This article examines the stance held by a Meccan-Indonesian exegete in the 13 AH or 19 AD century, Muḥammad Nawawī al-Bantānī (d. 1230–1314 H/1813–1897 AD), in dealing with Ṣifāt verses in his exegetical work, Marāḥ Labīd li Kashf Ma’nā al-Qur’ān al-Majīd. As an established term, Ṣifāt verses refer to Quranic expressions that ostensibly ascribe anthropomorphic dimensions to God. Interpretation of such ambiguous verses has been bitterly contended since the 2/8th century and remains one of the (...) most debated topics in the pre- and postmodern era. This study applies literature and document analysis focused on many of al-Bantānī’s works. The results show that al-Bantānī actively applied ta’wīl [figurative interpretation] in dealing with Ṣifāt verses without totally discarding amodality position [tafwīḍ].Contribution: Although al-Bantānī never mentioned Wahhabism in any of his works, his interpretation of Ṣifat verses alludes to his indirect response to the Wahhabi’s literalism and anti-ta’wīl approach. In addition, by accepting both of ta’wīl and tafwīḍ solutions, al-Bantānī underpinned the wasaṭī [moderate] stand, which later became the most distinctive tradition in Malay–Islamic discourse. (shrink)

Ethics and ethical principles extend to all spheres of human activity. They apply to our dealings with each other, with animals and the environment. They should govern our interactions not only in conducting research but also in commerce, employment and politics. Ethics serve to identify good, desirable or acceptable conduct and provide reasons for those conclusions. Fair subject selection is the first and foremost concern which must be ensured before initiating a research project. Which subjects may enroll in the research (...) is determined by the study’s inclusion or exclusion criteria. One of the important aspects of fair subject selection is to have an oversight system through International Review Board (IRB) to review to conduct the research and to have approval whether subject selection is fair or not. (shrink)

Turkish-Islamic literature contains numerous religious literar writings. In the existing literature, it can be seen that many kinds such as tawhīd, munājāt, nʿat, mawlid, hilya, hijrah-nāma, shafāʿat-nāma, miʿrāj, qisas al-anbiya, ramaḍāniyya, and al-asmā al-ḥusnā were written. Al-Asmā al-ḥusnā, written in the form of poetry and prose, were mostly sharḥ or their khawaṣṣ were explained. Çihil-nām al-Manẓūm, which is mentioned in the study, was written as khawaṣṣ al-asmā al-ḥusnā. The work is a poet entitled as Fażāyī. Manuscript was written in the (...) last quarter of the fifteenth century, and thus, it is presumed that the poet lived in the same century. This work has been identified in a manuscript. In addition, the poet’s Hadiyyat al-aḥbāb, der-Bayān al-maqāmāt al-darwīshān, Kitāb al-sharʿiyyat al-arbāb, and Ghazaliyyāt al-Darwīsh Fażāyī four other works have been identified. In the writings of the asmā al-ḥusnās, the names of ninety-nine were emphasized. In this study, the forty names of God are expressed. The text presented is a continuation of the tradition of writing some prose works written in Arabic and Persian. Çihil-nām al-Manẓūm, written in Arabic prose and known as Asmā al-Idrīsiyya it can be seen as a free stsyle translation of the prophet Idrīs. Forty names in the content of the work, their proper-ties, when, how much and how to read is explained. In this study, firstly the information about the subject of Qurʾān, hadith, Arabic, Persian and Turkish literature in the beautiful names of God is provided. Then, the information about the poet Fażāyī was given. Çihil-nām al-Manẓūm was introduced and the transcriptional form of the text was given.SummaryOne of the reasons that deeply affect a nation is the change of religion. This change did not only affect the individual but also influenced the society in which he was born and grew. One of the nations with strong influence is the Turks. Turks, after Islamization, have estab-lished a new civilization. One of the areas where this Islamic civilization reflects is the literary aspect of society. In this literature, which has begun to be formed, religious genres such as tawhīd, munājāt, nʿat, mawlid, hilya, hijrah-nāma, shafāʿat-nāma, miʿrāj, qisas al-anbiya, ramaḍāniyya, have been revealed. One of them is about God. Religious literary writings about God were written in the form of tawhīd and munājāts, which consist of one or more prophets found at the head of the dīwāns, or as the annotations of asmā al-ḥusnā or as khawaṣṣ asmā al-ḥusnā.In time, the need for some Turkish literary and scientific works to be translated into a different language were born. It can be seen that with some changes such as subtraction and addition, texts are rewritten or poetic works are translated into prose. The original of our research subject Çihil-nām al- Manẓūm’s is written in Arabic and prose. Çihil-nām al-Manẓūm, it is a munājāt of the work known as Asmā al-Idrīsiyya, which describes the call of prophet Idrīs.Asmā al-ḥusnā is a religious term used mostly to describe the attributes and names of God. In the Qurʾān, there is no information about the number of asmā al-ḥusnā mentioned as a concept. However, the number of the names of God in the Qurʾān is 155. This number is differ-ent in ḥadīths. It is widely accepted that the number of asmā al-ḥusnā is 99. Some Islamic schol-ars have argued against such restricting statements, arguing that ninety-nine names, such as the hiding of the Night of Qadr, were hidden in all Divine names during the month of ramaḍān, while others suggested that the number of ninety-nine was large number of asmās (names).The first examples of asmā al-ḥusnā were written in Arabic literature. Some of them are not detached: Abū Manṣūr al-Māturidī (d. 333/944) Kitāb al-Tawḥīd, Abū ʿAbdullāh al-Ḥalīmī (d. 403/1012) al-Minhāj fī shuʿabiʾl īmān, Taḳī al-Dīn Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328) al-Īmān. A part of asmā al-ḥusnās is also a single work: Abū Isḥāq al-Zajjaj (d. 311/923) Tafsīr al-asmāi’llāh al-ḥusnā, Aḥmad b. Husayin al-Bayhaḳī (d. 458/1066) al-Asmā al-ṣifāt and ʿAbd al-karīm b. Havāzin al-Quşayrī (d. 465/1072) Sharḥ al-asmāi’llāh. In addition to Arabic, it is useful to talk about some of the asmā al-ḥusnās which is written in Persian. Muḥammed al-Shrāzī al-Nishāburī (d. 904/1498) al-Risāla der-asmā al-ḥusnā, Çarkhī Yaʿḳūb b. ʿOthmān (d. 851/1447) Sharḥ al-asmāi’llāh and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Aḥmad al-Jāmī (d. 898/1492) Muʿammā al-Jāmī.Islamic nations have created an enormous collection of literature about God. Among them, asmā al-ḥusnās has a special importance. Many asmā al-ḥusnā were written in Turkish literature. The most famous among the verses of Ibn Isa b. Majduddīn ʿĪsā Saruḥanī (d. 967/559) is Sharḥ al-asmā al-ḥusnā. Other than that, Ḥusayin b. Aḥmad Sirozī (d. 1000/1401) Sharḥ asmā al-ḥusnā, Aḥmad Shākir Pasha (d. 1234/1818) Rawḍ-ı Ward, Ibrahim Mahdī (d. 1345/1926) al-Kanz al-asmā fī sharḥ al-asmā al-ḥusnā and Bijaqji-zāda Ismā‘īl Haqqi b. ʿOthmān (ö.1352/1933) Asmā al-ḥusnā’s naẓman tafsīr this work is shown among the major works written in this field. Again, the works of the late Sheykh-oghlu Muṣṭafā (d. 817/1414) Khawaṣṣ al-asmā al-ḥusnā, Ṣubḥī al-Bursawī (n.d.) Sharḥ al-manẓūm al-asmā al-ḥusnā, Ḥākim Sayyid Maḥmad Afandi (d. 1184/1770) Sharḥ manẓūm al-asmā al-ḥusnā, Lāmiʿ Jelebi (d. 938/1532) Sharḥ al-muʿammayāt ʿalā asmā al-ḥusnā, Ḥamdī Afandi (n.d.) Sharḥ al-manẓūm al-asmā al-ḥusnā, Naḥīfī (d. 1151/1738) Manẓūm al-asmā al-ḥusnā, ʿAbd al-Majīd b. Naṣūḥ Ṭosyavī (d. 996/1588) Sharḥ al-asmā al-ḥusnā can be listed among other notable works.In this study, a khawaṣṣ al-asmā al-ḥusnā is examined. Khawaṣṣ; khāṣṣ and khāṣṣa are the plural of the words khawaṣṣ al-wukalā, khawaṣṣa al-balda, the properties of some drugs, khawaṣṣa al-Qurʾān al-karīm, khawaṣṣa al-ism al-aʿẓam; a force that is found in something and not from others means special case. The verses of the Qurʾān, the rings, the hours of the days, some prayers, the names of God have some of the accents. It is believed that the desire of the person who reads them in certain conditions, in a certain amount, or in any manner, in specific hours, will occur. The fact that the concept of khawaṣṣ met these meanings allowed him to acquire scientific knowledge and to call it “khawaṣṣ science” characteristic in the literature.The works that deal with the Qurʾān and the asmā al-ḥuṣnā are written. Some of these works written in Arabic and Turkish literature are: Risāle fī khawaṣṣ al-asmā al-ḥusnā: Zunnūn al-Miṣrī, Khawaṣṣ al-Qurʾān: Ghazālī, ʿIḳdu al-manẓūm fī khawaṣṣ al-ḥurūf: Muḥyī al-Dīn al-ʿArabī, Asmā al-Idrīsiyya: Shāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī, Khawaṣṣ al-asmā al-ḥusnā: Shakh-oghlu Muṣṭafā, Sharḥ al-manẓūm al-asmā al-ḥusnā: Ṣubḥī al-Bursawī, Sharḥ al-asmā al-ḥusnā: Ibn ʿIsā b. Majd al-Dīn Ṣaruhanī, Manẓūm al-asmā al-ḥusnā sharḥ: Ḥākim Sayyid Maḥmad Afandi, Manẓūm al-asmā al-ḥusnā: Naḥīfī, Sharḥ al-asmā al-ḥusnā and khawaṣṣuhā: Imām Shabrāwī.One of the works in which asmā al-ḥusnā was described is attributed to prophet Idrīs. Among the miracles of prophet Idrīs, there have been intresting miracoulus performances such as possessing the knowledge of astronomy, fortune, mathematics, plants, writing, sew-ing, using the scales and strange art. The mysterious secrets were revaled to him in 30 ṣuḥuf. His major miracles are governing spiritual beings, knowing the properties of the beings and possessing the knowledge of various unknown things. Again, he wrote a book about the char-acteristics of letters. Aristotle later wrote a commentary using the majority of the information found in this book. Some of the works are written to narrate the Prophet Idrīs’s praising God with forty names:Muḥammad al-Tunisian, al-Ravḍatu al-Sundusiyya fī asmā al-ḥusnā al-Idrīsiyya al-Suhrawardiyya; Shāb al-Dīn Yaḥya b. Ḥabash al-Suhrawardī, Çihil-nām. Among these, the most famous is the work called Asmā al-Idrīsiyyā, written by Suhrawardī. Here, in addition to the asmā al-ḥusnā (forty names), prayers, prayers, conquests, their meanings, and the merits of reading them are explained. The book is written in Arabic. Many copies of this work have been identi-fied. Here are a few of these: Sulaymāniyya Hagia Sophia, K. 1870; Sulaymāniyya, Hagia Sophia, 377; Bāyazıd State Library 1314; National Library A005133-03 23b-33a; Adana Public Library 140; National Library, 06 Mil Yz A 9084/6.The works describing Asmā al-Idrīsiyya were written as prose. The work examined in this study was written as a manuscript. Çihil-nām-ı Manẓūm is distinguished from the others in this respect. Another point that makes the study important is the fact that Çihil-nām-ı Manẓūm has a very old period, this is written in the fifteenth century. (shrink)

Ibn al-Fārid, Muqadimāt fī al-taṣawwuf.--2. Abū al-ʻAlāʼ al-Maʻarrī fī Luzūmiyyātih.--3. Muqaddimat Ibn Khaldūn.--4. al-Ghazālī. 2 v.--5. Ibn Ṭufayl.--6. Ibn Rushd. 2 v.--7. Ikhwān al-Safāʼ--8. al-Kindī.--9. al-Farābī. 2 v.--10. Ibn Sīnā. 2 v.

The elegy flared into existence, commanded the cultural stage for several decades, then went extinct. This book accounts for the swift rise and sudden decline of a genre whose life span was incredibly brief relative to its impact. Examining every major poet from Catullus to Ovid, Subjecting Verses presents the first comprehensive history of Latin erotic elegy since Georg Luck's. Paul Allen Miller harmoniously weds close readings of the poetry with insights from theoreticians as diverse as Jameson, Foucault, Lacan, (...) and Zizek. In welcome contrast to previous, thematic studies of elegy--efforts that have become bogged down in determining whether particular themes and poets were pro- or anti-Augustan--Miller offers a new, "symptomatic" history. He asks two obvious but rarely posed questions: what historical conditions were necessary to produce elegy, and what provoked its decline? Ultimately, he argues that elegiac poetry arose from a fundamental split in the nature of subjectivity that occurred in the late first century--a split symptomatic of the historical changes taking place at the time. Subjecting Verses is a major interpretive feat whose influence will reach across classics and literary studies. Linking the rise of elegy with changes in how Romans imagined themselves within a rapidly changing society, it offers a new model of literary theory that neither reduces the poems to a reflection of their context nor examines them in a vacuum. (shrink)

Verse is text which is divided into lines. In this paper I explore a psychological account of how verse is processed, and specifically the hypothesis that the text is processed line by line, such that each line is held as a whole sequence in the limited capacity of working memory. I will argue that because the line is processed in this way, certain low-level aesthetic effects are thereby produced, thus giving a partial explanation for why verse is often a highly (...) valued type of verbal behaviour. The general goal is to address the question of what literary form is, from a psychological perspective, and how the textual presence and psychological processing of form can contribute to particular aspects of the aesthetic experience of verse. (shrink)

I argue that philosophy was naturally conceived and written in verse, not prose, in the early years of philosophy, and that prose writing would be the exception not the norm. I argue that philosophers developed their ideas in verse and did not repackage ideas and thoughts first formulated in non-poetic genres, so there is no adaptation or modification involved in "putting it into poetry". This also means that the content and the form are interdependent, and the poetic details are part (...) of the message, and integral to understanding the philosophy. In both Parmenides and Empedocles there are interesting patterns of linearity and circularity in the composition which mimic and reinforce the message in the poem, which is a philosophical message about, respectively, linear journeys and cosmic cycles. (shrink)

Blank Verse é uma web série que retrata William Shakespeare e outras figuras históricas do período elisabetano reimaginados como estudantes e professores universitários nos dias atuais. Através de vídeos curtos e postagens em redes sociais, acompanhamos os personagens em suas jornadas como escritores iniciantes num contexto altamente mediado pela tecnologia. A mescla criativa de elementos históricos, biográficos e ficcionais provocaram as reflexões apresentadas neste artigo. A partir do pensamento de teóricos da literatura como Josefina Ludmer e Flora Süssekind; História, como (...) Pierre Nora e Hayden White; e Filosofia, tal qual Roland Barthes e Friedrich Nietzsche, este texto explora o desmantelamento das fronteiras entre verdade e ficção, real e virtual, todos eles produtos da mesma ferramenta: a linguagem.Palavras-chave: William Shakespeare. Literatura. História. Biografia. Ficção. (shrink)

Russian verse: Its metrics, versification systems, and prosody (Generative synopsis). In the article the general verse metre theory and its application to Russian verse is adressed, allowing us, thereby, to observe not the single details, but only the most general characteristics of verse. The treatment can be summarised in the five following points:1) the basis for the phenomenon of verse is its metrical code: the special feature of verse text is the presence of its metre (this feature is common to (...) every verse type, to the most regular verse, as well as to vers libre);2) the nature of verse metre is extralinguistic, there is no metre within a language, the latter can only induce certain limitations in choosing a metre;3) metre is an abstract chain of translational symmetry, the elementary period of which is called verse foot (i.e. firstly, verse feet are contained in every versification system, incl. syllabic verse and free verse, and, secondly, verse feet can not be defined in terms of natural language, e.g., as the combination of short and long or accented and unaccented syllables).4) in verse text, metre appears through the medium of natural language: verse metre is coded in terms of natural language; the nature of its codification is detennined by the versification system. Hence, every verse metre can be realised in different versification systems, e.g. iambus can occur in syllabic-accentual, syllabic-quantitative, and some other versification systems;5) verse prosody is a consequence of the influence of verse metre on the prosodies of language; the range of transformation of a language system by verse metre extends from the unification of the strength of verse accents in accentual verse to such artificial formations as the origination of long syllables in languages which lack phonological quantity. (shrink)

Russian verse: Its metrics, versification systems, and prosody (Generative synopsis). In the article the general verse metre theory and its application to Russian verse is adressed, allowing us, thereby, to observe not the single details, but only the most general characteristics of verse. The treatment can be summarised in the five following points:1) the basis for the phenomenon of verse is its metrical code: the special feature of verse text is the presence of its metre (this feature is common to (...) every verse type, to the most regular verse, as well as to vers libre);2) the nature of verse metre is extralinguistic, there is no metre within a language, the latter can only induce certain limitations in choosing a metre;3) metre is an abstract chain of translational symmetry, the elementary period of which is called verse foot (i.e. firstly, verse feet are contained in every versification system, incl. syllabic verse and free verse, and, secondly, verse feet can not be defined in terms of natural language, e.g., as the combination of short and long or accented and unaccented syllables).4) in verse text, metre appears through the medium of natural language: verse metre is coded in terms of natural language; the nature of its codification is detennined by the versification system. Hence, every verse metre can be realised in different versification systems, e.g. iambus can occur in syllabic-accentual, syllabic-quantitative, and some other versification systems;5) verse prosody is a consequence of the influence of verse metre on the prosodies of language; the range of transformation of a language system by verse metre extends from the unification of the strength of verse accents in accentual verse to such artificial formations as the origination of long syllables in languages which lack phonological quantity. (shrink)

“Scaldic verses,” said Gabriel Turville-Petre, “can tell us little about the history of England, but the history of England may give us confidence in the authenticity of some scaldic verses.” A similar skepticism was voiced by Alistair Campbell.

The Madhyamaka Buddhist philosopher Nāgārjuna (2nd c. CE) is best known for his works on emptiness in which he advances a program for the relinquishing of all philosophical views (_dṛṣṭi_) in light of the impossibility of establishing the true existence of any kind of entity. At the same time, he is famous also for his theory of two truths, according to which conventional or transactional language is both a legitimate and a necessary factor on the path to the ultimate abandonment (...) of views. Although more than 100 works are ascribed to Nāgārjuna in the Tibetan canon, none is specifically dedicated to an exploration of conventional or transactional truth. So it is of great interest to find that two eighth-century Madhyamaka thinkers, Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla, have in their writings preserved and commented on six verses from a treatise they ascribe to Nāgārjuna entitled _Establishing the Transactional_ (_Tha snyad grub pa = *Vyavahārasiddhi_). The present article provides a translation of the six verses from the Tibetan (the Sanskrit of all these writings is lost) along with a translation for the first time in English of Śāntarakṣita’s commentary and Kamalaśīla’s subcommentary upon the verses. The multi-part translation is framed by a consideration of the nature and role of philosophical views in relation to Nāgārjuna’s other writings, based on a reading of these few tantalizing verses from an apparently lost text, the commentaries of Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla, and the theories of contemporary Madhyamaka scholars. (shrink)

After having been for some while the butt of conservative critics, verse transpositions in Propertius have, mainly thanks to the work of G. P. Goold, again become respectable among scholars. In his edition of Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius J. J. Scaliger , the great archeget of the method, had subjected the other great elegist of Propertius’ generation to the same treatment,2 and in fact one of Scaliger's transpositions is supported by external evidence: 1.5.71–6 belong after 6.32; this is confirmed by (...) Ovid's imitation in Trist. 2.447ff. Trist. 2. 459–60 echo Tib. 1.6.31f. and 5.73 . That Ovid should have brought together in one distich verses from two different Tibullian poems may not seem wholly impossible, but much less likely than that the lines in Tibullus were also consecutive, in particular because the distich immediately preceding 459f. clearly refers to the situation of Tib. 1.6. (shrink)

Medical educators recognize the value of reflection for medical students and the role creative writing can play in fostering this. However, direct creative writing tasks can be challenging for many students, particularly those with limited experience in the arts and humanities. An alternative strategy is to utilize an indirect approach, engaging students with structured tasks that obliquely encourage reflection. This paper reports one such approach. We refer to this approach as in-verse reflection, playing on both the structure of the writing (...) and its novel approach to reflection. Students were invited to write, in verse-like structures, about their personal and clinical experiences as medical students. Thematic analysis of their creative outputs and reactions identified four principal themes: the challenges of life as a medical student, the emotional demands of the medical course, a sense of connectedness and solidarity with fellow students, and a sense of marginality within the hospital system. Students generally found the tasks highly engaging and conducive to reflection, producing texts representing significant insights into their experiences as medical students. The reported method offers a relatively simple, structured, and guided approach to reflective writing, adding to the repertoire of methods available to educators in the medical humanities. (shrink)

In 130 ce, Hadrian and Sabina traveled to Egyptian Thebes. Inscriptions on the Memnon colossus document the royal visit, including fifty-four lines of Greek verse by Julia Balbilla, an elite Roman woman of Syrian heritage. The poet's style and dialect have been compared to those of Sappho, although the poems' meter and content are quite different from those of her archaic predecessor. This paper explores Balbilla's Memnon inscriptions and their social context. Balbilla's archaic forms and obscure mythological variants showcase her (...) erudition and allegiance to a Greek past, but while many of the Memnon inscriptions allude to Homer, Balbilla aligns herself closely with Sappho as a literary model. The main question raised here is what it means for Julia Balbilla to imitate Sappho while simultaneously honoring her royal patrons in the public context of dedicatory inscriptions. (shrink)

Poetry is an important challenge for semiotics, and a special area of study for the Tartu-Moscow semiotic school, since the first volume of Sign Systems Studies was Juri Lotman’s monograph Lectures on Structural Poetics (1964). From then on the concept of poetry as one of the secondary modelling systems has evolved, since in relation to poetry, the primary modelling system is natural language. In this paper, the concept of semiotic system has been re-examined and the treatment of primary and secondary (...) semiotic systems has been significantly revised. A semiotic system can be characterized not only by its internal structure and other systems to which it is related, but also by the field upon what it is realized. The latter aspect has gained almost no attention in any treatment of semiotics; the execution of a sign is understood in the spirit of Saussure and Hjelmslev as a material realization of an abstract element (for instance, a chess piece knight can be realized with wood or plastic, but it can also remain purely virtual). At first, distinction is made between language and sign system. Every sign system consists of language and field. There are three different kinds of fields: 1) just a background – footprints on sand are a sign on the background of sand; 2) a material structured field (a football ground or a chess board in the game called Chapayev) and 3) an abstract structured field, which in its turn consists of other fields (for instance, the chess board which consists of 64 fields). Differently from a football ground, a chess board can be a purely virtual one on which virtual pieces are moved (for instance, in case of blindfold or correspondence chess). The field in its turn can be language and one language can use another language as its field. In this case we speak of primary and secondary sign systems. For instance, the prosodic system of language is a field for a verse metre, while the semantic system of language is a field for a narrative. (shrink)

The article introduces the results of a semantic analysis of Uku Masing’s (1909–1985) early poetry (1926–1943). The metres analyzed are syllabic-accentual trochaic tetrameter, trochaic pentameter, iambic pentameter and dactylic, logaoedic and polymetric hexameters. In each text the textual communicative perspective as well as motifs and tropes of each verse line were examined. The semantic differences and colourings of the metres are most evident in the way of expression, in the viewpoint.

Whatever we choose to call Beckett’s series of disjunctive and repetitive paragraphs , Ill Seen Ill Said surely has little in common with the short story or the novella. Yet this is how the editors of the New Yorker, where Beckett’s piece first appeared in English in 1981, evidently thought of it, for like all New Yorker short stories, it is punctuated by cartoons and, what is even more ironic, by a “real” poem, Harold Brodkey’s “Sea Noise” . Notice that (...) the reader immediately knows—or is supposed to know—that Brodkey is a poet and Beckett a fiction writer, not only because “Sea Noise” is designated a poem in the issue’s table of contents, but also because its placement on the page, framed by white space, distinguishes it from Ill Seen Ill Said, which is printed in standard New Yorker columns. Yet if we examine the sound structure of Brodkey’s poem, we find that the rhythm of recurrence is, if anything, less prominent here than in the Beckett “prose.” The four stanzas are of irregular line length ; the stress count ranges from one to five ; rhyme occurs only once, at the end of the poem ; and alliteration and assonance are not marked. Unless we assume that poetry is defined by the sheer decision of its maker to lineate the text, or unless we want to call “Sea Noise” a poem because it is built around a single extended metaphor , there is no rationale for the classification the New Yorker has implicitly adopted.4The meaning of this classification is worth pondering, for it represents, in microcosm, the orthodoxy of every major literature textbook and literary history as well as of most classrooms in the United States and Britain, which that Beckett is a writer who, like the young Joyce or the young Faulkner, wrote in his dim youth some negligible, clotted lyric poems but whose real work belongs to drama and fiction. As such, we don’t teach Beckett in our poetry courses or include him in discussions of contemporary poetry and poetics. The index of any major book on the subject—say, Robert Pinsky’s The Situation of Poetry—will bear this out. And yet the irony is that contemporary poets are increasingly using forms that cannot be properly understood without the example of Beckett’s astonishing “lyrics of fiction”—to use Ryby Cohn’s apt term5—or, as I shall call them, his “associative monologues.” Perhaps, then, it is time to rethink our current procedures of canon making. In what follows, I shall use Ill Seen Ill Said as an example.4. Contemporary prosodists, perhaps because they must account for the difficult case of free verse, generally do equate verse—and hence implicitly the poem—with lineation. For example, Charles O. Hartman, in his recent Free Verse: An Essay in Prosody , observes that, difficult as it is to define the word “poetry” “rigorously and permanently,” verse can be distinguished from prose quite readily:Verse is language in lines. This distinguishes it from prose…. This is not really a satisfying distinction, as it stands, but it is the only one that works absolutely. The fact that we can tell verse from prose on sight, with very few errors…indicates that the basic perceptual difference must be very simple. Only lineation fits the requirements. [P.11]But, as I have just shown in the case of Beckett and Brodkey, what looks like verse may sound like prose and vice versa. The “basic perceptual difference” between the two is surely not as simple as Hartman suggests. I discuss this question from a somewhat different angle in “The Linear Fallacy,” Georgia Review 35 : 855-69.5. See Ruby Cohn, Back to Beckett , chap. 5, “Lyrics of Fiction.”. (shrink)

This paper presents a pilot study in the "epidemiological" program for cultural research put forward by Dan Sperber. Theory is offered to argue that verse form is so disabling that its worldwide distribution must be explained by functions other than the broad communicative, or ideological, power traditionally attributed to it. The theoretical case is confirmed by numerical data showing that in matched texts of English prose and verse the latter contain words of a lower mean length (measured in syllables). Candidate (...) hypotheses for the epidemiology of verse are offered, including design for mnemonic properties, the registration of differences in verbal intelligence, the presentation of gestures of commitment, and the introduction of levels of quasi-randomness that lead to an impression of semantic richness and the illusion of profound and powerful communication. (shrink)

An exploration of Rudolf Steiner's recommendation that class teachers create verses for their pupils to be inserted into their annual school reports.

Sāyaṇa-Mādhava closed his exposition of the Cārvāka philosophy in his Sarva-darśana-saṃgraha, Chap. 1 by quoting 11 and a half verses, the authorship of all of which was attributed to Bṛhaspati, the eponymous founder of materialism in India. One of these verses is presumably taken from the Viṣṇupurāṇa. However, it is not Bṛhaspati but some demons, deluded by a Jain and a Buddhist monk, who say this. Bṛhaspati does not appear at all in this Purāṇa. Variant versions of the (...) same story are found in other Purāṇas but Bṛhaspti is not invariably present in all of them. The origin of the story may be traced back to the Maitrāyaṇīya Upaniṣad. Although Bṛhaspati plays a leading part in that story, the background is quite different. By comparing all the versions found in the Purāṇas and the subject matter of the epigrams attributed to Bṛhaspati the paper proposes to show that the Viṣṇupurāṇa story has nothing to do with the materialists, whether the Pre-Cārvākas or the Cārvākas; the Jains and the Buddhists are the target of attack. Sāyaṇa-mādhava, by placing these satirical epigrams either in their original or in altered forms, and attributing them to Bṛhaspati, has mixed up the views of all sorts of nāstikas, particularly the Jains and the Buddhists, with the Cārvākas and thereby succeeded in deceiving several generations of readers and misleading even the best of scholars. (shrink)