The article is based on theories of meaning creation and the concepts of archaic mind of Juri Lotman and Giambattista Vico. It compares the notions fantasia, ingegno, memoria and poetic logic by Vico with Lotman’s concepts of text, memory and modelling systems. Donald Phillip Verene’s and Marcel Danesi’s interpretations of Giambattista Vico’s work are also taken into consideration in the analysis. The article aims to bring out the characteristic features of archaic meaning creation. The archaic mind is considered to be (...) fundamentally poetic. Its main mechanism of generating new meaning is metaphorical identification of two otherwise separate elements. The creativity of this act lies in the presumption that imagination is needed to bring these two elements together — they cannot be identified with each other by the means of syllogistic logic. The archaic mind does not operate mainly with generic concepts, as rational mind does. It forms imaginative universals instead, which are based on the sense of identity between objects or their parts, not on the sense of similarity/ dissimilarity of distinct features of objects. This process forms the basis of poetic modelling, which is primary in relation to verbal modelling. (shrink)

The article is based on theories of meaning creation and the concepts of archaic mind of Juri Lotman and Giambattista Vico. It compares the notions fantasia, ingegno, memoria and poetic logic by Vico with Lotman’s concepts of text, memory and modelling systems. Donald Phillip Verene’s and Marcel Danesi’s interpretations of Giambattista Vico’s work are also taken into consideration in the analysis. The article aims to bring out the characteristic features of archaic meaning creation. The archaic mind is considered to be (...) fundamentally poetic. Its main mechanism of generating new meaning is metaphorical identification of two otherwise separate elements. The creativity of this act lies in the presumption that imagination is needed to bring these two elements together — they cannot be identified with each other by the means of syllogistic logic. The archaic mind does not operate mainly with generic concepts, as rational mind does. It forms imaginative universals instead, which are based on the sense of identity between objects or their parts, not on the sense of similarity/ dissimilarity of distinct features of objects. This process forms the basis of poetic modelling, which is primary in relation to verbal modelling. (shrink)

The article is based on theories of meaning creation and the concepts of archaic mind of Juri Lotman and Giambattista Vico. It compares the notions fantasia, ingegno, memoria and poetic logic by Vico with Lotman’s concepts of text, memory and modelling systems. Donald Phillip Verene’s and Marcel Danesi’s interpretations of Giambattista Vico’s work are also taken into consideration in the analysis. The article aims to bring out the characteristic features of archaic meaning creation. The archaic mind is considered to be (...) fundamentally poetic. Its main mechanism of generating new meaning is metaphorical identification of two otherwise separate elements. The creativity of this act lies in the presumption that imagination is needed to bring these two elements together — they cannot be identified with each other by the means of syllogistic logic. The archaic mind does not operate mainly with generic concepts, as rational mind does. It forms imaginative universals instead, which are based on the sense of identity between objects or their parts, not on the sense of similarity/ dissimilarity of distinct features of objects. This process forms the basis of poetic modelling, which is primary in relation to verbal modelling. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Rhetoric of Narrating Communal History in the Nineteenth-Century Finnish Historical NovelMari Hatavara (bio)Det var en mulen och dyster afton om våren 1718. Klockan knäppte fem minuter till sex i salen på den ståtliga herrgård, som tillhört den stolte Baronen Göran Boije, och som nu ägdes af hans enka, fru Catharina Boije. I detsamma hördes en klocka ringa gårdsfolket tillsamman för aftonbönen. I nedra ändan af salen samlades (...) med sakta steg allt gårdsfolket i tyst förbidan. Nu slog vägguret sex. […]It was a cloudy and dreary evening in the spring of 1718. The clock turned five to six in the great hall of the stately manor which once had belonged to the proud Baron Göran Boije, and which now was in the possession of his widow, Lady Catharina Boije. At the very moment, a bell was heard to summon all the folk together for an evening prayer. The servants gathered in the lower end of the hall with silent footsteps in a quiet waiting. The clock struck six now. […](All translations mine.)Finland's first historical novel, Fredrika Runeberg's Fru Catharina Boije och hennes döttrar (Lady Catharina Boije and Her Daughters) (1858),1 begins with this passage after a short frame narrative. The very first sentence provides the date where the story-world is set, and the lines following describe a setting suitable for that period of time. This is in accordance with the generic tradition of the historical novel. Even if the historical novel has very few characters whom theorists would agree upon, most theories of historical novel concur on the statement that the genre is "by definition referential, gesturing toward a world commonly understood to have existed" (Maxwell 545). This emphasis on the story-world has dominated the study of the historical novel. What I want to stress, however, are the specific ways in which a historical novel—to use Richard Maxwell's words—gestures toward this commonly comprehensible, preexistent world. How is the story-world made understandable to a reader and offered as the past? I want to demonstrate the importance of the literary means that help mediate between the past of the story-world and the present of the reader.The passage above begins with the retrospective view: the narrator refers to a date over two hundred years ago, and the passage is in the past tense. The text does, however, also apply expressions like "now." This indicates a point of view that is present in the story-world, at least in terms of temporality. The impression of a viewpoint present in the story-world is further emphasized by the frequent references to aural experience; the [End Page 21] sounds heard (the bell and the clock) and not heard (silent footsteps and quiet waiting) offer the reader an interpretative position that takes her into the story-world through experience. The origin of the experience, however, is not specified. Two questions arise that are crucial to my argument: Is the experiencing subject located temporally in the story-time or in the narrator's retrospective time? Is there a single experiencing subject? While the first question tackles the relationship between the past tense and the deictic markers indicating the present ("now"), the second question is concerned with features like the hearing of the sound of the bell in the passage: because the hearing is depicted in the passive mode, the hearer could be anybody or everybody.These two questions, the first about temporality and the second about the experiencing subject, intersect in the study of narrative identity. Alan Palmer suggests that in current research on narrative literature the individual consciousness has been emphasized at the expense of the social, and he stresses the importance of studying the latter (136). Still, individual and social modes of narrativizing one's past and present share common features, with the most important one perhaps being the need to mediate between different levels of time. Whereas self-narrations attempt to bridge the gap between the former, experiencing I, and the present, narrating I, historical narratives attempt to bridge the gap between characters experiencing the... (shrink)

Artikelns utgångspunkt är att dagens biomedicinska samhälle ger upphov till frågor om teknikens möjligheter och risker. Avstamp tas i Ulrich Becks diskussion om att dessa motpoler föder en reflexiv modernitet. Ambitionen är att undersöka hur detta reflexiva tillstånd försiggår på ett individuellt plan, närmare bestämt inom en yrkesgrupp som bedriver omdebatterad biomedicinsk forskning. Den empiriska ingången är diskussioner om etik som författaren har haft med forskare från Lund Stem Cell Center. Forskarnas funderingar präglas av komplexitet och motsägelsefullhet. Å ena sidan (...) förekommer ifrågasättande av den egna forskningen, å andra sidan en pragmatisk inställning som innebär att den laboratoriestyrda verksamheten blir riktgivande. Artikeln visar hur reflexioner om etik får ringa betydelse för hur biomedicinsk kunskap produceras – snarare blir de redskap för forskarna att göra yrkesverksamheten kulturellt hanterlig. Artikeln betonar samtidigt att på sikt får reflexiva etiska samtal betydelse för forskningens praxis. (shrink)

I sin uppsats "Satsens subjekt och textens"2 ger Staffan Hellberg en översikt över vad han kallat empatimarkörer (alternativt ‘perspektivmarkörer’, sid 2) i berättande prosa. Grundidén, så som jag förstått den, är att en empatimarkör visar på en viss typ av förändring av berättarperspektivet. Hellberg skriver: Det är vanligt, för att inte säga normalt, i modern berättarteknik, att händelseförloppet upplevs genom en deltagande persons sinnen eller på annat sätt behandlas ur dennes synvinkel.3 Utgångspunkten är att en berättelse återges på ett för (...) berättelsen normalt sätt. Vissa berättelser är t.ex. i jag-form, medan andra återges på ett mer neutralt sätt, med en framställning i tredje person av berättelsens gestalter. Emellanåt bryts denna normala framställning genom att en situation återges, helt eller delvis, ur en deltagares perspektiv, t.ex. så som sedd av denna deltagare, eller så som tolkad av denne deltagare. Det som Hellberg eftersträvat är en översikt över de språkliga element som markerar en sådan tillfällig förskjutning av berättarperspektivet. För egen del vill jag använda termen perspektivförskjutning för de fenomen jag kommer att behandla nedan. Hellbergs översikt är i mycket hög grad baserad på intuitioner om förekomster av markörer för perspektivförskjutning, och bygger på en litteraturvetenskaplig tradition där intuitioner om perspektiv och perspektivförskjutning av olika slag behandlats under åtskilliga decennier. Detta förhållande erbjuder både svårigheter och utmaningar för en som står utanför denna tradition. Hellberg försöker inte formulera några allmänna kriterier för att vara en empatimarkör, varför det ankommer på läsarens egen intuitiva uppfattning av exemplen att förstå vad som exemplifieras. För den som är skolad i den tradition Hellberg bygger på kanske detta inte erbjuder några svårigheter alls, eller endast ringa svårigheter, men för mig, som är skolad i analytisk filosofi, och som visserligen läst en del romaner men aldrig studerat skönlitteratur teoretiskt, är svårigheterna emellanåt betydande. Utmaningen består å andra sidan just i att försöka formulera en allmän idé om perspektivförskjutning, så att vi också kan erhålla ett kriterium för att vara en språklig markör av sådana förskjutningar.. (shrink)