Journal articles on the topic 'Religious aspects of Greek epic poetry'

The term "myth" is a category of our thinking, used to combine the attempts to explain natural phenomena, creations of oral literature, philosophical constructions and cases of linguistic processes in the mind of the subject. Myth is a living word, myth was experienced, and this experience determined the essence of the myth for man in the period of transformation of thinking from figurative into conceptual. Man of ancient times didn't separate himself from society, both society from nature and cosmos as an embodiment of various and numerous gods. "Myth" was used to confirm the existence of something unknown or something that couldn't be verified, but there is trust in this unknown, based on translation. "Logos" was used to denote a word generated by mind, as a word referred to some higher, metaphysical one. The word "epic" was understood as an objective metrical narrative, in which a poetic illusion, an appropriate deception, illogicality were allowed. "Myth", "logos" and "epic" were filled with different semantic meanings. The semantic nuances in the word "myth" appeared in periods of weakening the power of myth and lately, when myth, as a sacred word, was opposed to religion, science and philosophy. The mythical word weakened by religious dogmas and definitions, empirical data of science and the logic of philosophical constructions, which created a new attitude to the myth and its definition. According to the Greek tradition the word "myth" was formed as a multifaceted concept with a number of semantic nuances. The word itself was less understood, while more felt, reflecting the irrational aspects of human perception of the world or some parts. The myth was determined not by the word itself, but by the attitude to the description of experiences or events conveyed by him, formed in stories, with the addition of emotions, signs and symbols, combining verbal and nonverbal means of information.

The ancient Greek epic Iliad, including the oral epic and the written epic, has enjoyed a solid status as a ‘heroic epic’ (or ‘narrative poetry’) of European literature. But if a reader takes look at the general aspects of the heroic epic of oral tradition, it turns out that Iliad is not a typical work of a typical epic, but rather an individual one. Because the birth, trials, performance, and ending of a hero’s life are divided relatively evenly, and the general pattern of transferring the hero’s life to the heroic epic of oral tradition can be found in such cases as Manas, Jangar, Gesar and Mwindo.

Homer's Iliad and Odyssey were created, probably in the second half of the 9th century BC, in the framework of the Greek epic tradition of oral formulaic poetry, which started in the Peloponnese in proto-Mycenaean times (c. 1600 BC). The epic verse, the dactylic hexameter, must have been taken over from the Minoan Cretans. Whereas most 19th century scholars were analysts, considering Homer's epics' conflations of older and more recent epic poems, most modern scholars are unitarians, recognizing the unity of both epics, thanks to modern insights in the nature of oral traditional poetry and to modern narratology. Although many modern scholars ascribe the Odyssey to a later poet than that of the Iliad, there are no convincing arguments against the Ancients' opinion that both epics are the work of one single poet called Homer. Both Iliad and Odyssey are characterized by the principle of ‘unity of action’, a principle not found in other ancient epic poetry. There are reasons to suppose that Homer learnt the art of epic versification in Smyrna, his native city, by listening to performances of Aeolic singers. Driven by Ionic self-consciousness he transposed the epic Aeolic Kunstsprache into Ionic, thus creating the so-called Homeric dialect. He could perform his monumental epics at great religious festivals and at the courts of princes. There is evidence that he gave performances in the island of Euboea, the only prosperous region of the contemporary Greek world, and that there his epics were eventually written down. Thus, Homer's epics are the end-point of the oral epic tradition and the starting point of written Greek and European literature.

Largely because the processes of transmission have been unkind, the religious hymns sung by the Greeks during worship of a god on a public or private occasion have received less than their due attention from modern scholars. Our sources frequently mention in passing that hymns were sung on the way to Eleusis, for example, or at the well Kallichoron on arrival at Eleusis, or by the deputations to Delos for the Delia, but they usually fail to record the texts or contents of these hymns. Until the fourth century BC temple authorities did not normally have the texts of cult songs inscribed; and the works themselves were by a diversity of authors, some well-known, some obscure, making the collection of their ‘hymns’ a difficult task for the Alexandrian compilers. Some such hymns were traditional—Olen's at Delos, for example — handed down orally from generation to generation; others were taught to a chorus for a specific occasion and then forgotten. Nor do the surviving corpora of ‘hymns’ — I refer to the Homeric Hymns, Callimachus' six hymns, and the Orphic Hymns—go very far to satisfy our curiosity as to the nature of this ubiquitous hieratic poetry. The Homeric Hymns would seem to have been preludes (προοίμια) to the recitation of epic poetry; they are in the same metre and style as epic, and the singer usually announces that he is about to commence another poem on finishing the hymn. Their content may give us authentic material about a god and his attendant myths, but the context of their performance seems distinct from worship proper. The Homeric Hymns provided the basic model for Callimachus' hymns although it is clear that he adapted the model to permit innovations such as the mimetic mode of hymns 2, 5 and 6, which present an eye-witness account of religious ritual. Some find Callimachus' hymns lacking in true religious feeling; few seriously maintain that they were intended, or could have been used, for performance in cult.

The expression “(on) this day” has an extremely pregnant meaning in different contexts of early Greek poetry. It is used in rituals and in solemn utterances, but it is much more than an emphatic way of saying “today.” It shows that the speaker is recognizing that a decisive, irreversible moment is approaching. Such knowledge of the appointed destiny is only accessible to the gods or to mortals inspired by them, which often makes the authoritative utterance “this day” a performative speech-act that brings immediate accomplishment. The study of the instances of this expression, both with ἦμαρ and ἡμέρα, in epic, religious poetry, and tragedy, also sheds light on the different Greek notions of what a decisive day was.

In a book I published a few years ago, entitledTowards a Poetics of Modern Greek Folksong, I examined certain aspects of the poetics of modern folksongs in the light of the ‘oral composition theory’ of Homeric poetry, originally expounded by Milman Parry in the late twenties and early thirties and subsequently elaborated by Albert B. Lord. In this paper I propose to follow the opposite course, and inquire whether some of my findings regarding the verse-making techniques of the modern folksongs could be applied to the Homeric epics, and whether they could be made to cast some additional light on the making of ancient epic poetry. More specifically, in my study of formular and otherwise similar verses in the folksongs, I was able to distinguish five degrees of kinship, as it were, or of decreasing similarity, from identical formulas to sense units of similar type. Can a comparable scale of similarities be found in Homer, and, if it can, could it be used in modern discussions of ancient epic versification and composition, without further encumbering a terminology that is not always clear or generally agreed upon? The purpose of this exercise is not merely taxonomic; by using some basic concepts of structural linguistics as tools, I think we may perhaps come a little closer to understanding the verse-making process, which is a prerequisite for understanding Homer's manner of composition and, in the last analysis, his ‘creativity’ or even ‘originality’ vis à vis the tradition to which he belonged.

The poetry of the era of the Islamic Revolution developed alongside the Islamic movement of Iran in the closing years of the previous regime, and soon indicated its future direction. Many poets were inspired by the demonstrations and protests of the days of the Revolution to write about achievements of the movement and reflect the new values of the popular movement in their poetry, with their mainly epic, mystic and religious aspects. After the Revolution, these works grew in quantity and reflected the bravery and self-sacrifice of the generation of the Revolution. The traditional and religious emotions of the people opened up a new horizon for Persian poetry and literature and paved the way for the introduction of new subjects, theme and even vocabulary into the language and literature of Iran. The poetry of Gholamreza Dabiran is a characteristic example of the poetry of the Revolution, in which all literary features and rhetorical figures are reflected.

Mary Bachvarova's large, complex and ambitious From Hittite to Homer argues for long-distance interactions linking the Near East to Anatolia to Greece, and constructs a model of ‘why, how, and when’ (198) those interactions operated. The general thesis is not seriously in doubt, and much of the model's detail seems plausible; but since that is beyond my competence to judge, I will stick to my remit as Greek literature reviewer and focus on what the model, if right in detail, might tell us about Greek narrative poetry. How useful is Bachvarova's speculative literary prehistory, and what is it useful for? Can it illuminate the texts we have? Referential ambiguities expose one problem. The claim that ‘the overarching plot and theme of the Odyssey speak to the values of the warrior-traders that motivated the spread of Near Eastern epic motifs’ (296) is startling: Odysseus never engages in trade; indeed, to call him a trader is a calculated insult (Od. 8.159–64). It emerges a few pages later that the reference is not to the Odyssey, but to a hypothetical original: ‘The Odyssey may have originally addressed the values of heroic trade…but as the values of the Greek aristocratic class changed and trade was viewed more negatively, the role of the hero would have lost its trader aspects’ (298). I'm not sure whether this explanation also applies to (e.g.) ‘Agamemnon rejects the interpretation of his seer, refusing to release Chryseis’ (193) or ‘it has become clear to Achilles that the gods’ intervention, the advice to avoid battle…has been at the cost of his own life’ (194). Contrast the extant Iliad, in which Agamemnon agrees to release Chryseis (1.116–17) and Achilles withdraws on his own initiative (1.169–71). These may just be inaccurate recollections of ‘the supremely sophisticated and complex works that are known to us’ (396). But to the extent that Bachvarova's interpretation of extant texts is skewed by her speculative literary prehistory, or her reconstruction of lost texts is shaped by it, the parallels are not evidence for the hypothesis but artefacts of it. Parallels per se are not, in any case, sufficient evidence of influence: Mesoamerican pyramids were not derived from Egypt. Yet Bachvarova's opening sentences jump directly from parallels to the how and why of influence (1). Is ‘negative reaction to speech’ (44) so distinctive a cultural phenomenon as to make its appearance in different narrative traditions evidence of influence? If parallels between hospitality narratives (142–5) reflect cognate hospitality cultures, why should we appeal to transmission by song to explain them? The similarities between Naram-Sin and Hector (191–5) could originate independently in any two cultures which regarded divination as a source of good advice if (as is likely) they had noticed that leaders sometimes fail to accept good advice. This is a stimulating book; but Bachvarova's approach to diagnosing influence lacks the methodological rigour of Christopher Metcalf's The Gods Rich in Praise (G&R 63 [2016], 251).

Three major aspects of Volodymyr Yaniv’s life-creativity are described in the article: 1. biographical (his forma- tion as a creative person); 2. literary and art studies; 3. essayistic (author’s stories about the meetings with the perennial rec- tor of UFU). In parallel, there are “plots” about Volodymyr Yaniv as s historian of the church and Christianity, as a religious scholar, about his contacts with the Vatican, and in particular with His Beatitude Josyf Slipyj in the study. We can trace the “odyssey” of a young ascetic of the Galician revolutionary movement for the statehood and the unity of Ukrainian lands. A separate vision in the life of V. Yaniv is the magazine “Student’s Way”. He was fond of modern processes that took place in the cultural and artistic sphere. Studying poetry of European poets, poetry of Ukrainian creative youth, in particular B.-I. Antonych, V. Havrylyuk, O. Olzhych, poets of the Right-Bank Ukraine, Yaniv developed for himself the criteria for evaluating a literary work. The Lviv weekly “Towards” and the month “Dazhbog” and, of course, the poetry of the “Prague School” were played a special role for Yaniv as a poet. The famous Polish writers, supporters of the so-called “Ukrainian school”, Severin Goshchin- sky, Alexander Fredro, Leopold Staff, Jan Kasprovich, Maria Konopnitskaya whose creativity, undoubtedly, also influenced Volodymyr Yaniv lived and worked in Lviv. The ideological and thematic space of the poetry of Yaniv, in particular the collections “The Sun and the Lattices” and “The Foliage Fragments”, his prison poems, poetry about the Kruty heroes, are analyzed in the article. Lyro-epic creativity of V. Ya- niv in this thematic direction in her own way is biographical. The collection “Ways,” based on the scientific observations of the German, Polish and Czech theorists of psychoanalysis, is based on the ethno-psychoanalysis of the Ukrainian political prisoner. V. Yaniv is a scientist, psychologist, ethnic psychologist of the Ukrainian “soul”, sociologist and literary critic, art critic, organizer of Ukrainian science and church-religious life, public figure, professor of the Ukrainian Catholic University named after St Clemens, the Pope in Rome. The sacred motives are an organic page in poetry, literary criticism and, in general, in the works of Volodymyr Yaniv. The author used the bibliographic literature about the life and work of Volodymyr Yaniv, which, however, doesn’t allevi- ate his individual views.

While studying the author’s creative work, present-day philological studies take into account a number of linguоcultural and linguocognitive factors that shape the author’s individual style. New perspectives and insights into the research of the creative work of the Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus (87–54 BC) prompted the scholars to refocus their attention onto a unique collection of 116 poems, which was rather popular among the ancient Romans. This paper is aimed to analyse one the expressive means typical of Catullus’ poetry, namely the borrowing, which clearly reflects the individual author’s style. It is outlined in the paper that Greek borrowings have been studied by A. Garnyk, O. Malein, and O. Mikina. Some aspects of Greek borrowings functioning in Catullus’ poems are represented in I. Shtal’s and E. Nazhott’s works. Researchers point out that the specificity of Graeco-Latin contacts lies not only in their cultural and religious relations, but also in their every-day life which affected the Latin language and thus was reflected in the Latin vocabulary. Accordingly, the existing literary traditions as well as the author’s own creative discoveries contributed to the fact that Catullus actively used Greek words in his poetry, assimilating them to the morphological system of the Latin language. By way analyzing authentic Catullus’ poems, the present paper substantiates the reasons of this vocabulary actualization in poetic works, offers a comprehensive classification of borrowings according to the criteria of their derivation type and thematic group as well as describes the specificity of their functioning and stylistic value in poetic texts. In particular, the nouns are classified into the following thematic groups: anthroponyms (ethmonyms, theonyms, mythonyms, cosmonyms), chrematonyms (i.e. the lexical units denoting material values and the results of human activities), toponyms (choronyms, hydronyms, oronyms, natural phenomena), phytonyms (the words, designating various plants), zoonyms (the vocabulary denoting animals). We have also singled out qualitative and relative adjectives belonging to the group of Greek borrowings. It was found out that qualitative adjectives are predominantly formed from mythological and geographical names with the help of various word-formative means. Despite the fact that a large number of Graecisms historically became a part of the Latin vocabulary and were used by the Romans rather unconsciously, in the analyzed texts there are cases of specifically individual use of Graecisms by Catullus when the author deliberately ignores the Latin equivalents. The analysis results demonstrate that borrowings play an important role in presenting a comprehensive view on Catullus’ idiostyle. It has been found out that Graecisms should be viewed as one of the characteristic means of Catullus’ poetic language that reflect the author’s desire to create poetry of the elevated style complying at the same time with the requirements of established literary traditions. Borrowing from the Greek language proves to be an active word-formative element of Catullus’ idiostyle, while their frequent use is conditioned by the subject matter of poetic works, their general expressive potential as well as by Catullus’ desire to create vivid poetic images.

As a part of the series on female deities and demons in the Indo-European culture, the article begins by establishing Helen’s divine character in the Greek tradition and religion. The first area where the Indo-European character of Helen is displayed concerns the etymology of her name, which has been the subject of discussion and controversy throughout several decades. The most prominent theories are presented, including the concept of Pokorny and West to explain her name as ‘Lady of Light’ from the Proto-Indo-European root *swel- or *swelh1-, the idea of Skutsch to connect Helen with Vedic Saṛanyū, the etymology by Clader relying on the local Greek ritual practices and finally the new etymology provided by Pinault explaining the name as ‘having a year like a thread’ from Proto-Indo-European *suh1-l̥-h1eno. The second part of the article deals with the cultural, literary and religious attributes of Helen which connect her with the Indo-European world, especially with the Vedic tradition. The most interesting aspects include the issue of Helen’s parenthood and her birth, her relationship with her brothers – the Dioskouroi – the prototypical Indo-European Divine Twins, as well as similarities with Vedic goddesses Uṣās – Dawn and Sūryā́ – the Sun Princess. The final part of the article establishes Helen as the Greek representation of the Indo-European myth of an abducted wife. Relying heavily on the analysis of Jamison, it draws on the similarities between the passages in the book III of the Mahābhārata and the book III of the Iliad, which from the comparative perspective explains well the inclusion of this scene in the Homeric epic and Helen’s role in it as well as sheds more light on the Indo-European practices regarding marriage. Lastly, the article mentions a connection between Helen and Vedic Saṛanyū by the story of eidolon – a phantom, which both characters created at certains points in some literary traditions.

✓The seat of consciousness has not always been thought to reside in the brain. Its “source” is as varied as the cultures of those who have sought it. At present, although most may agree that the central nervous system is held to be the root of individualism in much of Western philosophy, this has not always been the case, and this viewpoint is certainly not unanimously accepted across all cultures today. In this paper the authors undertook a literary review of ancient texts of both Eastern and Western societies as well as modern writings on the organic counterpart to the soul. The authors have studied both ancient Greek and Roman material as well as Islamic and Eastern philosophy. Several specific aspects of the human body have often been proposed as the seat of consciousness, not only in medical texts, but also within historical documents, poetry, legal proceedings, and religious literature. Among the most prominently proposed have been the heart and breath, favoring a cardiopulmonary seat of individualism. This understanding was by no means stagnant, but evolved over time, as did the role of the brain in the definition of what it means to be human. Even in the 21st century, no clear consensus exists between or within communities, scientific or otherwise, on the brain's capacity for making us who we are. Perhaps, by its nature, our consciousness—and our awareness of our surroundings and ourselves—is a function of what surrounds us, and must therefore change as the world changes and as we change.

Grundtvig ’s Norse Mythological Imagery - An Experiment that Failed?By Flemming Lundgreen-NielsenSince his early youth, Grundtvig worked frequently and diligently with Norse mythology. From 1805 to 1810 he tried in a scholarly way to sort out its original sources and accordingly its ancient meanings, though Grundtvig even as a philologist preferred to give spontaneous enthusiasm aroused by a synthetic vision a priority above linguistic proofs (Norse Mythology, 1808). After a pause of some years, Grundtvig in 1815 returned to Norse mythology, allowing himself a more free and subjective interpretation in lieu of an all-encompassing conception. From now on aiming to turn the Norse myths into an accessible store of modeme national imagery, he adapted a favourable evaluation of Snorri’s Edda, which until then he had been regarding as late, distorted information.Drawing mainly upon previously unprinted material the paper demonstrates, how Grundtvig around 1820, 1832, in the 1840’s and during the Schleswig-Holstein war 1848-50 tried to revive Snorri’s Edda for actual commonday use. To put Grundtvig’s opinions in a historical perspective, other contemporary statements are included, such as a Copenhagen press and pamphlet feud on the potential usefulness of Norse mythology to sculptors and painters (1820-21) and a public lecture in favour of Greek mythology and Christian civilization given by professor Madvig (1844).Grundtvig’s own attempts to mobilize the Norse gods in current affairs are illustrated in selected examples from his poetical works. The conclusion indicates that his project was a failure: none of his ballads and poems popular then and today deal with Norse mythology, and although his Norse Mythology, 1832, became a handbook for teachers of the Folk Highschools, neither later poets nor philosophers employed the Norse mythological imagery he recommended. In the war 1848-50 Grundtvig wanted to take advantage of situations from myths and legends such as Thor battling the giant Hrungnir and prince Uffe the Meek killing two Saxons, but the majority of the Danes cherished heroes of the people such as the brave unknown army soldier celebrated in a 1858-statue and the little homblower from a bestselling verse epic. At the end of his life, Grundtvig continued to write poetry in Norse mythological terms, but apparently made no efforts to get his manuscripts printed - why is not known.Among the reasons to be suggested for the failure of Grundtvig’s Norse mythological imagery, the victorious ideas in Romantic 19. century poetry and arts pertaining to originality and individualism, the prominent place of traditional classical mythology in the minds of the cultured public, and the political emphasis in the mid century period on democratization are probably most decisive.Finally attention is given to the fact that the proverbial phrase about ’freedom to Loki as well as to Thor’, the only surviving popular dictum from Grundtvig’s Norse mythological writings, almost invariably is misunderstood to be a token of boundless tolerance to both parties in the struggle between good and evil. However, several instances can be mentioned to prove that Loki, mythologically half god, half giant, in Grundtvig’s understanding does not represent evil as much as a gifted intellectualism without religious faith, possessing potential to acquire it.An English version of the paper with less regard to quotes from unprinted Grundtvig manuscripts and more attention to introductory paragraphs on Danish literary history is published in Andrew Wawn (ed.): Northern Antiquity. The Post-Medieval Reception of Edda and Saga, Hisarlik Press, 1994, p. 41-67.

: Sociological studies pay special attention to the mechanisms of cultural change and development, as well as the main factors that determine such dynamics. Zyhdi Dervishi (2011) considers cultural diffusion as one of the most influential factors of cultural development. Referring to the sociological literature consulted for this study, it is founded that Albanian culture is described as a mosaic of diverse subcultures, which differ greatly from one another. This sub-cultural diversity is evidenced in all components of cultural system; the docks, customs, manner of speaking, clothing, lifestyle, religious and pagan rituals and ceremonials, art, music, poetry, norms, values, symbols, elements of material culture etc. There are a number of factors that have contributed significantly in shaping the features of Albanian culture and its sub-cultural diversity. One of these factors is migration. It is noticed that migratory movements affect social and cultural development; major changes occur in family relationships, lifestyle, tendency for new cultural values acquisition, etc. This is more evident in rural- urban migration, as well as in international migration phenomenon. New economic resources, new working devices, system of social relationship in host society comprise an important source in transforming people's lives. Over the past twenty years Albanian society has experienced a number of economic, social and cultural changes, caused especially by increasing flows of internal and international migrants. Significant cultural changes are evidenced in social and cultural environment of Korça city, which is characterized by the phenomenon of massive displacement of population from rural areas to the city, as well as migration phenomenon in Greece. Taking into consideration the complexity of migration phenomenon and the consequences it brings in cultural plan, we intend to highlight and examine elements of sub-cultural diversity in Korça city, caused by internal and international migration. This paper draws on a research in Korça city, located in southeast of Albania, 35 km to the Greek border, which reflects a cultural environment where are intertwined trends of the cultural change, caused by migration from rural areas within the city and emigration process to neighboring Greece. In- depth interviews and observation will be used for data collection. Combined analysis of qualitative and quantitative methods will be used for data processing. This enables making comparisons and identifying problems. This paper aims to identify and analyze the impact of migration in sub-cultural diversity and aspects of the coexistence between rural subculture, urban subculture and the one of people having migration experience to Greece.

Chronicling the lives of the pagan Gods, Metamorphoses was essentially a compilation of stories based on Greek mythology. As the title suggests, the primary theme throughout the work was that of change and evolution. Suggesting that the process was naturally occurring, the stories also sent the message that in spite of any physical transformation, the soul or spirit would remain fundamentally the same. In short, the world was in constant flux but the soul was not. Although this idea ran throughout the epic poem, Ovid’s story was richly layered and comprised of many other aspects, with various themes continuing throughout the book. One reoccurring theme was that of unrequited love, which often involved one character in aggressive pursuit. Jove, otherwise known as Jupiter in Roman mythology, was the supreme God of the Heavens and though he was married to Juno, he often lusted after the most beautiful of mortals in the earthly realm. This presentation proposes that while Ovid’s Metamorphoses provided a starting point for artists, these Ovidian stories were open to interpretation (and reinterpretation). Similar to religious imagery, which was most dominant at the time, they were constantly adapted in art. Examining two different portrayals of the Rape of Ganymede, one by Correggio and the other by Michelangelo demonstrates how Metamorphoses, as the title implies, was able to continually evolve and remain relevant to the changing social values.

Anyone contemplating the role of a “hermeneutics of suspicion” in literary and cultural studies must concede that the phrase is rarely used—even by its most devout practitioners, who usually think of themselves engaged in something called “critique.” What, then, are the terminological differences between “critique” and “the hermeneutics of suspicion”? What intellectual worlds do these specific terms conjure up, and how do these worlds converge or diverge? And what is the rationale for preferring one term over the other?The “hermeneutics of suspicion” is a phrase coined by Paul Ricoeur to capture a common spirit that pervades the writings of Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche. In spite of their obvious differences, he argued, these thinkers jointly constitute a “school of suspicion.” That is to say, they share a commitment to unmasking “the lies and illusions of consciousness;” they are the architects of a distinctively modern style of interpretation that circumvents obvious or self-evident meanings in order to draw out less visible and less flattering truths (Ricoeur 356). Ricoeur’s term has sustained an energetic after-life within religious studies, as well as in philosophy, intellectual history, and related fields, yet it never really took hold in literary studies. Why has a field that has devoted so much of its intellectual energy to interrogating, subverting, and defamiliarising found so little use for Ricoeur’s phrase?In general, we can note that hermeneutics remains a path not taken in Anglo-American literary theory. The tradition of hermeneutical thinking is rarely acknowledged (how often do you see Gadamer or Ricoeur taught in a theory survey?), let alone addressed, assimilated, or argued over. Thanks to a lingering aura of teutonic stodginess, not to mention its long-standing links with a tradition of biblical interpretation, hermeneutics was never able to muster the intellectual edginess and high-wattage excitement generated by various forms of poststructuralism. Even the work of Gianni Vattimo, one of the most innovative and prolific of contemporary hermeneutical thinkers, has barely registered in the mainstream of literary and cultural studies. On occasion, to be sure, hermeneutics crops up as a synonym for a discredited model of “depth” interpretation—the dogged pursuit of a hidden true meaning—that has supposedly been superseded by more sophisticated forms of thinking. Thus the ascent of poststructuralism, it is sometimes claimed, signaled a turn away from hermeneutics to deconstruction and genealogy—leading to a focus on surface rather than depth, on structure rather than meaning, on analysis rather than interpretation. The idea of suspicion has fared little better. While Ricoeur’s account of a hermeneutics of suspicion is respectful, even admiring, critics are understandably leery of having their lines of argument reduced to their putative state of mind. The idea of a suspicious hermeneutics can look like an unwarranted personalisation of scholarly work, one that veers uncomfortably close to Harold Bloom’s tirades against the “School of Resentment” and other conservative complaints about literary studies as a hot-bed of paranoia, kill-joy puritanism, petty-minded pique, and defensive scorn. Moreover, the anti-humanist rhetoric of much literary theory—its resolute focus on transpersonal and usually linguistic structures of determination—proved inhospitable to any serious reflections on attitude, disposition, or affective stance.The concept of critique, by contrast, turns out to be marred by none of these disadvantages. An unusually powerful, flexible and charismatic idea, it has rendered itself ubiquitous and indispensable in literary and cultural studies. Critique is widely seen as synonymous with intellectual rigor, theoretical sophistication, and intransigent opposition to the status quo. Drawing a sense of intellectual weightiness from its connections to the canonical tradition of Kant and Marx, it has managed, nonetheless, to retain a cutting-edge sensibility, retooling itself to fit the needs of new fields ranging from postcolonial theory to disability studies. Critique is contagious and charismatic, drawing everything around it into its field of force, marking the boundaries of what counts as serious thought. For many scholars in the humanities, it is not just one good thing but the only conceivable thing. Who would want to be associated with the bad smell of the uncritical? There are five facets of critique (enumerated and briefly discussed below) that characterise its current role in literary and cultural studies and that have rendered critique an exceptionally successful rhetorical-cultural actor. Critique, that is to say, inspires intense attachments, serves as a mediator in numerous networks, permeates disciplines and institutional structures, spawns conferences, essays, courses, and book proposals, and triggers countless imitations, translations, reflections, revisions, and rebuttals (including the present essay). While nurturing a sense of its own marginality, iconoclasm, and outsiderdom, it is also exceptionally effective at attracting disciples, forging alliances, inspiring mimicry, and ensuring its own survival. In “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam?” Bruno Latour remarks that critique has been so successful because it assures us that we are always right—unlike those naïve believers whose fetishes we strive to expose (225–48). At the same time, thanks to its self-reflexivity, the rhetoric of critique is more tormented and self-divided than such a description would suggest; it broods constantly over the shame of its own success, striving to detect signs of its own complicity and to root out all possible evidence of collusion with the status quo.Critique is negative. Critique retains the adversarial force of a suspicious hermeneutics, while purifying it of affective associations by treating negativity as an essentially philosophical or political matter. To engage in critique is to grapple with the oversights, omissions, contradictions, insufficiencies, or evasions in the object one is analysing. Robert Koch writes that “critical discourse, as critical discourse, must never formulate positive statements: it is always ‘negative’ in relation to its object” (531). Critique is characterised by its “againstness,” by its desire to take a hammer, as Latour would say, to the beliefs of others. Faith is to be countered with vigilant skepticism, illusion yields to a sobering disenchantment, the fetish must be defetishised, the dream world stripped of its befuddling powers. However, the negativity of critique is not just a matter of fault-finding, scolding, and censuring. The nay-saying critic all too easily calls to mind the Victorian patriarch, the thin-lipped schoolmarm, the glaring policeman. Negating is tangled up with a long history of legislation, prohibition and interdiction—it can come across as punitive, arrogant, authoritarian, or vitriolic. In consequence, defenders of critique often downplay its associations with outright condemnation. It is less a matter of refuting particular truths than of scrutinising the presumptions and procedures through which truths are established. A preferred idiom is that of “problematising,” of demonstrating the ungroundedness of beliefs rather than denouncing errors. The role of critique is not to castigate, but to complicate, not to engage in ideas’ destruction but to expose their cultural construction. Barbara Johnson, for example, contends that a critique of a theoretical system “is not an examination of its flaws and imperfections” (xv). Rather, “the critique reads backwards from what seems natural, obvious, self-evident, or universal in order to show that these things have their history” and to show that the “start point is not a (natural) given, but a (cultural) construct, usually blind to itself” (Johnson xv–xvi). Yet it seems a tad disingenuous to describe such critique as free of negative judgment and the examination of flaws. Isn’t an implicit criticism being transmitted in Johnson’s claim that a cultural construct is “usually blind to itself”? And the adjectival chain “natural, obvious, self-evident, or universal” strings together some of the most negatively weighted words in contemporary criticism. A posture of detachment, in other words, can readily convey a tacit or implicit judgment, especially when it is used to probe the deep-seated convictions, primordial passions, and heart-felt attachments of others. In this respect, the ongoing skirmishes between ideology critique and poststructuralist critique do not over-ride their commitment to a common ethos: a sharply honed suspicion that goes behind the backs of its interlocutors to retrieve counter-intuitive and uncomplimentary meanings. “You do not know that you are ideologically-driven, historically determined, or culturally constructed,” declares the subject of critique to the object of critique, “but I do!” As Marcelo Dascal points out, the supposedly non-evaluative stance of historical or genealogical argument nevertheless retains a negative or demystifying force in tracing ideas back to causes invisible to the actors themselves (39–62).Critique is secondary. A critique is always a critique of something, a commentary on another argument, idea, or object. Critique does not vaunt its self-sufficiency, independence, and autotelic splendor; it makes no pretense of standing alone. It could not function without something to critique, without another entity to which it reacts. Critique is symbiotic; it does its thinking by responding to the thinking of others. But while secondary, critique is far from subservient. It seeks to wrest from a text a different account than it gives of itself. In doing so, it assumes that it will meet with, and overcome, a resistance. If there were no resistance, if the truth were self-evident and available for all to see, the act of critique would be superfluous. Its goal is not the slavish reconstruction of an original or true meaning but a counter-reading that brings previously unfathomed insights to light. The secondariness of critique is not just a logical matter—critique presumes the existence of a prior object—but also a temporal one. Critique comes after another text; it follows or succeeds another piece of writing. Critique, then, looks backward and, in doing so, it presumes to understand the past better than the past understands itself. Hindsight becomes insight; from our later vantage point, we feel ourselves primed to see better, deeper, further. The belatedness of critique is transformed into a source of iconoclastic strength. Scholars of Greek tragedy or Romantic poetry may mourn their inability to inhabit a vanished world, yet this historical distance is also felt as a productive estrangement that allows critical knowledge to unfold. Whatever the limitations of our perspective, how can we not know more than those who have come before? We moderns leave behind us a trail of errors, finally corrected, like a cloud of ink from a squid, remarks Michel Serres (48). There is, in short, a quality of historical chauvinism built into critique, making it difficult to relinquish a sense of in-built advantage over those lost souls stranded in the past. Critique likes to have the last word. Critique is intellectual. Critique often insists on its difference from everyday practices of criticism and judgment. While criticism evaluates a specific object, according to one definition, “critique is concerned to identify the conditions of possibility under which a domain of objects appears” (Butler 109). Critique is interested in big pictures, cultural frameworks, underlying schema. It is a mode of thought well matched to the library and seminar room, to a rhythm of painstaking inquiry rather than short-term problem-solving. It “slows matters down, requires analysis and reflection, and often raises questions rather than providing answers” (Ruitenberg 348). Critique is thus irresistibly drawn toward self-reflexive thinking. Its domain is that of second-level observation, in which we reflect on the frames, paradigms, and perspectives that form and inform our understanding. Even if objectivity is an illusion, how can critical self-consciousness not trump the available alternatives? This questioning of common sense is also a questioning of common language: self-reflexivity is a matter of form as well as content, requiring the deployment of what Jonathan Culler and Kevin Lamb call “difficult language” that can undermine or “un-write” the discourses that make up our world (1–14). Along similar lines, Paul Bove allies himself with a “tradition that insists upon difficulty, slowness, complex, often dialectical and highly ironic styles,” as an essential antidote to the “prejudices of the current regime of truth: speed, slogans, transparency, and reproducibility” (167). Critique, in short, demands an arduous working over of language, a stoic refusal of the facile phrase and ready-made formula. Yet such programmatic divisions between critique and common sense have the effect of relegating ordinary language to a state of automatic servitude, while condescending to those unschooled in the patois of literary and critical theory. Perhaps it is time to reassess the dog-in-the-manger attitude of a certain style of academic argument—one that assigns to scholars the vantage point of the lucid and vigilant thinker, while refusing to extend this same capacity to those naïve and unreflecting souls of whom they speak.Critique comes from below. Politics and critique are often equated and conflated in literary studies and elsewhere. Critique is iconoclastic in spirit; it rails against authority; it seeks to lay bare the injustices of the law. It is, writes Foucault, the “art of voluntary insubordination, that of reflected intractability” (194). This vision of critique can be traced back to Marx and is cemented in the tradition of critical theory associated with the Frankfurt School. Critique conceives of itself as coming from below, or being situated at the margins; it is the natural ally of excluded groups and subjugated knowledges; it is not just a form of knowledge but a call to action. But who gets to claim the mantle of opposition, and on what grounds? In a well-known essay, Nancy Fraser remarks that critical theory possesses a “partisan though not uncritical identification” with oppositional social movements (97). As underscored by Fraser’s judicious insertion of the phrase “not uncritical,” critique guards its independence and reserves the right to query the actions and attitudes of the oppressed as well as the oppressors. Thus the intellectual’s affiliation with a larger community may collide with a commitment to the ethos of critique, as the object of a more heartfelt attachment. A separation occurs, as Francois Cusset puts it, “between academics questioning the very methods of questioning” and the more immediate concerns of the minority groups with which they are allied (157). One possible strategy for negotiating this tension is to flag one’s solidarity with a general principle of otherness or alterity—often identified with the utopian or disruptive energies of the literary text. This strategy gives critique a shot in the arm, infusing it with a dose of positive energy and ethical substance, yet without being pinned down to the ordinariness of a real-world referent. This deliberate vagueness permits critique to nurture its mistrust of the routines and practices through which the everyday business of the world is conducted, while remaining open to the possibility of a radically different future. Critique in its positive aspects thus remains effectively without content, gesturing toward a horizon that must remain unspecified if it is not to lapse into the same fallen state as the modes of thought that surround it (Fish 446).Critique does not tolerate rivals. Declaring itself uniquely equipped to diagnose the perils and pitfalls of representation, critique often chafes at the presence of other forms of thought. Ruling out the possibility of peaceful co-existence or even mutual indifference, it insists that those who do not embrace its tenets must be denying or disavowing them. In this manner, whatever is different from critique is turned into the photographic negative of critique—evidence of an irrefutable lack or culpable absence. To refuse to be critical is to be uncritical; a judgment whose overtones of naiveté, apathy, complacency, submissiveness, and sheer stupidity seem impossible to shrug off. In short, critique thinks of itself as exceptional. It is not one path, but the only conceivable path. Drew Milne pulls no punches in his programmatic riff on Kant: “to be postcritical is to be uncritical: the critical path alone remains open” (18).The exceptionalist aura of critique often thwarts attempts to get outside its orbit. Sociologist Michael Billig, for example, notes that critique thinks of itself as battling orthodoxy, yet is now the reigning orthodoxy—no longer oppositional, but obligatory, not defamiliarising, but oppressively familiar: “For an increasing number of younger academics,” he remarks, “the critical paradigm is the major paradigm in their academic world” (Billig 292). And in a hard-hitting argument, Talal Asad points out that critique is now a quasi-automatic stance for Western intellectuals, promoting a smugness of tone that can be cruelly dismissive of the deeply felt beliefs and attachments of others. Yet both scholars conclude their arguments by calling for a critique of critique, reinstating the very concept they have so meticulously dismantled. Critique, it seems, is not to be abandoned but intensified; critique is to be replaced by critique squared. The problem with critique, it turns out, is that it is not yet critical enough. The objections to critique are still very much part and parcel of the critique-world; the value of the critical is questioned only to be emphatically reinstated.Why do these protestations against critique end up worshipping at the altar of critique? Why does it seem so exceptionally difficult to conceive of other ways of arguing, reading, and thinking? We may be reminded of Eve Sedgwick’s comments on the mimetic aspect of critical interpretation: its remarkable ability to encourage imitation, repetition, and mimicry, thereby ensuring its own reproduction. It is an efficiently running form of intellectual machinery, modeling a style of thought that is immediately recognisable, widely applicable, and easily teachable. Casting the work of the scholar as a never-ending labour of distancing, deflating, and diagnosing, it rules out the possibility of a different relationship to one’s object. It seems to grow, as Sedgwick puts it, “like a crystal in a hypersaturated solution, blotting out any sense of the possibility of alternative ways of understanding or things to understand” (131).In this context, a change in vocabulary—a redescription, if you will—may turn out to be therapeutic. It will come as no great surprise if I urge a second look at the hermeneutics of suspicion. Ricoeur’s phrase, I suggest, can help guide us through the interpretative tangle of contemporary literary studies. It seizes on two crucial parts of critical argument—its sensibility and its interpretative method—that deserve more careful scrutiny. At the same time, it offers a much-needed antidote to the charisma of critique: the aura of ethical and political exemplarity that burnishes its negativity with a normative glow. Thanks to this halo effect, I’ve suggested, we are encouraged to assume that the only alternative to critique is a full-scale surrender to complacency, quietism, and—in literary studies—the intellectual fluff of aesthetic appreciation. Critique, moreover, presents itself as an essentially disembodied intellectual exercise, an austere, even abstemious practice of unsettling, unmaking, and undermining. Yet contemporary styles of critical argument are affective as well as analytical, conjuring up distinctive dispositions and relations to their object. As Amanda Anderson has pointed out in The Way We Argue Now, literary and cultural theory is saturated with what rhetoricians call ethos—that is to say, imputations of motive, character, or attitude. We need only think of the insouciance associated with Rortyan pragmatism, the bad-boy iconoclasm embraced by some queer theorists, or the fastidious aestheticism that characterises a certain kind of deconstructive reading. Critical languages, in other words, are also orientations, encouraging readers to adopt an affectively tinged stance toward their object. Acknowledging the role of such orientations in critical debate does not invalidate its intellectual components, nor does it presume to peer into, or diagnose, an individual scholar’s state of mind.In a related essay, I scrutinise some of the qualities of a suspicious or critical reading practice: distance rather than closeness; guardedness rather than openness; aggression rather than submission; superiority rather than reverence; attentiveness rather than distraction; exposure rather than tact (215–34). Suspicion, in this sense, constitutes a muted affective state—a curiously non-emotional emotion of morally inflected mistrust—that overlaps with, and builds upon, the stance of detachment that characterises the stance of the professional or expert. That this style of reading proves so alluring has much to do with the gratifications and satisfactions that it offers. Beyond the usual political or philosophical justifications of critique, it also promises the engrossing pleasure of a game-like sparring with the text in which critics deploy inventive skills and innovative strategies to test their wits, best their opponents, and become sharper, shrewder, and more sophisticated players. In this context, the claim that contemporary criticism has moved “beyond” hermeneutics should be treated with a grain of salt, given that, as Stanley Fish points out, “interpretation is the only game in town” (446). To be sure, some critics have backed away from the model of what they call “depth interpretation” associated with Marx and Freud, in which reading is conceived as an act of digging and the critic, like a valiant archaeologist, excavates a resistant terrain in order to retrieve the treasure of hidden meaning. In this model, the text is envisaged as possessing qualities of interiority, concealment, penetrability, and depth; it is an object to be plundered, a puzzle to be solved, a secret message to be deciphered. Instead, poststructuralist critics are drawn to the language of defamiliarising rather than discovery. The text is no longer composed of strata and the critic does not burrow down but stands back. Instead of brushing past surface meanings in pursuit of hidden truth, she dwells in ironic wonder on these surface meanings, seeking to “denaturalise” them through the mercilessness of her gaze. Insight, we might say, is achieved by distancing rather than by digging. Recent surveys of criticism often highlight the rift between these camps, underscoring the differences between the diligent seeker after buried truth and the surface-dwelling ironist. From a Ricoeur-inflected point of view, however, it is their shared investment in a particular ethos—a stance of knowingness, guardedness, suspicion and vigilance—that turns out to be more salient and more striking. Moreover, these approaches are variously engaged in the dance of interpretation, seeking to go beyond the backs of texts or fellow-actors in order to articulate non-obvious and often counter-intuitive truths. In the case of poststructuralism, we can speak of a second-order hermeneutics that is less interested in probing the individual object than the larger frameworks and conditions in which it is embedded. What the critic interprets is no longer a self-contained poem or novel, but a broader logic of discursive structures, reading formations, or power relations. Ricoeur’s phrase, moreover, has the singular advantage of allowing us to by-pass the exceptionalist tendencies of critique: its presumption that whatever is not critique can only be assigned to the ignominious state of the uncritical. As a less prejudicial term, it opens up a larger history of suspicious reading, including traditions of religious questioning and self-scrutiny that bear on current forms of interpretation, but that are occluded by the aggressively secular connotations of critique (Hunter). In this context, Ricoeur’s own account needs to be supplemented and modified to acknowledge this larger cultural history; the hermeneutics of suspicion is not just the brain-child of a few exceptional thinkers, as his argument implies, but a widespread practice of interpretation embedded in more mundane, diffuse and variegated forms of life (Felski 220).Finally, the idea of a suspicious hermeneutics does not invalidate or rule out other interpretative possibilities—ranging from Ricoeur’s own notion of a hermeneutics of trust to more recent coinages such as Sedgwick’s “restorative reading,” Sharon Marcus’s “just reading” or Timothy Bewes’s “generous reading.” Literary studies in France, for example, is currently experiencing a new surge of interest in hermeneutics (redefined as a practice of reinvention rather than exhumation) as well as a reinvigorated phenomenology of reading that elucidates, in rich and fascinating detail, its immersive and affective dimensions (see Citton; Macé). This growing interest in the ethos, aesthetics, and ethics of reading is long overdue. Such an orientation by no means rules out attention to the sociopolitical resonances of texts and their interpretations. It is, however, no longer willing to subordinate such attention to the seductive but sterile dichotomy of the critical versus the uncritical.ReferencesAnderson, Amanda. The Way We Argue Now: A Study in the Cultures of Theory. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2005.Asad, Talal. “Free Speech, Blasphemy, and Secular Criticism.” Is Critique Secular? Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech. Ed. Talal Asad, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, and Saba Mahmood. Berkeley: Townsend Center for the Humanities, 2009. 20–63. Bewes, Timothy. “Reading with the Grain: A New World in Literary Studies.” Differences 21.3 (2010): 1–33.Billig, Michael. “Towards a Critique of the Critical.” Discourse and Society 11.3 (2000): 291–92. Bloom, Harold. The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages. 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