Journal articles on the topic 'Poetry; Textual criticism; Literary criticism'

Although ekphrastic poetry has always been a popular poetic genre, the twentieth century saw a profusion in the production of literary texts that describe art objects. Ekphrastic criticism is abundant with critical discussions raising questions concerning aesthetics, the value of artistic creations, and the nature of representation. However, these discussions rarely consider the experience of reading an ekphrastic poem or account for readers’ responses to ekphrastic texts. The present paper uses the tools and methodology of cognitive poetics to examine how WD Snodgrass’ ekphrastic poem ‘Matisse: The Red Studio’ may be mentally reconstructed. The analysis focuses on figure–ground relations and the psychological notion of attention to explore how textual cues are brought together to create a representation of the painting described in the poem. It examines the use of particular lexical items that denote colors, forms, and textures as they become available for processing into objects. While addressing Snodgrass’ questions concerning the ownership of art objects and the notion of ‘still movement’, it also illustrates the ability of cognitive poetics to account for reader responses to ekphrastic poems in a way that complements and expands on trends in linguistics and literary criticism.

This essay argues that there remains a far way to go before the translingual complexities of contemporary francophone poetry are exhausted. It introduces a new, different constellation of international poets, essayists, and translators to bear on the question of language choice as a means of creative expression. Building on the debates over franco-Arabic textual bilingualism that began in the 1980s, it presents close readings of translations by Salah Stétié and of original poetic compositions by Ryoko Sekiguchi. Two translational moments that foil, in french script, a deeper Arabic intertext show how literature and criticism work in multilingual situations, as they transform literary language through the aspiration of a single phonemic consonant—f.

Abstract Ludolph Dissen's Excursus II on the use of asyndeton in poetic diction, accompanying his 1830 edition of Pindar's odes and fragments, sparked a controversy among German classical scholars, August Boeckh, Gottfried Hermann, Theodor Bergk, Friedrich Schneidewin, and Tycho Mommsen among them. Set in a diachronic framework, this article explores Dissen's observations in his Excursus II and argues that Dissen's and Mommsen's views mark the two ends of a diachronic spectrum, constructing a virtual diptych of literary and textual criticism, as both classical scholars tackled the use of asyndeton in their editions. Along this train of thought, it scrutinizes Dissen's influence on Mommsen's editio maior. It also discusses the influence exerted on their views by Boeckh's and Hermann's editorial practices. Hence, in the light of the rivalry between Boeckh and Hermann, the article explores their reaction to Dissen's observations. In conclusion, it argues that nineteenth-century German classical scholarship fertilized Pindaric literary criticism through large scale projects e.g. the edition of texts, as well as through subtle observations resulting from textual criticism and close reading.

This essay offers an early chapter in the conjoined history of poetry and performance art, literary criticism and performance studies. Beginning in the mid-1950s and with increasing fervor through the 1960s, American poetry lived simultaneously in print, on vinyl, and in embodied performance. Amid this environment of multimedia publicity, an oddly private poetry emerged. The essay locates confessional poetry in the performance-rich context of its birth and interrogates not only its textual voice but also its embodied, performed breath. Focusing on early confessional work by Robert Lowell and Anne Sexton, this essay conducts side-by-side “readings” of printed poems and recorded performances and suggests that confessional refers to an intermedial, print-performance style—a particular logic for capturing personal performances in print form and for breathing performances back out of the printed page.

AbstractSome of the mainly unchartered territories in literary criticism are the implications of Susan Sontag’s frontal attack on traditional hermeneutical practices in Against Interpretation (1969). This contribution to investigations into the modes of interpretation attempts to draw constructive consequences from this provocation and investigate the notion of a ›poetics of criticism‹ emanating into what can be called the ›aesthetics of interpretation‹. In so doing, it explores the Romantic backdrop of this discourse through examining Friedrich Schlegel’s plea for a ›poetization‹ of critique and his demand to turn critical approaches into aesthetic, if not artistic, acts. Then, these reflections examine notions of perception or Anschauung as a cornerstone of comprehension; discuss poetic renderings of thought with Nietzsche, who epitomizes the fusion of reflection and aesthetic production; single out one of Gottfried Benn’s early poems (»Kreislauf«) as an object for putting aesthetic interpretation into practice given the specific character of this Expressionistic text; and, finally, assess elements of theories of recognition in terms of aesthetic practice with specific reference to a paragraph in early Adorno, which highlights cognitive transformation processes as matters of aesthetic experience.Thus, this essay illustrates the interrelationship between critical theory and practice as an aesthetic act, which takes into account the significance of Sontag’s challenge, exemplifying the necessity of finding a language register that can claim to strive towards adequacy in relation to the (artistic) object of criticism without compromising analytical rigour.The argument developed in this contribution towards an aesthetics of interpretation begins with a critical appreciation of various forms and modes of criticism in literature and other aspects of artistic expression. It centres on the significance of the dialogue as an explorative means of critical discourse, ranging from Friedrich Schlegel to Hugo von Hofmannsthal and indeed Hans Magnus Enzensberger. With the (fictive) dialogue as an instrument of aesthetic judgement, ›experience‹ entered the stage of literary criticism negotiating ambivalences and considering alternative points of view often generated from the texts under consideration.In terms of the ambivalences mentioned above, this investigation into the nature of criticism considers the notion of criticism as a form of art and an extrapolation of aesthetic reason as propagated already by Henry Kames, once even quoted by Hegel in connection with the establishing of a rationale for the critical appreciation of artistic products.It discusses the interplay of distance from, and empathy with, objects of aesthetic criticism asking to what extent the act of interpretation (Wolfgang Iser) can acquire a creative momentum of its own without distorting its true mission, namely to assess the characteristics and aesthetic qualities of specific (poetic) texts or other artistic objects. Following the closer examination of several of Nietzsche’s poems and Roland Barthes’s insistence on the segmentation of the linguistic material that constitutes a textual entity worthy of criticism, the article examines one of Gottfried Benn’s early poems (»Kreislauf«, 1912) in respect of its textual and structural dynamics, awkward sensuality as a form of negative eroticism. On the basis of a detailed linguistic, and indeed poetic, examination it shows where, when, and how literary criticism can meaningfully identify structural features as denominators for aesthetic experience.The final section is devoted to instrumentalize Adorno’s point that concepts can turn with some inevitability into images enabling the theory of cognition to acquire some credibility as a potentially fertile basis for aesthetic practice – both in literary criticism and poetic production. With a concluding reference to Paul Celan’s remark that language acquires a Being of its own and that something of existential significance occurs in the poem, this article illustrates that interpretation depends on a successful interplay of cognitive and sensual processes, which leaves criticism somewhere between aesthetic analysis and contextualization as well as between taking linguistic images metaphorically or indeed literarily. Finally, it suggests regarding aesthetic criticism as a way to assess both the actual creative process and its results as if they were involved in a ›dialogue‹ of their own. Therefore, interpretation can be seen as a process that generates its very own dynamics and procedures (i. e. ›poetics‹), either in relation to its object or in form of a juxtaposition. If the latter, the likelihood is stronger that ›interpretation‹ acquires more distinctiveness. Ultimately, however, the (quasi-performative) quality of interpretation depends on its stylistic features, the adequacy of language used, and conceptual stringency without disregarding its essential function, namely to enable a dialogue between the work of art and its recipient and the recipients amongst themselves.

The specificity of the development of the geographical and cultural space of Egypt in the poetry of the Silver Age at the time when the “Russian” poetic Egypt was born as a system of leitmotifs, imagestopos and a specific lexicon is described. It is noted that in modern literary criticism, in comprehending the geopoetics of a regional text, works devoted to the European continent, in particular, geopoetic regional models of Russian literature, have been most fully investigated. The relevance of the study is seen in the need to comprehend and analyze the geopoetics of Egypt and, more broadly, Africa as a sacred geocultural space. The textual fragments of poetic works by K. Balmont, V. Bryusov, I. Bunin, N. Gumilyov, V. Khlebnikov, representing stable geospatial images and symbols of Egypt, are analyzed. The authors come to the conclusion that the poetry of the Silver Age combines geocultural images and symbols with mythological motives, which gives the topos of Egypt a geosophical meaning. The analyzed material made it possible to show the generalized artistic structure of the geopoetic representation of Egypt in the poetics of the Silver Age and to highlight the spatial geocultural dominants: the Nile, Africa, the desert, the Sphinx, Egyptian heroes as images-topos, the Arab East.

The focus of this research work on selected descriptive of images refers to the analytic survey of metaphor and simile. They are selected, defined, explained and interpreted. Their significances in bringing about poetic diction, licence, meaning, message and themes are highlighted. They are fundamental figures of speech that implicitly and explicitly display the emotive value, connotative meaning, literariness and language skills. The poetic images reflect and represent real life situations through poetic skills and meanings. The literary criticism, comparative and textual analysis is evident when the objects are looked at from animate to inanimate and inanimate to animate. They serve as basic methodologies that are backing the theories and strategies on selected figures of speech. Imagery is the use of words that brings picture of the mind of the receiver or recipient and appeal to the senses. It is, however, manifested in various forms for resemblances, contrasts and comparisons. Artistic language through images revealed poetic views, assertion and facts.

AbstractAs a response to the tradition of scholarship that focused on questions of LXX origins, translation techniques and textual criticism, this article looks at how the LXX translations in antiquity were already in certain respects marked as Greek texts at their production, constructed as Greek literary texts in their origins, and subsequently employed in the same ways as compositional Greek texts by those who engaged them. It shows how the author of Aristeas constructs the LXX as a Greek text, how it functioned as such for Aristobulos and Philo. Already the translators demonstrate in their use of poetic language that they could produce literary Greek. Subsequently, Jewish Hellenistic authors employed the LXX alongside other Greek texts, and treated it with the methods of Hellenistic scholarship.

Recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in “New Formalism,” a close attention to textual language and structure that departs from the outdated and regressive stances of old formalisms (especially “New Criticism”) by interrogating the connections between form, history, and culture. This article surveys the contributions of New Formalism to Romanticism studies and applies its techniques to two canonical texts, suggesting that New Formalism is useful both for literary criticism and teaching literature. Opening with a survey of New Formalist theory and practices, and an overview of the theoretical innovations within New Formalism that have been made by Romantic scholars, the article applies New Formalist techniques to William Wordsworth’s Prelude and William Blake’s Milton: a Poem. Often read as poems seeking to escape the dispiriting failure of the French Revolution, these texts, I argue, engage the formal strategies of epic poetry to enter the discourse of the period, offering competing ways to conceive of the self in relation to history. Written during the Romantic epic revival, when more epics were composed than at any other time in history, these poems’ allusive dialogue with Paradise Lost and with the epic tradition more broadly allows them to think through the self’s relationship to the past, a question energized by the Revolution Controversy. I explore how Wordsworth uses allusion to link himself to Milton and ultimately Virgil, both privileging the past and thereby asserting the value of the present as a means of reiterating and restoring it; Blake, in contrast, alludes to Milton to query the very idea of dependence on the past. These readings are intertwined with my experiences of teaching, as I have employed New Formalism to encourage students to develop as writers in response to texts. An emphasis on form provides students with concrete modes of entry into discussing literature and allows instructors to help students identify and revise the forms and structures of their own writing in response to literature.

We persistently fail to appreciate the very status of cancionero poetry as an innovative art form, as literature worthy of serious analysis, and as an intellectual and humanistic pursuit. The villancico ‘Por una gentil floresta’, attributed to both the Marqués de Santillana and Suero de Ribera, is a case in point, a composition that is very well known but grossly underappreciated as a work of art, a cultural commentary, or for its social significance. It exists in multiple incarnations, in both the manuscript and early printed traditions of the cancioneros, attesting to its ample circulation and popularity. While the object of intense philological enquiry regarding issues of authorship, transmission, and possible influence, the numerous studies dedicated to this villancico do not foreclose further discussion of it to achieve greater appreciation of its artistic and human complexity. Close reading illustrates the abundant literary, thematic and cultural possibilities it offers, and allows us to articulate the wealth, intricacy, human understanding and artistic significance of fifteenth-century Castilian courtly verse; possibilities that reach well beyond philology and textual criticism and prove it a rich source for fruitful interpretation that exemplifies the kind of poetry and hermeneutical potential that can be found in the cancioneros.

Contemporary works of electronic literature that focus on the use of moving text are aesthetically related to the text movies that arose in the experimental film community, particularly in the 1960s, and both share much in common with concrete and visual poetry. Though criticism has traditionally placed a barrier between works of electronic literature and cinematic text movies on the basis of their perceived medium (cinema characterised by emulsion and electronic literature characterised by computer code), textual screen works originating from both media utilise similar techniques in the presentation and manipulation of text. Interactivity is potentially a differentiator between electronic literature and cinema, but this distinction is negated by the fact that not all works of electronic literature are interactive (that is, they do not require an interactor in order to function). The increasing digitisation and, to a lesser extent, interactivity of cinema also argues against placing a gap between electronic literature and cinematic works that utilise the textual screen. Text movies, visual poetry, and other digital works featuring moving text can be seen as belonging to the same family; they are united by the aesthetic experience of perceiving them, which derives from a dynamic tension between the act of reading and the act of watching. Taken together, they form a continuum of countertextual practice that involves the destabilisation of reading and the displacement of literary significance away from traditional means of sense-making and towards the use of text-as-objects that do not always achieve the status of language.

Formulating a definition of ‘good’ poetry is, and should be, impossible. Yet women's poetry of the First World War seems generally to have been condemned as ‘bad’. It inspires an ambiguous response from readers who recognize the value of its historical, social and psychological content, but shudder at the limitations of its form. However, I believe that a much more fruitful reading of these ‘recalcitrant’ texts is possible. It is not my intention to deny either their problematic nature, or the diversity and complexity of male responses to the war, but rather to emphasize that women's experience of the First World War was radically different from that of men, and we should not therefore be constrained by the traditional parameters of 1914–18 criticism when we explore these works. This article examines a selection of this poetry in the light of the psychological processes of grief and bereavement, and in so doing indicates other areas in which constructive readings of these texts might be made. Why do we expect the articulation of a radically new and uniformly consistent poetic voice from what was a large and diverse group of women? The expectations of modernism ironically have created a literary ‘mainstream’ out of a selection of experimental, and largely male, writing. I hope to show that the ‘failure’ of these women to conform to our textual ‘great expectations’ is irrelevant. The single most characteristic feature of these women's experience of war was isolation. Their position had neither the homogeneity of the trenches, nor the intense intellectualism of experimental circles. Predominantly middle class, alienated by absence and bereavement, they attempted to articulate the unprecedented nature of their experience. That their experiments were not wholly successful is perhaps indicative of the near impossibility of the task they undertook.

The author summarizes Blake studies of the 21st century. The beginning of the modern era of Blake studies can be considered with the paradigm of deconstruction. At the end of the 20th century, synthetic analysis took a special place in Blake studies, when Blake’s illuminated books were studied as an inseparable unity of verbal and visual. Blake’s legacy has undergone a significant evolution related to deconstruction and postmodern approaches, and linguistic research. The development of traditional areas of research, such as psychoanalysis, textual criticism of manuscripts, religious and mystical allusions, and comparative studies is also traced. Postmodernism, which owes much to the Romanticism (i.e. the concept of irony, fragmentation, the category of the exalted, the original lonely hero), brought new features to Blake studies and greatly contributed to its approval among canonical authors of the Romanticism. In modern Blake studies, such areas as gender studies, postcolonial studies, studies in digital reality environments are most actively developing. Starting from the 2000s, the main direction in Blake studies has become reception, that is, the cultural influence of Blake’s writings on later culture, including the culture of other countries: poetry, literature, music and cinema. Each new era reveals fundamentally similar features and adds meanings to Blake: this process is going from symbolism and psychoanalysis to the present day.

The author summarizes Blake studies of the 21st century. The beginning of the modern era of Blake studies can be considered with the paradigm of deconstruction. At the end of the 20th century, synthetic analysis took a special place in Blake studies, when Blake’s illuminated books were studied as an inseparable unity of verbal and visual. Blake’s legacy has undergone a significant evolution related to deconstruction and postmodern approaches, and linguistic research. The development of traditional areas of research, such as psychoanalysis, textual criticism of manuscripts, religious and mystical allusions, and comparative studies is also traced. Postmodernism, which owes much to the Romanticism (i.e. the concept of irony, fragmentation, the category of the exalted, the original lonely hero), brought new features to Blake studies and greatly contributed to its approval among canonical authors of the Romanticism. In modern Blake studies, such areas as gender studies, postcolonial studies, studies in digital reality environments are most actively developing. Starting from the 2000s, the main direction in Blake studies has become reception, that is, the cultural influence of Blake’s writings on later culture, including the culture of other countries: poetry, literature, music and cinema. Each new era reveals fundamentally similar features and adds meanings to Blake: this process is going from symbolism and psychoanalysis to the present day.

This article introduces the special issue. In it, we argue that research into reader response should be recognised as a vital aspect of contemporary stylistics, and we establish our focus on work which explicitly investigates such responses through the collection and analysis of extra-textual datasets. Reader response research in stylistics is characterised by a commitment to rigorous and evidence-based approaches to the study of readers’ interactions with and around texts, and the application of such datasets in the service of stylistic concerns, to contribute to stylistic textual analysis and/or wider discussion of stylistic theory and methods. We trace the influence of reader response criticism and reception theory on stylistics and discuss the productive dialogues which exist between stylistics and the related fields of the empirical study of literature and naturalistic study of reading. After offering an overview of methods available to reader response researchers and a contextualising survey of existing work, we argue that both experimental and naturalistic methods should be regarded as ‘empirical’, and that stylistics is uniquely positioned to embrace diverse approaches to readers and reading. We summarise contributions to the special issue and the valuable insights they offer into the historical context of reader response research and the way readers perceive and evaluate texts (either poetry or narrative prose). Stylistic reader response research enables both the testing and development of stylistic methods, in accordance with the progressive spirit of the discipline, and also the establishment of new and renewed connections between stylistic research and work in other fields.

The article examines the influence of V.S. Solovyov on the writers and poets of the Silver age. On the material of the works of Solovyov, related to the «сhinese theme»: the articles «Russia and Europe», «China and Europe», «Japan», «The enemy from the East»; the review of the first volume of works by E.E. Ukhtomsky; the poems «Panmongolizm» and «Dragon»;the tractate «The three conversations about war, progress and the end of world history»; the letter «About the recent events», – is evaluated his influence on D.S. Merezhkovsky's articles: «Yellow-faced positivists», «The coming ham», V.I. Ivanov's articles «Russia, England and Asia», «Inspiration of horror», V.M. Doroshevich's story «Goddess», V.V. Veresaev's story «Under the cedars»; «Chinese poems» and the articles of V.J. Bryusov. The political context of the works, the tradition of depicting China in Russian literature, literary and sinological works on this topic are taken into account. The comparative analysis of texts, the coincidence of a number of theoretical positions, and separate definitions and epithets are revealed. The numbers of Solovyov's positions are revealed, which are reflected in the works of Merezhkovsky and Ivanov: materialism and positivism of the Chinese, the «emptiness» of their philosophy, the denial of life and progress, the «yellow danger», the need for the Christianization of China (the last position in Merezhkovsky is not). Doroshevich's story, written at the height of the ikhetuan rebellion («boxer rebellion»), was influenced by the philosopher's eschatological prophecies. The negative image of China in the poetry of V.J. Bryusov is the textual confirmation of the influence of Solovyov, noted by modern literary criticism.

For the first time in literary studies, a comparative analysis of the urbanistic poetry of Bohdan Ihor Antonych and Georg Heym is realized. The common and divergent in semantic codes and characteristic practices from which the poetics of both authors grows are investigated. The city is the defining topos of modernist writing and the central category of the modernist worldview. In no other epoch did the city enjoy the attention of writers as at the end of the 19th century and in the first third of the 20th century. The modern city acquires its outlines only in the middle of the 18th century, and the modernist city from the second half of the 19th century, but especially in the early 20th century through dialectical denial and overcoming the «city of enlightenment». The metaphor of the sea and the semantics of the element, usually water, characterize expressionist speech. Expressionist lyrics are imbued with apocalyptic visions. Urban modernist poetry is an extrapolation of the inner world (states of consciousness) to the outer world. Negative fascination is a defining feature of urbanistic discourse in expressionist poetry. Expressionist urbanistic lyricism is a romantic revolt against urbanization as a defining structural element of the civilizational evolution of mankind, and demonization is the main instrument of criticism of the city in expressionist lyricism. Special attention is paid to the function of memory and remembrance in big-city modernist poetry. While in Heym, a representative of early expressionism in German literature, the city appears as a topos of the apocalypse, in Antonych, the picture of the city is significantly more differentiated – and figuratively, and tonally, and substantial. The thematic blurring of Heym's urban landscapes is opposed by Antonychʼs structural urban subtopoi, the key one being the square. Antonychʼs poetics moves from the concrete to the abstract; his apocalypse is more mundane, aestheticized and playful, and the trumpets of the last day trumpet in the squares, which lovers meet. Antonychʼs city is more vitalistic than Heimʼs, even when the lyrical subject inflicts a flood on him. Not only expressionist but also formalistic and cubist melodies are heard in it. The article uses methods of textual, paratext, and contextual analysis, method of distributive analysis, method of poetic analysis, method of semantic analysis, method of stylistic analysis, method of phonological analysis, hermeneutic and post-structuralist methods. Keywords: modernism, expressionism, urbanistic lyrics, urban landscape, memory, remembrance.

Resumo: Em meio às composições coligidas no livro O engenheiro (1945), muita ênfase foi dada ao poema “A Carlos Drummond de Andrade”, ladeado pelo outro “A Joaquim Cardozo”, que quase não teve repercussão alguma. A partir do cotejo entre as duas homenagens poéticas, será feito o acompanhamento editorial do poema dedicado ao engenheiro profissional e poeta, para conferir o valor comunicativo de sua representação naquele contexto de pronunciamento específico. De igual modo, a análise deste poema será desenvolvida de acordo com suas variações ao longo da produção autoral de João Cabral de Melo Neto por meio das reedições do livro que o coligiu. Para tanto, serão acionadas a edição princeps do volume, sua reedição em Duas águas (1956) e a fixação do poema na década seguinte, quando as Poesias completas (1968) foram publicadas. Como contraponto ao perfil literário de Joaquim Cardozo esboçado pelo autor, será acionado o depoimento de Oscar Niemeyer em Minha experiência em Brasília (1961) sobre a atuação de seu amigo e engenheiro dileto no ofício comum a ambos.Palavras-chave: poesia brasileira moderna; crítica textual; João Cabral de Melo Neto; Joaquim Cardozo.Abstract: Among the poems collected in the book O engenheiro (1945), much emphasis was given to the poem “A Carlos Drummond de Andrade”, published by side of “A Joaquim Cardozo”, which had not almost any repercussion. From the comparison between the two poetic tributes, the editorial accompaniment of the poem dedicated to the engineer and poet will be made, to assign the communicative value of their representation in that context of specific pronouncement. Likewise, the analysis of this poem will be developed according to their variations throughout the authorial production of João Cabral de Melo Neto through the reissues of the book that collated it. To this end, the princeps edition of the volume, its reissue in Duas águas (1956) and the fixation of the poem in the following decade, when the Poesias completas (1968) was published. As a counterpoint to Joaquim Cardozo’s literary profile outlined by the author, Oscar Niemeyer’s testimony will be triggered in Minha experiência em Brasília (1961) about the performance of his friend and favorite engineer in the craft common to both.Keywords: modern Brazilian poetry; textual criticism; João Cabral de Melo Neto; Joaquim Cardozo.

The Old English Descent into Hell fits uneasily into the poetic corpus remaining to us from Anglo-Saxon England. The poem is an oddity both thematically and genetically, and (insofar as it has attracted any attention at all) the history of its criticism has been an unrewarding search for sources. The Descent presents a sourcing problem at its most basic, for its parts are so disparate that it is difficult even to construct a horizon of expectations from which to read the work. I hope to suggest here a new analogue, as well as a new way of thinking about sources and analogues in Old English literary studies, that may prove fruitful. The more rewarding context for comparative study of the Descent into Hell is not textual, but pictorial; I argue that visual exegesis of the psalms reveals both the source and the nature of the connection between the poem's two primary topics. In particular, iconography derived from the enormously influential Utrecht Psalter (Utrecht, Universiteitsbibliotheek, 32) provides a structural model, if not for the composition of the text in the most direct sense, then certainly for both medieval and modern understanding of it.

Despite frequent attempts to explain the emergence of a coherent type of polyphonic song in the early 14th century, our understanding is dominated by views drawn from lyric poetry, romance, criticism of musical and literary register, traditions of performance, and other abstract conceptualizations of this remarkable moment in the history of music. But there exists an extensive body of musical evidence that points to an energetic and sophisticated experimentation with musical and poetic elements that anticipated the style of polyphonic song cultivated by Machaut and his contemporaries. One such experimental repertory consists of the 22 motets based on vernacular tenors copied into the seventh and eighth fascicles of the Montpellier Codex (F-MOf H 196) and in the Turin motet book (I-Tr vari 42) ca.1300. The vernacular tenors that underpin these motets exhibit the types of repeating structures familiar from secular monody around 1300: six- and eight-line rondeaux and various other types of structure as described by Ludwig, Gennrich, and Walker. What has been less systematically explored is the degree to which the upper voices of the motets reflect the repetitions that characterize their tenors. The composers of these motets were attempting——within the stylistic restraints that the genre imposed on them——to create polyphonic works whose entire texture followed the structure of the tenor: in other words, to construct a musical entity that had much in common with the polyphonic song of the next generation, but that still retained the overlapping phrase patterns and poetic line length of the motet as had been traditional for nearly a century.

Problem’s setting. The problem of interpretation and research of the term “intertextuality” today is a topical issue of philosophy, literary criticism, linguistics, modern Ukrainian linguistic poetics, and stylistics of the text. That is, no text can be created in an empty space, it must have an intertextual relationship with other works or texts. Analysis of recent studies. The theoretical basis for the study formed works in the field of modern linguistics, in particular, Robert de Bogrand, Alexander Veselovsky, Olga Vorobyova, Wolfgang Dressler, Alexander Potebnya considered “intertextuality” as a textual category; Yuri Lotman, Vladimir Lukin – as a prerequisite for textuality; Lyudmyla Babenko, Suren Zolyan, Larysa Omelchenko, Natalia Fateeva – as means of its implementation in specific texts. Objective of the research. The purpose of the work is to analyze the external and internal connections of the literary text of Maksym Rylsky and the means of their realization in the explicitly intertextual process of the text’s existence. The main part. The article studies the peculiarities of the artistic embodiment of intertextuality in the poems of Maxim Rylsky; the definition of intertext in a broad and narrow sense is traced; the classification of the intertextuality of Jennet is singled out. The focus is on the separation of language units, intertextual components in the language of Maxim Rylsky; examples and quotations, allusions, titles, epigraphs, hints, genre connection of texts, references to the pretext in the artist’s creative work are given and analyzed. Conclusions. Research and analysis of the intertextuality of the artist’s poetics show that in a new way the comprehension and depiction of quotations, allusions, epigraphs, titles, hints, paraphrases become differential features of the individual author’s style.

The goal of this work is determine the peculiarities and origins of artistic thinking of the Crimean Tatar writer of the XX century Mehmet Nuzhet. The methodological and theoretical framework of this research is comprised of the works of U. Ipchi, E. Shemizade, J. Bekirov, A. Altanly, I. Kerimov, Y. Kandymov and others. The aforementioned authors made an indisputable contribution to the development of Crimean Tatar literature and literary criticism. The artistic heritage of M. Nuzhet is diverse and unique. His poetic, prosaic and translation works are fused with national spirit. The actions and feelings of the protagonists of the artist’s lyrical works are a direct reflection of his psychological state. This article pays special attention to the psychological type of the lyricist. Using comparative, textual analysis, the author examines the published and original handwritten texts by M. Nuzhet. The conclusion is made that the writer systematically worked on the study of the depth feelings, emotions and ways their expression. The application of traditional folk poetic forms, genres, images allows creating the new patterns of influence upon the audience. Conveying the eternal anthropological topics, he transforms into a wise folk storyteller and preacher. For depicting the life realities, he disguises an old poor man or a street drunkard. Poetic alliterations and assonances enliven these images. In the process of declamation of such poems, the audience is captivated by the text and uses various mimic emotions intended by the context.

The following article explores ekphrasis as a literary device in the context of the Russian and English language literary texts. The phenomenon of ekphrasis is regarded to be a relatively researched area in the literary criticism. However, the majority of the existing research focuses on the visual representations in the verbal medium, thereby neglecting the aspect of the reader’s possible interpretation of an ekphrastic description and its stylistic expression in a literary text. Thus, the aim of this article is to identify the specific language patterns constructing ekphrastic references in the Russian and English language literary texts by conducting a comparative linguo-cognitive analysis of ekphrastic intertextual references in Dina Rubina’s ‘On the Sunny Side of the Street’ (2006) and Margaret Atwood’s ‘Cat’s Eye’ (1988). The research is based on the comparative linguo-cognitive analysis combining the following cognitive poetic techniques: the ‘figure — ground’ dichotomy, the model of literary resonance, and the narrative interrelation theory. The analysis of the figure-ground relations in ekphrastic descriptions has shown that the main character takes the figure position and becomes a pronounced attractor, thereby exerting an affective influence on the reader’s perception. The application of the literary resonance model confirms this claim by identifying typical semantic, syntactic and stylistic features (attractors) of the character in the analysed ekphrastic passages. The comparison of an ekphrastic description to a passage which it is based on has revealed the characteristic parallelism of their syntactic and semantic patterns. In part, parallel constructions contain specific intertextual references that create links to an art object, thus actualising the representation of a picture in the reader’s perception. A comparative linguo-cognitive analysis of ekphrastic references in Russian and English literary texts has shown the possible intratextuality of ekphrastic references, which establish the relationships between plots within the narrative. Additionally, in both literary texts, ekphrastic references imitate the visual construction of an object of art at the semantic, syntactic and textual levels and, as a result, accentuate the metaphorical realisation of the presented artefact.

In "The Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature" on Harvard University out of 131 epic songs recorded from Milovan Vojicic, several are dedicated to the popular theme of the Serbian and Balkan epic - the Kosovo Battle 1389 (Prince Lazar and Milos Obilic, The Defeat of Kosovo, ?he Kosovo Tragedy, The Kosovo Field after the Battle, The Death of Mother Jugovici, The Death of Pavle Orlovic at Kosovo, noted in 1933-34 in Nevesinje). The paper examines Vojicic?s Kosovo songs from the perspective of textual, stylistic and rhetoric criticism, poetics, and memory studies. An analysis of Milovan Vojicic?s Kosovo epic poetry leaves an impression of an active singer who has internalised tradition, and on this foundation composes new works in the traditional manner and "in the folk style". Vojicic is a literate singer who was familiar with the collections of Vuk Karadzic, Bogoljub Petranovic, the Matica Hrvatska, and the songbooks of the time. He did not hesitate to remake or rewrite songs from printed collections or periodicals, which means that his understanding of authorship was in the traditional spirit. Vojicic?s compilations lie on that delicate line between oral traditional and modern literary poetry; he is, naturally, not alone in this double role - the majority of the gusle-players who were his contemporaries could be similarly described. In the body of Kosovo epic poetry Vojicic?s songs stand out (The Death of Pavle Orlovic at Kosovo, The Kosovo Tragedy), where he abandons the printed model and achieves the kind of originality which is in fact part of tradition itself. Vojicic highly valued oral tradition and the opportunity to perform it, as part of the process of creating an image of himself as a folk gusle-player in modern terms. For this reason, his repertoire includes both old and new themes. They are sung according to the epic standard, but also in accordance with the modern standard of epic semi-literary works. In Vojicic?s world, oral tradition is an important component in viewing the historical past, and in perceiving reality and the singer?s place in it. The epic is a form of oral memory and the guardian of remembrance of past events; however it also provides a space for surveying and commenting on modern historical situations in a popularly accepted manner, at times in an ideological key, as seen in songs which gather together major historical events. This perception of the epic tradition and history is mirrored in the heterogeneity of the corpus and in the repertoire of songs, and is all a consequence of vastly changed conditions of origin, existence and acceptance, i.e. the consumption of oral works in the first half of the 20th century, in a process of interaction between literature and folklore.

This essay explains the appearance of tragic narrative patterns and motifs in the Croesus logos not as a passive manifestation of "tragic influence," but as a self-conscious textual strategy whereby Herodotus makes his narratives familiar and engaging while also demonstrating the distinctive traits of his own innovative discourse, historie. Herodotus' purposive appropriation and modification of tragic technique manifests the critical engagement with other authors and literary genres that is one of the defining features of the Histories. Herodotus embellishes the story of Atys and Adrastus with numerous formal and thematic features of Attic tragedy. Uniquely in the Histories, the story traces the full arc of a tragic drama, from the king's ominous dream of Atys' death to catastrophe, lament, and burial. The celebrated climactic description of Adrastus' suicide, however, transcends Herodotus' dramatic model. In describing Adrastus as the most unfortunate man "of all that he (Adrastus) himself knew," Herodotus introduces an idiom used elsewhere in the Histories to portray the activity of the histor, and thus places the unmistakable stamp of his own genre upon tragic narrative. In a fully mimetic episode that lacks the author's characteristically intrusive "voiceprint," Herodotus seems to suggest that he could beat the dramatists at their own game if he chose to play it. Two other episodes (thought by some to be based upon pre-existing tragedies) make similar use of tragic motifs on a smaller scale. In the story of Gyges and Candaules Herodotus adapts the Aeschylean motif of the decision made under duress to focus attention on human causation and socio-political issues of fundamental interest to him. Finally, the tragic stylization of Croesus' pyre scene allows Herodotus to manipulate audience expectations while subtly demonstrating, through the use of indirect discourse, the interest in source criticism that sets Herodotean historie apart from the poetic tradition.

The present article compares the two principal received editions of the Gongsun Longzi in the Daozang and the Shuofu collections. Exploring the considerable number of textual variants between these two editions, the analysis challenges the acknowledged status of the Daozang as the superior version. Instead, both the Daozang and the Shuofu editions are at times inferior or superior to one another. Therefore, in the interpretation of the Gongsun Longzi both editions need to be consulted in order to unravel certain obscure passages. Altogether, due to the generally high degree of coherence between the two editions, the understanding of the Gongsun Longzi is significantly affected by textual variants only in a limited number of cases. This further suggests that the Daozang and Shuofu editions do not represent two separate lines of transmission but rather two textual witnesses of a common line. Cet article compare les deux principales éditions reçues du Gongsun Longzi, recueillies respectivement dans le Daozang et dans le Shuofu. L’analyse des multiples variantes textuelles entre les deux versions conduit à remettre en question la supériorité généralement admise de celle du Daozang. En réalité, chacune des deux éditions est suivant les cas supérieure ou inférieure à l’autre. Pour interpréter le Gongsun Longzi il convient par conséquent de consulter l’une et l’autre si l’on veut éclaircir certains passages obscurs. Dans la mesure où dans l’ensemble les deux éditions présentent un degré élevé de cohérence entre elles, les cas où la compréhen­sion du texte est affectée de façon significative par les variantes restent finalement peu nombreux. Ce qui suggère que les versions du Daozang et du Shuofu représentent non pas deux lignées séparées de transmission, mais plutôt deux témoignages d’une seule et même lignée.

My appreciation of textual criticism – a nowadays somewhat marginalized subdiscipline that continues nevertheless to provide the foundation of our subject – has been vastly enhanced by Richard Tarrant's new book on the subject. I read it from cover to cover with great pleasure and satisfaction (several times laughing out loud, which doesn't happen often with works of scholarship), with great interest, and with dismay at my own ignorance, and I came away determined to be a better Classicist. This little volume is the fourteenth ‘suggestive essay’ published in CUP's Roman Literature and its Contexts series (established in 1990 by Denis Feeney and Stephen Hinds), but it does not – sadly – mark a revival of this excellent series, but rather a late addition. (There cannot be many Latinists of my generation who did not, as young scholars, aspire one day to be the author of one of these elegantly concise yet ground-breaking volumes.) On the face of it this volume is rather different from its predecessors, which usually engaged with cutting-edge theory from a Classical perspective; instead, Texts, Editors and Readers opens up to non-initiates such as myself a whole world of existing scholarship into which many literary scholars seldom venture, inhabited not only by the towering ‘heroic editors’ of the past (Chapter 1) but also by colourful characters such as ‘interpolation hunters’ (86), freewheeling neo-sceptics (77), elegant minimalists, and unrestrained maximalists. With a combination of vivid characterization, lucid explanation, and delicious detail, Tarrant outlines the challenges of establishing a decent text, and the techniques involved; in Chapters 3 to 5 we learn about recension, conjecture, interpolation, collaboration, and intertextuality. He also makes exceptionally clear the issues that are at stake in editing a text, and the tensions with which the discipline is charged. At every stage of the process, from the selection of manuscripts for scrutiny to the display of information in the final edition, choices need to be made that are bound to provoke dissent. The twin aims of providing a legible text and legible apparatus are often in conflict with one another. Eventually, to establish a readable text, an editor needs to choose a single solution and put all alternatives in the apparatus, which must then record the evidence and the decision process as far as possible. Done well, it allows us to understand the process by which the text of the edition has been established, and the contributions made by scholars over the years. But within Classics there is no agreement about precisely how this should be achieved, as Tarrant points out. As he makes clear with his comparison of two reviews of the same edition, one reviewer's ‘accuracy’ and ‘methodological rigor’ is another's ‘frivolous superfluities’ (25–6). Tarrant comments that one would hardly believe these evaluations pertained to the same edition of Lucan, but in fact the picture is consistent and the divergence of opinion is telling; what comes across strongly is that these two reviewers want something very different from their editions. The disagreement here is between a scholar who wants progress towards a better text, amending scribal errors and providing confident, robust conjectures, and another who is glad to find a text relatively untouched, but in the apparatus all the material that enables a reader to come to their own decisions about the variants to be preferred. The merits of both are clear; the tensions are between the aspiration for a readable, usable text and the desire to be transparent about the difficulties involved in establishing that text. A decisive reading may obscure ambiguities; excessive hedging muddies the reading. Every choice involves compromise: minimalists may omit important information that might allow the reader to draw different conclusions; maximalists risk cluttering up the page and seeming undiscriminating. Tarrant (a self-confessed minimalist) alarms us on pages 130–1 with the sight of the monstrous apparatus produced by an unrestrained maximalist. Meanwhile, while conservative critics are averse to new conjectures and stick as close to the manuscript reading as possible, conjecture emerges as a creative art form, where natural talent is enhanced by intimate appreciation of Latin literature and style (73); it can attract great admiration. I now aspire to be able someday to compile, as Tarrant does, my own list of favourite conjectures – a bit like a montage of favourite sporting moments, as one revels in the pleasure of seeing the execution of skilful manoeuvres. Chapter 6 brings our attention to a representative case where textual tradition and literary interpretation cannot be disentangled: is Propertius a ‘difficult’ poet, prone to elliptical writing, or is he an elegant writer whose text has been unfortunately mangled in transmission? In other words, where the text is hard to understand, do we spend our energies reading his poetry as if he were a modernist poet, teasing out cryptic meaning, or do we channel our energies into amending the text to something more easily comprehensible? One's prejudice about the nature of Propertius’ poetry inevitably shapes one's approach to editing the text. The question is insoluble, but the debates thereby evoked are illuminating. As Chapter 2 makes clear, this is a discipline that relies on persuasion and is characterized by strong rhetoric; the contempt and disgust that are directed at fellow scholars and inferior manuscripts are remarkable. Language is often emotive and moralizing; the bracketing of problematic lines described as ‘a coward's remedy’ (86, n. 2). Tarrant himself, who takes a light and genial tone throughout, doesn't shy away from describing a certain practice of citing scholars in the apparatus criticus as ‘an abomination’ (161). One of many evocative details is the idea of Housman storing up denunciations of editorial vices without a particular target yet in mind (68). Traditionally, self-belief and decisive authority have been the hallmarks of the ‘heroic’ style of editing, and these qualities are especially unfashionable in our own era, which prizes the acknowledgement of ambiguity and hermeneutic openness. Tarrant encourages us to accept that the notions of the ‘recoverable original’ or the ‘definitive edition’ are myths, but at the same time to acknowledge that they are necessary myths (40) for this ‘doomed yet noble’ endeavour (156). A critical edition is no more nor less than a provisional ‘working hypothesis’ which invites continued and continual engagement. As Tarrant puts it: ‘any edition, to the degree that it stimulates thinking about the text, begins the process that will lead to its being succeeded by another edition’ (147). Textual criticism should be, therefore, a collaborative endeavour to be marked by humility and an acceptance of the open-endedness of interpretation, of the hermeneutic work that an editor needs to undertake, and also of the overlap between the roles of editor and reader. It is easy to perceive textual criticism – with its heyday in the nineteenth century – as constituting the dry and dusty past of Classics, and indeed Tarrant treats us to a most entertaining account of its Heroic Age, when Housman et al. lashed one another with cruel wit and erudite put-downs. However, Tarrant also makes an irrefutable case for the continued relevance, and indeed the exciting future, of textual criticism – despite the fact that it has lost its position at the centre of our discipline, and so many of us are untrained and unable to appreciate its value. Tarrant's depiction of the discipline brings home the lesson – which we already knew, but now really get – that all classical scholars ought accordingly to be aware of these general issues and to have some grasp of the specific routes by which the text they are reading has been reached, the problematic aspects of that text, and the issues involved in attempting to resolve its problems. Such is the information that an apparatus criticus attempts to convey, and it may therefore be judged on how effectively and efficiently it does so. Having made all of this so clear and in such an engaging fashion, Tarrant concludes by providing as an appendix a helpful guide for the inexperienced to reading a critical apparatus. The final chapters explore two questions in particular: what can technological advances contribute (for instance in access to and presentation of manuscripts), and is the current model of the apparatus criticus fit for purpose? On the latter issue, Tarrant would like to see, at the very least, more scope for providing in the notes nuanced indication of the editor's feelings about the choices he or she has made. He proposes the wider use of phrases that allude to the internal struggles behind a rejected variant, for instance (such as utinam recte or aegre reieco) or the introduction of new symbols for the apparatus that would signal degrees of suspicion – although he doesn't go quite so far as to second Donaldson's suggestion for a pictorial symbol of ‘a small ostrich, with head in the sand’ to denote occasions where an editor follows a manuscript out of despair of making actual sense of the text (58, n. 25). Early in his essay, Tarrant expresses regret that new editions are less likely to be reviewed than other forms of scholarship, and, with the decline in the requisite editorial knowhow, it easy to see why: reviewing a new edition of a text is not a job that can be undertaken with confidence by most scholars of Latin literature. How can one pass judgement on an editor's decisions without a very sound knowledge not only of the work but also of the manuscripts available, of the relationships between them, and of the subsequent critical tradition? How can one comment on individual amendments or conjectures without an understanding of the entire interpretative framework which the critic has brought to bear? One of the many valuable things I have learned from Tarrant's book is that it not always necessary to comment on individual cruces; equally useful can be an evaluation of the general approach and principles upon which an edition is both established and communicated.