Arpi Movsesian

Bio: Arpi Movsesian is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Aesthetics & Poetry. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 2 publications receiving 92 citations.

Love and its Critics: From the Song of Songs to Shakespeare and Milton’s Eden

Abstract: This book is a history of love and the challenge love offers to the laws and customs of its times and places, as told through poetry from the Song of Songs to John Milton’s Paradise Lost. It is also an account of the critical reception afforded to such literature, and the ways in which criticism has attempted to stifle this challenge. Bryson and Movsesian argue that the poetry they explore celebrates and reinvents the love the troubadour poets of the eleventh and twelfth centuries called fin’amor: love as an end in itself, mutual and freely chosen even in the face of social, religious, or political retribution. Neither eros nor agape, neither exclusively of the body, nor solely of the spirit, this love is a middle path. Alongside this tradition has grown a critical movement that employs a 'hermeneutics of suspicion', in Paul Ricoeur’s phrase, to claim that passionate love poetry is not what it seems, and should be properly understood as worship of God, subordination to Empire, or an entanglement with the structures of language itself – in short, the very things it resists. The book engages with some of the seminal literature of the Western canon, including the Bible, the poetry of Ovid, and works by English authors such as William Shakespeare and John Donne, and with criticism that stretches from the earliest readings of the Song of Songs to contemporary academic literature. Lively and enjoyable in its style, it attempts to restore a sense of pleasure to the reading of poetry, and to puncture critical insistence that literature must be outwitted. It will be of value to professional, graduate, and advanced undergraduate scholars of literature, and to the educated general reader interested in treatments of love in poetry throughout history.

Soviet (In)finite Jest: Leonid Yengibarov’s Pantomime and State Erasure

Abstract: This article presents Leonid Yengibarov’s innovations to Soviet pantomime and the ways in which his interdisciplinarity prompted philosophical reflection and dialogue. Yengibarov’s performances emphasized the tragicomic, a move away from traditional clowning and toward the recognition of and reflection on ethical responsibility. This unconventionality marked him as unpredictable in the decidedly curated reality of Soviet entertainment and often led him to deviate from what the state considered acceptable. As such, this article likewise explores the underlying reasons, particularly the socio-political, for why the custodians of public order, opinion, and law ultimately worked toward the erasure of his art, and perhaps even his life.

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined

Abstract: THE BETTER ANGELS OF OUR NATURE: WHY VIOLENCE HAS DECLINED. Steven Pinker, Penguin, New York, NY 2011. ISBN 978-0-670-02295-3.There's been a shooting in a Sikh Temple this morning. A lone gunman entered a Colorado theater and opened fire. Syrians are now engaged in civil war. Faced with daily news stories of death and destruction, it is easy to believe that things are getting worse. Not so, explains Harvard psychologist, Steven Pinker in his new work, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined.Pinker combines in-depth historical research with rigorous psychological research to argue the case for a decline in global violence. As Pinker aptly points out, many people look at our age as one of unprecedented violence and terror to be viewed with pessimism. Drawing on historical analysis, psychological research and findings from related sciences such as anthropology, sociology, and economics Pinker argues that the data paint a very different picture. In the first chapter, Pinker takes the reader on a quick journey through the history of the world pointing out that the ancient and medieval worlds were very different than the world we live in today. Numerous prehistoric skeletons bear evidence of very violent deaths. Ancient people destroyed entire tribes. Romans carried out violent executions. Medieval Knights led lies of violence and other Europeans meted out horrendous punishments for acts which might not even be judged worthy of condemnation in today's democracies. Finally, the early 20th century saw two World Wars before the long peace ensued. In light of that history, Pinker argues that perhaps we should reconsider our assumptions about our own world.In the first section of the book, Pinker identifies six historical trends which could have led to declines in violence. The first trend he calls the Pacification Process by which people gave up nomadic hunting and gathering lives for lives of agriculture in cities. Competition and anarchy in the prehistoric world made violence necessary for survival. The development of agriculture called for greater cooperation between individuals and the formation of governments to impose order created a world where violence was not always in one's best interest. Statistical analysis supports the idea that the emergence of states lead to a decline in violence. The second trend, the Civilizing Process, is an idea he developed from the work of Norbert Elias. In the late medieval and early modern periods, etiquette and social norms began to be important in social interactions, economics and technology began to advance, and governments began to become more centralized. This trend was also accompanied by a decline in violence. The third trend is the Humanitarian Revolution during which people began to increasingly find practices, such as torture, capital punishment, war and slavery, morally questionable. Empathy, compassion, and peace became important characteristics. The fourth trend is the Long Peace, which stems from the realization that since World War II no two major world powers have gone to war and, in spite of predictions to the contrary, nuclear weapons have never been used. …

The power of myth

Abstract: The interviews in the first five episodes were filmed at George Lucas's Skywalker Ranch in California, with the sixth interview conducted at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, during the final two summers of Campbell’s life. (The series was broadcast on television a year after his death.) In these discussions Campbell presents his ideas about comparative mythology and the ongoing role ofmyth in human society. These talks include excerpts from Campbell’s seminal work The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

The Intentional Fallacy

Abstract: Sometimes we find ourselves believing in the existence of an object which provides the basis for a new investigation. Its provenance is irrelevant. The properties of the source of an artwork are irrelevant to our reception of it. We find ourselves confronting the work, and it provides die material for further investigations. The artist's intentions are irrelevant to the identity of a work. Similarly, an author is only the source of a text. He has no other properties. The investigation is about the nature of the text.

The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century.

Abstract: 1. THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 2. INTELLECTUAL CENTRES 3. BOOKS AND LIBRARIES 4. THE REVIVAL OF THE LATIN CLASSICS 5. THE LATIN LANGUAGE 6. LATIN POETRY 7. THE REVIVAL OF JURISPRUDENCE 8. HISTORICAL WRITING 9. THE TRANSLATORS FROM GREEK AND ARABIC 10. THE REVIVAL OF SCIENCE 11. THE REVIVAL OF PHILOSOPHY 12. THE BEGINNINGS OF UNIVERSITIES INDEX