DOCSLIB.ORG

Rendering the Sublime

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Rendering the Sublime Rendering the Sublime ACTA UNIVERSITATIS STOCKHOLMIENSIS Stockholm Studies in Russian Literature 41 ACTA UNIVERSITATIS STOCKHOLMIENSIS Stockholm Studies in Russian Literature 41 Rendering the Sublime A Reading of Marina Tsvetaeva’s Fairy-Tale Poem The Swain Tora Lane © Tora Lane and Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, 2009 ISSN 0346-8496 (Stockholm Studies in Russian Literature) ISBN 978-91-86071-26-4 Front cover: Natalya Goncharova, La Forêt [The Forest], 1913, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art Layout: Larisa Korobenko Printed in Sweden by Universitetsservice AB, Stockholm 2009 Distributor: eddy.se ab, Visby, Sweden Contents Acknowlegdements 7 Notes on References 10 Introduction 11 0.1. On The Swain and Tsvetaeva’s other Folkloric Writings 12 0.2. Research and Purpose of Study 14 0.3. Writing as Rendering 21 0.4. The Sublime 26 0.5. Performance and the Visitation of the Elements 29 Chapter 1 The Swain: Folk Art and the Sublime 34 1.1. The Two Tales 35 1.1.1. The Vampire 35 1.1.2. The Swain 36 1.2. The Return of the Myth 44 1.2.1. Inverting the Tale 44 1.2.2. Composition: the Course of the Elements 48 1.3. The Sublime Non-Tale 53 1.3.1. More than Art 53 1.3.2. The Theme of Obsession and Possession: Faust and Marusia 57 1.4. A Passage to Poetic Reality 58 5 Chapter 2 Poetic Performance 63 2.1. Performance 65 2.1.1. Performance through Folk Poetry 65 2.1.2 Polyphonic Performance 72 2.2. Sound Patterns 81 2.2.1. Leitmotiv and Repetition 81 2.2.2. Sound Presentation 86 2.3. Rhythmical Performance 89 2.3.1. Rhythmification of Metre 92 2.3.2. Graphic Form 96 2.3.3. Punctuation Marks 100 Chapter 3 Literal and Secret Writing 105 3.1. The Riddle and Hidden Reference 107 3.2. Syllabic Writing 113 3.3. Leitmotiv and the Birth of “Literal” Meaning 120 3.4. Parallellisms: Coincidence of Opposites 126 3.5. Appearance: Elements and the Name of Sublime Presence 129 Conclusion 132 Bibliography 135 Appendix 143 6 Acknowledgements I have had the good fortune to receive considerable guidance, support and advice from scholars at institutions around the world at different stages of my work on this book. I am deeply indebted to all who have helped me and made me go much further in this work than I expected. I would first of all like to thank my supervisor Anna Ljunggren at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Stockholm University, for working closely and patiently with me throughout the course of this work, for sharing her knowledge, her feeling for poetry, and attention to detail. I owe certain central ideas in this study to my second supervisor Mar- cia Sá Cavalcante Schuback at Södertörn University College, who has been a constant source of inspiration, and in particular, has guided me in matters that concern the philosophical and poetological aspects of Tsvetaeva’s poetry. A grant from STINT, The Swedish Foundation for International Coope- ration in Research and Higher Education, enabled a visit at Princeton Univer- sity, where I was able to receive supervision from Olga Hasty. I am deeply grateful to her for working closely with me, generously sharing her time and erudition, and giving me decisive supervision at the crucial moment when the dissertation was about to take its form. I am also grateful to other members of staff and graduate students at Princeton University for letting me take part in their scholarly atmosphere. A grant from The Swedish Institute enabled a visit to Moscow and con- sul­­tations with Liudmila Aleksandrovna Sofronova at the Russian Academy of Scien ces, Moscow on questions concerning Russian folklore. I am very grate- ful to her for being a good mentor in matters of Russian culture, for her caring support and for our inspiring meetings. I thank Karin Grelz, Lund University, who has given me valuable and constructive guidance at different times of my work on the thesis. I am also 7 grateful to Olga Grigorievna Revzina at Moscow State University, whom I consulted at a very early stage of my doctoral studies, and James Bailey, University of Wisconsin-Madison, who has given me valuable advice on folkloric metre. I am deeply indebted to Irina Shevelenko, University of Wisconsin- Madison, for reading and commenting on the manuscript and providing me with decisive critique, and to Irina Sando mir skaja, Södertörn University College, for her thought-provoking comments on the ma nuscript. I am grateful to Ursula Phillips for editing the English of the final manu- script. I would also like to express my gratitude to the funds and institutions that have given financial support to this project over the years. Besides STINT and The Swedish Institute, I owe thanks to the Birgit and Gad Rausing Founda- tion and to the Ad Infinitum Foundation for giving me funding to work on the completion of the script. I am also grateful to the Vera Sager Foundation for funding a visit to archives in Moscow. I wish to express my most profound gratitude to all colleagues at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Stockholm University, for making it such a wonderful place in which to work. People who have played an important role in the formation of my thesis are Peter Alberg Jensen, who led the graduate seminars and whose perspicacious critique, inspiration and warmth have provided me with motivation to continue to develop; Per-Arne Bodin, whom I thank not only for the interest he has taken in this work, and the beneficial comments he has made, but also for his great kindness and the support he has given since my time as a student at the department, and Leonard Neuger, who has always been there to develop any thoughts in the most unexpected and joyful direction, and who has always been a wonderful friend. I would also like to thank Elisabeth Löfstrand for the keen interest she has shown and for always being so good. Thanks also to doctoral students and other senior researchers, who have participated in seminars and other formal or informal discussions of the book. I thank in particular Mattias Ågren and Fabian Linde for comments, critique and friendship, in short, for being such good fellow travellers in the troika that we constituted during our years of doctoral studies. I owe special thanks to Fabian for his reading of the final manuscript. I would also like to thank 8 Natalia Ringblom for her participation in seminars on this work, and last but not least, Larisa Korobenko for her enthusiastic support, substantial help with the final redactions, and for doing the layout. I also owe thanks to Susanna Witt for reading and commenting on the bibliographical part. Finally, I cannot imagine having written this thesis without friends and relatives, and I am especially grateful to all those who have shown manifest interest in the work over the years. I would like to particularly thank Howard Goldman for contributing with careful editing at different stages, Maja Thrane and Carl-Filip Brück for reading and commenting on the manuscript, and Evgenij Wolynsky and Alisa Ilmenska for advice on the oral and rhythmical qualities of the poem. Some thanks seem to be beyond mention, but I owe so much to my mother, Karin Rodhe, who has given me great and vital support throughout the years. Last I thank my husband, Oleg Iliyuyshchenko, for his constant inspira- tion and, for sharing everything, and my daughter Hilda, for everything. 9 Notes on References Tsvetaeva’s writings are quoted in Russian and in English translation, see Primary Sources, page 135 for full bibliographical note. Unless otherwise indicated, translations are mine. I will quote the poem The Swain (Mólodets) in Russian, but also give translations and transliterations of the lines that I discuss, with the sole purpose of making my argumentation accessible to the reader who is not or little acquainted with Russian. I have used the Library of Congress system for transliteration. However, Russian names are given in their familiar spelling (Bely, Gogol) in the English text. They are accurately transliterated (Belyi, Gogolʹ) in the Russian entries of the bibliographical part. 10 Introduction he reader of the Modernist poet Marina Tsvetaeva’s writings is often Tstruck by the vehement intensity of her poetic intonation, which can seem to be on the verge of an outburst. In a critical remark, Osip Mandelstam asserts that the women’s poetry of his times, including Tsvetaeva’s, “vibrates at the highest pitch”1, and Joseph Brodsky echoes him, albeit as a sign of praise, with the assertion that it is typical of her poetry to begin on “high C”.2 It has already been remarked that the characteristic fervour of her poetic voice should not be mistaken for a mere expression of the poet’s personality, but that it is related to the central artistic questions of Russian Modernism.3 In both her poetic and prose writings, she experiments with potential meanings, rhythms, tonalities and forms of speech. In a remark on a poem in a letter to Pasternak, she asks if he noticed how: “I cry, leap, roll myself to meaning” (“dokrikivaiusʹ, 1 Quotation in English is from Svetlana Boym, Death in Quotation Marks: Cultural Myths of the Modern Poet. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1991, p. 192. Mandelshtam writes in the essay “Literaturnaia Moskva” (1922): “[…] женская поэзия продолжает вибрировать на самых высоких нотах, оскорбляя слух, исто- рическое, поэтическое чутье.” (Osip Mandelʹshtam, Sobranie sochinenii v dvukh tomakh (ed. P. Nerler). Tom 2. Moskva: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1990, p.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Hermeneutics: a Literary Interpretive Art
    City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 9-2019 Hermeneutics: A Literary Interpretive Art David A. Reitman The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/3403 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] HERMENEUTICS: A LITERARY INTERPRETATIVE ART by DAVID A. REITMAN A master’s thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Liberal Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, The City University of New York 2019 © 2019 DAVID A. REITMAN All Rights Reserved ii Hermeneutics: A Literary Interpretative Art by David A. Reitman This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Liberal Studies in satisfaction of the thesis requirement for the degree of Master of Arts. Date George Fragopoulos Thesis Advisor Date Elizabeth Macaulay-Lewis Executive Officer THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii ABSTRACT Hermeneutics: A Literary Interpretative Art by David A. Reitman Advisor: George Fragopoulos This thesis examines the historical traditions of hermeneutics and its potential to enhance the process of literary interpretation and understanding. The discussion draws from the historical emplotment of hermeneutics as literary theory and method presented in the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism with further elaboration from several other texts. The central aim of the thesis is to illuminate the challenges inherent in the literary interpretive arts by investigating select philosophical and linguistic approaches to the study and practice of literary theory and criticism embodied within the canonical works of the Anthology.
    [Show full text]
  • ION: Plato's Defense of Poetry Critical Introduction We
    ION: Plato's defense of poetry Critical Introduction We occasionally use a word as a position marker. For example, the word 'Plato' is most often used to mark an anti-poetic position in the "old quarrel" between philosophy and poetry. Occasionally that marker is shifted slightly, but even in those cases it does not shift much. So, W.K.C. Guthrie in his magisterial History of Greek Philosophy1 can conclude [Plato] never flinched from the thesis that poets, unlike philosophers, wrote without knowledge and without regard to the moral effect of their poems, and that therefore they must either be banned or censored (Vol IV, 211). Generally, studies of individual dialogues take such markers as their interpretative horizon. So, Kenneth Dorter,2 who sees the importance of the Ion as "the only dialogue which discusses art in its own terms at all" (65) begins his article with the statement There is no question that Plato regarded art as a serious and dangerous rival to philosophy—this is a theme that remains constant from the very early Ion to the very late Laws (65). Even in those very rare instances where the marker is itself brought into question, as Julius Elias' Plato's Defence of Poetry3 attempts to do, the one dialogue in which Plato picks up poetry (rather than rhetoric) on its own account and not in an explicitly political or educational setting—the Ion—is overlooked entirely or given quite short shrift. Elias, after a two paragraph summary of the dialogue says "almost anybody could defend poetry better than Ion; we must look elsewhere for weightier arguments and worthier opponents" (6) and does not refer to the dialogue again in his book.
    [Show full text]
  • The Rhetoric of Poetry Contests and Competition Marc Pietrzykowski
    CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by Georgia State University Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University English Dissertations Department of English 8-7-2007 Winning, Losing, and Changing the Rules: The Rhetoric of Poetry Contests and Competition Marc Pietrzykowski Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Pietrzykowski, Marc, "Winning, Losing, and Changing the Rules: The Rhetoric of Poetry Contests and Competition." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2007. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss/21 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of English at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 1 Winning, Losing, and Changing the Rules: The Rhetoric of Poetry Contest and Competition by Marc Pietrzykowski Under the Direction of Dr. George Pullman ABSTRACT This dissertation attempts to trace the shifting relationship between the fields of Rhetoric and Poetry in Western culture by focusing on poetry contests and competitions during several different historical eras. In order to examine how the distinction between the two fields is contingent on a variety of local factors, this study makes use of research in contemporary cognitive neuroscience,
    [Show full text]
  • Ardis 1990. Каталог Издательства. — Ann Arbor : Ardis. 1990
    C 0 NTENT S New and Forthcoming in Hardback ..............................................3 The Prose of the Russian Poets Series ............................................8 New and Forthcoming in Paperback ..............................................9 Twentieth-Century Literature Backlist ........................................10 Nineteenth-Century Literature Backlist ....................................... 12 Miscellaneous ................................................................................ 13 Literary Criticism ..........................................................................14 Russian Literature Triquarterly ....................................................16 Language Instruction ....................................................................16 Books in Russian ...........................................................................17 Books in Print-English .................................................................19 Books in Print-Russian .................................................................21 Ordering Information........................................................ ...........23 NOTE TO LIBRARIANS The following titles are announced for the first time: V. Nabokov. A Pictorial Biography .. ..... .. ......... ........ .... 3 After Russia ...... ..... .... ..... ..... ..... .... .... .... .... .... .... ..... ... 4 Disappearance . ..... .. .... ....... .... ... .... .... .. .... ..... ... ....... 5 An Ordinary Story .. ..... ...... .... .. ..... .. ...... .. ..... ... ... ..
    [Show full text]
  • Russia Outside Russia”: Transnational Mobility, Objects Of
    “RUSSIA OUTSIDE RUSSIA”: TRANSNATIONAL MOBILITY, OBJECTS OF MIGRATION, AND DISCOURSES ON THE LOCUS OF CULTURE AMONGST EDUCATED RUSSIAN MIGRANTS IN PARIS, BERLIN, AND NEW YORK by Gregory Gan A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Anthropology) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) February 2019 © Gregory Gan, 2019 The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the dissertation entitled: “Russia outside Russia”: Transnational Mobility, Objects of Migration, and Discourses on the Locus of Culture amongst Educated Russian Migrants in Paris, Berlin, and New York submitted by Gregory Gan in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology Examining Committee: Dr. Alexia Bloch Supervisor Dr. Leslie Robertson Supervisory Committee Member Dr. Patrick Moore Supervisory Committee Member Dr. Nicola Levell University Examiner Dr. Katherine Bowers University Examiner Prof. Michael Lambek External Examiner ii Abstract This dissertation examines transnational Russian migration between Moscow, Berlin, Paris, and New York. In conversation with forty-five first- and second-generation Russian intellectuals who relocated from Russia and the former Soviet Union, the researcher investigates transnational Russian identity through ethnographic, auto-ethnographic, and visual anthropology methods. Educated migrants from Russia who shared with the researcher a comparable epistemic universe and experiential perspective, and who were themselves experts on migration, discuss what it means to belong to global transnational diasporas, how they position themselves in historical contexts of migration, and what they hope to contribute to modern intellectual migrant narratives.
    [Show full text]
  • Intellectual Culture: the End of Russian Intelligentsia
    Russian Culture Center for Democratic Culture 2012 Intellectual Culture: The End of Russian Intelligentsia Dmitri N. Shalin University of Nevada, Las Vegas, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/russian_culture Part of the Asian History Commons, Cultural History Commons, European History Commons, Intellectual History Commons, Other Languages, Societies, and Cultures Commons, Political History Commons, Slavic Languages and Societies Commons, and the Social History Commons Repository Citation Shalin, D. N. (2012). Intellectual Culture: The End of Russian Intelligentsia. In Dmitri N. Shalin, 1-68. Available at: https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/russian_culture/6 This Article is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by Digital Scholarship@UNLV with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Article in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/ or on the work itself. This Article has been accepted for inclusion in Russian Culture by an authorized administrator of Digital Scholarship@UNLV. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Intellectual Culture: The End of Russian Intelligentsia Dmitri Shalin No group cheered louder for Soviet reform, had a bigger stake in perestroika, and suffered more in its aftermath than did the Russian intelligentsia. Today, nearly a decade after Mikhail Gorbachev unveiled his plan to reform Soviet society, the mood among Russian intellectuals is decidedly gloomy.
    [Show full text]
  • The Literary Fate of Marina Tsve Taeva, Who in My View Is One Of
    A New Edition of the Poems of Marina Tsve taeva1 he literary fate of Marina Tsvetaeva, who in my view is one of the T most remarkable Russian poets of the twentieth century, took its ultimate shape sadly and instructively. The highest point of Tsve taeva’s popularity and reputation during her lifetime came approximately be- tween 1922 and 1926, i.e., during her first years in emigration. Having left Russia, Tsve taeva found the opportunity to print a whole series of collec- tions of poetry, narrative poems, poetic dramas, and fairy tales that she had written between 1916 and 1921: Mileposts 1 (Versty 1), Craft (Remes- lo), Psyche (Psikheia), Separation (Razluka), Tsar-Maiden (Tsar’-Devitsa), The End of Casanova (Konets Kazanovy), and others. These books came out in Moscow and in Berlin, and individual poems by Tsve taeva were published in both Soviet and émigré publications. As a mature poet Tsve- taeva appeared before both Soviet and émigré readership instantly at her full stature; her juvenile collections Evening Album (Vechernii al’bom) and The Magic Lantern (Volshebnyi fonar’) were by that time forgotten. Her success with readers and critics alike was huge and genuine. If one peruses émigré journals and newspapers from the beginning of the 1920s, one is easily convinced of the popularity of Marina Tsve taeva’s poetry at that period. Her writings appeared in the Russian journals of both Prague and Paris; her arrival in Paris and appearance in February 1925 before an overflowing audience for a reading of her works was a literary event. Soviet critics similarly published serious and sympathetic reviews.
    [Show full text]
  • Talking Fish: on Soviet Dissident Memoirs*
    Talking Fish: On Soviet Dissident Memoirs* Benjamin Nathans University of Pennsylvania My article may appear to be idle chatter, but for Western sovietolo- gists at any rate it has the same interest that a fish would have for an ichthyologist if it were suddenly to begin to talk. ðAndrei Amalrik, Will the Soviet Union Survive until 1984? ½samizdat, 1969Þ All Soviet émigrés write ½or: make up something. Am I any worse than they are? ðAleksandr Zinoviev, Homo Sovieticus ½Lausanne, 1981Þ IfIamasked,“Did this happen?” I will reply, “No.” If I am asked, “Is this true?” Iwillsay,“Of course.” ðElena Bonner, Mothers and Daughters ½New York, 1991Þ I On July 6, 1968, at a party in Moscow celebrating the twenty-eighth birthday of Pavel Litvinov, two guests who had never met before lingered late into the night. Litvinov, a physics teacher and the grandson of Stalin’s Commissar of Foreign Affairs, Maxim Litvinov, had recently made a name for himself as the coauthor of a samizdat text, “An Appeal to World Opinion,” thathadgarneredwideattention inside and outside the Soviet Union. He had been summoned several times by the Committee for State Security ðKGBÞ for what it called “prophylactic talks.” Many of those present at the party were, like Litvinov, connected in one way or another to the dissident movement, a loose conglomeration of Soviet citizens who had initially coalesced around the 1966 trial of the writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel, seeking to defend civil rights inscribed in the Soviet constitution and * For comments on previous drafts of this article, I would like to thank the anonymous readers for the Journal of Modern History as well as Alexander Gribanov, Jochen Hell- beck, Edward Kline, Ann Komaromi, Eli Nathans, Sydney Nathans, Serguei Oushakine, Kevin M.
    [Show full text]
  • Russians Abroad-Gotovo.Indd
    Russians abRoad Literary and Cultural Politics of diaspora (1919-1939) The Real Twentieth Century Series Editor – Thomas Seifrid (University of Southern California) Russians abRoad Literary and Cultural Politics of diaspora (1919-1939) GReta n. sLobin edited by Katerina Clark, nancy Condee, dan slobin, and Mark slobin Boston 2013 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: The bibliographic data for this title is available from the Library of Congress. Copyright © 2013 Academic Studies Press All rights reserved ISBN 978-1-61811-214-9 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-61811-215-6 (electronic) Cover illustration by A. Remizov from "Teatr," Center for Russian Culture, Amherst College. Cover design by Ivan Grave. Published by Academic Studies Press in 2013. 28 Montfern Avenue Brighton, MA 02135, USA [email protected] www.academicstudiespress.com Effective December 12th, 2017, this book will be subject to a CC-BY-NC license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. Other than as provided by these licenses, no part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or displayed by any electronic or mechanical means without permission from the publisher or as permitted by law. The open access publication of this volume is made possible by: This open access publication is part of a project supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book initiative, which includes the open access release of several Academic Studies Press volumes. To view more titles available as free ebooks and to learn more about this project, please visit borderlinesfoundation.org/open. Published by Academic Studies Press 28 Montfern Avenue Brighton, MA 02135, USA [email protected] www.academicstudiespress.com Table of Contents Foreword by Galin Tihanov .......................................
    [Show full text]
  • Freedom from Violence and Lies Essays on Russian Poetry and Music by Simon Karlinsky
    Freedom From Violence and lies essays on russian Poetry and music by simon Karlinsky simon Karlinsky, early 1970s Photograph by Joseph Zimbrolt Ars Rossica Series Editor — David M. Bethea (University of Wisconsin-Madison) Freedom From Violence and lies essays on russian Poetry and music by simon Karlinsky edited by robert P. Hughes, Thomas a. Koster, richard Taruskin Boston 2013 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: A catalog record for this book as available from the Library of Congress. Copyright © 2013 Academic Studies Press All rights reserved ISBN 978-1-61811-158-6 On the cover: Heinrich Campendonk (1889–1957), Bayerische Landschaft mit Fuhrwerk (ca. 1918). Oil on panel. In Simon Karlinsky’s collection, 1946–2009. © 2012 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn Published by Academic Studies Press in 2013. 28 Montfern Avenue Brighton, MA 02135, USA [email protected] www.academicstudiespress.com Effective December 12th, 2017, this book will be subject to a CC-BY-NC license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. Other than as provided by these licenses, no part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or displayed by any electronic or mechanical means without permission from the publisher or as permitted by law. The open access publication of this volume is made possible by: This open access publication is part of a project supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book initiative, which includes the open access release of several Academic Studies Press volumes. To view more titles available as free ebooks and to learn more about this project, please visit borderlinesfoundation.org/open.
    [Show full text]
  • 010 Nagy Epic.Pdf (258.2Kb)
    Epic The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Nagy, Gregory. 2009. Epic. In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Literature, edited by Richard Eldridge, 19–44. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Published Version doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195182637.003.0002 Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:15479860 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Epic Gregory Nagy [[This essay is an online version of an original printed version that appeared as Chapter 1 in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Literature, ed. Richard Eldridge (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2009) 19-44. In this online version, the original page-numbers of the printed version are indicated within braces (“{” and “}”). For example, “{19|20}” indicates where p. 19 of the printed version ends and p. 20 begins.]] What is epic? For a definition, we must look to the origins of the term. The word epic comes from the ancient Greek noun epos. As we are about to see, epos refers to a literary genre that we understand as ‘epic’. But the question is, can we say that this word epic refers to the same genre as epos? The simple answer is: no. But the answer is complicated by the fact that there is no single understanding of the concept of a genre - let alone the concept of epic.
    [Show full text]
  • The Generic Intertext of Psalms in The
    THE GENERIC INTERTEXT OF PSALMS IN THE POETRY OF MARINA TSVETAEVA (1892-1941) Sarah Ossipow Cheang Thesis submitted to the University of Nottingham for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2008 Abstract This study investigates the presence of the genre of psalms in Tsvetaeva’s poetry by means of Alastaire Fowler’s theory of the historical persistence of literary genres throughout history. The main argument is that in her intertextual use of psalms Tsvetaeva develops further some of their typical features such as the expression of bafflement at God’s passivity or an over-familiarity in addressing God; although these features are already present in psalms, they are not given a full- blown realisation because of the religious restrictions reigning at the time and context in which they were composed. Chapter One presents the theoretical tools used in this research, namely the concomitant concepts of interextuality and genre: intertextuality focuses on how texts differ from one another, while genre theory highlights the resemblance existing between a set of texts. Taken together these concepts offer a balanced and multisided approach. Chapter Two presents the psalms and outlines its importance in Russian poetry. It also discusses Tsvetaeva’s spiritual outlook. Chapter Three demonstrates that the integration of the generic intertext of psalms into Tsvetaeva’s poetry results in the modification of their praying function: Tsvetaeva’s psalm-like praises to God contain a veiled expression of doubt that is absent from the praises of the Psalter; another change of the praying function of psalms performed in Tsvetaeva’s poetry consists in the implicit denunciation of the absence of a feminine voice in this genre.
    [Show full text]