scholarly journals Fragrant Spaces between Words: Prolonging Shōjo Liminality into Adulthood in the Poetry of Yonezawa Nobuko

2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-201
Author(s):  
Marianne Tarcov
Keyword(s):  
Bodily Experience ◽  
Sense Of Smell ◽  
Sensory Pleasure ◽  
Poetic Inspiration ◽  
Poetic Creation

This essay argues that, in 1920s Japanese Symbolist poetry and perfume advertising, women inhabit a space of ambiguity, where bodily experience is elevated as the highest form of creativity and knowledge. Yonezawa’s poems prolong the liminality of the shōjo, or girl, archetype into adult womanhood, thereby transgressing the border between womanhood and girlhood. In her poetry, Yonezawa uses fragrance to portray the inherent sexuality of poetic creation, creating a feminine, sexual creative voice. Yonezawa uses the idealized homosocial relationships found in shōjo culture to imagine a world determined by the creativity and community of women. The relationships between women feature ecstatic sensory pleasure and shared poetic inspiration, brokered by the sense of smell. 

Self-Reported Sense of Smell Predicts Disgust Sensitivity and Disgust Reactivity

2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 191-195
Author(s):  
Nicholas J. Kelley ◽  
Adrienne L. Crowell
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Individual Difference ◽  
Olfactory Stimulus ◽  
Disgust Sensitivity ◽  
Sense Of Smell ◽  
Olfactory Ability ◽  
Good Proxy ◽  
Insight Into

Abstract. Two studies tested the hypothesis that self-reported sense of smell (i.e., metacognitive insight into one’s olfactory ability) predicts disgust sensitivity and disgust reactivity. Consistent with our predictions two studies demonstrated that disgust correlates with self-reported sense of smell. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated, from an individual difference perspective, that trait-like differences in disgust relate to self-reported sense of smell. Physical forms of disgust (i.e., sexual and pathogen disgust) drove this association. However, the association between self-reported sense of smell and disgust sensitivity is small, suggesting that it is likely not a good proxy for disgust sensitivity. The results of Study 2 extended this finding by demonstrating that individual differences in self-reported sense of smell influence how individuals react to a disgusting olfactory stimulus. Those who reported having a better sense of smell (or better insight into their olfactory ability) found a disgusting smell significantly more noxious as compared to participants reporting having a poor sense of smell (or poor insight into their olfactory ability). The current findings suggest that a one-item measure of self-reported sense of smell may be an effective tool in disgust research.

Pleasure as a Sign of Efficacy of Mental Activity

1997 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 226-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michel Cabanac ◽  
Chantal Pouliot ◽  
James Everett
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Psychology ◽  
Magnitude Estimation ◽  
Mental Activity ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Macintosh Computer ◽  
Science Students ◽  
Cognitive Efficiency ◽  
Sensory Pleasure ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Mental Tasks

Previous work has shown that sensory pleasure is both the motor and the sign of optimal behaviors aimed at physiological ends. From an evolutionary psychology point of view it may be postulated that mental pleasure evolved from sensory pleasure. Accordingly, the present work tested empirically the hypothesis that pleasure signals efficacious mental activity. In Experiment 1, ten subjects played video-golf on a Macintosh computer. After each hole they were invited to rate their pleasure or displeasure on a magnitude estimation scale. Their ratings of pleasure correlated negatively with the difference par minus performance, i.e., the better the performance the greater the pleasure reported. In Experiments 2 and 3, the pleasure of reading poems was correlated with comprehension, both rated by two groups of subjects, science students and arts students. In the majority of science students pleasure was significantly correlated with comprehension. Only one arts student showed this relationship; this result suggests that the proposed relationship between pleasure and cognitive efficiency is not tautological. Globally, the results support the hypothesis that pleasure is aroused by the same mechanisms, and follows the same laws, in physiological and cognitive mental tasks and also leads to the optimization of performance.

Decanting the Rabelaisian Casks: Accessing Neoplatonic Poetic Fury in Baudelaire's ‘L'Âme du vin’

2016 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 263-279
Author(s):  
Robert J. Hudson ◽  
Kristen Foote
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Old Regime ◽  
Robust Version ◽  
Poetic Inspiration ◽  
Fleurs Du Mal

In one of the lesser-studied sections of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal, ‘Le Vin’, the poet offers a key to understanding the transcendence necessary for common post-Revolution Parisians to attain the proper poetic inspiration to create elevated verse. Divine or poetic Fury, a theoretically more robust version of other nineteenth-century ideas of intoxication, is at the heart of the section's threshold poem, ‘L'Âme du vin’, and establishes a bridge in Les Fleurs du mal linking the modern terrestrial wanderings of the ‘Tableaux parisiens’ to the celestial flights of the ‘Fleurs du mal’. Developed from Plato's Ion and Gallically codified by Rabelais, these theories filter to the aesthete Baudelaire, who decants this aged wine into a nineteenth-century vessel that lays old regime vertical hierarchies on their side and offers poetic intoxication to all who are willing to labour to become vessels of inspiration themselves.

A Pleasing Odour for Yahweh

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-24
Author(s):  
Anne Katrine De Hemmer Gudme
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Sacred Space ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
The Sun ◽  
The West ◽  
Sense Of Smell ◽  
The Temple ◽  
Crucial Part

This article investigates the importance of smell in the sacrificial cults of the ancient Mediterranean, using the Yahweh temple on Mount Gerizim and the Hebrew Bible as a case-study. The material shows that smell was an important factor in delineating sacred space in the ancient world and that the sense of smell was a crucial part of the conceptualization of the meeting between the human and the divine.  In the Hebrew Bible, the temple cult is pervaded by smell. There is the sacred oil laced with spices and aromatics with which the sanctuary and the priests are anointed. There is the fragrant and luxurious incense, which is burnt every day in front of Yahweh and finally there are the sacrifices and offerings that are burnt on the altar as ‘gifts of fire’ and as ‘pleasing odors’ to Yahweh. The gifts that are given to Yahweh are explicitly described as pleasing to the deity’s sense of smell. On Mount Gerizim, which is close to present-day Nablus on the west bank, there once stood a temple dedicated to the god Yahweh, whom we also know from the Hebrew Bible. The temple was in use from the Persian to the Hellenistic period (ca. 450 – 110 BCE) and during this time thousands of animals (mostly goats, sheep, pigeons and cows) were slaughtered and burnt on the altar as gifts to Yahweh. The worshippers who came to the sanctuary – and we know some of them by name because they left inscriptions commemorating their visit to the temple – would have experienced an overwhelming combination of smells: the smell of spicy herbs baked by the sun that is carried by the wind, the smell of humans standing close together and the smell of animals, of dung and blood, and behind it all as a backdrop of scent the constant smell of the sacrificial smoke that rises to the sky.

Kreation und Zeit

2006 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-133
Author(s):  
Renate Schlesier
Keyword(s):  
Central Position ◽  
Intellectual Work ◽  
Eine Analyse ◽  
Artistic Production ◽  
Poetic Creation

Das Inspirationskonzept ist für Prousts selbstreflexive Bestimmung künstlerischer Produktion von zentraler Bedeutung (dies läßt sich durch eine Analyse von Textstellen sowohl aus dem letzten Teil von Prousts Recherche als auch aus dem Kontext von Jean Santeuil und Contre Sainte-Beuve zeigen). Prousts spezifische Bestimmung der Inspiration als etwas, das auf intellektuelle Arbeit nicht verzichten kann, unterminiert jedoch antiintellektualistische platonische Dichtungslehren. Dies impliziert zudem, daß Proust die Kluft zwischen Künstlern und Nicht-Künstlern für unüberbrückbar erklärt. Inspiration ist für Proust etwas Verzauberndes, weil sie wiedergefundene Zeit ist, die jedoch erst im poetischen Kreationsprozeß Gestalt gewinnt. The concept of inspiration occupies a central position in the realm of Proust’s self-reflexive evaluation of artistic production (as can be demonstrated by an analysis of passages bothfrom the last part of Proust’s ›Recherche‹ and from the context of ›Jean Santeuil‹ and ›Contre SainteBeuve‹). Yet by evaluating inspiration as something that could not do without intellectual work, Proust undermines anti-intellectualistic platonizing poetics. In addition, this implies that Proust declares the gap between artists and non-artists as unbridgeable. For Proust, inspiration is enchanting because it is time regained, but takes shape only in the process of poetic creation.

Scents and Sensibility

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Maxwell
Keyword(s):  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
Victorian Literature ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Walter Pater ◽  
Algernon Charles Swinburne ◽  
Victorian Poetry ◽  
Michael Field ◽  
Sense Of Smell ◽  
Romantic Poetry

A major reconceptualization of the imagination that reinstates its hidden links with the historically neglected sense of smell, this book is the first to examine the role played by scent and perfume in Victorian literary culture. Perfume-associated notions of imaginative influence and identity are central to this study, which explores the unfamiliar scented world of Victorian literature, concentrating on texts associated with aestheticism and decadence, but also noting important anticipations in Romantic poetry and prose, and earlier Victorian poetry and fiction. Throughout, literary analysis is informed by extensive reference to the historical and cultural context of Victorian perfume. A key theme is the emergence of the olfactif, the cultivated individual with a refined sense of smell, influentially represented by the poet and critic Algernon Charles Swinburne, who is emulated by a host of canonical and less well-known aesthetic and decadent successors such as Walter Pater, Edmund Gosse, John Addington Symonds, Lafcadio Hearn, Michael Field, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Symons, Mark André Raffalovich, Theodore Wratislaw, and A. Mary F. Robinson. This book explores how scent and perfume pervade the work of these authors in many different ways, signifying such diverse things such as style, atmosphere, influence, sexuality, sensibility, spirituality, refinement, individuality, the expression of love and poetic creativity, and the aura of personality, dandyism, modernity, and memory. A coda explores the contrasting twentieth-century responses of Virginia Woolf and Compton Mackenzie to the scent of Victorian literature.

scholarly journals Effects of COVID-19 on Sense of Smell: Human Factors/Ergonomics Considerations

2021 ◽  
pp. 001872082199016
Author(s):  
E. Leslie Cameron ◽  
Per Møller ◽  
Keith S. Karn
Keyword(s):  
Human Factors ◽  
Olfactory Dysfunction ◽  
System Communication ◽  
Human System ◽  
Sense Of Smell ◽  
Primary Means ◽  
Human Sense ◽  
Smell Loss

Objective We review the effects of COVID-19 on the human sense of smell (olfaction) and discuss implications for human-system interactions. We emphasize how critical smell is and how the widespread loss of smell due to COVID-19 will impact human-system interaction. Background COVID-19 reduces the sense of smell in people who contract the disease. Thus far, olfaction has received relatively little attention from human factors/ergonomics professionals. While smell is not a primary means of human-system communication, humans rely on smell in many important ways related to both quality of life and safety. Method We briefly review and synthesize the rapidly expanding literature through September 2020 on the topic of smell loss caused by COVID-19. We interpret findings in terms of their relevance to human factors/ergonomics researchers and practitioners. Results Since March 2020 dozens of articles have been published that report smell loss in COVID-19 patients. The prevalence and duration of COVID-19-related smell loss is still under investigation, but the available data suggest that it may leave many people with long-term deficits and distortions in sense of smell. Conclusion We suggest that the human factors/ergonomics community could become more aware of the importance of the sense of smell and focus on accommodating the increasing number of people with reduced olfactory performance. Application We present examples of how olfaction can augment human-system communication and how human factors/ergonomics professionals might accommodate people with olfactory dysfunction. While seemingly at odds, both of these goals can be achieved.

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