Through a detailed study of Herder's Enlightenment thought, especially his philosophy of literature, Kristin Gjesdal offers a new and sometimes provocative reading of the historical origins and contemporary challenges of modern hermeneutics. She shows that hermeneutic philosophy grew out of a historical, anthropological, and poetic discourse in the mid-eighteenth century and argues that, as such, it represents a rich, stimulating, and relevant engagement with the potentials and limits of human meaning and understanding. Gjesdal's study broadens our conception of hermeneutic philosophy (...) - the issues it raises and the answers it offers - and underlines the importance of Herder's contribution to the development of this discipline. Her book will be highly valuable for students and scholars of eighteenth-century thought, especially those working in the fields of hermeneutics, aesthetics, and European philosophy. (shrink)

In spite of his status as a highly original thinker whose views were, in many ways, ahead of his time and anticipate those of more famous successors, the work of Johann Gottfried von Herder has not received the attention it deserves in mainstream philosophical discourse. In Herder's Hermeneutics, Kristin Gjesdal successfully addresses this deficit by exploring the enlightenment origins of the hermeneutic tradition through a careful and compelling reconstruction of Herder's theory of interpretation. Breaking with the widespread view of Herder (...) as a contra-Enlightenment thinker, Gjesdal conceives of Herder's hermeneutics as contributing to the enlightenment of the Enlightenment project through an immanent critique of... (shrink)

In spite of his status as a highly original thinker whose views were, in many ways, ahead of his time and anticipate those of more famous successors, the work of Johann Gottfried von Herder has not received the attention it deserves in mainstream philosophical discourse. In Herder's Hermeneutics, Kristin Gjesdal successfully addresses this deficit by exploring the enlightenment origins of the hermeneutic tradition through a careful and compelling reconstruction of Herder's theory of interpretation. Breaking with the widespread view of Herder (...) as a contra-Enlightenment thinker, Gjesdal conceives of Herder's hermeneutics as contributing to the enlightenment of the Enlightenment project through an immanent critique of... (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

A History of Classical Poetry: Sanskrit - Pali - Prakrit. Siegfried Lienhard. Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1984. viii + 307 pp. DM 128.

History, according to Aristotle, relates "things that happen ; whereas poetry's function is to relate the kinds of things that happen—that is, are possible in terms of probability or necessity."1 A generic clause, expressing "the kinds of things that happen" to certain kinds of agents, distinguishes the task of the poet from that of the historian.2 History speaks of "particulars," whereas poetry speaks more of "universals." A historian might assert, for example, that Alcibiades urged the Athenians (...) to invade Sicily, or that he was later exiled, and finally murdered; whereas a poet would use Alcibiades's story to show the kind of person to whom things of that kind are likely or bound to... (shrink)

En el artículo proponemos que la novela Mezquina memoria del escritor Antonio Gil actualiza la compleja relación entre poesía e historia que instituye a La Araucana de Alonso de Ercilla como canto épico fundacional. Según esta propuesta de lectura, Mezquina memoria se configura a partir de una hipótesis que constantemente se frustra y que dice relación con la imposibilidad de construir un relato --unitario, un “gran relato”-- sobre la escritura de Ercilla como acto poético creador. De esta manera, la dimensión (...) mitohistórica de la novela da lugar a una lectura crítica de Chile como territorio simbólico. In this text we propose that the novel Mezquina memoria, of the writer Antonio Gil, updates the complex relationship between poetry and history that establishes the La Araucana, of Alonso de Ercilla, as a foundational epic. In our proposal for reading, Mezquina memoria is configured from a hypothesis that constantly frustrates and that said relationship with the impossibility of constructing a story --unitary, a “meta recit”-- about the writing of Ercilla as an act of poetic creation. In this way, the mythistorical dimension of the novel, gives rise to a critical reading of Chile as a symbolic territory. (shrink)

Twice in the Poetics, Aristotle contrasts poetry with history. Whatever its didactic value, the contrast has not seemed to readers of special philosophical interest. The aim of this paper is to show that this contrast is philosophically significant not just for our understanding of tragedy but also for the light it sheds on Aristotle’s overall methodology. I shall show how he uses the method sketched in the Topics to define tragedy and explain why the same method will not (...) define history. In particular, tragedy admits of definition because its parts constitute a unity, and much of the Poetics aims to show how, despite being defined through six distinct parts, tragedy can be one. In contrast, history, though a proper preliminary to poetics and concerned also with human action, does not admit of scientific treatment because it contains no essential unities. Aristotle’s understanding of ‘science’ is used here to explain why any attempt to create a scientific history would turn history into poetry. (shrink)

Aristotle’s statement that — in terms of philosophy — poetry is superior to history can be understood better, when analysed in the context of the Stagirite’s epistemology, ontology, and eudaimonic ethics. Both poetry and history deal with numerous contingent and chaotic events, but while history is only reconstructive, poetry reworks its matter more thoroughly. History attempts to recount all events and does it in accord with their contingent and chaotic nature, whereas poetry (...) implies certain choices. By doing so, it introduces uniformity and coherence thus providing a different ontic status than the one that reigned originally. Consequently, the cognitive result of poetry can be compared to the beatific value of conceptual knowledge in philosophy. (shrink)

Tae-Yeoun Keum begins her beautifully written book, Plato and the Mythic Tradition in Political Thought, clear-eyed about how the contested definitions of myth we find in the literature – especiall...

Ruby in the Dust: Poetry and History in Padmāvat by the South Asian Sufi Poet Muḥammad Jāyasī. By Thomas de Bruijn. Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2012. Pp. 371. [American ed., 2013. Dist. by University of Chicago Press.].

Poetry, fiction, literary history, and politics. These four cornerstone concerns of Roberto Bolaño's work have established him as a representative, generational figure in not only Chile, Mexico, and Spain, the three principal locations of his life and work, but throughout Europe and the Americas, increasingly on a global scale. At the heart of Bolaño's 'poemas-novela', his poet- and poetry-centered novels, is the history and legacy of the prose poem. Challenging the policing of boundaries between verse and (...) prose, poetry and fiction, the literary and the non-literary, the aesthetic and the political, his prose poem novels offer a sustained literary history by other means, a pivotal intervention that restores poetry and literature to full capacity. Framing Roberto Bolaño is one of the first books to trace the full arc and development of Bolaño's work from the beginning to the end of his career. (shrink)

Poetry and History: The Value of Poetry in Reconstructing Arab History. Edited by Ramzi Baalbaki, Saleh Said Agha, and Tarif Khalidi. Beirut: American University of Beirut Press, 2011. Pp. xii + 459. $40.

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)

Important as they are in people’s mental and intellectual development and in their appreciation of the things around them, the Humanities remain a field that is, more often than not, frowned upon among people who firmly believe that the STEM fields are much more important, practical, and lucrative in a rapidly growing and competitive workplace. Besides, when scientific and technological breakthroughs have invaded every nook and cranny of our lives, the incessant comparison between science and the arts does not, and (...) actually should not strike us as new or even shocking. The present paper seeks to revisit the status of the Humanities nowadays, by shedding light on the crisis befalling this field nationally. The paper also aims at providing a reappraisal of the moment of poetry—one that substantiates Poet Meena Alexander’s famous line, “We have poetry / So we do not die of history.” This is achieved through readings of Sylvia Plath’s so-called hospital poems that highlight the deft interplay between poetry, science and ideology. (shrink)

The main theme of this volume of selected essays on poetry and on history, written between 1938 through 2004, is suggested in Vierecks coined phrase 'strict wildness,'which suggests a balance between restraint and passion. The book explores questions of modernism and poetic craft with respect to American poetry. It discusses the controversy over Era Pounds politics and its relation to his poetics, and the nearly forgotten poet Vachel Lindsay. Viereck offers more general views on poetics, including the (...) fruitful tensions between form and content, and the impact of modern technology on poetic expression. This book also discusses history and politics, and contains essays on McCarthyism, the Cold War, political conformity of the Left and Right, and issues of historiography and culture that define Vierecks individual, often critical brand of conservatism. (shrink)

The period from the eighth to the fifth centuries B.C. was one of extraordinary creativity in the Greek-speaking world. Poetry was a public and popular medium, and its production was closely related to developments in contemporary society. At the time when the city states were acquiring their distinctive institutions epic found the greatest of all its exponents in Homer, and lyric poetry for both solo and choral performance became a genre which attracted poets of the first rank, writers (...) of the quality of Sappho, Alcaeus and Pindar, whose influence on later literature was to be profound. This volume covers the epic tradition, the didactic poems of Hesiod and his imitators, and the wide-ranging work of the iambic, elegiac and lyric poets of what is loosely called the archaic age. The contributors make use of recent papyrus finds to fill out the picture of a cosmopolitan and highly sophisticated literary culture which had not yet found its intellectual centre in Athens. (shrink)

The book explores three specific areas: the practice of writing with respect to orality; the interpretive modes of poetic and philosophical discourse as self ...

Aristotle’s claim that poetry is ‘a more philosophic and better thing’ than history (Poet 9.1451b5-6) and his description of the ‘poetic universal’ have been the source of much scholarly discussion. Although many scholars have mined Poetics 9 as a source for Aristotle’s views towards history, in my contribution I caution against doing so. Critics of Aristotle’s remarks have often failed to appreciate the expository principle which governs Poetics 6-12, which begins with a definition of tragedy and then (...) elucidates the terms of that definition by means of a series of juxtapositions. The juxtaposition between poetry and history is one such instance which seeks to elucidate what sort of plot exemplifies a causal unity such that the events of a play unfold with likelihood or necessity. Within that context, Aristotle compares history and poetry in order to elucidate the object of poetic mimesis rather than criticize history as a discipline. Viewing Aristotle as antagonistic towards history fails to appreciate the expository structure of the Poetics and obscures the resource which history provides to the poet, a point which I explore by considering what Aristotle would have thought of an ‘historical’ tragedy like Aeschylus’ Persians. (shrink)

This is certainly one of the most beautiful books in philosophy published in the last couple of years. It comprises eighty-four essays, carefully selected, well-translated, covering almost the full range of Croce's immense literary production. Croce is certainly one of the most important and influential thinkers of this century and in this huge anthology the English-speaking reader is given an incomparable instrument to get acquainted with him. The list of the headings which classify the eighty-four essays are: The Logic of (...) Philosophy; Philosophical Criticism; Aesthetics; The Philosophy of Art and Language; The Theory of History; Economics and Ethics; Essays in Criticism and Literary History; Moral and Political History. But first one should read the late Cecil Sprigge's excellent introduction.—M. J. V. (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 article applies a life history model to advance the evolutionary understanding of poetry that inspired nineteenth-century Swedish National Romanticism. We show that the characters featured in two of Erik Gustaf Geijer’s poems, “The Viking” and “The Yeoman Farmer”, display patterns of time perspective, mating effort, and parental invest­ment that are now recognized as central life history attributes: a fast strategy and a slow strategy, respectively. These patterns were identified by undergraduate participants who read excerpts of the (...) poems that had been stripped of identifying information and mentions of romantic or sexual relationships. Participants read each poem and rated each character on validated scales of the life history dimensions of mating effort and paren­tal investment, relationship interests and attractiveness, characteristics of his developmen­tal environment, and physiological characteristics. Results are consistent with generally accepted associations in life history theory and also inform current theoretical develop­ments and debates. Geijer had an intuitive understanding of life history patterns, which he used to create recognizable characters for his Romantic depiction of Swedish history. (shrink)

This paper addresses the way Hegel determines the difference between poetry (i.e., literature) and history. Hegel’s position is particularly significant for understanding both the basic features of the two fields and the implications that their relationship generates, even in contemporary debates. Starting from a comparison with Aristotle’s fundamental position, I will show how the Hegelian proposal, while initially appearing akin to that of the Greek philosopher, actually differs profoundly from it. This divergence has to do with their different (...) conceptions of the relationship between the two disciplines and philosophy. Unlike Aristotle, for Hegel history is more philosophical than poetry, because, to be genuinely history, it must itself become philosophy. At the same time, if poetry becomes philosophy, it loses its specificity and ceases to be art. To reach this determination, I will show that the key factors concern how the individual practice of the two disciplines is conceived and, more importantly, the different ways they relate to universality. (shrink)