Topoiesis del espacio textual

ABSTRACT

The concept of topoiesis of textual space addresses an analysis of the spatial elements that tend to provide a meaning to the literary text. Based on textual semiotics where there is an organized relational system of meanings, in this article we propose that it is possible to determine the function of space as a meaning issue from three different literary text instances (event or motive; character; and object). This distinction will permit a deeper interpretation of the sense of space in the literary text.     

Topoiesis: Procesos de espacialización en la literatura (crítica y metodología)

ABSTRACT

Space in literary texts has been widely studied but poorly systematized. There is no valid method of analysis that gives space a critical meaning. For instance, critics have eluded the fact that time and space cannot be considered separately. On the other hand, they have used concepts or methods from disciplines aside literature such as anthropology, biology, psychology, or geography that do not help clarify the meaning or signification of a literary text. We begin this article by giving a review of the main theoretical and critical positions regarding space in literature from the second half of the twentieth century. We do this in order to evaluate the main results those studies have attained. Later on, we propose a methodology that may clarify the significance of space in a literary text. The concept topoiesis (as far as we know, it has not been used in the humanities) represents for us a key word. It helps us to distinguish one main process where space can turn from a signification practice to the production of meaning in a literary text.     

Topoiesis de los dispositivos de registro del texto literario

ABSTRACT

Never before have the layout, the text format, and support been as important as they are today. Studies reflecting on the relationship between the meaning of the literary text and its form have rapidly increased. This kind of study has focused mostly on the history of the reading process and the history of the book as well as on the possibilities of new technologies in the literary field. However, none of these approaches has reached the point of creating a comprehensive methodology for the analysis of the relationship between the message and its channel. This work is intended to propose a methodology of analysis based on some concepts such as peritexts (Genette) and visuo-graphic zone (Cárdenas).     

Topoiesis de las instancias enunciativas

ABSTRACT

The literary text is a communicative situation that involves a sender, a message, and a receiver. Literary theorists and critics have extensively studied the different instances of enunciation, making it clear that the author of a literary text is not the enunciator of it. This article intends to show that each one of them belongs to a distinctive level: those of the communicative situation and the enunciative situation. This article intends to show the space-time axis related to the situations mentioned above. This would allow the researcher to find the mechanisms of power that lie behind the authorization or discredit of a speech. By doing so, we intend to extend the analysis of the literary work, including the context of creation of the literary text. We would like to focus our attention on three aspects related to the enunciator: topoiesis of the communicative situation, topoiesis of the enunciative frame, and topoiesis of the writing individual.     

One problem involved in translating to meaning: An example of acknowledging time and tradition

Abstract

The translation to meaning of Psalm 82 changed through time and tradition. The polytheistic world of the author of the poem was not the accepted context for understanding the psalm when it was considered as part of the Bible. Jewish and Christian readings of the same text have traditionally been quite different. Examples of various understandings of the psalm from the author's to the Reformation's are presented to demonstrate that the official meaning of the biblical text actually has been different according to the tradition in which it has been read.     

The Book of Job – The Cyclical Progression of the Aporia

ABSTRACT

This article explores the relation between aesthetics and theology in the Book of Job. The overall aim of the article is to explain the relationship between centre and periphery (poetry and prose) and its significance for the theology of the book. The article claims that Job's problem is not the attainment of wisdom but how to reconcile wisdom with suffering—how to relate to suffering. And this theological theme is propagated through aesthetics—including stylistic, narrative, compositional and structural features.

It is impossible to point out a preferential reading in the Book of Job because of the fundamental and structural dissonance of the text. This destabilized, ambiguous, paradoxical, ironical and dissonance-producing text is the hermeneutical starting point. Qua dissonance-producing text this feature is used as foundation for the interpretative task. And to get a comprehensive grip on the book two instruments are used: the literary and compositional means are analyzed, and the structural elements are evaluated in their relation between frame and centre. Following this line of interpretation reveals that the stylistic differences of the work manifest crucial theological distinctions. In the book of Job, shape and aesthetics are meaning and theology.     

Genealogical narrative and self-knowledge in Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin and the Foundations of Inequality among Men

SUMMARY

Why did Rousseau cast the substance of the Second Discourse in the form of a genealogy? In this essay the author attempts to work out the relation between the literary form (genealogical narrative, as the author calls it) of the Discourse's two main parts and the content. A key thesis of Rousseau's text concerns our lack of self-knowledge, indeed, our ignorance of our ignorance. The author argues that in a number of ways genealogical narrative is meant to respond to that lack. In the course of his discussion he comments on Rousseau's puzzling remarks in the Second Discourse about his expository method. Further, given the thesis that we lack self-knowledge, Rousseau owes us an account of his genesis as self-knowing genealogist. He attempts to do so in part through his narrative of the ‘illumination of Vincennes’. The author examines that narrative as well, reading it and the Discourse in light of each other. Can Rousseau resolve the problems of self-reference that the philosophical use of genealogy often leads to? The article discusses this complex metaphilosophical problem, along with views about the value of genealogical accounts, in light of recent work by Robert Guay, John Kekes, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Frederick Neuhouser, among others.     

The playful mode of writing in Psycharis's To Tαξíδι μoυ (1888)

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to discuss the literary qualities of Psycharis's To Tαξíδι μoυ, in particular, to analyse specific examples that demonstrate its playful mode of writing. Firstly, it will attempt to place the text in the literary context of its period by discussing its conception and significance for Modern Greek literature. Secondly, it will focus on the element of humour in the text, which can best be described as a playful mode of writing. The playfulness can be explained as raising false expectations in readers in a way that does not become obtrusive or unpleasant, but aims to entertain through the effects of surprise. This mode of writing is created mainly through intertextual allusions, incongruous juxtapositions, and comical, satirical or parodic undertones.     

The Shock Factor of Divine Revelation: A Philological Approach to Daniel 8 and 9

ABSTRACT

This article explores the story and plot of Daniel 8 and 9, and argues that the angel Gabriel assists Daniel in handling the shock factor associated with Divine revelation concerning a seemingly successful antichrist. A comparison of the Septuagint traditions with the Masoretic text this article shows that Daniel 8 and the later part of 9 present visions of an apparently successful blasphemous king and an initially unsuccessful Messiah, rulers against and for God respectively. The perplexities of the prophet about the apparent lack of fulfilment of earlier Divine revelation are part of the literary tension of the text. This article takes a philological approach to Daniel 8 and 9 as a literary unity passed on by a Judeo-Christian tradition and recognizing a unifying role of the Angel Gabriel in Biblical literature.     

Lying and deception in the Biblical and post‐Biblical Judaic tradition

Abstract

A great variety of cuneiform texts have been found within the precincts of the high priest's building complex in ancient Ugarit. Some of the texts are letters, others are lexical texts and others again are ritual texts. The great epics of aqht and krt are best described as literary texts. Some of the texts, however, do not unambiguously belong to one group only: Some scholars would construe the Baal‐cycle as a ritual text or at least a text somehow connected with the cult performed in the temples; others would describe the Baal‐cycle as pure literature. Similarly the enigmatic text about Shachar and Shalim (abbreviated SS) apparently contains cultic and literary elements. Is this text then a cult‐text or a piece of literature? The aim of the article is to investigate if from the archaeological evidence we can add an argument to the on‐going debate about the Sitz im Leben of the Ugaritic Baal‐cycle: Were the clay tablets in the high priest's building distributed according to their content? The answer seems to be yes. The Baal‐cycle was in fact stored with other literary texts in the high priest's building whereas SS has been kept in the room of the ritual texts. This fact might give us a hint as to how to interpret these two texts.     

Meaning in a Changing Context: Towards an Interdisciplinary Approach to Authorial Revision

Summary

In this article, I seek to develop a genetic/diachronic approach to the phenomenon of authorial revision, and to the interpretation of texts that exist in multiple versions. In all such cases, the reconstruction of textual meaning cannot be separated from the reconstruction of the process through which the text in its ‘final’ form came into being; furthermore, an understanding of the author's intentions in (re)writing cannot be entirely separated from an understanding of his/her motives for (re)writing. This article is divided into three sections. In the first section, I consider recent trends in editorial and literary theory that aim at characterising texts in terms of processes rather than products, in order to uphold the equal dignity of each version without losing sight of its connectedness to other stages in the history of the text. In the second section, I discuss how Quentin Skinner's views on meaning and context apply to cases of authorial revision, and I suggest that some key aspects of Skinner's contextualism need to be reconsidered. In the concluding section, I focus on a case study in order to demonstrate the operational value of such a genetic and motive-based approach to authorial revision: more particularly, I seek to show how a close examination of Jean Bodin's rewriting practices in the Methodus (1566–1572) and the République (1576) can throw new light on his shift from a concept of limited sovereignty to one of absolute sovereignty.     

“Celticism,ballad transmission,and the schizoid voice: Ossianic fragments in Owenson,Yeats, Joyce,and Beckett”

ABSTRACT

This essay surveys responses to Macpherson’s Ossian in Irish literature, alongside analysis of the development of literary Celticism. Despite being a key text behind the development of Celticism in Irish writing, Ossian is consciously rejected in Irish Romanticism and in the Celtic Revival. However, Ossian becomes a symbol of literary recycling and mental fragmentation in Irish Modernism. Texts studied in this essay include Owenson’s The Wild Irish Girl, Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, and Beckett’s Murphy.     

Exile and return in John Mauropous,Poem 47

Abstract

The author reads an epigram by John Mauropous as an engagement with epic and biblical traditions. Critical studies of exile and return from different eras of the Greek literary tradition by Émile Benveniste, Gregory Nagy and Nancy Sultan are used to provide a theoretical approach to the tradition with which Mauropous engages. It is suggested that Mauropous' wanderings in the territory of the xenos and return to the familiar world of the philos, and especially his personification of his home as a trophos (nurse), allude to Homer, and that epic language and motifs strengthen the poet's assertion of selfhood and make ancient literary themes relevant to Mauropous' life as a scholar and churchman.     

The meaning of El Roi and the mythological dimension in Genesis 16

Abstract

This article discusses the literary debt of the story of Hagar in Genesis 16 to the Ugaritic text KTU 1.23, suggesting that behind the present tale lie ancient royal ideological motifs. These have a bearing on the present form of the story, ans suggest a message of hope to an exilic readership. The divine epithet Roi is explained as “seen”, expressing Hagar's surprise at surviving a vision of God.     

Showing and telling science – the integrated use of literature and images in the works of Erasmus Darwin and Alexander von Humboldt

ABSTRACT

In recent years, both the fields of literature and science and visual culture of science have addressed the importance of different visual and literary elements and their roles in establishing meaning and communication in science. In this article, I explore how visual and textual elements work to establish a narrative of plants in Erasmus Darwin’s The Botanic Garden (1791) and in Alexander von Humboldt’s Essai sur la géographie des plantes (1804). These two scientists employed literary and visual elements in order to construct their visions of the nature of plants in a time when the ideals of Enlightenment science gave way to a more holistic view of integrating the sciences and the arts. I, therefore, also discuss the analytical approach of integrated readings between the literary and visual elements of science.     

Eine verklungene Novelle Zur Deutung des PSI 725

This paper treats a rhetorical fragment which is preserved in Stobaeus from four points of view. (1) The speech was delivered in Alexandria by a travelling rhetor. (2) There is a philosophical background with a Cynic flavour to this oration, which advocates concord within the city. (3) An analysis of the literary form shows that this text can be regarded as an example of a λαλι?. (4) The date has been very much debated, but a study of the vocabulary makes a date in the second half of the second century A.D. seem plausible.     

‘Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof!’ Reading Leviticus 25:10 through the centuries

ABSTRACT

This paper follows the text of Leviticus 25:10 in the Hebrew Bible and in selected works of the exegetical tradition of both Rabbinic Judaism and Western Christianity, in order to provide a lens through which to assess the use of a biblical text which was instrumental during the early modern period in formulating ideas about the Republic and its use in the modern liberal state. The main argument of the paper is that over time the meaning of the text shifted from the socio-economic to the salvific to the political, depending on the context in which it was read. Further, all the authors cited here approached the text as an authoritative normative text, and did not look at the text as a textual artefact. While the move to re-introduce Jewish Sources into the debate in political theory is to be welcomed, it is argued that the results would be improved by balanced reading strategies and by interaction with critical academic biblical scholarship.     

Parallelism in Biblical Hebrew verse

Abstract

Parallelism is one of the best known features of Biblical Hebrew verse, yet, until recent years, work on this topic was usually content to repeat or elaborate Lowth's analysis. This paper explores the phenomenon of parallelism as a feature of rich potential implicit in all writing and fully activated in literary discourse, especially poetry. After a linguistic analysis using the seminal work of Jakobson on the syntagmatic (chain or sequence axis) and paradigmatic (choice or overshadowing axis) dimensions of text, the insights of a variety of artists are used to identify the dynamics of the device.     

Biblia hebraica ‐ et Septuaginta

Abstract

The article is a review of and a discussion with M.Müller, The First Bible of the Church. A Plea for the Septuagint (1996). This book holds an excellent rendering of the history of the Septuagint, beginning with the letter of Aris‐teas and ending with Augustin. It is also discussed whether the Septuagint ought to be the text translated in an authorized Christian version of the Old Testament, and it is argued that the Greek text should play as important a rôle in biblical theology as does the Hebrew text The present author answers the first question in the negative (Biblia Hebraica — and Septuaginta) and the second positively (Biblia Hebraica et Septuaginta).     

Dünya Giizeli: Cavafy's folkloric Odalisque

Abstract

Cavafy's overlooked poem ‘Dünya Güzeli’ reflects the seminal influence of folklore on the early writings of the poet, an influence which significantly shaped the contours of the Cavafy canon. The poem is a sophisticated attempt to synthesize the flourishing discourse of λαoγρα??α with the fashionable literary and painterly trends of Orientalism. It thus warrants a fuller appreciation as a complex text that documents Cavafy's emerging craft and anticipates his poetic hybridisation of East and West which finds its fullest expression in Cavafy's Orientalising Hellenism.