Dionysus after Nietzsche examines the way that The Birth of Tragedy (1872) by Friedrich Nietzsche irrevocably influenced twentieth-century literature and thought. Adam Lecznar argues that Nietzsche's Dionysus became a symbol of the irrational forces of culture that cannot be contained, and explores the presence of Nietzsche's Greeks in the diverse writings of Jane Harrison, D. H. Lawrence, Martin Heidegger, Richard Schechner and Wole Soyinka (amongst others). From Jane Harrison's controversial ideas about Greek religion in an anthropological modernity, to Wole (...) Soyinka's reimagining of a postcolonial genre of tragedy, each of the writers under discussion used the Nietzschean vision of Greece to develop subversive discourses of temporality, identity, history and classicism. In this way, they all took up Nietzsche's call to disrupt pre-existing discourses of classical meaning and create new modes of thinking about the Classics that speak to the immediate concerns of the present. (shrink)

Die Geburt der Tragödie and Weimar classicism -- The formative influence of Weimar classicism in the genesis of Zarathustra -- The aesthetic gospel of Nietzsche's Zarathustra -- From Leucippus to Cassirer : toward a genealogy of "sincere semblance".

German classicist's monumental study of the origins of European thought in Greek literature and philosophy. Brilliant, widely influential. Includes "Homer's View of Man," "The Olympian Gods," "The Rise of the Individual in the Early Greek Lyric," "Pindar's Hymn to Zeus," "Myth and Reality in Greek Tragedy," and "Aristophanes and Aesthetic Criticism.".

Issues of style in art are fundamental issues of modern aesthetics, since style is put forward in a number of main categories of art, acting as a principle of the organization of aesthetic form. It is no coincidence that over the past century, the attention of numerous researchers has been drawn to the XVII century - the beginning of the history of aesthetics of modern times, in which, perhaps, the root of modern problems lies. In this respect, the XVII century (...) seems to be the most grateful material for a discussion about style, since in the XVII century great styles arise that will develop and transform in the following centuries and will determine the development of art for many decades - classicism and Baroque. Since the 30s of the XX century, in studies devoted to the study of literature and art of the XVII century, a departure from the theory of classicism of the XIX century is planned. The first stage of this turn is the study of the creativity of the "pillars of classicism", which demonstrated that it has nothing to do with hierarchized academicism and reverence for norms. The desire to please the public, which was initially perceived as the main paradox in the theory of classicism, is further formulated by researchers as the presence of a different aesthetic. The next stage - the term "classicism" itself is criticized as late, evaluative, giving this era the meaning of the absolute. As a result, many researchers come to the conclusion that in France of the XVII century there was no literary and aesthetic doctrine as a single and "classical" one. Finally, the third stage of the study - the appeal to a single anthropo-socio-cultural concept of history, the use of sociological methods to highlight the gallant ethos allows us to conclude that classicism is a phenomenon in the field of art, gallantry is not only an artistic phenomenon, but also a social one. (shrink)

The monster and the woman thus find themselves on the same side, the side of dissimilarity. “The female is as it were a deformed male,” added Aristotle . As she belongs to the category of the different, the female can only contribute more figures of dissimilarities, if not creatures even more monstrous. But the female is a necessary departure from the norm, a useful monstrosity. The monster is gratuitous and useless for future generations. Aristotle’s seminal work on the generation of (...) monsters posited a rigorously physical definition that was not necessarily linked to deformities: “Monstrosities,” he wrote, “come under the class of offspring which is unlike its parents” . Further, while a “monstrosity, of course, belongs to the class of ‘things contrary to Nature,’ … it is contrary not to Nature in her entirety but only to Nature in the generality of cases” .The monster, defined repeatedly by its lack of resemblance to its legitimate parents, is also monstrous in another important way, one that Aristotle described as a false resemblance to different species: “People say that the offspring which is formed has the head of a ram or an ox; and similarly with other creatures, that one has the head of another.… at the same time, in no case are they what they are alleged to be, but resemblances only” . The monster is thus a double imposture. Its strange appearance—a misleading likeness to another species, for example—belies the otherwise rigorous law that children should resemble their parents. Further, monsters offer striking similarities to categories to which they are not related, blurring the differences between genres, and disrupting the rigorous order of nature. Thus, if the monster were defined in the first place as that which did not resemble him who engendered it, it nevertheless displayed some sort of resemblance, albeit a false resemblance to an object external to its conception. Marie-Hélène Huet is William R. Kenan Professor of Romance Languages at Amherst College. She is the author of Rehearsing the Revolution: The Staging of Marat’s Death, 1793-1797 and is currently completing a book on literature and tetratology. (shrink)

Classicism in architecture and literature; Turkey; history.

In this book, classicist Joshua Billings considers classical Greek drama as intellectual history. Developing an innovative approach to dramatic form as a mode of philosophical thought, Billings recasts early Greek intellectual history as a conversation across types of discourses and demonstrates the significance of dramatic reflections on widely-shared conceptual questions. He integrates evidence from tragedy, comedy, and satyr play into the development of early Greek philosophy in order to place poetry at the center of Greek thought. He thus offers a (...) substantially new history and map of classical intellectual culture: drama, on his view, appears as our best source for understanding the thought of the fifth century, while at the same time revealing significant tensions and anxieties in the development of philosophy. At the heart of the book is a novel approach to the philosophical qualities of drama. Though dramatists and their works have been considered philosophical in a variety of ways going back to antiquity, scholarly approaches have consistently taken "literature" and "philosophy" as defined categories, tracing more or less direct connections between one and the other. On the contrary, Billings argues that neither "literature" nor "philosophy" were available as stable categories in the fifth century. Rather he describes the way that drama treats issues that would come to be called philosophical, without relying on assumptions concerning what constitutes philosophical method or literary form. Drama develops a kind of method that allows it to pose and pursue conceptual questions in dramatic form which Billings describes as the "philosophical poetics" of drama. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Believing in Yesterday while Living for TodayJudith P. HallettLee T. Pearcy's meditation on the past and prospects of classical education in the United States, The Grammar of Our Civility: Classical Education in America (Baylor University Press, Waco, Tex. 2005), embarks from an assessment by the German émigré-scholar Werner Jaeger in his Scripta Minora, published in Rome in 1961, a year before Jaeger died. Jaeger's exact words merit full quotation: (...) "Without the continuing prestige of the ancient idea of humanity in human culture, classical scholarship is just a waste of time. Whoever does not see this ought to come to America and let himself learn from the way classical studies have developed there." Arguing "that Jaeger was right," Pearcy contends that "Classics, the study of ancient Greece and Rome, has never developed, as other academic subjects and disciplines have, a distinctly American form in response to American social and cultural conditions." Instead, "classics in this country has imitated European models and patterned itself after forms of education and scholarship developed in a cultural context where, as Jaeger saw, the prestige of Humanism guaranteed the cultural value of classical study" (Foreword, x).The Grammar of Our Civility not only offers a thoughtful response to Jaeger's criticism of how classical studies have developed in this alien environment; it also considers how they might, at long last, become truly American. In faulting classics in this country for merely emulating inapposite European models, Pearcy investigates the genesis of these models in Renaissance Italy and nineteenth-century England and Germany, and traces the evolution of American classics in higher and secondary education from colonial to contemporary times. He maintains that the inability of classics "to negotiate successfully the transition at the end of the nineteenth century," moving from the curricular configurations that have been called the "Old College" to the modern American university, has left it uniquely marginalized among professionalized disciplines. Yet he also evocatively imagines, in the mode of another illustrious European settler on our shores, John Lennon: "the contours of a distinctive form of classical education grounded in American personal and social reality [End Page 589] as firmly as European classical studies were grounded in the society they served" (Foreword, ix–x).Pearcy insists that this "pragmatic" American form of classical education needs to resemble its European predecessor by remaining "a way of becoming human and humane." Nevertheless, he envisions that it will adopt patterns of education and scholarship that draw on the "progressive, democratic strain" in the practice of a few American classicists, "avoid[ing] the temptations of some postmodern theories that deny language and literature any possibility of interacting with the human world and make them instruments of power rather than the creators of the powerful." He visualizes a discipline that emerges from and reacts to what he terms the "American cultural self... indeterminate and various." At the same time, he stipulates that this new form of classics must respond to "Jaeger's provocative challenge... by refusing to depend on the 'ancient idea of humanity in human culture'" (118–19).Jaeger's "ancient idea," responsible for the form of classical education that prevailed from approximately the Renaissance to World War I, is the "grammar" of Pearcy's title. Pearcy deploys the term "grammar" in an inventive, subtle analogy between the mastery of an individual language and the study of the entire classical world. As he observes, much as those who acquire the fundamentals of a language through exposure to abstract accounts of its workings become capable of comprehending and actively transforming the culture that this language describes and sustains, so those who once absorbed the messages emanating from that old-time, Old World classical education came to possess the "tastes, values and attitudes of the governing class," and be deemed "civilized" (2–5).Pearcy ponders the form that this "civility" of yore—informed, humane interactions of the mind—might assume in American society today. He similarly considers how a new, culturally rooted and authentic kind of grammar—formal intellectual engagement with the ancient Greco-Roman world in the halls of learning—might foster that civility. Not surprisingly, he assumes that those acquiring this grammar "will begin... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Dante in Deutschland: An Itinerary of Romantic Myth by Daniel DiMassaBrenda Deen SchildgenDaniel DiMassa. Dante in Deutschland: An Itinerary of Romantic Myth. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2022. 242 pp., hardcover, $150.00. ISBN 9781684484195.Dante in Deutschland is an eloquently written study of the "itinerary," as the author labels it, of the myth of Dante's personage and his works in Germany from the Romantic period to the Second World War. (...) The latest book in Bucknell University Press's series New Studies in the Age of Goethe, edited by John B. Lyon, the book's central argument is that "to the Romantics, the Commedia was more than a touchstone—it was a lodestar, its author no less vital to them than Shakespeare had been to the Sturm und Drang" (3). This premise lays the foundation for a reception study that is a model of Comparative Literature research. As Daniel DiMassa explains, his approach does not just examine "the Romantics' attempt at a mythology, but their attempt at a Dantean mythology" (5). Combining philology, hermeneutics, and history, he promises to [End Page 276] "open new interpretations of Romantic works" and to "trace an itinerary of Romantic myth, highlighting the waystations of a path that has remained in obscurity" (5–6). Indeed, the book succeeds in this endeavor.In terms of utopian studies, this is not a consoling literary story, for as DiMassa demonstrates, this study turns our "attention to a familiar yet puzzling trajectory of Romanticism—its move from radicality and revolution to Catholicism and conservatism" (9) in Germany. But, in contrast to Lukács's "straight line from Schelling to Hitler," DiMassa proposes a Romanticism inflected by the myth of Dante and "culminat[ing] in a trio of figures who embodied one form of fascism or another—Hauptmann, Borchardt, and George" (9). In highlighting this trajectory, DiMassa provokes thought about the dangers of utopian ideologies as well as how to confront them.Following an introduction that succinctly lays out the argument and the methodology, DiMassa historically situates, in six thoughtful and thoroughly researched chapters, pivotal figures in German Romanticism and the neo-Romanticism of the twentieth century. He then provides close readings of their major texts to show how Dante and his Commedia are "recovered, repurposed, revered, and reduplicated" to shape "the origins of German Romanticism and the attempts at its rehabilitation" in the twentieth century (177). This review of the book cannot do justice to such a complex and fascinating argument, so this cursory overview of some of the chapters is intended as a recommendation to read the study in its entirety.Chapter 1, "Discovering Dante and Theorizing Myth," examines the "Schlegel Brothers and the Origins of the Romantic Project." The eighteenth century was the nadir of Dante's reception, even in Italy, but the "myth of Dante" burst onto the stage of cultural and political history in the nineteenth century. By the end of the eighteenth century, according to DiMassa, writers such as Bodmer, Herder, and Goethe had prepared the way for a new reception of long neglected "barbarians" like Dante. Signaling this imminent change in taste, framed in nationalistic terms, in a 1772 essay, "On German Architecture," having recently revisited Strasbourg Cathedral, Goethe exclaimed, "This is German architecture! Our architecture!"1 He insists, "what unexpected emotions seized me when I finally stood before the edifice! My soul was suffused with a feeling of immense grandeur."2 Earlier, Goethe had labeled medieval buildings "barbaric," he admits in the same essay,3 but his experience of the cathedral awakened a nationalist intensity suggestive of utopian emotion. A. W. Schlegel's projection of [End Page 277] Dante "as a man of action who, in an age devoid of political leadership, had drafted a poetry teeming with manliness and vitality" (25) smacks of the same Romantic enthusiasm, but A. W. Schlegel was eager to celebrate the once "barbaric" Dante as the apogee of an emerging "Weimar Classicism and Jena Romanticism" (25), an idyll of the contemporary romantic enthusiasm. In a decade, the work of early German Romantics, including A. W. Schlegel's translations, Schelling's lectures, and Friedrich Schlegel's advocacy, buried Dante's so-called barbarism... (shrink)

These fifteen essays on Nietzsche's indebtedness to the Classical Tradition were composed by scholars in the fields of philosophy, theology, German and Classics. The essays roughly cover the following epochs: the age of the Fathers of the Western Church, medieval scholasticism, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, Weimar Classicism, Romanticism and the several other intellectual trends and movements in the nineteenth century. Collection includes three essays comparing Nietzsche's perceptions of Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates with those (respectively) of Augustine, Aquinas, and Hamann. (...) Three essays treat Nietzsche's relationship to Goethe, Schiller, and Heine. Three deal with Nietzsche and French literature or thought, one explores possible parallels between Nietzsche and Dante, another the extent of his debt to Byron. Four contributions center on Nietzsche's view of tragedy, and an older study has been expanded to show the underlying harmony of Nietzsche's conception with that of the French classical tragedians. This book affirms and fulfills the need for serious scholarship by the student of Nietzsche unable to work in German, while presenting a readable cross-section of the work being done relating Nietzsche to the intellectual tradition from which he sprang. (shrink)

Who cares about details? As Naomi Schor explains in her highly influential book, we do-but it has not always been so. The interest in detail--in art, in literature, and as an aesthetic category--is the product of the decline of classicism and the rise of realism. But the story of the detail is as political as it is aesthetic. Secularization, the disciplining of society, the rise of consumerism, the invention of the quotidian, have all brought detail to the fore. (...) In this classic work of aesthetic and feminist theory, now available in a new paperback edition, Schor provides ways of thinking about details and ornament in literature, art, and architecture, and uncovering the unspoken but powerful ideologies that attached gender to details. Wide-ranging and richly argued, Reading in Detail presents ideas about reading (and viewing) that will enhance the study of literature and the arts. (shrink)

_A literary master’s entertaining guide to reading with deeper insight, better understanding, and greater pleasure_ What makes a work of literature good or bad? How freely can the reader interpret it? Could a nursery rhyme like _Baa Baa Black Sheep_ be full of concealed loathing, resentment, and aggression? In this accessible, delightfully entertaining book, Terry Eagleton addresses these intriguing questions and a host of others. _How to Read Literature _is the book of choice for students new to the (...) study of literature and for all other readers interested in deepening their understanding and enriching their reading experience. In a series of brilliant analyses, Eagleton shows how to read with due attention to tone, rhythm, texture, syntax, allusion, ambiguity, and other formal aspects of literary works. He also examines broader questions of character, plot, narrative, the creative imagination, the meaning of fictionality, and the tension between what works of literature say and what they show. Unfailingly authoritative and cheerfully opinionated, the author provides useful commentaries on classicism, Romanticism, modernism, and postmodernism along with spellbinding insights into a huge range of authors, from Shakespeare and J. K. Rowling to Jane Austen and Samuel Beckett. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Homeric Durability: Telling Time in the Iliadby Lorenzo F. GarciaJonas GrethleinL orenzoF. G arcia. Homeric Durability: Telling Time in the Iliad. Hellenic Studies 57. Washington, D.C.: Center for Hellenic Studies, 2013. Distributed by Harvard University Press. viii + 321 pp. Paper, $22.50.The philosophy of Heidegger continues to cast a spell on some Classicists. It is less Heidegger’s own interpretations of Greek authors that serve as stimulus than the (...) main work of his early career, Sein und Zeit(Halle 1927), that seems to invite applications to ancient texts. Reading such studies as Shanske’s Thucydides and the Philosophical Origins of History(Cambridge 2007), I keep wondering to what extent the attractiveness of Heidegger to some Classicists ultimately derives from the impact that ancient texts may have had on the formation of his philosophy. Attending a humanistisches Gymnasium, Heidegger received a thorough training in Greek and must have read a fair amount of ancient texts in the original. Besides tying in with the existentialism of his day, the gloomy nature of Heidegger’s philosophy is highly reminiscent of what is traditionally referred to as Greek pessimism. It is easy, for instance, to sense in the concept of “ Sein zum Tode” an echo of the sentiment of the Herodotean Solon that “we must look to the conclusion of every matter and see how it will end” (Hdt. 1.32.9). The common tenor notwithstanding, applying Heidegger’s philosophy of Being to the interpretation of ancient literature is a daunting task.In Homeric Durability: Telling Time in the Iliad, Garcia draws on Heidegger to show that “the subject of the Iliad... is time itself and the durability of its objects to withstand time’s withering flow” (5). Garcia claims that the tenet of Heidegger’s philosophy of time plays out in the Iliadat various levels. For Heidegger, Daseinis defined by death, which is always impending and thereby constitutes its totality. Daseinis essentially Sein zum Tode(“being-toward-death”). This, Garcia argues, is reflected in the temporal economy of the Iliadwhich hinges on the notion of “not yet” already encapsulating a “no longer.” Various physical objects, humans, and, to some extent, also gods are presented as enduring, but fated to fade. Garcia’s central argument is that they thereby reflect the temporal dynamics of epic poetry itself. To him, kleos aphthitondoes not imply the idea of eternity, but a duration that entails its own ending. Before discussing the soundness of this argument in conjunction with its deployment of Heidegger, let me give a brief synopsis of the individual chapters.In chapter 1, Garcia elaborates on “the rhetoric of time and memory”; while “time has disintegrating effects..., memory in a pure or ideal form, on the other hand, preserves its object against time” (45). This dialectic comes to the fore in Iliad2 where the rotting of the ships and the flagging morale of the [End Page 481]Greeks indicate the “loss of cohesion through waiting” (55). At the same time, Garcia claims, Odysseus’ intervention illustrates the power of memory. Odysseus reminds the Achaeans of Calchas’ prophecy which he remembers as if “it was either yesterday or the day before” and “thereby seeks to undo the disintegration of the Achaeans’ emotional resolve” (63). The tension between the decaying force of time and the attempt at recuperation through memory yields the framework for the investigation of various entities and their temporal dynamics in the main part of the book.The second chapter is devoted to the fate of the bodies of Sarpedon, Patroclus, and Hector. In the eyes of Garcia, “the preservation of these exquisite corpses serves as an analogue within the poem for the very project of the epic commemoration of Achilles—as if the epic were a ‘freezing’ of temporal flow against the ravages of time” (66). However, neither the application of ambrosia and nectar nor funeral rites achieve permanent preservation: bodies can be removed from time only temporarily. They are subject to “the logic of the ‘still perfectly’ and ‘not yet’” (94) and thereby mirror the fame of Achilles which, despite its longevity, carries its termination in itself.In chapter... (shrink)

This is a 1992 study of writing of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, mainly in France, but also in Britain and Russia. Its focus is on the establishing and questioning of rational, 'civilized' norms of 'politeness', which in the ancien régime meant not just polite manners, but a certain ideal of society and culture.

This book considers the relation between language and thought. Robert Wardy explores this huge topic by analyzing linguistic relativism with reference to a Chinese translation of Aristotle's Categories. He addresses some key questions, such as, do the basic structures of language shape the major thought patterns of its native speakers? Could philosophy be guided and constrained by the language in which it is done? And does Aristotle survive rendition into Chinese intact? Wardy's answers will fascinate philosophers, Sinologists, classicists, linguists and (...) anthropologists, and make a major contribution to the scholarly literature. (shrink)

The study of Greco-Roman civilisation is as exciting and innovative today as it has ever been. This intriguing collection of essays by contemporary classicists reveals new discoveries, new interpretations and new ways of exploring the experiences of the ancient world. Through one and a half millennia of literature, politics, philosophy, law, religion and art, the classical world formed the origin of western culture and thought. This book emphasises the many ways in which it continues to engage with contemporary life. (...) Offering a wide variety of authorial style, the chapters range in subject matter from contemporary poets' exploitation of Greek and Latin authors, via newly discovered literary texts and art works, to modern arguments about ancient democracy and slavery, and close readings of the great poets and philosophers of antiquity. This engaging book reflects the current rejuvenation of classical studies and will fascinate anyone with an interest in western history. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Man and Animal in Severan Rome: The Literary Imagination of Claudius Aelianus by Steven D. SmithFabio TutroneSteven D. Smith. Man and Animal in Severan Rome: The Literary Imagination of Claudius Aelianus. Greek Culture in the Roman World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. 308pp. $99.When Otto Keller published his meticulous work Die Antike Tierwelt (1909–13), classical scholars still conceived of ancient zoological knowledge as an astonishingly labyrinthine corpus of (...) tales. One felt the need to separate objective truths and fabulous accounts on the basis of a modern-oriented comparatist approach which was especially suspicious of Aelian’s De Natura Animalium and the so-called paradoxographic tradition. At that time, classicists were also keen to [End Page 532] see Severan literature as a scarcely original (and relatively uninteresting) digest of earlier writings—a faithful mirror of the beginning of the end.Steven Smith’s book on Aelian’s “literary imagination” and its culturally embedded use of animal figures is paradigmatic of the notable progress of scholarship in both such fields of research—the role of animals as revealing symbolic constructs and the intellectual life of Severan Rome. Throughout his well-structured survey, Smith offers new insights into Aelian’s worldview as a profoundly Hellenized Roman writer creatively combining biological notions and literary mirabilia, socio-political patterns, and sophistic aesthetics. On the one hand, the book clearly situates itself in the flourishing area of cultural and animal studies, making the most of both well-known and newly emerging theoretical frameworks (from Michel Foucault to Donna Haraway, from Derrida and Deleuze to Giorgio Agamben). Of course, the purpose of Smith as well as of other contemporary scholars interested in the ancient representation of animals is no longer to identify reliable “scientific” data as distinct from ancient folklore. Rather, it is the intersection of rhetorical, historical, and anthropological factors which seems to characterize most properly the Graeco-Roman discourse on animal life. On the other hand, however, Smith engages in an ambitious reconfiguration of Aelian’s (admittedly enigmatic) profile as an exponent of the Second Sophistic, at the same time indebted and alien to the milieu of the third century c.e. The multifaceted textual construction of Aelian’s animal narratives is shown to entail a critical (and at times ambiguous) reflection on such different issues as gender, religion, ethnicity, natural philosophy, and kingship.The book is composed of ten chapters, each one investigating a specific aspect of Aelian’s Weltanschauung on the basis of thematically connected passages. While the main focus is on De Natura Animalium (and thus on animal-related topics), two chapters (2 and 10, respectively) extend the scope of the inquiry to Aelian’s Rustic Letters and Varia Historia (VH). The monograph as a whole is framed by an introductory overview (starting with a fictional first-person speech by Aelian) and a conclusive note which sums up Smith’s most relevant theses. In addition, a more “philological” appendix discusses seventeen short fragments possibly pertaining to Aelian’s lost Katēgoria tou gunnidos (“The Indictment of the Little Woman”), a bitter invective against Elagabalus prudently written after the emperor’s death (cf. Philostr. Vit. Soph. 625).The question of Aelian’s elusive literary persona figures prominently in the general introduction and is the core subject of chapter 1. By qualifying the author of the De Natura Animalium (NA) as “independent” and “countercultural,” Smith does not mean to remove him from his social and political context. On the contrary, the evidence drawn from the NA itself (especially from the impressionistic self-portrait of the preface and the epilogue), together with the biographical sketches in Philostratus’ Lives of the Sophists and in the Byzantine Souda lexicon, is used to demonstrate that, though “inextricably bound up with and perhaps even unwittingly celebratory of urban Roman culture of the early third century c.e., Aelian nevertheless also fashions a literary persona that is critical of that same [End Page 533] cultural milieu” (16). In Smith’s view, such a fascinatingly ambivalent effect is made possible by the overwhelming stylistic variety (poikilia) of the NA, which appears as an “open” work (in Umberto Eco’s terms) intentionally lacking any large-scale... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Notes and Fragments PLATONIC ELEMENTS IN KAFKA'S "INVESTIGATIONS OF A DOG" by Lewis W. Leadbeater Few critics of Kafka, and certainly few German critics of Kafka, have been willing to allow for much of any classical influence on his works. There are exceptions, but for the most part these commentators can bring themselves to admit only the fact Kafka endured with distaste his lengthy involvement with the classical languages (...) and literature and that, if in any way, he was influenced only in terms of syntax or style.1 Yet it is certain that Kafka read classical literature with interest and that he was well acquainted with classical epic, tragedy, philosophy, and mythology. The wandering Odysseus, the sea god Poseidon, tortured Prometheus —all these and other classical figures are to be found in his works. Indeed, a recent interpretation of The Trial involves a discussion of it in comparison with the trial of Socrates.2 The fact is that Kafka knew Plato's Apology and counted as one of his prized possessions a copy of Plato's Phaedrus. He and Brod read Plato together in high school.3 Are we really to assume, then, that, given Kafka's philosophical bent, he saw no relationship between Plato and the later philosophers, like Kierkegaard for instance, with whom he was quite taken, and that given his fertile mind and penchant for metaphor, Kafka reflects only Platonic syntax?4 Quite the contrary; we must, I think, cede his classicism to Kafka, and in the discussion which follows I should like to point out that in one of the short stories, "Investigations of a Dog," parable and metaphor blend as well as they do because of Platonic influence, and especially that of the Apology and the Phaedrus. Kafka's animals pervade his works in both metaphor and simile. Gregor Samsa awakes one morning to find himself transformed into a gigantic beetle; Joseph K dies, at the end of his trial, like a dog, and it is a questioning canine which investigates the meaning of dog104 Lewis W. Leadbeater105 ness in "Forschungen eines Hundes." Generally the animalistic metaphor involves removal, alienation, and isolation— a loss of kinship with humanity to be sure, but more important a loss of communication, an inability to communicate, and hence an emphasis on all-encompassing, frustrating silence. The natural result for these people turned animal is an involvement in a process of severe introspection frequently linked with the pursuit of some idea or ideal which will provide a hitherto unknown, transcendent nourishment for a famished, alienated soul. Such is certainly the case with Gregor Samsa and quite possibly the case with Joseph K; it is in fact such pursuits which lie at the heart of the researches of our investigating Dog. Though any attempt to pinpoint the source of Kafka's penchant for animalistic metaphors is quite certainly futile, one might well posit as paradigmatic the alienation plays of Aristophanes involving animals, and certainly the notion of a psychological link between man and beast is present in Plato's Phaedrus, a dialogue in which the soul metaphor itself involves horses, and one in which there is considerable discussion of the interchangeability of the souls of men and beasts.5 As noted above such interchangeability or transformation occurs regularly in Kafka; within the ugly form of beetle lay the psyche of Gregor Samsa. Perhaps within the not-so-ugly canine form of our investigating hound lies the soul of Socrates. Consider for a moment the character of our Dog in light of Plato's Socrates as he appears in the Apology. To begin with, the Dog, as he tells us, is a solitary creature, withdrawn and involved solely in his "investigations" (p. 278).6 In addition, he fully realizes that he is different from the rest of his species (p. 279) and that indeed at times he feels rejected by his kind, realizing as he does that his investigations run counter to the traditional values of his species, a species by which he had hoped at one time to be accepted with great honor (p. 308). What he has capitulated to is "questions" which, furthermore, have quite removed him from normal... (shrink)

The T.S. Eliot of the 1920s was a European humanist who was part of an international network of like-minded intellectuals. Their ideas about literature, education and European culture in general remain highly relevant to the cultural debates of our day.

The image of Antonio Salieri is recreated based on the memories of his contemporaries and epistolary and journalistic literature. The author, relying on memoir literature, archival documents and journalistic sources, substantiates his own position regarding A. Salieri’s contribution to the world artistic treasury and artistic higher education, the expediency of researching his heritage at the current stage. A wide range of primary sources little-known in scientific circulation are used, which allow us to reveal the image of Antonio Salieri (...) – a musician, composer, teacher, theater director, rector of the central art institution of higher education in Europe in the 19th century – the Vienna Conservatory. The concept of A. Salieri’s involvement in the early death of is refuted Mozart. The aim consists in recreating the image of Antonio Salieri based on the memories of his contemporaries and epistolary and journalistic literature. The tasks of the research are the analy of primary sources on this issue and the identification of modern approaches to Antonio Salieri’s contribution to the world artistic treasury. Research methods. The methodology of the author’s research is based on the content-comparative method, which allows you to determine the reliability of one or another source, the ratio of traditionally established and non-traditional vision of the image of a prominent representative of his era – Antonio Salieri. Reconstruction was also used – to reproduce the events of the era at the turn of the 18 – 19th centuries within the scope of the research. Research results: The development of the pedagogical heritage of A. Salieri in the activities of his students and followers is shown; the creative portrait of Y.N. Hummel, who, thanks to the Maestro, mastered vocal art, Italian musical terminology, music theory and solfeggio, choral singing and conducting, orchestration, pedagogical skills, combined “Salierian” classicism and his own romanticism. The achievements of Fortunata Valzel-Franchetti as a singer, artist and teacher are analyzed, and it is shown how the vocal-pedagogical school of A. Salieri came to Ukraine through her. Conclusion.The analysis of primary sources –correspondence, diaries of Antonio Salieri and his students, made it possible to find out the significance of the Maestro’s creative heritage for subsequent eras, to recreate his image based on the memories of his contemporaries and epistolary and journalistic literature. 27 archival cases were presented for consideration, which gave an opportunity to understand how domestic scientists, artists and publicists treated Antonio Salieri throughout the 20th century, so often they turned to his creative heritage. After careful analysis of these materials, it can be said that their assessment was very high. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Literature as Sheltering the HumanJohn Durham PetersLiterature as Sheltering the Human, by Frederic Will; 203 pp. Lewiston, Maine: Edwin Mellen Press, 1993, $69.95.This volume contains thirteen essays by Frederic Will, poet, critic, ex-professor of literature, autobiographer, translator, man of letters. All concern the peculiar powers of literature to offer spiritual comfort and protection against the storms of life.A cluster of four theoretical essays begins the (...) collection. The first surveys Husserl’s intellectual offspring, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, and Heidegger, and seeks in their philosophies of language a grounding for literature’s uniqueness. The second essay argues that everyday language is always on the verge of entropy, but at its best, can be sublimated into literature. The third essay is a fiction of a crazed lit professor trying to master “the whole of literature” (p. 41). The eternally elusive object of “literature” turns out to evoke erotic-aggressive energies. The fourth essay on “Influencing the Past” rehearses some Benjaminian and Borgesian themes about literary influence being not causality, but intertextual resonance.The next set of five essays—which Will calls a “testimony” (p. 133) or “hit and run theology” (p. 138)—forms the core of the book. They treat “sheltering the human” in Homer, the Bible, Sappho, the Bhagavad Gita, and the epistles of St. Paul. Each ponders an enclosure—a retreat from battle, a womb, an act of translation, an inward wrestle of conscience, the blood of Christ—made of words. To my mind, this is the best part of the book: a steady meditation, graced with poetic lines and steeped in wide learning, on the proposition that “poetically man dwells.” Here Will performs the humane survey of world-literature he elsewhere extolls.The concluding section explores the relation of literature to the other arts. There is an essay on the gradual discovery of the oral core of Greek literature, largely through German scholarship, and one on literature’s relation to the other arts, which argues for its unique centrality among human expressive forms, thanks to its alleged continuity with the essential human possession, language. The penultimate essay meditates on Adorno’s aesthetics of music (concluding on an affirmative note not quite in tune with Adorno’s gloomy musings on capitalism), and the grand finale muses on the relation of art to life, via the dubious conceit of “art” as a great resort hotel.The book is remarkable for an intense and bald aestheticism that is exceedingly rare today. Will calls literature “the ripest offspring of language” (p. 1) and is happy to speak of masterpieces, genius, revelation, the autonomy of art, classics, humanism, values lodged in the structure of the universe (p. 125), universal validity (p. 131), “texts high in redemptive claim” (p. 147), the continuing necessity of the classical tradition (p. 190), and the artist as all but a different species (p. 200). The faith in a totality called “literature” is, to put it lightly, out of season in the academy today. As Will, a confirmed foe of [End Page 387] academic politics and pedantry, might well suggest, this may speak in its favor. Though Will’s aestheticism may refresh, I cannot help but wonder with Adorno whether some forms of expression and faith are objectively impossible in certain eras. Can “literature” sustain credulity today as anything more than one among many remarkable human practices?There is something, if I may say it, sheltered about these essays. If, as J. S. Mill said, eloquence is heard but poetry is overheard, this work is more poetry than eloquence. It features repeated and unannounced autobiographical intrusions. The self-reflexive quality supplies ready phrases to the reviewer: Will calls himself a “fallen contemporary classicist,” praises “high-minded eclecticism” and favors those thinkers who “sensualize knowing.” These traits make for a rare voice singing in the cornfields of Iowa.John Durham PetersUniversity of IowaCopyright © 1995 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

This book is a study of ancient views about 'moral luck'. It examines the fundamental ethical problem that many of the valued constituents of a well-lived life are vulnerable to factors outside a person's control, and asks how this affects our appraisal of persons and their lives. The Greeks made a profound contribution to these questions, yet neither the problems nor the Greek views of them have received the attention they deserve. This book thus recovers a central dimension of Greek (...) thought and addresses major issues in contemporary ethical theory. One of its most original aspects is its interrelated treatment of both literary and philosophical texts. The Fragility of Goodness has proven to be important reading for philosophers and classicists, and its non-technical style makes it accessible to any educated person interested in the difficult problems it tackles. This new edition features an entirely new preface by Martha Nussbaum. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Sexual Symmetry: Love in the Ancient Novel and Related GenresAndrew WalkerDavid Konstan. Sexual Symmetry: Love in the Ancient Novel and Related Genres. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. xiii + 270 pp. Cloth, $35.“Thus there begins to develop an erotics different from the one that had taken its starting point in the love of boys.... This new erotics organizes itself around the symmetrical and reciprocal relationship of a man (...) and a woman, around the high value attributed to virginity, and around the complete union in which it finds perfection.” So Michel Foucault asserts in a concluding chapter of his three-volume History of Sexuality (III, The Care of the Self [1984, trans. 1986] 232), a history that began as an effort to describe the emergence of sexuality as the subject of a distinct science in the late nineteenth century (I, An Introduction [1976, trans. 1978]) and that later broadened into “a genealogy of desiring man, from classical antiquity through the first centuries of Christianity” (II, The Use of Pleasure [1984, trans. 1985] 12). Here Foucault is commenting on the transition from pederasty to heterosexual love as the subjects of philosophical reflection on the nature of desire and its proper management. It is to this “new erotics” of heterosexual reciprocity that David Konstan’s title Sexual Symmetry refers: the notion that a new construction of sexuality emerged in the Common Era, a sexuality structured, not hierarchically as in the relationship between the erasts and the ermenos (with its predatory dynamic of subject and object, active and passive partners), but symmetrically, with an emphasis on the subjectivity of both partners who, although of opposite sex, are alike in age, social standing, and measure of amatory attachment, culminating in the Christian ideal of conjugal love and heterosexual fidelity. Konstan’s subtitle, Love in the Ancient Novel and Related Genres, provides an index to the book’s focus on literary genres and to Konstan’s generic approach to his subject matter, first locating the ideal of erotic reciprocity in the five Greek romances that survive (chaps. 1 and 2) and then showing how this type of relationship differs markedly from the representation of desire in the (roughly contemporaneous) Latin novels of Petronius and Apuleius (chap. 3), as well as in a wide variety of related literary genres that antedate the novel and contributed to its emergence as a literary form (chap. 4). In none of these, Konstan argues, do we find the type of erotic reciprocity enjoyed by the hero and heroine of the standard Greek romance. In later chapters, Konstan contrasts further still this idea of erotic reciprocity, as represented in the ancient texts, with the representation of desire in modern fiction (from Sidney’s Arcadia and Richardson’s Pamela to the contemporary Harlequin Romance, chap. 5), and he attempts (however briefly) to identify those aspects of the social milieu that might account for the emergence and appeal of “sexual symmetry” in Greek fiction (chap. 6).Konstan’s argument is summarized in his introduction, and the progression of each chapter is aided by subheadings which are listed in the table of contents. All Greek is transliterated, and all foreign-language texts, including modern [End Page 165] scholarship, are translated to make the work accessible for the nonspecialist. A single index collects words, themes, topics, and authors—both ancient and modern—discussed. The list of works cited runs for nearly thirty pages and contains more than seven hundred items. The book is suitable for comparativists curious about the antecedents of modern romance, and especially useful for classicists who desire a synoptic view of gender studies in the context of classical literature and culture. Few scholars, I suspect, will complete this book without encountering something new in the way of ancient text or modern scholarship—a fact which in itself is testimony to the impressive breadth of Konstan’s own reading and depth of his erudition.This is not to say that the work is without problems of its own, both of a technical nature and of a theoretical sort. For one thing, Konstan’s argument by its very nature demands a large measure of plot summary of the detailed... (shrink)

Aristote attribue à la poésie la faculté de représenter la réalité par l'intermédiaire du récit: on comprend le monde en le racontant. Cette doctrine a été reçue, modifiée, pliée à de nouvelles exigences au cours des siècles. Comment les préoccupations de l'Antiquité ont-elles survécu à l'âge moderne?

Incompletion is an essential condition of cultural history, and particularly the idea of the fragment became a central element of Romantic art. Through its resistance to classicist ideals it continued being of high relevance to the various strands of modernist and contemporary aesthetics. The fourteen essays in this volume, based on the 2017 Stockholm conference of the International Association for Word and Music Studies (WMA), for the first time address incompletion in a wide range of literary and musical texts, from (...) Baudelaire and Flaubert through Tolstoy and Henry James to Bachmann, Jelinek and Janet Frame, from Nietzsche and Chopin through Russolo and Puccini to Rihm and Kurtàg. Two further essays deal with topical general issues in the field of word and music studies. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.3 (2002) 483-500 [Access article in PDF] Greek Origins and Organic Metaphors: Ideals of Cultural Autonomy in Neohumanist Germany from Winckelmann to Curtius Brian Vick That the educated classes of late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Germany were increasingly captivated by images of both nationality and Greek antiquity is a fact long noted and long puzzled over. This seemingly strange confluence of cultural tendencies does, (...) however, help explain why studying the drawn-out debates among German neohumanist scholars on the cultural origins of the Greeks ultimately offers a fresh perspective on certain problems of German national identity—in this case, on the ambivalent relationship to things foreign in that period of German history.Scholarly attention has recently been drawn to this question as part of the conflict over Martin Bernal's Black Athena, the first volume of which argued that nineteenth-century German classicists' denial of an Egyptian contribution to early Greek cultural development revealed their xenophobic tendencies. While Bernal pointed to racism as the prime motive for this repudiation of African and later of Semitic influence on the Greeks, he also invoked several of the other "-isms" that have proven so fruitful yet confusing for efforts to understand the intellectual and cultural climate of late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Germany: romanticism, historicism, organicism, and of course neohumanism. 1 [End Page 483]The present essay is not intended to be another of the past decade's many responses to Bernal. Attention must be paid to that discussion, but it is important to recognize the extent to which this debate reflects a much broader disagreement about German attitudes in the romantic and nationalist eras. Some scholars portray the more cosmopolitan side of the romantic inheritance and stress its continued fascination with foreign literatures and cultures. Others, however, seem more like Bernal in citing the historicist turn to nature and nationality either to illustrate or to explain an alleged German xenophobia and hypersensitivity to issues of ethnic and cultural purity. 2It is to this wider question of the cultural legacy of German classicism and romanticism, historicism and organicism, that I would like to direct attention in this essay. Rather than invoking these "-isms" in an effort to explain the various positions taken in the debate about Greek origins, I hope to reverse the process and examine the relevant texts in an effort to clarify the broader implications of these issues of cultural purity and cultural borrowing, from the time of Winckelmann's first assertion of Greek originality through the rise of new kinds of nationalism and racism in the Wilhelmine era. 3 I shall show that belief in the importance of Greek civilization's Asian and even Egyptian cultural heritage remained strong for decades, even after Karl Otfried Müller's seemingly definitive rejection of such a connection in the 1820s. Moreover, most of the figures engaged on both sides of the debate made remarkably similar use of historicizing organic metaphors to help reconcile the twin values of national autonomy and cultural transmission, both so central to the self-conception and national identity of the German Bildungsbürgertum in this period. Continuity and connection with the environment, not purity and isolation from it, were the hallmarks of such organicist thinking across a wide spectrum of romantic, neohumanist, and idealist commentators. Only in the second half of the nineteenth century, with the passing of romantic values, the transformation of historicism into historicist positivism, and the development of new meanings attached to images of biology and race, would this situation slowly begin to change. The Greeks, History, and Culture: Foundational Perspectives Many of the considerations central to discussions about the origins of the Greeks and about the role of cultural mixing generally can be seen in the debate's [End Page 484] two most important early statements, the denial of Egyptian influence by Johann Joachim Winckelmann in his History of Ancient Art of 1764 and the successive sharp critiques of this view by an otherwise admiring Johann Gottfried... (shrink)

By examining in particular Augustan notions of probability and the way they provided a framework for thinking about and organising experience, Dr Patey ...

Time is integral to human culture. Over the last two centuries people's relationship with time has been transformed through industrialisation, trade and technology. But the first such life-changing transformation – under Christianity's influence – happened in late antiquity. It was then that time began to be conceptualised in new ways, with discussion of eternity, life after death and the end of days. Individuals also began to experience time differently: from the seven-day week to the order of daily prayer and the (...) festal calendar of Christmas and Easter. With trademark flair and versatility, world-renowned classicist Simon Goldhill uncovers this change in thinking. He explores how it took shape in the literary writing of late antiquity and how it resonates even today. His bold new cultural history will appeal to scholars and students of classics, cultural history, literary studies, and early Christianity alike. (shrink)

foreword by Pierre Vidal-Naquet The acclaimed French classicist Marcel Detienne's first book traces the odyssey of "truth," aletheia, from mytho-religious concept to philosophical thought in archaic Greece. Detienne begins by examining how truth in Greek literature first emerges as an enigma. He then looks at the movement from a religious to a secular thinking about truth in the speech of the sophists and orators. His study culminates with an original interpretation of Parmenides' poem on Being.

Combining literary and philosophical analysis, this study defends an utterly innovative reading of the early history of poetics. It is the first to argue that there is a distinctively Socratic view of poetry and the first to connect the Socratic view of poetry with earlier literary tradition.Literary theory is usually said to begin with Plato's famous critique of poetry in the Republic. Grace Ledbetter challenges this entrenched assumption by arguing that Plato's earlier dialogues Ion, Protagoras, and Apology introduce a distinctively (...) Socratic theory of poetry that responds polemically to traditional poets as rival theorists. Ledbetter tracks the sources of this Socratic response by introducing separate readings of the poetics implicit in the poetry of Homer, Hesiod, and Pindar. Examining these poets' theories from a new angle that uncovers their literary, rhetorical, and political aims, she demonstrates their decisive influence on Socratic thinking about poetry.The Socratic poetics Ledbetter elucidates focuses not on censorship, but on the interpretation of poetry as a source of moral wisdom. This philosophical approach to interpreting poetry stands at odds with the poets' own theories--and with the Sophists' treatment of poetry. Unlike the Republic's focus on exposing and banishing poetry's irrational and unavoidably corrupting influence, Socrates' theory includes poetry as subject matter for philosophical inquiry within an examined life.Reaching back into what has too long been considered literary theory's prehistory, Ledbetter advances arguments that will redefine how classicists, philosophers, and literary theorists think about Plato's poetics. (shrink)

Wissenschaftler verschiedener Fachrichtungen (Theologen, Historiker, Padagogen, Literaturwissenschaftler und Musikwissenschaftler) haben sich 2017 mit der Frage befasst, wie weit Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) durch eine Interpretation seiner Position in Weimar als Superintendent besser verstanden werden konnte, arbeitend unter dem Bilde Luthers, sich diesem lebenslang verpflichtet fuhlend auch als Aufklarer. Kann man den "Theologen unter den Klassikern" aus dem Geflecht der Beziehungen zu Goethe, Schiller und Wieland losen, aus seinen Beziehungen zum Hof, zur Stadt, zur Schule in Weimar? Andererseits lebte er autonom (...) aus der Idee, das Erbe der Reformation fur eine neue Zeit umformen zu mussen. Aus diesen Fragestellungen fallt neues Licht auf die deutsche Geistesgeschichte, auf die Herder gerade als Protestant massgeblich eingewirkt hat. Mit Beitragen von:Martin Bollacher, Claas Cordemann, Corinna Dahlgrun, Stefanie Freyer, Stefan Gerber, Hans-Werner Hahn, Henry Hope, Martin Kessler, Roland M. Lehmann, Johannes von Lupke, Michael Maurer, Hans-Jurgen Schrader, Christopher Spehr, Michael Winkler. (shrink)

A satisfactory accounting of the current state of classical studies, at least in an American setting, requires consideration of the vitality of the connections between classics—understood as the study of the ancient civilizations of Greece and Rome as revealed in their languages, literature, art, architecture, and political institutions— and the disciplines of history, philosophy, literary criticism, political science, religious studies, archaeology, and art history. I argue that the relationship between classics and philosophy, at least in the context of American (...) higher education, is marred by a significant degree of parochialism—as classicists deprecate the value of philosophical analysis, and as philosophers fail to avail themselves of the linguistic and literary expertise typically possessed by the professional classicist. To address these problems, I propose instituting approaches to research and teaching that foster an appreciation of expertise across disciplinary boundaries—team-taught or interdisciplinary courses and multi-disciplinary graduate seminars, conferences, and workshops. (shrink)

Capricci are nonsense drawings that delineate an elusive but inevitable sense behind or, better, within the palpable nonsense of the elementary proposition of a drawing; they are capers on a tightrope stretched between the poles of pathos and the ridiculous. We shall succeed in not falling only if we step forward boldly and know not only what we are doing but also what we are up against in the making of a picture as well as in living in the world. (...) For the world, in its yawning impudence of death and the dance of blind eagerness, ambition, and noisy speechlessness, makes us look to art not, or not necessarily, to escape from the world but rather to learn how to take its measure.... There is a painting ["St. Vincent Ferrer Preaching"] joined to the Passion cycle in S. Polo which demonstrates as well as any paradox ever will how Giandomenico joined piety and irony in his religious art without curtailing the glory of either. He arrives, as it were, at a God-fearing irony. We see St. Vincent Ferrer preaching. He speaks so eloquently, so convincingly in praise of the divine truth, that light shines forth from him and angel's wings grow on his shoulders. Fascinated by the miracle but even more so by the saint's words, his audience sits spellbound at his feet; in the foreground, however, sits a youth, a fop perhaps, gorgeously dressed, with a singular smile on his face, his hand musingly poised to his cheek, who looks at us quizzically. He is the link between us and the miracle. "Can you believe it?" says the smile, and perhaps "I did not—and yes—how can you now not believe it, you need but look - as I did - for there it is!" It is, I think, the face of one who knows about the truth of the absurd and its inner logic. Credo quia absurdum: if it were not so, we could prove the existence of God by feeding data into a computer, and there would be many believers, whose faith, in turn, deserved but little credit. Needless to say, perhaps, the face that so speaks to us in laughter joined to wonder is a self-portrait.1 · 1. In S. Polo the painting of St. Vincent Ferrer Preaching hangs opposite a matching picture of The Finding of the True Cross. There is a beautiful young woman on the right who looks at us beseechingly and with her right hand points at the cross. Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo who looks out of St. Vincent Ferrer Preaching cannot help but see this lady and be affected by her earnest gesture. For a reproduction of the painting, see Maruz, G. D. Tiepolo, plate 22. Philipp P. Fehl is a professor in the department of art and design at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has edited Franciscus Junius: The Literature of Classical Art. His previous contribution to Critical Inquiry, "Turner's Classicism and the Problem of Periodization in the History of Art," appeared in the Autumn 1976 issue; the present essay was delivered in an earlier version at Stanford University in 1976 and is included in his collection of essays, Art and Mortality. His capricci, Birds with Titles, were exhibited in a one-man show at Kenyon College. (shrink)

Knowing Words will be welcomed by sinologists, classicists, and scholars of comparative philosophy and literature.

Wide-ranging essays making up the first major study of Nietzsche and the classical tradition in a quarter of a century. This volume collects a wide-ranging set of essays examining Friedrich Nietzsche's engagement with antiquity in all its aspects. It investigates Nietzsche's reaction and response to the concept of "classicism," with particular reference to his work on Greek culture as a philologist in Basel and later as a philosopher of modernity, and to his reception of German classicism in all (...) his texts. The book should be of interest to students of ancient history and classics, philosophy, comparative literature, and Germanistik. Taken together, these papers suggest that classicism is both a more significant, and a more contested, concept for Nietzsche than is often realized, and it demonstratesthe need for a return to a close attention to the intellectual-historical context in terms of which Nietzsche saw himself operating. An awareness of the rich variety of academic backgrounds, methodologies, and techniques of reading evinced in these chapters is perhaps the only way for the contemporary scholar to come to grips with what classicism meant for Nietzsche, and hence what Nietzsche means for us today. The book is divided into five sections -- The Classical Greeks; Pre-Socratics and Pythagoreans, Cynics and Stoics; Nietzsche and the Platonic Tradition; Contestations; and German Classicism -- and constitutes the first major study of Nietzsche and the classical tradition in a quarter of a century. Contributors: Jessica N. Berry, Benjamin Biebuyck, Danny Praet and Isabelle Vanden Poel, Paul Bishop, R. Bracht Branham, Thomas Brobjer, David Campbell, Alan Cardew, Roy Elveton, Christian Emden, Simon Gillham, John Hamilton, Mark Hammond, Albert Henrichs, Dirk t.D. Held, David F. Horkott, Dylan Jaggard, Fiona Jenkins, Anthony K. Jensen, Laurence Lampert, Nicholas Martin, Thomas A. Meyer, Burkhard Meyer-Sickendiek, John S. Moore, Neville Morley, David N. McNeill, James I. Porter, Martin A. Ruehl, Herman Siemens, Barry Stocker, Friedrich Ulfers and Mark Daniel Cohen, and Peter Yates. Paul Bishop is William Jacks Chair of Modern Languages at the University of Glasgow. (shrink)

This remarkable work of scholarship sought to deal with the very roots of European civilisation and thought: the fundamental beliefs about life, mind, body, soul and human destiny which were embodied in the myths, legends and customs of the ancients and later emerged, often unrecognized, in literature, philosophy and science. Professor Onians adduces an extraordinary range of comparative evidence, predominantly from Greece and Rome, but also from Norse, Celtic, Jewish, Indian, Chinese and Christian sources. The volume remains a fascinating (...) compendium of ideas, conjectures and explanations which can continue to stimulate and inform the anthropologist, historian of science and philosophy, and classicist. (shrink)

Marie Cabaud Meaney looks at Simone Weil's Christological interpretations of the Sophoclean Antigone and Electra, the Iliad and Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound. Apart from her article on the Iliad, Weil's interpretations are not widely known, probably because they are fragmentary and boldly twist the classics, sometimes even contradicting their literal meaning. Meaney argues that Weil had an apologetic purpose in mind: to the spiritual ills of ideology and fanaticism in World War II she wanted to give a spiritual answer, namely the (...) re-Christianization of Europe to which she wished to contribute in some way. To the intellectual agnostics of her day she intended to show through her interpretations that the texts they cherished so much could only be fully understood in light of Christ; to the Catholics she sought to reveal that Catholicism was much more universal than generally believed, since Greek culture already embodied the Christian spirit - perhaps to a greater extent than the Catholic Church ever had. Despite or perhaps because of this apologetic slant, Weil's readings uncover new layers of these familiar texts: Antigone is a Christological figure, combating Creon's ideology of the State by a folly of love that leads her to a Passion in which she experiences an abandonment similar to that of Christ on the Cross. The Iliad depicts a world as yet unredeemed, but which traces objectively the reign of force to which both oppressors and oppressed are subject. Prometheus Bound becomes the vehicle of her theodicy, in which she shows that suffering only makes sense in light of the Cross. But the pinnacle of the spiritual life is described in Electra which, she believes, reflects a mystical experience - something Weil herself had experienced unexpectedly when 'Christ himself came down and took her' in November 1938. In order to do justice to Weil's readings, Meaney not only traces her apologetic intentions and explains the manner in which she recasts familiar Christian concepts, but also situates them among standard approaches used by classicists today, thereby showing that her interpretations truly contribute something new. (shrink)

Capricci are nonsense drawings that delineate an elusive but inevitable sense behind or, better, within the palpable nonsense of the elementary proposition of a drawing; they are capers on a tightrope stretched between the poles of pathos and the ridiculous. We shall succeed in not falling only if we step forward boldly and know not only what we are doing but also what we are up against in the making of a picture as well as in living in the world. (...) For the world, in its yawning impudence of death and the dance of blind eagerness, ambition, and noisy speechlessness, makes us look to art not, or not necessarily, to escape from the world but rather to learn how to take its measure. . . . There is a painting ["St. Vincent Ferrer Preaching"] joined to the Passion cycle in S. Polo which demonstrates as well as any paradox ever will how Giandomenico joined piety and irony in his religious art without curtailing the glory of either. He arrives, as it were, at a God-fearing irony. We see St. Vincent Ferrer preaching. He speaks so eloquently, so convincingly in praise of the divine truth, that light shines forth from him and angel's wings grow on his shoulders. Fascinated by the miracle but even more so by the saint's words, his audience sits spellbound at his feet; in the foreground, however, sits a youth, a fop perhaps, gorgeously dressed, with a singular smile on his face, his hand musingly poised to his cheek, who looks at us quizzically. He is the link between us and the miracle. "Can you believe it?" says the smile, and perhaps "I did not—and yes—how can you now not believe it, you need but look - as I did - for there it is!" It is, I think, the face of one who knows about the truth of the absurd and its inner logic. Credo quia absurdum: if it were not so, we could prove the existence of God by feeding data into a computer, and there would be many believers, whose faith, in turn, deserved but little credit. Needless to say, perhaps, the face that so speaks to us in laughter joined to wonder is a self-portrait.1 · 1. In S. Polo the painting of St. Vincent Ferrer Preaching hangs opposite a matching picture of The Finding of the True Cross. There is a beautiful young woman on the right who looks at us beseechingly and with her right hand points at the cross. Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo who looks out of St. Vincent Ferrer Preaching cannot help but see this lady and be affected by her earnest gesture. For a reproduction of the painting, see Maruz, G. D. Tiepolo, plate 22. Philipp P. Fehl is a professor in the department of art and design at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has edited Franciscus Junius: The Literature of Classical Art. His previous contribution to Critical Inquiry, "Turner's Classicism and the Problem of Periodization in the History of Art," appeared in the Autumn 1976 issue; the present essay was delivered in an earlier version at Stanford University in 1976 and is included in his collection of essays, Art and Mortality. His capricci, Birds with Titles, were exhibited in a one-man show at Kenyon College. (shrink)

Arthur W. H. Adkins's writings have sparked debates among a wide range of scholars over the nature of ancient Greek ethics and its relevance to modern times. Demonstrating the breadth of his influence, the essays in this volume reveal how leading classicists, philosophers, legal theorists, and scholars of religion have incorporated Adkins's thought into their own diverse research. The timely subjects addressed by the contributors include the relation between literature and moral understanding, moral and nonmoral values, and the contemporary (...) meaning of ancient Greek ethics. The volume also includes an essay from the late Adkins himself illustrating his methodology in an analysis of the "Speech of Lysias" in Plato's _Phaedrus_. _The Greeks and Us_ will interest all those concerned with how ancient moral values do or do not differ from our own. Contributors include Arthur W. H. Adkins, Stephanie Nelson, Martha C. Nussbaum, Paul Schollmeier, James Boyd White, Bernard Williams, and Lee Yearley. Commentaries by Wendy Doniger, Charles M. Gray, David Grene, Robert B. Louden, Richard Posner, and Candace Vogler. (shrink)

The word “romanticism” designates in German as in other European languages a broad movement in literature that originated at the beginning of the nineteenth century and has often been characterized as an opposition to the preceding age of rationalism and Enlightenment. Situated between the classicist schools of taste of the previous century and the realistic and naturalistic trends in literature of the later nineteenth century, Romanticism or romantic literature is the product of the creative power of the (...) imagination; it appeals to the emotions, has a preference for the mysterious aspects of nature, and shows a strong predilection for the past, the Middle Ages, and mythological traditions. With its strong affinity to the novel, romantic literature departs from the classical forms and the classicist canon of literature, but when these classical forms were nevertheless used by the authors of this movement, something new was created – the romantic tale, the romantic drama, and romantic poetry. The great romantic authors in Germany were E. T. A. Hoffmann, Eichendorff, Brentano, Arnim, and Fouqué. There is both a narrower and a broader notion of Romanticism in Germany, the broader also relating to painting (Friedrich, Runge) and music (Schumann, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Bartholdy, Wagner). Romanticism had a great impact on the general view of the world and was influential in the rise of the historical consciousness, the revival of a religious spirit, and the emergence of a conservative political attitude. As far as philosophy and the sciences are concerned, Romanticism is associated with figures such as Schelling and Schopenhauer, the development of a philosophy of art, of nature, and of the subconscious. On the whole, Romanticism is one of those movements that shaped an entire age and manifested itself down to the most particular features of popular belief and scientific interest. (shrink)

Classical temples in ancient Greece show two deterministic illusionistic principles of architecture, which govern their functional design: geometric proportionalism and a set of illusion-strengthening rules in the proportionalism's stochastic margin. Animal morphology, in its mechanistic-deductive revival, applies just one architectural principle, which is not always satisfactory. Whether a Greek Classical situation occurs in the architecture of living structure is to be investigated by extreme testing with deductive methods.Three deductive methods for explanation of living structure in animal morphology are proposed: the (...) parts, the compromise, and the transformation deduction. The methods are based upon the systems concept for an organism, the flow chart for a functionalistic picture, and the network chart for a structuralistic picture, whereas the optimal design serves as the architectural principle for living structure. These methods show clearly the high explanatory power of deductive methods in morphology, but they also make one open end most explicit: neutral issues do exist. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 33.3 (2000) v-vii [Access article in PDF] On Feminizing the Philosophy of Rhetoric Molly Meijer Wertheimer When asked to define his editorial policies in choosing articles to publish in Philosophy and Rhetoric, Henry W. Johnstone Jr. disavowed following any strict editorial guidelines; instead, he gave two examples to show how selection worked as a process. In one case, he agreed to publish an "off the wall (...) article" by a distinguished classicist; in another, he accepted an unusually long article--a "behemoth"--by an eminent rhetorician. These examples demonstrate what was to me one of Henry's most unusual and endearing traits as an editor and scholar: he was willing always to go wherever the argument led. It was probably in this spirit that he agreed to publish a special issue on "Feminizing the Philosophy of Rhetoric." I want to thank him posthumously for that decision. As "guest editor" of the issue, I feel privileged to present four well-written essays and two reviews that lead the readers of Philosophy and Rhetoric to consider some philosophical issues that emerge when we overlap concepts of "gender," "culture," and "rhetoric."The essays in this issue explore tactics women have used to get their messages across to others who would not--even could not--entertain speech seriously if presented by a woman. In the first essay, "Unveiling Esther as a Pragmatic Radical Rhetoric," Susan Zaeske reads the Book of Esther as a rhetorical manual of exile and empowerment. She traces features of the narrative that were useful as a model of rhetorical behavior early on, as well as appropriations that were made throughout the Middle Ages, Antebellum South, and even in our own day. Her essay emphasizes the riskiness to the speaker that is often entailed by the act of speaking, especially when the listener is "all-powerful" (199); when "his decisions are based not on careful deliberation, but on who influences him the most, usually by prodding his sense of power and manliness" (200). In the narrative, the speaker, Queen Esther, is depicted as utterly thoughtful, careful, well planned and well timed. She seems very much in control of an "indirect" rhetoric. Says Zaeske, "[T]he book teaches that direct, resistant rhetoric is ineffective, even dangerous, while clever, indirect, noncon- frontational methods will succeed in gaining the desired end--power" (202). [End Page v] This is a "conciliatory strategy wise women are forced to use in the patriarchal world" (qtd. on p. 202). And this kind of strategy is contrasted to the defiant rhetoric of Vashti, the former queen, Esther's predecessor, who was banished for saying no to one of the king's commands. Silence and supplication, according to Zaeske, when adopted self-consciously as strategies, are effective with hostile, neanderthal-type auditors. They are "radical," at least in the sense that they are "extreme."Nan Johnson, in her essay "Reigning in the Court of Silence: Women and Rhetorical Space in Postbellum America," furthers discussion of women's rhetorical options. In Zaeske's essay, women assume positions of supplicants or petitioners, or they stand defiant in the face of an oppressive listener (the king). The former are idolized; the latter are demonized. Centuries later, in the fifty years following the Civil War, similar representations of women appeared in conduct literature. Johnson describes a media blitz of ideas and images in etiquette and other self-help manuals that sought to define rhetorical behaviors and actions appropriate for men and women. Some of the writings idolized the "quiet woman" of the home, who reigned silently as queen stitching together via indirection a rhetoric of nurturance that moved beyond the home only through the actions of husbands and sons. This kind of rhetoric was viewed as a natural consequence of femininity. Other writings demonized the woman who spoke from the public platform as a teacher, preacher, and advocate, and who needed a rhetorical education to do so effectively. Many writings highlighted the negative consequences of rhetorical experience to women (who risked their femininity and the love of their families) and to their families (who risked the true source of... (shrink)

Richly illustrated study drawing on art, literature and science to explore Victorian attitudes towards sight.

M'illumino/d'immenso - I'm lit/with immensity is Geoffrey Brock's translation of Giuseppe Ungaretti's poem Mattina. In the poem's minimalism, Ungaretti points to the maximal: the richness of poetry's expressive possibilities and the power of thinking in literature. This book addresses the fascination of readers to transcend the boundaries of their own in fiction, and literature's capacity, according to Kant, even to evoke, with the help of the development of aesthetic ideas, representations that exceed what is empirically and conceptually graspable (...) - in case studies about myths of creativity, images of death and the beyond after the 'death of God', of the soul, of melancholy as the dark ground of genius, of metamorphoses of both evil and good, of ecstasy, of the economy of self-sacrifice, of the art of resistance, and, among others, about figurations of biography and the portrait as approaches to singularity, what is particular and cannot be fully subsumed to any universality. (shrink)