scholarly journals The Translation of Life: Thinking of Painting in Indian Buddhist Literature

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 467
Author(s):  
Sonam Kachru
Keyword(s):  
Close Reading ◽  
Sense Experience ◽  
Buddhist Literature ◽  
Figures Of Speech ◽  
Preliminary Consideration

What are paintings? Is there a distinctive mode of experience paintings enable? What is the value of such experience? This essay explores such questions, confining attention for the most part to a few distinctive moments in Indian Buddhist texts. In particular, I focus on invocations of painting in figures of speech, particularly when paintings are invoked to make sense of events or experiences of particular importance. The aim is not to be exhaustive, but to suggest a meta-poetic orientation: On the basis of moments where authors think with figurations of painting, I want to suggest that in Buddhist texts one begins to find a growing regard for the possibilities of re-ordering and transvaluing sense experience. After suggesting the possibility of this on the basis of a preliminary consideration of some figures of speech invoking painting, this essay turns to the reconstruction of what I call aesthetic stances to make sense of the idea of new possibilities in sense experience. I derive the concept of “aesthetic stances” on the basis of a close reading of a pivotal moment in one Buddhist narrative, the defeat of Māra in The Legend of Aśoka.

Glances and Loopholes: Bakhtin’s view of Dostoevsky’s Linguistic Microcosm

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-71
Author(s):  
John Cook
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Descriptive Analysis ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Figures Of Speech ◽  
The Brothers Karamazov ◽  
Brothers Karamazov ◽  
The Way

The two figures of speech, «cлoвo c oглядкoй» [a word with a backward glance] and «cлoвo c лaзeйкoй» [a word with a loophole], can arguably be considered the apogee of Bakhtin’s creative analysis of language. This paper provides a detailed analysis of these tropes, commencing with a brief introduction to Bakhtin’s view of the utterance and parody. These short summaries are based on a close reading of Пpoблeмa peчeвыx жaнpoв [ПPЖ] and Из пpeдыcтopии poмaннoгo cлoвa [ИПpc] respectively. This introduction provides a platform for a detailed textual review of Bakhtin’s analysis of the two figures of speech in Пpoблeмы пoэтики Дocтoeвcкoгo [ППД]. The paper then explores the two figures of speech as exemplars of interdiscursivity by examining the way in which Bakhtin builds up his descriptive analysis of both «oглядкa» and «лaзeйкa», using examples from Poor Folk, The Double, Notes from Underground, The Idiot, and The Brothers Karamazov. The paper concludes that these tropes synecdochically represent Bakhtin’s constructs in a number of important domains: his philosophy of language, his philosophy of identity, as well as his literary theory.

On the Vṛndāvana of Bliss

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rembert Lutjeharms
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Good Sense ◽  
Narrative Style ◽  
Small Section ◽  
Figures Of Speech

The final two chapters turn to the Ānanda‐vṛndāvana, Kavikarṇapūra’s longest and most sophisticated poem in praise of Kṛṣṇa’s play in Vṛndāvana. Each chapter studies a small section of this voluminous work but, by examining such brief passages in depth, it is hoped the reader will get a good sense of the complexity of his poetic and narrative style, and be encouraged to explore more of Kavikarṇapūra’s poetry. Chapter 6 examines the style of Kavikarṇapūra’s prose, revisiting Kavikarṇapūra’s eclectic philosophy of language (Chapter 4) and drawing out its theological implications, which are argued to be essential to grasping the suggested sense of Kavikarṇapūra fusion of figures of speech that mark the prose of the Ānanda‐vṛndāvana. The chapter offers a close reading of the opening sentence of the Ānanda‐vṛndāvana, exploring how Kavikarṇapūra’s ‘splendour of speech’ conveys not just theological ideas, but is also meant to affect the reader and contribute to the realization of rasa.

From Figures of Speech to Figments of Thought

1996 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 222-223
Author(s):  
Boaz Keysar
Keyword(s):  
Figures Of Speech

Emotions Explained Through Figures of Speech

1991 ◽  
Vol 36 (11) ◽  
pp. 952-953
Author(s):  
Carroll E. Izard
Keyword(s):  
Figures Of Speech

Stolen from the Snows: John Kinsella as Poet and as Fiction Writer

CounterText ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 232-238
Author(s):  
Nicholas Birns
Keyword(s):  
Close Reading ◽  
Artistic Identity ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Fiction Writer

This piece explores the fiction of John Kinsella, describing how it both complements and differs from his poetry, and how it speaks to the various aspect of his literary and artistic identity, After delineating several characteristic traits of Kinsella's fictional oeuvre, and providing a close reading of one of Kinsella's Graphology poems to give a sense of his current lyrical praxis, the balance of the essay is devoted to a close analysis of Hotel Impossible, the Kinsella novella included in this issue of CounterText. In Hotel Impossible Kinsella examines the assets and liabilities of cosmopolitanism through the metaphor of the all-inclusive hotel that envelops humanity in its breadth but also constrains through its repressive, generalising conformity. Through the peregrinations of the anti-protagonist Pilgrim, as he works out his relationships with Sister and the Watchmaker, we see how relationships interact with contemporary institutions of power. In a style at once challenging and accessible, Kinsella presents a fractured mirror of our own reality.

‘Nothing is simply one thing’: Woolf, Deleuze and Difference

2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 456-474
Author(s):  
Beatrice Monaco
Keyword(s):  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
Prose Poetry ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Similar Model ◽  
Complex Interplay ◽  
To The Lighthouse

This paper explores some key texts of Virginia Woolf in the context of Deleuzian concepts. Using a close reading style, it shows how the prose poetry in Mrs Dalloway engages a complex interplay of repetition and difference, resulting in a remarkably similar model of the three syntheses of time as Deleuze understands them. It subsequently explores Woolf's technical processes in a key passage from To the Lighthouse, showing how the prose-poetic technique systematically undoes the structures of logical fact and rationality inscribed in both language and everyday speech to an extremely precise level.

Resonance in Dhvani Aesthetics and the Deleuzian Logic of Sensation

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-44
Author(s):  
Srajana Kaikini
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
Normative Theory ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Literary Interpretation ◽  
Sanskrit Poetics ◽  
Comparative Framework ◽  
Time Image

This paper undertakes an intersectional reading of visual art through theories of literary interpretation in Sanskrit poetics in close reading with Deleuze's notions of sensation. The concept of Dhvani – the Indian theory of suggestion which can be translated as resonance, as explored in the Rasa – Dhvani aesthetics offers key insights into understanding the mode in which sensation as discussed by Deleuze operates throughout his reflections on Francis Bacon's and Cézanne's works. The paper constructs a comparative framework to review modern and classical art history, mainly in the medium of painting, through an understanding of the concept of Dhvani, and charts a course of reinterpreting and examining possible points of concurrence and departure with respect to the Deleuzian logic of sensation and his notions of time-image and perception. The author thereby aims to move art interpretation's paradigm towards a non-linguistic sensory paradigm of experience. The focus of the paper is to break the moulds of normative theory-making which guide ideal conditions of ‘understanding art’ and look into alternative modes of experiencing the ‘vocabulary’ of art through trans-disciplinary intersections, in this case the disciplines being those of visual art, literature and phenomenology.

Metonymy in Dance: Ballet Bunheads Take a Cognitive Turn

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-34
Author(s):  
Edward C. Warburton
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Artistic Development ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Figures Of Speech ◽  
Self Image ◽  
Level I ◽  
Dance Educators ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Metaphor And Metonymy

This essay considers metonymy in dance from the perspective of cognitive science. My goal is to unpack the roles of metaphor and metonymy in dance thought and action: how do they arise, how are they understood, how are they to be explained, and in what ways do they determine a person's doing of dance? The premise of this essay is that language matters at the cultural level and can be determinative at the individual level. I contend that some figures of speech, especially metonymic labels like ‘bunhead’, can not only discourage but dehumanize young dancers, treating them not as subjects who dance but as objects to be danced. The use of metonymy to sort young dancers may undermine the development of healthy self-image, impede strong identity formation, and retard creative-artistic development. The paper concludes with a discussion of the influence of metonymy in dance and implications for dance educators.

On the Primacy of Matter: Neoplatonism Right-Side Up

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tyler Tritten
Keyword(s):  
Close Reading ◽  
After Effect ◽  
The One

This chapter provides a close reading of Schelling’s early commentary on Plato’s Timaeus and then contrasts this reading with Neoplatonism’s, particularly Proclus’, understanding of this same text. While Neoplatonism views being according to a hierarchy of degradation or descent, with matter at the bottom, Schelling affirms that being potentiates itself into higher and greater degrees of order such that matter is not the last but the first. He is able to do this, however, only by rejecting the Platonic notion of participation. For Schelling, the participating acquires an independence from the participated so that an effect can be greater than its cause and, moreover, the effect exerts a retroactive after effect on the cause. The identity of a cause or antecedent is only constituted in and through its consequents. If matter is said to process from the One, then matter, in turn, is the consequent condition of the identity of the One as one rather than as many.

Transformation and Education in GDR Youth Literature: A Script Theory Approach

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-82
Author(s):  
Jean E. Conacher
Keyword(s):  
Fairy Tale ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
National Literature ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Theory Approach ◽  
Conceptual Blending ◽  
Script Theory ◽  
Cultural Policies ◽  
Youth Literature

Youth literature within the German Democratic Republic (GDR) officially enjoyed equal status with adult literature, with authors often writing for both audiences. Such parity of esteem pre-supposed that youth literature would also adopt the cultural–political frameworks designed to nurture the establishment of socialism on German soil. In their quest to forge a legitimate national literature capable of transforming the population, politicians and writers drew repeatedly upon the cultural heritage of Weimar classicism and the Bildungsroman, Humboldtian educational traditions and Soviet-inspired models of socialist realism. Adopting a script theory approach inspired by Jean Matter Mandler, this article explores how directive cultural policies lead to the emergence of multiple scripts which inform the nature and narrative of individual works. Three broad ideological scripts within GDR youth literature are identified which underpin four distinct narrative scripts employed by individual writers to support, challenge and ultimately subvert the primacy of the Bildungsroman genre. A close reading of works by Strittmatter, Pludra, Görlich, Tetzner and Saalmann reveals further how conceptual blending with classical and fairy-tale scripts is exploited to legitimise and at times mask critique of transformation and education inside and outside the classroom and to offer young protagonists a voice often denied their readers.

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