The Digital Humanities, Inc.: Literary Criticism and the Fate of a Profession

PMLA ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 131 (2) ◽  
pp. 324-339 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Kopec
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Digital Humanities ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Critical Practice ◽  
New Formalism ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
New Critics ◽  
The One ◽  
Data Reading

The popularization of the digital humanities and the return to formalism are overdetermined by the perceived crises in the humanities. On the one hand, the new formalism harks back to a professionalizing strategy begun by the New Critics with John Crowe Ransom's “Criticism, Inc.,” drawing strength from close reading's original polemic against industrialism. On the other hand, the digital humanities reimagine professional labor in ways that seemingly approximate postindustrial norms. These contradictory but inextricably related visions of professional futures restage a conflict between literature and data, reading and making, that has been misrecognized as a conflict between literature and history. Approaching these tensions by way of historicist critique can illuminate the extent to which the debate between literature and data will define critical practice in the twenty-first century.

scholarly journals DANTES LITTERÆRE ATMOSFÆROLOGI

1970 ◽  
Vol 41 (116) ◽  
pp. 33-48
Author(s):  
Dennis Meyhoff Brink
Keyword(s):  
Divine Comedy ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Peter Sloterdijk ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The One ◽  
Atmospheric Phenomena ◽  
Lauren Berlant

DANTE’S LITERARY ATMOSPHEROLOGY | The article argues that recent theories on affect and atmosphere by, for instance, Teresa Brennan, Lauren Berlant, and Peter Sloterdijk, can enter into an extraordinarily fruitful interchange with Dante’s Divine Comedy. On the one hand, these theories can direct our attention to the hitherto overlooked atmospheric phenomena that occur ubiquitously in Dante’s Comedy and provide us with concepts that render them legible as products of human emissions. On the other hand, the numerous descriptions of different atmospheres in Dante’s Comedy can contribute to overcoming the lack of linguistic specifications and distinctions which – according to theorists such as Brian Massumi and Peter Sloterdijk – characterizes today’s Western understanding of affective atmospheres and impedes its ongoing theorization. Based on readings of a selected number of atmospheres in Dante’s Comedy, the article argues that the Comedy not only anticipated insights that were not articulated theoretically until the twentieth and twenty-first century, butalso makes up an exceptional encyclopedia of affective atmospheres that have not yet been examined, neither by Dante researchers, nor by theorists of affects and atmospheres. Therefore, both camps have much to learn from Dante’s literary atmospherology, which the article aims to make explicit.

scholarly journals El marco epistolar de los artículos de crítica literaria de Mme d'Épinay

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 77-88
Author(s):  
María Ángeles Llorca-Tonda
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
The Other ◽  
Literary Style ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One

The aim of this paper is to analyse the literary criticism that Mme d'Épinay consecrates to the Correspondance littéraire of Grimm and Meister. The epistolary framework in which the critical articles studied are presented deserves particular attention, since it allows us, on the one hand, to establish the different functions developed by Louise d'Épinay in the circle of Grimm's collaborators, and, on the other hand, to highlight the dialogic structure that will dominate the literary style of Mme d'Épinay. El presente trabajo tiene como objetivo analizar la obra de crítica literaria que Mme d’Épinay consagra a la Correspondance littéraire de Grimm y de Meister. El marco epistolar en el que se presentan los artículos críticos estudiados merece una atención particular, ya que nos permite, por un lado, establecer las diferentes funciones desarrolladas por Louise d’Épinay en el círculo de los colaboradores de Grimm, y por otro lado, poner de manifiesto la estructura dialógica que dominará el estilo literario de Mme d’Épinay.

Psalms of Solomon as Resistance Poetry

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 366-385
Author(s):  
Matthew E. Gordley
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Dominant Discourse ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Poetry Of Witness ◽  
Psalms Of Solomon ◽  
The One

Two trends in recent scholarship provide a new set of lenses that enable contemporary readers to appreciate more fully the contents and genre of Psalms of Solomon. On the one hand, scholars such as Richard Horsley, Anathea Portier-Young, and Adela Yarbro Collins have now explored the ways in which early Jewish writers engaged in a kind of compositional resistance as they grappled with their traditions in light of the realities of oppressive empires. These approaches enable us to consider the extent to which Psalms of Solomon also may embody a kind of resistant counterdiscourse for the community in which it was edited and preserved. On the other hand, scholars within biblical studies (e. g., Hugh Page) and beyond have examined the dynamics of the poetry of resistance. Such poetry has existed in many times, places, and cultures, giving a voice to the oppressed, protecting the memory of victims, and creating a compelling vision of a possible future in which the oppression is overcome. In this article the poetry of Guatemalan poet Julia Esquivel is interwoven with Psalms of Solomon to illustrate these dynamics and to illuminate the kinds of concerns that scholars like Barbara Harlow and Caolyn Forché have highlighted within the poetry of witness. Since Psalms of Solomon has yet to be explored through these dual lenses of resistance and resistance poetry, this article examines these early Jewish psalms in light of these scholarly trends. I argue that Psalms of Solomon can be understood as a kind of resistance poetry that enabled a community of Jews in the first century B. C. E. to resist the dominant discourse of both the Roman Empire and its client king, Herod the Great. The themes of history, identity, and possibility that pervade resistance poetry in other times and places are central features of Psalms of Solomon.

The Standard of Taste Debate

Food Fights ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 100-123
Author(s):  
Charles C. Ludington
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Tribal Identity ◽  
Political Beliefs ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Class Status ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Standard Of Taste ◽  
The One

On the one hand people like to say that “there is no accounting for taste.” On the other hand, people constantly make judgments about their own and other people’s taste (gustatory and aesthetic). Charles Ludington examines the taste for wine in eighteenth-century England and Scotland, and the taste for beer in twenty-first century America, to argue that taste can in fact be accounted for because it is a reflection of custom, “tribal” identity, gender, political beliefs, and conceptions of authenticity, which are mostly but not entirely conditioned by class status and aspirations. And rightly or wrongly, we judge other people’s taste because taste positions us in society.

scholarly journals Resurfacing the Disappeared: The Author in Fish-Hair Woman by Merlinda Bobis

Plaridel ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 73-90
Author(s):  
Jaimee Faith J. Santos
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Humanist Tradition ◽  
The One ◽  
The Disappeared

The subject of my paper is the author. I aim to explore how the self-conscious author functions in Fish-Hair Woman (2012), a metafictional novel by Merlinda Bobis. I begin with a brief discussion of how the author is constructed, first, in Philippine literary criticism, and second, in light of the collapse of the humanist tradition of valorizing the writer, which prompted the proclamation of the author’s “death” and rendered her irrelevant to the text and to criticism. But does the author stay dead? In metafiction, in particular, the author manages to “write” herself into the text using self-consciousness. I find that, while it is impossible to overlook the author’s decentered status, it is equally untenable to ignore how an overt “manifestation” of the author functions within the text. Through my reading of Fish-Hair Woman, I attempt to examine how the author’s self-consciousness results in two seemingly contradicting implications. On the one hand, the author’s constant references to herself allows her to “live” through the text, reinforcing the Barthesian notion that the author limits the text and its possible interpretations. On the other hand, the author’s constant references to herself as a subject exposes the author’s own limitations. This, in turn, “re-opens” the text, by giving room to questions about other perspectives that are not or cannot be represented in the text.

‘Complete rubbish but a real page-turner’ Chukovsky and detective stories

2020 ◽  
pp. 169-186
Author(s):  
P. A. Moiseev
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Detective Fiction ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
Wilkie Collins ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Detective Stories ◽  
Regular Reader ◽  
The One

K. Chukovsky was one of Russia’s first scholars of detective fiction. Yet his literary criticism on this particular topic has never been researched. Nor has it come to light that his attitude to the genre was ambivalent. On the one hand, he knew it very well, was a regular reader of detective stories and made a number of valuable observations about the works of Conan Doyle (whose writing he contrasted with the cheap sensationalist books about Nat Pinkerton, stressing the quality of logic in Conan Doyle’s stories) and Wilkie Collins. On the other hand, he often made very critical and ironic remarks about the genre, confessing that he failed to comprehend the reason for its popularity. The article suggests the grounds for Chukovsky’s attitude: he argued that literature was linked to ‘the most important personal experience’ (in the words of the writer N. Oleynikov), with entertaining literature automatically dismissed as an outsider to real art.

Translation and the Authorial Image: the Case of Federico García Lorca’s Romancero gitano

2004 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stella Linn
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Social System ◽  
The Other ◽  
Literary Translation ◽  
Federico Garcia Lorca ◽  
Translation Strategies ◽  
Translation Strategy ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One ◽  
Target Culture

Abstract Despite Barthes’s claim that the author is dead, leaving the scene for his work, freed from its all too personal origin, I would like to argue that the author image is far from absent in the practice of literary translation. On the one hand, the author’s image within a particular literary and social system may determine which work is translated, and even how it is translated. On the other hand, it seems likely that some characteristics of a persona will be highlighted more than others, depending on which source texts are selected for translation and on how the author and his or her works are presented in prefaces and commentaries accompanying the translations. Moreover, the translation strategy may enhance the prevailing tendencies within reception and thus contribute to a certain perception of the author in the target culture. In this paper I will investigate these hypothetical connections, taking as an example the Spanish author Federico García Lorca and a number of translations of his Romancero gitano (1928) into French, English, and Dutch. I will examine a possible correlation between the prevailing “folkloristic” image of Lorca in the early literary criticism, and the emphasis on romantic, naïve and mythological aspects in translations of his work, and conversely, the later, more complex and gloomy image presented of the author, and translation strategies which highlight elements that correspond to that view.

scholarly journals The Appropriation of Innocence: from Shelley’s Frankenstein to Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 126-138
Author(s):  
Karzan Aziz Mahmood
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycles ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ethical Responsibility ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Dead Body ◽  
Science Student ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Post War ◽  
The One

This paper demonstrates the appropriation of innocence in Shelley’s Frankenstein, Or the Modern Prometheus (1818) and Frankenstein in Baghdad (2013) by Ahmed Saadawi. These novels are selected because the latter appropriates the creator and creature characters and contextualizes them into the American-Iraq 2005 post-war period. In Shelley’s Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein, scientifically, gives life to a dead body amalgamated from other body parts, which start murdering and revenging upon his creator. Whereas, in Saadawi’s twenty-first century Frankenstein, a person who is formed from others’ dead bodies by merely a junk dealer, starts murdering and revenging upon other people. On the one hand, Frankenstein, a science student, sought to answer the question of human revival theoretically and practically. Therefore, after he resurrects the dead, it becomes monstrous due to its negligence and physical hideousness by its creator. On the other hand, the Iraqi Frankenstein’s creator, Hadi, celebrates collecting old materials in a non-scientific manner, including humans’ dead body parts, in order to give value to them by offering them worthy of proper burials. The resurrected creatures transform into more powerful beings than their creators as reactions against isolation and injustice. For that, both Frankenstein and Hadi lose control over their creations, who instigate new life cycles. Hence, the ethical responsibility of invention underlies the concept of innocence which this paper intends to analyze vis-à-vis the creators and their creations.

scholarly journals Targeted Sanctions and Deterrence in the Twenty-first Century

2020 ◽  
pp. 349-363
Author(s):  
Francesco Giumelli
Keyword(s):  
Moral Hazard ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Past ◽  
Moral Hazard Problem ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Potential Impact ◽  
Target States ◽  
State Actors ◽  
The One

AbstractThe use of sanctions is often associated with coercion and deterrence. The former implies that sanctions contribute to changing the behaviour of targets, while the latter suggests that the damage threatened by sanctions should discourage actors from embarking on certain policies. However, sanctions have evolved substantially over the last twenty years, thus this chapter discusses whether the emergence of targeted sanctions was enough to change the classical deterrence/sanctions relation. This chapter argues that while there are similarities with the past, there are elements of change that need to be carefully considered. On the one hand the imposition of a cost to certain policy actions, the existence of an audience and the potential impact on the wider society remain central problems for both comprehensive and targeted sanctions. On the other hand, targeted sanctions present unique features that directly interact with the concept of deterrence. First, sanctions do not target states and governments only, but also individuals and non-state actors. Second, targeted sanctions are designed to reduce their impact not only on innocent civilians, but there are clear boundaries of damage that can be inflicted on targets. Third, targeted sanctions can have a moral hazard problem, so that their imposition creates an incentive for actors to embark on the very actions that sanctions aim to deter.

scholarly journals Die πανοπλία Gottes. Eph 6,11–17 als Reflexion der Belagerung einer Stadt

2015 ◽  
Vol 106 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-64
Author(s):  
Nils Neumann
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Christian Community ◽  
Book Of Isaiah ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
God's Word ◽  
Biblical Texts ◽  
The One ◽  
The Military ◽  
Present Life

Abstract: The image of „God’s Armor“ in Eph 6,11–17 is modeled, on the one hand, after biblical traditions, taking formulations from the book of Isaiah (Isa 11,5; 52,7; 59,17). But on the other hand the author of Ephesians also adds some elements to the image that do not have any equivalents in Isaiah or other biblical texts. These extra elements in Ephesians are the sword, the shield, the mention of the military term πανοπλία („armor“), and the sandals. The naming of these additional items is based on first century knowledge about the equipment of a Roman legionnaire. As can be shown by comparison to descriptions of ancient Roman warfare in Josephus and Polybius, the wearer of God’s armor in Ephesians is figuratively positioned in a concrete battle situation, namely the siege of a town wall. The author of Eph 6,11–17 imagines the present life of the Christian community as a dramatic situation that can be compared to a battle. With the sword of God’s word in their hands the members of the Christian community are supposed to defend the wall of their fortress against the attacks of the forces of evil.

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