Political Poetics and the Aristotelian Turn

If emotion is expressed through the persuasive form of the enthymeme, what are the fields in which we can find this activated? Chapter 6 turns to poetry itself, poetry written in the wake of De regimine principum and arising from the sphere of political thought. It focuses on three texts that can be read in the light of De regimine principum: Dante’s Convivio, with emphasis on tractate IV and its canzone, part IV of Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale, and Hoccleve’s Prologue to his Regiment of Princes. Two of these, Convivio and Regiment of Princes, engage directly and explicitly with Giles of Rome’s work. Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale carries the accumulated influence of De regimine without directly citing it; Chaucer’s intertext is Dante’s Convivio. While these texts express some of the greater themes of De regimine, their poetic arguments can be read as enthymematic, using a brevity of argument that is emotionally effective. In this way, these poetic texts reflect—via the mediation of Giles’ De regimine—the impact of Aristotle’s rhetoric of emotion.

CEMFLORES: POÉTICAS POLÍTICAS EM BELO HORIZONTE NOS ANOS OITENTA / Cemflores: political poetics in Belo Horizonte in the eighties

O artigo traça uma trajetória do grupo Cemflores, a partir do contato crítico-afetivo com o arquivo do poeta Marcelo Dolabela, quem guardou por mais de quarenta anos os restos dessa memória. Formado por “trabalhadores em arte”, como se denominaram, Cemflores surge no seio do Movimento Estudantil – quase todos seus integrantes eram estudantes da UFMG – e atuou no cenário da contracultura em Belo Horizonte, nos anos oitenta, período marcado pelo processo de redemocratização. Buscaram repensar a práxis das esquerdas, através da realização de ações poéticas. Publicam revistas e dezenas de livrinhos em mimeógrafo, distribuem poesia em greves e atos pela anistia, realizam recitais, exposições de arte postal e experiências sonoras que culminam na criação das bandas de estilo pós-punk Sexo Explícito, Divergência Socialista e O Último Número.Palavras-chave: Cemflores; Marcelo Dolabela; Arte e política; Poesia marginal; Arte postal.AbstractThe article traces the Cemflores group’s path, based on the critical-affective contact with the poet Marcelo Dolabela’s archive, who kept the remains of that memory for more than forty years. Formed by, as they called themselves, “workers in art”, Cemflores appears within the Student Movement and they acted in the counterculture scenario in Belo Horizonte, in the 1980s, a period marked by the process of Brazil’s redemocratization. They sought to rethink the praxis of the left-wing tendencies, through the performance of poetic actions. They published magazines and dozens of booklets made in mimeograph, distributed poetry in strikes and acts for Amnesty, held recitals, mail art exhibitions and sound experiences that culminated in the creation of the post-punk style bands Sexo Explícito, Divergência Socialista and O Último Número.Keywords: Cemflores; Marcelo Dolabela; Art and politics; Marginal poetry; Mail art.

The Post-Machiavellian Poetry of ‘An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland’

The Machiavellian dimension to the portrayal of Cromwell in ‘An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland’ has long been recognized. The first part of this essay moves beyond existing interpretations to situate Marvell’s political poem in relation to the poetics of post-Machiavellian political discourse as it was understood and practised in a Europe-wide context, with a particular focus on translation between England, Italy, and Spain. Recovering the peculiar ‘wit’ of the sententia, which lay in its relation to action, enables us better to appreciate the complexity and subtlety with which Marvell created a contemporary Horatian voice. The second part of the essay turns to the characters of the action, analysing how that distinctive voice allows room for genuine drama without ever fully identifying with it; identity, in fact, is one of the things most troublingly problematized by the political poetics of the ‘Ode’.

Ways of Seeing China through Isaac Julien's Ten Thousand Waves

This article examines ways of seeing China in Isaac Julien's nine-screen film installation Ten Thousand Waves (2010), which represents a migratory aesthetic based on evocative translocality and mobile spectatorship. As Julien reconstructs the legend of compassionate Mazu (played by Maggie Cheung) and memories of Old and New Shanghai (both enacted by Zhao Tao), his screen images and sounds enter a constant circulation and form an intriguing multidirectional dialogue across a variety of media and genres: cinema, art photography, calligraphy, painting, poetry, and star performance. In addition to evaluating new concepts and new techniques at work in the cross-fertilization of cinema and other visual media in the new millennium, this article complicates Julien's celebrated political poetics by highlighting his problematic reception by ethnic Chinese spectators and by reckoning with the specter of orientalism that refuses to go away despite his previously audacious repudiation of stereotypes and clichés and his professed engagement with cosmopolitanism and globalization.

Aesthetics in Islamic philosophy

The major Islamic philosophers produced no works dedicated to aesthetics, although their writings do address issues that contemporary philosophers might study under that heading. The nature of beauty was addressed by Islamic philosophers in the course of discussions about God and his attributes in relation to his creation, under the inspiration of Neoplatonic sources such as the pseudo-Aristotelian Theology of Aristotle, a compilation based upon the Enneads of Plotinus. Considerations of artistic beauty and creativity were also addressed in works inspired by Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Poetics, and Islamic philosophers also adapted some of Plato’s views on literature and imitation, particularly those expressed in the Republic. On the whole, Islamic philosophers did not view artistic and literary creativity as ends in themselves. Rather, their interest was in explaining the relations of these activities to purely intellectual ends. In the case of poetics and rhetoric in particular, the emphasis in Islamic philosophy was pragmatic and political: poetics and rhetoric were viewed as instruments for communicating the demonstrated truths of philosophy to the populace, whose intellectual abilities were presumed to be limited. The medium of such communication was usually, although not necessarily, that of religious discourse. Islamic philosophers also devoted considerable attention to explaining the psychological and cognitive foundations of aesthetic judgment and artistic production within the spectrum of human knowledge. They argued that rhetoric and poetics were in some important respects non-intellectual arts, and that poetics in particular was distinctive in so far as it addressed the imaginative faculties of its audience rather than their intellects.