Machine generated contents note: Introduction: love after Aristotle; 1. Enjoyment: a medieval history; 2. Narcissus after Aristotle: love and ethics in Le Roman de la Rose; 3. Metamorphoses of pleasure in the fourteenth century Dit Amoureux; 4. Love's knowledge: fabliau, allegory, and fourteenth-century anti-intellectualism; 5. On human happiness: Dante, Chaucer, and the felicity of friendship; Coda: Chaucer's philosophical women.

What did it mean to keep a secret in early medieval England? It was a period during which the experience of secrecy was intensely bound to the belief that God knew all human secrets, yet the secrets of God remained unknowable to human beings. In Bonds of Secrecy, Benjamin A. Saltzman argues that this double-edged conception of secrecy and divinity profoundly affected the way believers acted and thought as subjects under the law, as the devout within monasteries, and as (...) readers before books. One crucial way it did so was by forming an ethical relationship between the self and the world that was fundamentally different from its modern reflex. Whereas today the bearers of secrets might be judged for the consequences of their reticence or disclosure, Saltzman observes, in the early Middle Ages a person attempting to conceal a secret was judged for believing he or she could conceal it from God. In other words, to attempt to hide from God was to become ensnared in a serious sin, but to hide from the world while deliberately and humbly submitting to God's constant observation was often a hallmark of spiritual virtue. Looking to law codes and religious architecture, hagiographies and riddles, Bonds of Secrecy shows how legal and monastic institutions harnessed the pervasive and complex belief in God's omniscience to produce an intense culture of scrutiny and a radical ethics of secrecy founded on the individual's belief that nothing could be hidden from God. According to Saltzman, this ethics of secrecy not only informed early medieval notions of mental activity and ideas about the mind but also profoundly shaped the practices of literary interpretation in ways that can inform our own contemporary approaches to reading texts from the past. (shrink)

Nasir-i Khusraw is a major literary figure in medieval Persian culture. He was a Muslim philosopher, poet, travel writer, and Ismaili da'i who lived a thousand years ago in the lands known today as Afghanistan, Iran, and Tajikistan. Although known in the West mainly for his Safarnama, or travelogue, which describes his seven-year journey from Khurasan, in the eastern Islamic lands, to Cairo, the city of the Fatimid imam-caliphs, his poetry and ideas are less familiar. Yet, over the centuries, (...) Persian-speaking lands have consistently ranked him as one of the finest poets of all time. But today, even among those who know Nasir-i Khusraw's poetry, few understand the philosophical and Ismaili concepts the poet expounds. And while mystical and epic genres of Persian poetry are memorized and studied, the genre of philosophical poetry in Persian remains basically unexplored. This collection of studies seeks to redress the balance. Originally presented at a conference at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London in 2005 to commemorate the millenary of Nasir-i Khusraw's birth, the papers published here examine his poetry both for philosophical meaning and poetic method. They address a variety of topics, ranging from metaphysics, cosmology, and ontology to prophecy, as well as rhythm and structure, and analysis of individual poems and authorship. (shrink)

Tropologies is the first book-length study to elaborate the medieval and early modern theory of the tropological, or moral, sense of scripture. Ryan McDermott argues that tropology is not only a way to interpret the Bible but also a theory of literary and ethical invention. The "tropological imperative" demands that words be turned into works--books as well as deeds. Beginning with Augustine, Jerome, and Gregory the Great, then treating monuments of exegesis such as the Glossa ordinaria and Nicholas of (...) Lyra, as well as theorists including Thomas Aquinas, Erasmus, Martin Luther, and others, Tropologies reveals the unwritten history of a major hermeneutical theory and inventive practice. Late medieval and early Reformation writers adapted tropological theory to invent new biblical poetry and drama that would invite readers to participate in salvation history by inventing their own new works. Tropologies reinterprets a wide range of medieval and early modern texts and performances--including the Patience-Poet, Piers Plowman, Chaucer, the York and Coventry cycle plays, and the literary circles of the reformist King Edward VI--to argue that "tropological invention" provided a robust alternative to rhetorical theories of literary production. In this groundbreaking revision of literary history, the Bible and biblical hermeneutics, commonly understood as sources of tumultuous discord, turn out to provide principles of continuity and mutuality across the Reformation's temporal and confessional rifts. Each chapter pursues an argument about poetic and dramatic form, linking questions of style and aesthetics to exegetical theory and theology. Because Tropologies attends to the flux of exegetical theory and practice across a watershed period of intellectual history, it is able to register subtle shifts in literary production, fine-tuning our sense of how literature and religion mutually and dynamically informed and reformed each other. "This is an original book. It draws confidently on a wide range of medieval critical and scholarly work, as well as on a cogent body of contemporary theory and theology. It not only moves easily and eloquently between the fourteenth and the sixteenth centuries but also delves back into the 'tropological' Christian thought of the previous thousand years." --Nicolette Zeeman, University of Cambridge. (shrink)

Often considered China's greatest poet, Du Fu (712-770) came of age at the height of the Tang dynasty, in an era marked by confidence that the accumulated wisdom of the precedent cultural tradition would guarantee civilization's continued stability and prosperity. When his society collapsed into civil war in 755, however, he began to question contemporary assumptions about the role that tradition should play in making sense of experience and defining human flourishing. In this book, Lucas Bender argues that Du Fu's (...) reconsideration of the nature and importance of tradition has played a pivotal role in the transformation of Chinese poetic understanding over the last millennium. In reimagining his relationship to tradition, Du Fu anticipated important philosophical transitions from the late-medieval into the early-modern period and laid the template for a new and perduring paradigm of poetry's relationship to ethics. He also looked forward to the transformations his own poetry would undergo as it was elevated to the pinnacle of the Chinese poetic pantheon. (shrink)

This volume collects 17 case studies that characterize the various kinds of translations of the European culture of the last two and a half millennia from ancient Greece to Rome, from the medieval world to the Renaissance up to the ...

Explores Blanchot's philosophical meditation on three poets, Mallarmé, Hölderlin, and René Char alongside his contribution to Jewish philosophy.

Introduction: Laughter as an expression of human nature in the Middle Ages and the early modern period: literary, historical, theological, philosophical, and psychological reflections -- Judith Hagen. Laughter in Procopius's wars -- Livnat Holtzman. "Does God really laugh?": appropriate and inappropriate descriptions of God in Islamic traditionalist theology -- Daniel F. Pigg. Laughter in Beowulf: ambiguity, ambivalence, and group identity formation -- Mark Burde. The parodia sacra problem and medieval comic studies -- Olga V. Trokhimenko. Women's laughter and gender (...) politics in medieval conduct discourse -- Madelon Köhler-Busch. Pushing decorum: uneasy laughter in Heinrich von Dem Türlîn's Diu crône -- Connie L. Scarborough. Laughter and the comic in a religious text -- John Sewell. The son rebelled and so the father made man alone: ridicule and boundary maintenance in The Nizzahon vetus -- Birgit Wiedl. Laughing at the beast: the judensau: anti-Jewish propaganda and humor from the Middle Ages to the early modern period -- Fabian Alfie. Yes . . . but was it funny? Cecco Angiolieri, Rustico Filippi and Giovanni Boccaccio -- Nicolino Applauso. Curses and laughter in medieval Italian comic poetry -- Feargal Béarra. Tromdhámh guaire: a context for laughter and audience in early modern Ireland -- Jean E. Jost. Humorous transgression in the non-conformist fabliaux: a Bakhtinian analysis of three comic tales -- Gretchen Mieszkowski. Chaucerian comedy: Troilus and Criseyde -- Sarah Gordon. Laughing and eating in the fabliaux -- Christine Bousquet-Labouérie. Laughter and medieval stalls -- Scott L. Taylor. Esoteric humor and the incommensurability of laughter -- Jean N. Goodrich. The function of laughter in The second shepherds' play -- Albrecht Classen. Laughing in late-medieval verse and prose narratives -- Rosa Alvarez perez. The workings of desire: Panurge and the dogs -- Elizabeth Chesney Zegura. Laughing out loud in the Heptaméron: a reassessment of Marguerite de Navarre's ambivalent humor -- Lia B. Ross. You had to be there: the elusive humor of the Sottie -- Kyle Diroberto. Sacred parody in Robert Greene's Groatsworth of wit -- Martha Moffitt Peacock. The comedy of the shrew: theorizing humor in early modern Netherlandish art -- Jessica Tvordi. The comic personas of Milton's Prolusion VI: negotiating masculine identity through self-directed humor -- John Alexander. Ridentum dicere verum (using laughter to speak the truth): laughter and the language of the early modern clown "pickelhering" in German literature of the late seventeenth century (1675-1700) -- Thomas Willard. Andreae's ludibrium: Menippean satire in The chymische hochzeit -- Diane Rudall. The comic power of illusion-allusion -- Allison P. Coudert. Laughing at credulity and superstition in the long eighteenth century. (shrink)

Summary This article opens with a brief introduction to Giuseppe Mazzini, with particular reference to his commitment to republicanism, an ideal that would be fulfilled in Italy only after considerable time and with great difficulty. It then focuses on Mazzini's critical reception of Byron. Although Giuseppe Mazzini and Percy Bysshe Shelley would have allowed a more obvious comparison, it was Byron who really attracted Mazzini's attention and criticism. Mazzini uses Byron, on the one hand, as a means to demonstrate (...) that Italians could discuss European poetry without putting at risk their national identity, or, as the classicists maintained, that fragile and fragmented profile of a nation that contemporary Italy offered to the minds and hearts of thousands of young people. On the other hand, however, Mazzini questions Byron's authority by subverting and converting his value, in a very personal way: he gradually substitutes Byron's with a different authority and credits him with new values. Mazzini could not accept Byron as the emblem of elitism and isolation: Byron's solipsism needed to be purified, and his renowned cynical attitude tempered; eventually Byron's myth needed to be connected to the destiny of peoples and nations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:An Undeleter for CriticismSimon Jarvis (bio)Is there experience of beauty, or is it only that we sometimes choose to sort and name certain experiences by using a set of terms, originating often in ancient and medieval philosophy and theology and by a long process of mutation and manipulation arriving under the disciplinary heading of "aesthetics"? This question asks for at least two kinds of information. It does not (...) only ask for information about the history of the formation of the concepts of aesthetics; it also asks for information about experiences. But information about experiences is hard to come by. This is not only, perhaps, for the large reason that "information is concerned with alien objects," rather than with experiences,1 but also for the more local one that "aesthetics" does not often attempt to describe any experiences with determined fidelity.2I can illustrate this with reference to a branch of aesthetics in which I have a particular interest, the aesthetics of prosody. A good deal of subtle and sometimes brilliant work exists in this field. It is rare, however, to find writing which describes in any detail the particular experiences which a particular living individual has had in relation to a line of poetry.3 One is much more likely to find such descriptions in works of fiction (or, rarely, in brief reviews) than in professional writing on the topic of prosody. There seem at first to be some obvious and good reasons for this. Professional writing demands not that we merely report our own subjective experiences, but that we produce knowledge. Critics are not paid to be artists but to be a kind of scientists of art. But what if there is no such science? What if "there is no science of the beautiful" [Kant, CJ 172]? Would that mean that the whole subject area should simply be—deleted?That this is a possibility is confirmed by the fact that in one area of thinking about aesthetic experience, it has almost happened already. While there are still a number of paid professionals who understand part of their vocation to be bound up with investigating the experience of the beauty or other value of works of art, there are few paid aestheticians of nature.4 There have been historical periods in which numbers of printed nonfiction [End Page 3] texts were devoted both to experiences of natural beauty and also to the relative propensity of natural appearances to occasion such experiences. Such descriptions are now thought to be, insofar as they are of interest at all, the province of artists.5 This is indeed a consequence of something like an acceptance that, in the sphere of experiences of nature, at least, "there is no science of the beautiful." Most agree that "an ideal of a beautiful view is unthinkable" [CJ 80]. Yet few, perhaps, would now argue that an ideal of a beautiful poem is quite thinkable either.We are thus returned to the question posed above. If there is no science of the beautiful, must claims to experiences of beauty be treated as fictional—in the specific sense that they are matters for fiction, and not for science? Why should the concept not be altogether eliminated?Perhaps for this reason. Let us imagine that I think I have had an experience. I have been walking along a street at night, say, head down as though scrutinizing the quite complex surface of tarmacadam, kerbstone, painted parking and motoring instructions, drain covers and grilles, although perhaps in distraction I may have been allowing my eyes simply to pass lightly over all this while I think about a mortifying remark addressed to me at a recent committee meeting, or attempt to identify the catalogue number relevant to a fragment of piano music which has come into my head; may, for example, as if startled by a call or a cry of pain have raised my look from the wet pavement—which I now possibly "see" for the first time (since it is the soul which sees, and not the eye [Descartes 1: 172])—and now indeed see at a great distance ahead of me, almost at the horizon of... (shrink)

Senshu University has hosted many international conferences on medieval English literature - primarily on Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland - as well as in the related fields of Old Germanic, medieval French and Renaissance Italian literature. These international collaborations inform and contribute to the present volume, which addresses the heritage bequeathed to medieval English language and literature by the classical world.<BR> This volume explores the development of medieval English literature in light of contact with Germanic and (...) Old Norse cultures, on the one hand, and Romance languages, on the other. The book includes a comparative study of <I>Beowulf in the Germanic context, discusses aspects of <I>Piers Plowman and its tradition, and offers philological approaches to Chaucer (especially his <I>Troilus and Criseyde). The articles assembled here collectively suggest how the torches of classical learning were carried from continental Europe to illuminate the pages of medieval English literature. (shrink)

Patronage and Poetry in the Islamic World: Social Mobility and Status in the Medieval Middle East and Central Asia. By Jocelyn Shariet. Library of Middle East History, vol. 24. London: I. B. Tauris, 2011. Pp. x + 326. £62.50, $105.

Theodicy: God or evil?: Irenaeus -- Augustine -- Thomas Aquinas -- John Hick -- Alvin Plantinga -- God and evil: Friedrich Nietzsche -- Richard Dawkins -- Divine hiddenness -- Rudolf Otto -- The Kabbalah -- Karl Barth -- Karl Rahner -- Empirical science -- A cultural, historical and literary survey: Does the devil exist? A persistent belief -- Stepping stones to Europe -- Demonology in medieval literary culture -- The Reformation: Two magisterial reformers: Martin Luther -- John Calvin -- (...) De-sacralisation -- The Catholic reform: Three outstanding reformers and conflict with the devil: Saint Ignatius Loyola -- Saint Teresa of Avila -- Saint John of the Cross -- The devil in the era of modernity: Poetry and literature in a new age -- Twentieth-century chronicles of evil -- Exorcism: A historical and theological analysis: Exorcism: The historical context -- Towards a theological assessment of exorcism -- Appendix: Towards a psychological analysis of possession and exorcism. (shrink)

The employment of mythological language and imagery by an Epicurean poet - an adherent of a system not only materialist, but overtly hostile to myth and poetry - is highly paradoxical. This apparent contradiction has often been ascribed to a conflict in the poet between reason and intellect, or to a desire to enliven his philosophical material with mythological digressions. This book attempts to provide a more positive assessment of Lucretius' aims and methodology by considering the poet's attitude to myth, (...) and the role which it plays in the De Rerum Natura, against the background of earlier and contemporary views. The author suggests that Lucretius was not only aware of the tension between his two roles as philosopher and poet, but attempted to resolve it by developing his own, Epicurean poetic, together with a bold and innovative theory of the origins and meaning of myth. (shrink)

Benedetto Croce’s influence pervades Anglo-Saxon culture, but, ironically, before Giovanni Gullace heeded the call of his colleagues and provided this urgently needed translation of _La Poesia, _speakers of English had no access to Croce’s major work and final rendering of his esthetic theory.__ __ _Aesthetic, _published in 1902 and translated in 1909, represents most of what the English-speaking world knows about Croce’s theory. It is, asserts Gullace, “no more than a first sketch of a thought that developed, clarified, and corrected (...) itself through new literary experience and more mature reflection.” During the 34 years between _Aesthetic _and _La Poesia _, for example, Croce added a striking new element to his thought: the analysis of prose literature. Gullace’s introduction to _La Poesia _constitutes a major under­taking in its own right. It is aimed at acquainting the reader with the evolution of Croce’s thought and at explaining the relation­ship between this final work and the philosopher’s previous work in esthetic theory and literary criticism. __ _La Poesia _is divided into two parts, text and postscripts. The text consists of four chapters: Poetry and Literature; The Life of Poetry; Criticism and History of Poetry; and The Formation of the Poet and the Precepts. Croce saw the postscripts “as a re­laxed conversation after the tension of theoretical exposition. In Gullace’s translation the text and relevant postscripts appear conveniently side by side in a double column. Gullace has anno­tated both text and postscripts. (shrink)

EDITORS' INTRODUCTION B he Vedas tell of a conversation between a young man, Shvetaketu, and his father concerning what the son had learned in his education ...

A characteristic hallmark of medieval astronomy is the replacement of Ptolemy’s linear precession with so-called models of trepidation, which were deemed necessary to account for divergences between parameters and data transmitted by Ptolemy and those found by later astronomers. Trepidation is commonly thought to have dominated European astronomy from the twelfth century to the Copernican Revolution, meeting its demise only in the last quarter of the sixteenth century thanks to the observational work of Tycho Brahe. The present article seeks (...) to challenge this picture by surveying the extent to which Latin astronomers of the late Middle Ages expressed criticisms of trepidation models or rejected their validity in favour of linear precession. It argues that a readiness to abandon trepidation was more widespread prior to Brahe than hitherto realized and that it frequently came as the result of empirical considerations. This critical attitude towards trepidation reached an early culmination point with the work of Agostino Ricci, who demonstrated the theory’s redundancy with a penetrating analysis of the role of observational error in Ptolemy’s Almagest. (shrink)

The volume gathers eleven studies on the intellectual exchanges during the Middle Ages among the three cultures which existed side by side in the same geographical area, i.e. the vast space from the British Isles to the Sahara Desert, and from the Douro Valley to the Hindu Kush. These three cultures – who may not be reduced to their confession or ethnicity – are historically related to each other in many respects, both material (trade, wars, marriages) and immaterial (the interdependence (...) among their religious narratives and their philosophical speculations). The studies herein presented focus on some peculiar examples of the transcultural interactions among exponents of the Arabic, Hebrew and Latin philosophical and theological traditions. While we do not want to downplay the fundamental role of the religious contexts, our focus on the linguistic denominations of these cultures aims at drawing attention to the conceptual medium, or rather media, which underlined and shaped the interactions and interplays among these traditions – interplays that were characterized by the contact of these three languages being used by people of different religious beliefs in their quest for knowledge: Spanish Jews writing in Arabic, Jews collaborating in the translation of Arabic texts into Latin through the vernacular, Western Muslims whose writings were read mainly by Jews and Christians in Hebrew and Latin. (shrink)

Abstract:Here I look at sundry aspects of the current controversy about Generative AI and, in particular, the implications of this new and rapidly evolving technology for poetry, the arts, and human creativity in general. My essay looks at earlier episodes in the history of thought, from Descartes on, that I take to have prefigured this latest debate around 'the human' in relation to its various physical, 'artificial,' or (presumptively) prosthetic means of extension and refinement. I also discuss its bearing (...) on literary-critical issues concerning the formal or structural aspects of poetry, the role (if any) of authorial intent, and the extent to which criticism enters into– and might lay claim to a stake in–what counts as human creativity. A central point of reference is William Empson's 1930 book, Seven Types of Ambiguity, where these issues are raised in a strikingly prescient way through his practice of close-focused textual analysis allied to great philosophical acuity. I conclude that a priori attitudinizing, pro or con, is not much use in this context, but that poets, critics, philosophers, cognitive scientists, and AI researchers need to cooperate in the reexamination of many long-standing but now highly contestable distinctions. (shrink)

Yashastilaka by Somadeva, composed in ce 959, is a Jaina religious romance written in Sanskrit prose and verse. It is notable as an encyclopaedic record of literary, socio-political, religious and philosophical data that throws light on the cultural history of the Deccan in early medieval India. This volume presents a critical study of the work, providing a comprehensive picture of the life and thought of the time of Somadeva. It begins with a discussion on Somadeva and his age (...) and gives a synopsis of Yashastilaka. it examines the Yashastilaka as a prose and a religious romance, a socio-political record and as an anthology of Sanskrit verse. The book discusses various philosophical doctrines in Indian thought. With many detailed references and footnotes, it reveals the Yashastilaka as a work that expounds the cardinal teachings of Jainism. It throws light on Jaina dogmatics, religious poetry, moral and religious stories, and myths and legends in the process of examining the work. The volume also has supplementary notes incorporating the results of studies on Somadeva's relations with the Vemulavada Calukyas and the locality in which he wrote his masterpiece. (shrink)

The somewhat deflating conclusion of Simon A. Gilson's meticulous examination of Dante's incorporation of the science of optics and theories of light is that the poet was considerably less well read than we have been giving him credit for.Gilson's book is divided into two parts: the first, dealing with the science of optics, contains four chapters; the second, dealing with theories of light, contains three. Each of these parts is devoted to debunking a tendency in Dante scholarship to attribute to (...) a particular scientific or philosophical movement a marked influence on his work. In the first part Gilson maintains that Dante's use of the science of optics does not—as others, most forcefully and influentially Alessandro Parronchi, have argued—rely specifically on knowledge of the authors of the perspectivae—detailed treatises on optics that placed the influence of light rays at the origin of terrestrial phenomena—that is, on such thinkers as Alhazen, Roger Bacon, and Robert Grosseteste. Rather, Gilson contends that Dante could easily have come by the requisite expertise concerning this science through contact with the more popular and widely known doctrines of such Arab interpreters of Aristotle as Avicenna and Averroës and the commentaries of Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas. He demonstrates the plausibility of this contention by way of a comparative analysis of the doctrines of the perspectivists and the Arab interpreters. This analysis is followed by a chapter devoted to optics and vision in Dante's earlier poetry.The two following chapters cover, respectively, topics such as blinding, optical illusions, and visual error in Dante's Commedia and the themes of reflection, mirrors, and meteorological optics, also in the Commedia, a work that Gilson specifies as having nevertheless gone beyond the more limited sources of the earlier poetry. In the third chapter Gilson's analysis achieves a welcome degree of insight into the poet's originality: here Gilson shows how Dante incorporates the scientific knowledge of his day in order to establish a set of limits that circumscribe human action in the physical world but that must be overcome in the course of the pilgrim's journey through his imaginative world. Such moments provide a refreshing alternative to an otherwise rather positivistic view of scientific knowledge as a compendium of facts and sources one either has or has not read. One cannot help but think that researchers in the field of the history of science might be most interested in the imaginative contributions of a specifically poetic knowledge, especially in an age in which the distinction between “hard” and “soft” science was not accorded the kind of unquestioned respect it currently receives.In the second part Gilson, continuing his debunking analysis, argues that the scholarship on Dante and his use of theories of light has remained captivated by the notion of “the metaphysics of light.” This term, Gilson claims, has been used to unify and oversimplify a rather diverse group of doctrines concerning the nature of light and its relation to knowledge, vision, God, and being. Against the grain of the traditional critical trend, Gilson maintains that Dante's thought has nothing in common with the proper metaphysics of light of a Grosseteste—who identifies light as the primary element of being—and that Dante would have had relatively little contact with Neoplatonic theories of emanation. Again, according to Gilson, in applying the imagery of light to his poetic themes, Dante would have had readily available models in the popular theological light imagery of his time; his use of light in the description of the Empyrean is, Gilson states, perhaps the best example of Dante's relative independence from any limited set of sources.Whether Gilson's informative examination of Dante's relative dependence on sources should be understood as liberating the poet from the anxiety of scientific influence remains, however, an open question. Whatever the extent or depth of any enumeration of those sources, it is the moment of creation that astonishes. (shrink)

The present volume explores how and why Averroes, a Muslim philosopher and jurist, became one of the most important figures in the history of Jewish philosophy.

The notion of a harmonious universe was taught by Pythagoras as early as the sixth century BC, and remained a basic premise in Western philosophy, science, and art almost to our own day. In Touches of Sweet Harmony, S. K. Heninger first recounts the legendary life of Pythagoras, describes his school at Croton, and discusses the materials from which the Renaissance drew its information about Pythagorean doctrine. The second section of the book reconstructs the many facets of this doctrine, and (...) the final section shows its influence on Renaissance poetics. Professor Heninger's magisterial work introduces the reader not only to Pythagoras but to a host of other classical, medieval, and Renaissance figures as well--from Plato and Aristotle through St. Augustine and Macrobius down to Sidney and Spenser. (shrink)

The arts of poetry and the arts of criticism are uncovered and studied in their products, in poems and in judgments. Poetry and criticism, however, the making and judging of poems, are processes. The study of literature as a product - existing poems and existing interpretations and appreciations of poetry - develops a body of knowledge which is sometimes called "poetic sciences." The recognition and use of poetic and critical processes - producing and judging poems which did not (...) previously exist, and uncovering and analyzing aspects of existing poems which were not previously discerned or appreciated - develop things and values by use of arts which are sometimes called "heuristic arts." Knowledge or science is used in the processes of deliberate or artful making; art or criticism is used in the production of things or knowledge of things, natural or artificial. Knowledge is a product of inquiry; criticism is a process of judgment; the two are joined - knowledge of things and use of knowledge - in critical inquiries or critiques of judgment. Richard McKeon is Charles F. Grey Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Greek at the University of Chicago; he was a member of the U.S. delegations to the first three General Conferences of UNESCO and served as U.S. counselor to UNESCO. His numerous publications include The Philosophy of Spinoza, Freedom and History, and Thought, Action, and Passion; he also has edited The Basic Works of Aristotle and coedited the forthcoming critical edition of Abailard's Sic et Non. His contributions to Critical Inquiry include "Canonic Books and Prohibited Books: Orthodoxy and Heresy in Religion and Culture" and Pride and Prejudice: Thought, Character, Argument, and Plot". (shrink)

This book features readings of over twenty key texts and authors in Western poetry and philosophy, including Homer, Plato, Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare and Rousseau. Simon Haines argues that the history of both can be seen as a struggle between two different conceptions of the self: the "romantic" vs. the "realist".

This volume explores the relationship between individuals and institutions in scholastic thought and practice across the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, setting an agenda for future debates. Written by leading European experts from numerous fields, this theoretically sophisticated collection analyses a wide range of intellectual practices and disciplines. Avoiding narrow approaches to scholasticism, the book addresses ethics, history, heresy, law, inquisition, metaphysics, pastoral care, poetry, religious orders, saints' cults and theology. A substantial introduction establishes an accessible historiographical context for the (...) volume's agenda, and a final afterword examines implications for future research. The history of individuals and institutions in scholasticism has often been unhelpfully treated either as a simple intellectual genealogy of schools and doctrines, or a constitutional history of particular organizational forms. This volume advances our understanding by reconsidering these fields as a whole and addressing two large questions. What was the relationship between particular intellectuals and their wider networks? How did individuals alter their institutions, and how did those institutions shape their individuality? This volume is of major importance to intellectual, religious and cultural historians as well as historians of knowledge and science. It will engage those working on individuals and institutions in the middle ages as well as in other periods. (shrink)

This study explores the relationship between the poetic language of Donne, Herbert, Milton, and other British poets, and the choral music and part-songs of composers including Tallis, Byrd, Gibbons, Weelkes, and Tomkins. The seventeenth century was the time in English literary history when music was most consciously linked to words, and when the mingling of Renaissance and 'new' philosophy opened new discovery routes for the interpretation of art. McColley offers close readings of poems and the musical settings of analogous (...) texts, and discusses the philosophy, performance, and disputed political and ecclesiastical implications of polyphony. She also enters into current discourse about the nature of language, relating poets' use of language and composers' use of music to larger questions concerning the arts, politics and theology. (shrink)

If any emergent historical criticism will tend by its own choice toward inclusiveness and eclecticism, it is also likely to be constrained by more subtle forms of complicity with the theoretical subculture within which it seeks its audience. It is not in principle impossible that we might choose to set going an initiative that is very different indeed from the methods and approaches already in place. But is nonetheless clear that we must be aware, in some propaedeutic way, of (...) the predispositions for or against such change that are latent in the horizons of the field as they are presently conceived and transmitted. An account of these predispositions will take up most of the following essay. Whether or not the particular texts I shall discuss constitute anything as firm as an establishment in the absolute sense does not matter much: they neither sum up the ongoing careers of their particular authors, in the diachronic sense, nor do they represent any simple totality in the critical culture of the late 1960s. All we need here is the weaker assumption: that these writings by Derrida, Paul de Man, Michel Foucault, and Pierre Macherey do offer, by virtue of their very notoriety, evidence of the priorities within the discipline that have afforded them their reputations in the first place. Thus, while they do not in themselves prohibit the emergence of alternatives, they do give us clues about the residual pressures that might constrain those alternatives, and they signal the questions that the historical party must respond to if it is to be recognized as making an important contribution to a debate. My argument will be that the influential critics of the late 1960s have made it very hard indeed to find a place for history, so much so that the avowedly Marxist alternative set forth by Jameson finds itself making disabling concessions to those very influences. I do not claim to describe the entire range of options and alternatives, and indeed offer no discussion of the most excitingly contested field of all, that represented by contemporary feminisms. I mean instead to demonstrate, through a reading of those methodologies that have become authoritative, that the status of historical inquiry has been so eroded that its reactive renaissance, in whatever form, threatens to remain merely gestural and generic. “History” promises thus to function as legitimating any reference to a context beyond literature exclusively conceived, whether it be one of discourse, biography, political or material circumstance. In particular, given the current popularity of discourse analysis, it seems likely that for many practitioners the historical method will remain founded in covertly idealist reconstructions. David Simpson is professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He is the author of various books and essays, most recently The Politics of American English, 1776-1850 and Wordsworth’s Historical Imagination: The Poetry of Displacement. (shrink)

Wordsworth and Kant and the Prosaic sublime -- Fitting infinities: Browning and Hegel -- Utter limits: Hopkins and Kierkegaard -- The echo of the poetic: Hardy and Adorno.

LUCRETIUS AND THE LATE REPUBLIC . Roman Intellectual History The history of human values is the history of changing notions about truth and reality, ...

The Performing Arts in Medieval Islam: Shadow Play and Popular Poetry in Ibn Dāniyāl’s Mamluk Cairo. By Li Guo. Islamic History and Civilization, vol. 93. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Pp. xiii + 240. $136.

A pioneering study that illuminates the connection of music, poetry, mystical praxis and social history underlying the ceremony of the Mevlevi Dervishes. Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi, whose life and mystical poetry provided the inspiration for the Mevlevi Sufi order, is one of the world's best-known poets, yet the centuries-long musical tradition cultivated by the Mevleviye remains much less known. In this deeply researched book, renowned scholar Walter Feldman traces the historical development of Mevlevi music and brings to light the remarkable (...) musical and mystical aesthetics of the Mevlevi ayin - the instrumental and vocal accompaniment to the sublime ceremony of the 'Whirling' Dervishes. (shrink)