The Poetics of Indeterminacy: Corneille's Le Cid

This article theorizes that it was an aesthetic motivation that prompted Corneille to leave Le Cid open-ended, despite his assertion in the 1660 examen that it was respect for the bienséances that obliged him to close the tragedy on such an uncertain note. While moral reservations may have played a role, surely an artist as committed to his craft as Corneille was motivated by some overriding aesthetic goal as well. In consequence, Chimène's defiance at the play's end must be viewed as an integral component of the tragedy and not just a reflection of the author's reluctance to violate dramaturgical precepts. I argue that by leaving the dénouement in doubt, Corneille draws deliberate attention to his aesthetic manipulation of the well-known historical/literary precedent. Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, his aesthetic manipulation of history shields Chimène's heroism from the quotidian reality of degradation and devolution that are the defining traits of non-aesthetic realities.     

The Poetics of the Crocodile: Changing Cultural Perspectives in Ambonwari

ABSTRACT Ambonwari people from the East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea, had a rich repertoire of song‐dances, each of which was associated with specific events and the birth of something new. Together they represented the entire human life cycle as well as the cosmology at large. Visual, verbal and tactile modalities of singing and dancing were tightly interwoven; images and symbols were enacted by the dancers, in their decoration, arrangement, movements and in the whole ceremony and were firmly situated in their landscape. Accordingly, song‐dances were also an important practice in male initiation ritual. The first song‐dance of the ritual was the crocodile song‐dance. This article analyses different transpositions of images and meanings which can be decoded from the dance, from the objects that were part of the initiation rite, and from the parallelism and rich allegory of verses. These transpositions operate at different levels until they converge upon the existential facts of birth and death. In the new millennium and under the influence of a Catholic charismatic movement, however, Ambonwari broke off their relationships with spirits, abandoned the men's houses and stopped talking about male initiation ritual. Along with other traditional song‐dances the crocodile song‐dance has been taken over by the song‐dances of the Holy Spirit. These changes in social and cultural perspectives, which are still taking place, are at the same time products and producers of the changes in their relationship to ‘space’ and ‘time’ which are at the same time changes in visual and auditory perception and expression of their life‐world. All these changes should not be seen merely in some abstract or symbolic terms but as tangible processes generated by people's action.     

敦煌写本《高兴歌》作者考

学术界一直认为敦煌写本《高兴歌》不是以“五言长城”闻名的唐代诗人刘长卿所作 ,而事实上 ,恰是这位中唐著名诗人在任江州刺史期间写的。只不过在流传过程中又经敦煌文人修改润色而已     

Museums as Relational Entities: The Politics and Poetics of Heritage

Over the last 40 years museums have become important sites to understand the politics and poetics of heritage management, display, and knowledge production. The books under consideration here all help demonstrate how museums as relational entities—containing dynamic relations between persons and things, as well as generating them—are emergent processes. Each work helps demonstrate why museums in their many guises remain critical terrains for the negotiation of identity, history, and culture in the push for more collaborative accounts of our world and the circulation and display of things.     

土族"安召"舞的审美愉悦

美丽的土乡,有挺拔的山峰,清幽的山谷,葱郁的树木,静穆的田园,潺潺的溪流,还有那些禽鸟,野花和蜂蝶……美好的景致时时刻刻地陶冶着土乡人的心灵,使他们随时随地想跟大自然和声,情不自禁地唱出纯朴的山歌,跳出欢乐的舞蹈.     

The Poetics of Pastiche in Eco's Postmodern Detective Novel

While the traditional boulevard novel of Eugène Sue wants to entertain and sell, Umberto Eco's boulevard novel wants to entertain and educate the contemporary reader in Italian history and in a form of modern semiotic theory. However, Eco's educational mission does not transform the low genre of the boulevard novel but remains bound by its limitations of “rhetoric and ideology.” Eco's reader is left with a representation of history as pastiche and a populist misconception about the potential of semiotics to relativise the perception of reality. Both history and semiotics are ultimately used by Eco not as heuristic devices but as instruments of seduction directed at a modern middle-class reading public with intellectual aspirations.     

磨炼：晚唐五代诗学的理论核心——以诗格为中心

“磨炼”是晚唐五代诗学的理论核心,这不仅体现为晚唐五代诗格中的具体理论阐述,而且可以从诗格著作群体以及诗格所举的诗例方面得到证明。晚唐五代诗格中的“磨炼”理论是对诗歌创作中字、句、意、格进行锤炼的全方位理论总结,是诗歌创作多方面要求的理论体现。