No description available.

From Poesie to Poetry: Remaniement and Mediaeval Techniques of French-to-English Translation of Verse Romance, explores the use of remaniement, the art of rewriting, as the method preferred for vernacular translations of genres such as romance. A thorough history of the practice's principles are given, drawing on comments from Classical rhetoricians, patristic writers, authorities of the artes poeticae, and mediaeval translators employing the procedure. A textual analysis of the Middle English Amis and Amiloun follows, utilising a broadly structuralist approach which compares each individual episode and 'lexie' with its Old French and AngloNorman predecessors. This examination demonstrates remaniement to be the method used to translate the romance, highlighting both the important debt owed to the francophone traditions as well as the use of dynamic interpretation to lend the work salience to an English audience. A subsequent linguistic examination includes a new definition of formulae based on prototype theory which utilises mental templates to identifY occurrences. This permits the recognition of over 3000 instances of formulaic diction, many of which can be traced back to native preConquest traditions, as can certain aspects of verse and structure. What emerges, therefore, is a composite work heavily indebted to continental and insular French sources for content and some aspects of style, but largely readapted to lend it appeal to an early fourteenth-century Anglophone audience. The thesis therefore clarifies the establishment and use of remaniement, provides a detailed examp Ie of its use, and in doing so reveals the true extent of the oft overlooked debt owed to francophone traditions in creating English romances. By way of setting these dimensions into a wider context, the conclusion suggests such translations had a general effect on the development of a new insular style, setting standards for the independent creation of works in English as that language continued to re-establish itself as an accepted medium for literary expression.

This thesis constitutes an investigation into the depiction of dreams in imagery accompanying the late-medieval manuscripts and printed editions of the Roman de la Rose. It reflects on the changing approaches to depicting dreams during the 250 years of the Rose’s popularity in central France, as well as discussing the historical theoretical understanding of the concept of dreams, and its expression in a specific Rose context. It examines the representation of dreams in a number of Rose manuscripts – in particular their prominent dreamer incipits – alongside other relevant miniatures of both a secular and religious nature. Furthermore, the alteration of trends for depicting the dream space in Rose manuscripts during the fifteenth century are also considered, as well as a case-study of the luxurious Valencia manuscript, which contains a variety of dream subjects. This is followed by a discussion of the methodology of manuscript production in the medieval period, gleaned from a number of extant Roses. This chapter underscores the important role played by artistic originality and intention in the processes of manuscript making – addressing the ‘artistic vision’ indicated in the title of this thesis. An outline of the printed editions of the Rose and their resurrection of earlier tropes of dream depiction is also included. Finally, the appendix contains a Catalogue of the Rose manuscripts studied in preparation for and throughout the production of the thesis.

Se dovessi esprimere in una sola frase le ragioni per intraprendere questa ricerca, probabilmente sceglierei le parole con cui Joyce Salisbury conclude la sua monografia sugli animali nel Medioevo: «we do not change our identity easily (…). In our definition of what it means to be human, it seems we cannot deny for long the beast within us» (Salisbury 1994: 178). L’identità animale è infatti una parte integrante dell’umanità, della quale non possiamo liberarci. Del resto, il concetto stesso di “animale” in opposizione a quello di “umano” non esiste; piuttosto, l'animale è da considerare una categoria relazionale, in opposizione alla quale l’uomo vorrebbe definire sé stesso: parlare di animale equivale a parlare del rapporto che l’uomo instaura con esso (Bonafin 1998: 237). È anche grazie agli animal studies che la definizione omogenea di animale è stata riconsiderata: quasi un ventennio di studi riguardanti il ruolo dell’animale nel dominio letterario, filosofico, storico e antropologico ha contribuito, infatti, a demistificare il discorso antropocentrico sull’animale e a smascherare la sua dimensione storica e relativa, e a evidenziare che l'essere umano stesso è il prodotto delle relazioni che gli umani hanno con gli altri personaggi della biocenosi (Steeves 2002: 239). Questa definizione relazionale sembrerebbe scaturire principalmente da una naturale familiarità dell’uomo con l'animale, nei confronti del quale l'uomo intesse una trama complessa di atteggiamenti, che Drevet condensa efficacemente in tre schemi principali: il rapporto di appropriazione (un esempio del quale è il modello venatorio), il rapporto di familiarizzazione (o di addomesticamento) e quello di utilizzazione (Drevet 1994: 17). Per Drevet è solo nel secondo rapporto, quello di addomesticamento, che l’uomo rende familiare l’animale, lo antropomorfizza, facendolo partecipare della propria natura (ibidem); tuttavia a me pare che anche gli altri due livelli comportino un grado di partecipazione nell'identità umana, interroghino la posizione dell'animale rispetto all'uomo, al suo spazio e al suo complesso di valori. Per questa ragione, l’animale – e il riconoscimento del beast within us, “l’animale dentro di noi” – interseca costantemente l’attività e il pensiero degli esseri umani: esso ci costringe a mettere quotidianamente in discussione il nostro concetto di umanità, in quanto individui e in quanto gruppo, e di volta in volta delinea, destabilizza e ridefinisce i confini tra Sé e l’Altro. Come ci possiamo probabilmente aspettare per un concetto così carico ideologicamente e simbolicamente, il rapporto con l’animale è sin dalle origini profondamente impregnato di religione (Barrau 1977: 578). Di esso si è occupato il Cristianesimo, che nei suoi primi secoli di storia ha avuto tra le sue principali preoccupazioni quella di alienare da sé forme di culti zoomorfi, desacralizzando e secolarizzando l’animale (Baratay 1998: 1441). Nel pensiero cristiano occidentale, il rapporto tra l’uomo e l’animale sembra difatti essere prevalentemente a sfavore di quest’ultimo: la tradizione dei Padri della Chiesa, da Agostino in poi, riconosce l’anima nella parte intellettuale dell’uomo, separando questa dalla corporeità e introducendo così una netta separazione tra l’uomo e l’animale, che, invece, non può possedere un’anima. Ne consegue una radicalizzazione dell’antropocentrismo nel Cristianesimo: già nella Genesi gli animali sono creati in funzione dell’uomo e all’uomo ne è dato il dominio completo, anche se questa dominazione non escludeva una collaborazione pacifica tra le due specie (Dittmar 2012a: 235); con il Nuovo Testamento e l’identificazione esplicita tra il demonio e il serpente o altri mostri teriomorfici, l’animale nella sua realtà corporea e nella sua dimensione istintuale diventa espressione demoniaca (Baratay 1998: 1434-40). Nel Cristianesimo medievale il concetto stesso di umano è dato in negativo, secondo quello che l’uomo non è: un esempio lampante è la definizione aristotelica ripresa da Agostino di uomo come animale razionale e mortale. Per questo i confini tra umanità e animalità costituiscono, nel Medioevo una questione particolarmente rilevante: dalla distinzione dall'animale dipende la definizione di umano, ma il problema non è soltanto distinguersi dall'animale sul livello fisiologico quanto su quello morale; a essere in gioco non è solo la frontiera esteriore, fisica, tra uomo e animale, ma anche la frontiera interiore, spirituale e morale (Bartholeyns et alii 2009: § 15). Non stupisce, perciò, che in questo contesto le trasformazioni e le ibridazioni uomo/animale siano considerate come una degradazione morale, o addirittura come una manifestazione diabolica, sia perché costituiscono una contaminazione con l’animale, sia per il fatto stesso di essere metamorfosi, segno inconfondibile del demonio (Brenot 1998: 1386-9). Tuttavia nel più vasto ambito della cultura medievale, pure così profondamente determinata dalla dottrina cristiana, il confine animale dell’umanità non si limita a essere il limite che separa l’uomo da un deprecabile stato di corruzione morale. Piuttosto, tale confine costituisce un luogo di negoziazione di opposti sistemi di pensiero, che dà luogo ad un’ampia gamma di attitudini: così superstizioni popolari e fede cristiana si intrecciano nelle storie sui lupi mannari, ammirazione e condanna si alternano nelle leggende di famiglie con antenati animali. Ciò è dovuto principalmente allo status ambiguo degli animali nell’orizzonte morale medievale: se tutte le bestie sono considerate irrazionali, perciò estranee a un giudizio morale, nei bestiari molti animali hanno una carica simbolica complessa, e quasi ognuno di questi può essere considerato virtuoso o vizioso a seconda dell’occasione. Ma un’altra ragione di questa ambiguità di giudizio è sicuramente il ruolo che gli animali continuavano a giocare nella vita economica e sociale del Medioevo: come l’agiografia ci ricorda con le sue tinte vivide, e come è stato confermato dalla storiografia, le occasioni di competizione e coesistenza più o meno forzata tra animali e uomini non erano rare, almeno fino all’Alto Medioevo (Ortalli 1985: 1393). Questa esperienza di contatto quotidiano stimolava nell'uomo medievale un’attenzione preferenziale nei confronti dell’incolto, e favoriva atteggiamenti improntati al rispetto e alla convivenza con la natura selvaggia (Montanari 1988: 60). La familiarità con l’incolto e con gli animali che lo abitavano, nonostante dopo l'anno Mille fosse in gran parte scomparsa nella realtà, continuò a costituire un fattore importante nella formazione dell’immaginario di diversi strati sociali. Un esempio di ciò è costituito dai bestiari: questi ci forniscono un’immagine dell’animale che va oltre il puro intento classificatorio, e ci restituiscono invece una trama di diversi livelli di conoscenza, «a knot in a tapestry of tales, observations, happenings» (Ingold 2012). Ciò è vero particolarmente per almeno una classe sociale, l’aristocrazia guerriera. Infatti, nella cultura della nobiltà feudale per tutto il Medioevo l’animale servì come principale risorsa di simboli e immagini. In particolare, gli animali erano pensati come modelli ideali e magici per il comportamento e per la pratica bellica: questo rapporto privilegiato dell’aristocrazia guerriera e la sua ideologia con l’animalità è dimostrato dall'importanza di riti e simboli feudocavallereschi incentrati sugli animali, come la pratica della caccia nobiliare, o il ricco repertorio teriomorfico dell’araldica – per non citarne che alcuni dei più vistosi. / Tuttavia anche qui la relazione con il modello animale non era priva di ambiguità: l’aggressività del predatore, la sua sessualità irregolare, il suo comportamento asociale o addirittura antisociale, erano ammirati dai giovani cavalieri ma allo stesso tempo disapprovati dal loro ambiente sociale e dall’ideologia cavalleresca (Galloni 1993: 35-40). L’attitudine della classe guerriera medievale nei confronti dell’“animale interiore”, dunque, risulta in una doppia contraddizione: da una parte il generale conflitto di familiarità e paura verso gli animali e il selvatico, dall’altra la contraddizione specifica di ammirazione e condanna del comportamento animale nella costruzione dell’identità guerriera. Questa è la ragione per cui credo che valga la pena investigare più a fondo la rappresentazione dell’identità animale nella classe cavalleresca, e per cui ho scelto di farlo attraverso un approccio ai testi che sia filologico e antropologico assieme.

The thesis argues that a certain 'locus' of poetry is perceptible diachronically in the French literary field of the 20^th Century and that this locus (elusive, fragmented, multilayered) may be meaningfully focused upon via the interaction of the questionings centered around the terms 'speech' and 'utopia'. In the introduction an argument is made for the conceptual validity of the term 'utopia' in relation to the diverse literary practices accruing around the pole of the 'poetic', which results in the derivation of the idea of a Utopian dynamic - a vectoral addition to the conventionally static, figure-bound 'utopia'. Concentrating on three poets (Victor Segalen, René Daumal and Yves Bonnefoy) from three distinct generations and periods (pre-WWI, inter-War and post-WWII) which are standardly represented as discontinuous, the thesis proposes an analysis, ordered along three canonical sub-divisions of the Utopian preoccupation (which are three distinct modalities of Utopian space), of the Utopian dynamic argued to be characteristic of the work of poetic writing. The three parts of the thesis thus examine the 'poetic' as occurring within social space (lieu commun), physical space (haut lieu) and textual space (non lieu) over the combined duration of the corpus. Arguing for an intelligible continuity of preoccupation among the three poetic oeuvres discussed, the thesis concludes that that continuity enables, in return, a modification of our understanding of the Utopian, of which a lucid practice of poetic writing can thus become the embodiment. Utopia, from being a synonym for illusionment in a century at all times supremely alive to the need for irony, becomes a creative embrace of disenchantment. The point of resolution (poetic foundation) at each stage in the individual oeuvres analysed being the ongoing representation of the 'human' as inner and outer limit to the poetic subject's practice and to the aspiration from which it moves.

The majority of this thesis consists of my creative work in poetry, accompanied by researched information and concepts that serve to contextualize and illuminate the poems themselves and my creative process. Key areas of scholarship that underlie my poetry include the tropes and motifs of Gothic literature from the Romantic era to the present; the progression of women’s writing, particularly writing by women identifying as lesbian; and the conflation of female writers and characters with the concept of the ‘monstrous’ and transgressive. Also informing the two research chapters are some of the basic concepts about abjection and depression developed by philosopher and theorist Julia Kristeva. The collection of my poems contains both narrative and lyric poems. The final chapter, following on from my collection of sixty-eight poems, outlines my creative progress as I developed my particular poetic aesthetic. It is heavily informed by my growing acquaintance and comfort level with my own darkness and depression reflected in Gothic tropes, lesbian fiction, and aspects of Kristevan theory. The progression of my craft as a writer led me to strive for an effective expressive balance between the abstractions of the French Symbolists and Surrealists and a more ‘Imagistic’ focus on accurate, concrete imagery.

The early twentieth-century avant-garde has cast a long shadow over the popular imagination as producers of manifestos, public scandals, and some of the most enduring art and literature of the last century. In this study, I examine the works of three poets who are not only considered leading avant-gardists, but who are foundational to how both popular consciousness and academic scholarship have understood the avant-garde’s theory and practice: Guillaume Apollinaire, F. T. Marinetti, and Ezra Pound. In particular, this study focuses on the recurring themes of prophecy and apocalypse in their work. These themes occur through reference to prophetic and apocalyptic literary or mythical figures, but also through stylistic innovations such as the use of literary personae or the attempt to synthesise diverse artistic forms. Focusing on these themes allows this study to re-engage the question of how these poets, and the avant-garde more broadly, regarded their practice as a social act. Using a comparative methodology in this thesis, prophecy is viewed not simply as a declamatory literary style that foretells the future, but as a particular kind of social relationship to an audience that is at turns mutually supportive and antagonistic. Similarly, apocalyptic thought is presented not merely as an expectation or belief in the end of the world, but as a specific method of imagining a new world that is, in spite of itself, dependent upon the social world of the present. Apollinaire, Marinetti, and Pound were major figures in the so-called ‘Pre-war Avant-Garde’ having established their reputations in the decade prior to World War I. While they each began formulating and proclaiming their views on aesthetics prior to the war, the experience of war had a profound impact on all three. Accordingly, this thesis examines a number of poems from Apollinaire’s two major collections: Alcools (1913) and Calligrammes (1918), the latter containing significant reflections on avant-gardism and war. Marinetti acted as a journalist in the Italo-Turkish war of 1911-1912, which inspired the work central to this study: his Futurist novel-in-verse Le Monoplan du Pape (1912). Pound, unlike Apollinaire and Marinetti, did not participate in World War I, and this study explores his sequence Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920), a long rumination on art, war, and his engagement with Imagism and Vorticism, but also analyses poems from his collections Personae (1908), Ripostes (1912), and Lustra (1916). This study examines how the acute crisis of the war pressed each of these poets to reconsider their view of the poet-as-prophet in society. In doing so it explores the ethical or political implications of avant-garde aesthetics influenced by and as a response to war. This study also closely compares these poets’ works to the biblical literature from which they frequently derived prophetic and apocalyptic themes. Apollinaire, Marinetti, and Pound’s relationship to religion, particularly Christianity, spanned from ambivalence to hostility, but they each engage biblical literature in unique and unorthodox ways. While these poets all sought to be identifiably modern, this study demonstrates the ways in which they attempted to recover values from biblical literature that each felt was necessary to establish the independence and autonomy of contemporary art and literature. Therefore, this study’s comparative framework is intended to engage the conversation over the spiritual, religious, or transcendent values to which avant-garde art aspired. And drawing significantly from the social theories of art, religion, and culture developed by Max Weber and Pierre Bourdieu, this thesis contributes to the study of avant-gardism as a social, as well as aesthetic, phenomenon.

No description available.

Contemporary cultural practices sometimes appear dispassionate, distant and clinical—committed to conceptualism or formalism. Yet works by Jacques Roubaud and Jacques Jouet (both members of the Oulipo, a group of experimental writers in France that use formal and mathematical constraints to generate new literary forms) suggest a complex relationship between epistemology and affect. This thesis argues that contemporary literary and artistic projects that appropriate the tropes of clinical procedure and experimental constraint, suggest alternative forms of knowledge that implicate the body and emotions of the experiencing subject. In these projects, affect and emotion travel through reason, logic, system and constraint and are transformed in the process. Therefore any analysis of forms of affect in these works must also consider the procedural and scientific aspect, that which makes them "projects". My research, drawing on recent work that places emphasis on affect, considers these projects as test cases often mediating between a series of dichotomies such as reason/emotion and mathematics/poetry. Curiously it is in the encounter with epistemological systems that the value of affect, embodiment and subjectivity is underscored, and this thesis interrogates the various ways that contemporary projects articulate affect almost despite themselves. By passing through a scientific impulse to inquire about and test the validity of epistemological systems, these projects underscore the role of affect in producing knowledge. This thesis insists on the continued importance of the Oulipo in contemporary culture and seeks to provide a larger, interdisciplinary context for oulipian experimentation by analysing similar works in the visual arts. This thesis has four chapters, each based on the materials that the projects themselves investigate: 1) numbers and mathematics, 2) lists, collection, and census-data, 3) itineraries and travel, 4) weather and meteorology. Projects bear witness to what the poet Lyn Hejinian has called the romance of science: its rigor, patience, thoroughness and speculative imagination (Mirage, 1983, 24) In so doing, these projects reveal forms of affect that only emerge through this 'weird science' as literary and artistic experiments.

Modern critical works on the seventeenth-century Extremaduran author Catalina Clara Ramírez de Guzmán are sparse, with the exception of recent interest manifested by a small group of feminist scholars in the United States. Apart from intermittent mentions of her poetry, she is virtually unknown among British Hispanists. This thesis seeks to fill many existing gaps in knowledge on her by providing a broader critical assessment of her surviving poetry than has been available thus far, particularly by situating it and its author within their historical, literary and social contexts and drawing thematic and stylistic analogies with works by other authors, male and female. Part I will concentrate primarily on historical aspects. It will establish the reputation enjoyed by the poet in her day and review references to her work in modern critical literature. It will also provide a detailed reconstruction of the poet's family antecedents and discuss the evidence of a literary community in her home city during the period in which she was active as a writer. Part II will focus on the poetry itself, specifically a consideration of the thematic content of a broad representative selection of Ramírez de Guzmán's verses, which were not published until nearly two centuries after her death, and an examination of her interaction with the genres of occasional verse, verse portraiture and burlesque and satirical poetry, all of which will be discussed against the background of their respective traditions.