Culture and Sacrifice: Ritual Death in Literature and Opera by Derek Hughes. Cambridge U. Press, 2007. Pp. xi + 313. $85. Despite its fairly standard size for a monograph, Derek Hughes's book is a expedition of veritably epic proportions through the entire history of Western literature in the course of which he brings up core samples from a wide range of literary genres. No shortage of ambition marks this project. Noting "the inexhaustible fascination of the theme of human sacrifice," which clearly also took hold of him during the research and writing of the book, Hughes explores the representation of ritual sacrifice in literature and opera, not real-life instances of killing (hence, no discussion of execution) and only limited, contextualizing discussion of the anthropological record (273). An initially restricted definition of sacrifice avoids confusion with the more remote metaphorical uses of the term (one thinks of the great sacrifices one makes to send the kids to college). Hughes also sets aside Jesus Christ from his treatment of sacrifice, in part because the crucifixion merits distinct treatment, in part because the crucifixion is framed in quite distinct ways from sacrifice in literature, at least until the eighteenth century. Hughes notes that the crucifixion annuls sacrifice in three ways: first, because it is the single sacrifice that brings all carnal sacrifice to an end; second, because Christ lives; and third, because the crucifixion is transformed, initiating other forms of sacrifice among the faithful, such as discipline (50-51). In addition to accomplished human sacrifices, Hughes often examines instances that flirt with ritual death without actually accomplishing it: Prometheus, for example, is only "potentially" a sacrificial victim (16); many deaths in the Aeneid "aspire to the condition of formal sacrifice" (46); Othello and Brutus (in Julius Caesar) "attach a sacrificial significance to the murders they commit" (74-75); and many literary treatments tread close to sacrifice but avert it in the end, most notably in the Iphigenia plays and operas (46). As Hughes notes, stories of human sacrifice serve to explain key features of culture, such as the origin of rites of initiation, or to mark a separation with an ideal past in which men and gods broke bread together, or as an example of the barbarity that civilization must reject in order to come into being, but which may also threaten to return. For ancient Greece, human sacrifice represents the boundary that leads to an inaccessible past, pointing from the culture of the city into the wilderness; and its return promises a monumental breakdown leading to chaos. At the other end of history, at the turn of the twentieth century, sacrifice moves inward to the realms of the mind. Chronologically organized chapters follow an introduction to the subject, covering the vast span from ancient Greece to the final, and longest, chapter which ends with an analysis of Margaret Atwood's The
{"title":"Culture and Sacrifice: Ritual Death in Literature and Opera","authors":"Downing A. Thomas","doi":"10.5860/choice.45-4769","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.45-4769","url":null,"abstract":"Culture and Sacrifice: Ritual Death in Literature and Opera by Derek Hughes. Cambridge U. Press, 2007. Pp. xi + 313. $85. Despite its fairly standard size for a monograph, Derek Hughes's book is a expedition of veritably epic proportions through the entire history of Western literature in the course of which he brings up core samples from a wide range of literary genres. No shortage of ambition marks this project. Noting \"the inexhaustible fascination of the theme of human sacrifice,\" which clearly also took hold of him during the research and writing of the book, Hughes explores the representation of ritual sacrifice in literature and opera, not real-life instances of killing (hence, no discussion of execution) and only limited, contextualizing discussion of the anthropological record (273). An initially restricted definition of sacrifice avoids confusion with the more remote metaphorical uses of the term (one thinks of the great sacrifices one makes to send the kids to college). Hughes also sets aside Jesus Christ from his treatment of sacrifice, in part because the crucifixion merits distinct treatment, in part because the crucifixion is framed in quite distinct ways from sacrifice in literature, at least until the eighteenth century. Hughes notes that the crucifixion annuls sacrifice in three ways: first, because it is the single sacrifice that brings all carnal sacrifice to an end; second, because Christ lives; and third, because the crucifixion is transformed, initiating other forms of sacrifice among the faithful, such as discipline (50-51). In addition to accomplished human sacrifices, Hughes often examines instances that flirt with ritual death without actually accomplishing it: Prometheus, for example, is only \"potentially\" a sacrificial victim (16); many deaths in the Aeneid \"aspire to the condition of formal sacrifice\" (46); Othello and Brutus (in Julius Caesar) \"attach a sacrificial significance to the murders they commit\" (74-75); and many literary treatments tread close to sacrifice but avert it in the end, most notably in the Iphigenia plays and operas (46). As Hughes notes, stories of human sacrifice serve to explain key features of culture, such as the origin of rites of initiation, or to mark a separation with an ideal past in which men and gods broke bread together, or as an example of the barbarity that civilization must reject in order to come into being, but which may also threaten to return. For ancient Greece, human sacrifice represents the boundary that leads to an inaccessible past, pointing from the culture of the city into the wilderness; and its return promises a monumental breakdown leading to chaos. At the other end of history, at the turn of the twentieth century, sacrifice moves inward to the realms of the mind. Chronologically organized chapters follow an introduction to the subject, covering the vast span from ancient Greece to the final, and longest, chapter which ends with an analysis of Margaret Atwood's The","PeriodicalId":43889,"journal":{"name":"PHILOLOGICAL QUARTERLY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2007-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71119911","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Between 1819 and 1824 Wordsworth undertook a translation of Virgil's Aeneid, which eventually included Books 1 to 3 nearly complete and only two further, unconnected passages: a brief fragment (six lines in English) from Book 4, and a more substantial section (forty-six lines) from the eighth book. Wordsworth left no indication why he singled out the last passage for translation. It contains the scene, well-known though scarcely crucial to the plot of the Aeneid, in which King Evander gives Aeneas a tour of his rustic settlement on what will later be the site of Rome. To the Tarpeian Rock their way they hold And to the Capitol now bright with gold,-- In those far-distant times a spot forlorn With bramble choked and rough with savage thorn ... Conversing thus their onward course they bent To poor Evander's humble tenement; Herds range the Roman Forum; in the street Of proud Carinae bellowing herds they meet.... (1) W. Warde Fowler, in his monograph on Book 8, Aeneas at the Site of Rome, calls this passage "a fine stroke which must have delighted the Romans of [Virgil's] own day." (2) Yet its appeal to Wordsworth is less obvious. One might think that, logically, the description of these rustic precursors to the glories of Rome would delight especially, or only, those who were familiar with the Capitol, the Forum, and the Carinae in all their glory. But to think thus is to misunderstand the workings of nostalgia. I would define nostalgia as an affection or desire, not for what one remembers, but for what one feels one has forgotten. (3) No detailed reconstruction of the Roman Forum could give the modern reader so intimate a sense of familiarity with it as Virgil's deconstruction. Virgil suggests the grandeur only by negating it ("Herds range the Roman Forum"), relying upon the reader's knowledge to provide the necessary contrasting image. Hence the modern reader actually derives more from this passage than would a Roman with first-hand knowledge of the places mentioned. Familiarity with the great monuments of ancient Rome is so implicitly ascribed to the reader that we unconsciously assume it, and although we could not therefore draw an accurate map of the Forum, knowledge of it comes to seem rather like something forgotten than like something never known. There is nothing logical, of course, in the feeling of having forgotten something one never really knew, but the nostalgic appeal of this scene from Virgil does not depend on logic. Coleridge (whom Keats memorably accused of being "incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge") might have questioned Wordsworth's apparent preference for this passage, just as he criticized a remarkably similar instance of paradoxical nostalgia, the Intimations Ode. In chapter 22 of Biographia Literaria, which enumerates some "characteristic defects of Wordsworth's poetry," Coleridge aims his final and bitterest attack against the passage of the Ode which apostrophizes a young boy as "Mighty Prophet! Seer blest
{"title":"Nostalgia, the Classics, and the Intimations Ode: Wordsworth’s Forgotten Education","authors":"E. Gray","doi":"10.7916/D8H99453","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7916/D8H99453","url":null,"abstract":"Between 1819 and 1824 Wordsworth undertook a translation of Virgil's Aeneid, which eventually included Books 1 to 3 nearly complete and only two further, unconnected passages: a brief fragment (six lines in English) from Book 4, and a more substantial section (forty-six lines) from the eighth book. Wordsworth left no indication why he singled out the last passage for translation. It contains the scene, well-known though scarcely crucial to the plot of the Aeneid, in which King Evander gives Aeneas a tour of his rustic settlement on what will later be the site of Rome. To the Tarpeian Rock their way they hold And to the Capitol now bright with gold,-- In those far-distant times a spot forlorn With bramble choked and rough with savage thorn ... Conversing thus their onward course they bent To poor Evander's humble tenement; Herds range the Roman Forum; in the street Of proud Carinae bellowing herds they meet.... (1) W. Warde Fowler, in his monograph on Book 8, Aeneas at the Site of Rome, calls this passage \"a fine stroke which must have delighted the Romans of [Virgil's] own day.\" (2) Yet its appeal to Wordsworth is less obvious. One might think that, logically, the description of these rustic precursors to the glories of Rome would delight especially, or only, those who were familiar with the Capitol, the Forum, and the Carinae in all their glory. But to think thus is to misunderstand the workings of nostalgia. I would define nostalgia as an affection or desire, not for what one remembers, but for what one feels one has forgotten. (3) No detailed reconstruction of the Roman Forum could give the modern reader so intimate a sense of familiarity with it as Virgil's deconstruction. Virgil suggests the grandeur only by negating it (\"Herds range the Roman Forum\"), relying upon the reader's knowledge to provide the necessary contrasting image. Hence the modern reader actually derives more from this passage than would a Roman with first-hand knowledge of the places mentioned. Familiarity with the great monuments of ancient Rome is so implicitly ascribed to the reader that we unconsciously assume it, and although we could not therefore draw an accurate map of the Forum, knowledge of it comes to seem rather like something forgotten than like something never known. There is nothing logical, of course, in the feeling of having forgotten something one never really knew, but the nostalgic appeal of this scene from Virgil does not depend on logic. Coleridge (whom Keats memorably accused of being \"incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge\") might have questioned Wordsworth's apparent preference for this passage, just as he criticized a remarkably similar instance of paradoxical nostalgia, the Intimations Ode. In chapter 22 of Biographia Literaria, which enumerates some \"characteristic defects of Wordsworth's poetry,\" Coleridge aims his final and bitterest attack against the passage of the Ode which apostrophizes a young boy as \"Mighty Prophet! Seer blest","PeriodicalId":43889,"journal":{"name":"PHILOLOGICAL QUARTERLY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2001-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71366338","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1995-03-22DOI: 10.5040/9781474292078.ch-002
E. Levy
Most criticism of Hard Times probes the historical accuracy of the novel -- investigating, as Coles observes, "those correspondences between Dickens' fictional world and the world he lived in..."(1) Inevitably, this tendency to evaluate the fiction as a medium of fact deflects attention from its deeper implications. Some critics attempt to overcome this limitation through alternate modes of analysis. These include, among many others, broadening the intellectual context to include, not merely Utilitarianism, but an emerging mentality involving thinkers as diverse as Malthus and Newton (Beauchamp), examining the expressive properties of physiognomy (Hollington) or names (Allingham), and applying the heuristic models of such theorists as Dolezel and Bakhtin to resolve ideological ambiguities (Weber, Fowler).(2) Typological exegesis has been employed to explicate the text as a fairy tale (Mills), an approach deriving ultimately from Leavis' treatment of the novel as a "moral fable."(3) Yet, regardless of particular emphasis or method, almost every study of Hard Times seeks to clarify the mimetic import of the novel -- to explicate, if only tangentially, the significance of the dystopic condition it concerns. But no critic has yet discovered that the text, while depicting the wretched environment of Coketown and elaborating the doctrine of self-interest on which it depends, provides a profound analysis of the unconscious motive for sustaining such a society. As we shall find, the formative principle of Coketown is the need to create an artificial time that repudiates the natural temporal tendency toward change and decay. In his study of narrative, Brooks relates the universal convention of plot to "the problem of temporality: man's timeboundedness, his consciousness of existence within the limits of mortality."(4) But, as we shall demonstrate, the fundamental purpose of Coketown is to deny or overcome this very predicament. A review of some basic points will help initiate our inquiry. The novel begins in a Coketown classroom where Mr. Gradgrind inculcates the first "principle" of a new mentality or way of thinking: "Now, what I want is, Facts."(5) The purpose of this education is to permit each graduate to enter adulthood equipped for success, which is here defined as the promotion of "self-interest" (303). To this end, the subjective faculties of "imagination" (57) and feeling -- especially the ability to feel pity -- must be sacrificed in order to develop the one faculty most capable of manipulating the objective world: practical (as opposed to speculative) reason. The perfect product of this education is Bitzer: "His mind was so exactly regulated, that he had no affections or passions. All his proceedings were the result of the nicest and coldest calculation" (150). Yet the ruthless "self-suppression" (195) demanded by this pedagogy ultimately thwarts the "self-interest" (303) it intends to advance. Far from benefitting its adherents by training th
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Designs on Truth: The Poetics of the Augustan Mock-Epic, by Gregory G. Colomb. Pennsylvania State U. Press, 1992. Pp. xxi + 228. In this book Colomb pursues two primary goals. Firstly, he tries to provide a useful summary description of the Augustan mock-epic. Secondly, he wants to shed light on the poetics of the genre. He is especially concerned to explain how the mock-epic uses satiric fictions to compel readers to adopt its judgmental "pieties" (xii), a feat that seems remarkable since its representations often utterly conflicted with contemporary readers' more empirically grounded knowledge of the historical counterparts. These objectives are, of course, commendable. Colomb might have produced a valuable study of a genre we would all like to know more about. But his book is not such a study. To begin with, Colomb does not present his materials cohesively, and his stance is pretentious. His book is "arrayed in two parts" (xvii): one focusing on mock-epic settings, the other on satiric portraits. An initial section, though, focuses on the mock-epic fable. In his preface Colomb states that he develops arguments about how the mock-epic "isolates its individual persons in terms of a wealth of particulars arrayed in a diagnostic network of metonymic (and causal) relations" (xvi), about how the mock-epic "is fascinated by language, its powers of social control, and its frightening--and thrilling--malleability" (xvi), and about how the genre maintains "a complex relation to law" (xvii). Many other plans are announced in this preface and in the course of the book. Some are taken up, but never for very long, and none are sufficiently developed. Colomb is, however, reliable, if no less profusive, in his statements about what his book does not do: "not a story of influence .... Nor is it a genetic story" (xi); "I do not attempt a comprehensive account of these poems"; "I will show little interest in tracking down epic sources of this or that mock-epic detail"; "I will not, unfortunately, have much to say about how mock-epic changes when it becomes a poem about a woman" (xvii); "I leave to posterity the question of whether The Dispensary can become again a work of intrinsic interest" (xix). "Part One" of Designs on Truth follows the "Preface," an "Introduction," and a "Prologue." "Part Two" is framed by another prologue and an epilogue. The postmodern--or "Modern"--mode of this study reminds this reader of nothing so much as the delirious energies of Swift's Tale, but without the intentional parody. There is, though, little that is innovative about Colomb's sense of what constitutes an Augustan mock-epic, a theory he sets forth piecemeal in the first half of his book. Four traits are seen as crucial: (1) a "strong, if caricatured resemblance to the epic fable" (1-30), (2) a sprawling contemporary urban landscape (33-58), (3) satire (59-77), and (4) a moral precept that shares with the epic a concern with the social order (79-116). With the exception of t
{"title":"Designs on Truth: The Poetics of the Augustan Mock-Epic","authors":"D. DeLuna","doi":"10.5860/choice.30-3108","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.30-3108","url":null,"abstract":"Designs on Truth: The Poetics of the Augustan Mock-Epic, by Gregory G. Colomb. Pennsylvania State U. Press, 1992. Pp. xxi + 228. In this book Colomb pursues two primary goals. Firstly, he tries to provide a useful summary description of the Augustan mock-epic. Secondly, he wants to shed light on the poetics of the genre. He is especially concerned to explain how the mock-epic uses satiric fictions to compel readers to adopt its judgmental \"pieties\" (xii), a feat that seems remarkable since its representations often utterly conflicted with contemporary readers' more empirically grounded knowledge of the historical counterparts. These objectives are, of course, commendable. Colomb might have produced a valuable study of a genre we would all like to know more about. But his book is not such a study. To begin with, Colomb does not present his materials cohesively, and his stance is pretentious. His book is \"arrayed in two parts\" (xvii): one focusing on mock-epic settings, the other on satiric portraits. An initial section, though, focuses on the mock-epic fable. In his preface Colomb states that he develops arguments about how the mock-epic \"isolates its individual persons in terms of a wealth of particulars arrayed in a diagnostic network of metonymic (and causal) relations\" (xvi), about how the mock-epic \"is fascinated by language, its powers of social control, and its frightening--and thrilling--malleability\" (xvi), and about how the genre maintains \"a complex relation to law\" (xvii). Many other plans are announced in this preface and in the course of the book. Some are taken up, but never for very long, and none are sufficiently developed. Colomb is, however, reliable, if no less profusive, in his statements about what his book does not do: \"not a story of influence .... Nor is it a genetic story\" (xi); \"I do not attempt a comprehensive account of these poems\"; \"I will show little interest in tracking down epic sources of this or that mock-epic detail\"; \"I will not, unfortunately, have much to say about how mock-epic changes when it becomes a poem about a woman\" (xvii); \"I leave to posterity the question of whether The Dispensary can become again a work of intrinsic interest\" (xix). \"Part One\" of Designs on Truth follows the \"Preface,\" an \"Introduction,\" and a \"Prologue.\" \"Part Two\" is framed by another prologue and an epilogue. The postmodern--or \"Modern\"--mode of this study reminds this reader of nothing so much as the delirious energies of Swift's Tale, but without the intentional parody. There is, though, little that is innovative about Colomb's sense of what constitutes an Augustan mock-epic, a theory he sets forth piecemeal in the first half of his book. Four traits are seen as crucial: (1) a \"strong, if caricatured resemblance to the epic fable\" (1-30), (2) a sprawling contemporary urban landscape (33-58), (3) satire (59-77), and (4) a moral precept that shares with the epic a concern with the social order (79-116). With the exception of t","PeriodicalId":43889,"journal":{"name":"PHILOLOGICAL QUARTERLY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"1993-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71042337","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1992-01-01DOI: 10.1007/978-0-230-57100-6_4
C. Relihan
{"title":"Liminal geography: Pericles and the politics of place","authors":"C. Relihan","doi":"10.1007/978-0-230-57100-6_4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-230-57100-6_4","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43889,"journal":{"name":"PHILOLOGICAL QUARTERLY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"1992-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"51663083","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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