Simbolisme as werklikheidsbenadering: Watter werklikheid?
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that the preferential status which the symbol has traditionally enjoyed in comparison with allegory, is symptomatic of a prejudice among critics who have collectively established a tradition of lit...
Abstract: Summary This article puts forward the argument that symbolism as poetic strategy should be approached in terms of its “historical effectiveness” in order to answer questions concerning the literary superiority which has traditionally been attributed to it in some circles. The work of Gadamer and Paul de Man, which focuses in different ways on the historically changing relationship between symbol and allegory serves as basis for the study. While Gadamer carefully outlines the route along which symbol and allegory reach a position of contrast with regard to each other towards the end of the eighteenth century, De Man problematizes the (romantic) valorization of the symbol (at the cost of allegory) by highlighting internal tensions in romantic poetry as well as in critical practice. This enables him to demonstrate that the preferential status which the symbol has traditionally enjoyed in comparison with allegory, is symptomatic of a prejudice among critics who have collectively established a tradition of lit...
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TL;DR: Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love (2007) and the cinematic version of Karen Blixen's novel Babette's Feast (1987) as discussed by the authors explore the significance of the enjoyment of food in relation to spirituality, as (re)presented in two texts.
Abstract: Summary This article explores the significance of the enjoyment of food in relation to spirituality, as (re)presented in two texts -Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love (2007) and the cinematic version of Karen Blixen's novel Babette's Feast (1987). It is argued that the pleasure derived from food occupies a crucial position in both texts, firstly in its own “hedonistic” right, but secondly also as far asit functions allegorically (Babette's Feast), or temporally (Eat, Pray, Love) regarding the (re)presentation of spiritually significant experience. That is, the enjoyment of food is (re)presented as a means of repeating (and perhaps anticipating) spiritually meaningful culinary experience (Babette's Feast). In Eat, Pray, Love, the spiritual awakening of the protagonist, in the “dark night of her soul”, is succeeded by a kind of “carnival”, followed by something resembling the Lent of the Christian tradition. Hence, her journey through space and time takes her from sensuous (though celibate) pleasure in foo...
4 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated allochronism, the denial of the simultaneity of the ethnographic other with the representing subject and the consequent placing of that other in an other time, with reference to Paul de Man's examination of the relation between symbol and allegory.
Abstract: Summary Allochronism, the denial of the simultaneity of the ethnographic other with the representing subject and the consequent placing of that other in an other time, is investigated in this article with reference to Paul de Man's examination of the relation between symbol and allegory. Johannes Fabian's discussion of allochronism in terms of the spatialisation of time is related to De Man's conception of the symbol, after which the collusion of allochronism with Empire is examined in terms of both the historicist project and the appearance of the novel. The allochronic invention of the innocence of people “discovered” by European explorers in the New World, is a sign of the inaccessibility experienced by the European explorers to what they found: this invention of innocence is an attempt to account for alterity within the epistemology of Empire. Such an insistence on epistemological innocence may be related to the constitutive ambivalence and resultant duplicity of the (early) novel in relation to its f...
2 citations
TL;DR: In this article, an allegorical reading of Antjie Krog's Lady Anne is attempted, and the allegorical point-for-point similarities between the characters include thematic (feminism and revolution), structural (both characters have concluding poems) and narratological (a story of concern about injustice supplanted by despair about art's function).
Abstract: Summary In this article an “allegorical” reading of Antjie Krog's Lady Anne is attempted. The allegorical point‐for‐point similarities between Antjie and Anne include thematic (feminism and revolution), structural (both characters have concluding poems) and narratological (a “story” of concern about injustice supplanted by despair about art's function) resemblances. This allegorical process could be explained as the succession of abstract ideas; the portrayal of these ideas in a text; the retrieval of these ideas by the reader and then the potential application of these ideas in the life of the reader. This model of interpretation as allegorical provides an inadequate explanation of especially the metafictional elements of Lady Anne and therefore postmodernist critics such as De Man (allegory as the incomprehensible nature of the text); Jameson (the inevitable use of known explanatory models in the interpretation of texts) and Derrida (the term “differance” enables a synthesis of the viewpoints of De Man ...
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Book•
[...]
TL;DR: The ontology of the work of art and its Hermeneutic importance is discussed in this article. But the ontology is not a theory of the human experience, and it does not describe the relationship between art and the human sciences.
Abstract: Translator's Preface \ Introduction \ Foreword \ Part I: The Question of Truth as it Emerges in the Experience of Art \ 1. Transcending the Aesthetic Dimension \ 2. The Ontology of the Work of Art and its Hermeneutic Significance \ Part II: The Extension of the Question of Truth to Understanding in the Human Sciences \ 3. Historical Preparation \ 4. Elements of a Theory of Hermeneutic Experience \ Part III: The Ontological Shift of Hermeneutics Guided by Language \ 5. Language and Hermeneutics \ Appendices and Supplements \ Afterword \ Subject Index \ Author Index.
7,968 citations
Book•
21 Sep 2010
TL;DR: A refreshing approach to the study of major Western philosophers is presented in this paper, where introductory essays by noted scholars enliven each volume with insights into the human side of the great thinkers, and provide authoritative discussions of the historical background, evolution, and imporace of their ideas.
Abstract: A refreshing approach to the study of major Western philosophers. Introductory essays by noted scholars enliven each volume with insights into the human side of the great thinkers, and provide authoritative discussions of the historical background, evolution, and imporace of their ideas. Highly recommended as stimulating classroom texts.
1,267 citations
TL;DR: This article argued that the common sense of empirical British philosophy owes much of its superiority over certain continental metaphysical excesses to its ability to circumscribe, as its own style and decorum demonstrate, the potentially disruptive power of rhetoric.
Abstract: Metaphors, tropes, and figural language in general have been a perennial problem and, at times, a recognized source of embarrassment for philosophical discourse and, by extension, for all discursive uses of language including historiography and literary analysis. It appears that philosophy either has to give up its own constitutive claim to rigor in order to come to terms with the figurality of its language or that it has to free itself from figuration altogether. And if the latter is considered impossible, philosophy could at least learn to control figuration by keeping it, so to speak, in its place, by delimiting the boundaries of its influence and thus restricting the epistemological damage that it may cause. This attempt stands behind recurrent efforts to map out the distinctions between philosophical, scientific, theological, and poetic discourse and informs such institutional questions as the departmental structure of schools and universities. It also pertains to the received ideas about differences between various schools of philosophical thought, about philosophical periods and traditions, as well as about the possibility of writing a history of philosophy or of literature. Thus, it is customary to assume that the common sense of empirical British philosophy owes much of its superiority over certain continental metaphysical excesses to its ability to circumscribe, as its own style and decorum demonstrate, the potentially disruptive power of rhetoric. "The Skywriters," says a contemporary literary critic (with tongue in cheek) in a recent polemical article, "march under the banner of Hegel and Continental Philosophy, while the Common Sense school [of literary criticism] is
249 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1973
TL;DR: This dictionary, dealing with contemporary critical terms, has been extensively revised and up-dated.
Abstract: This dictionary, dealing with contemporary critical terms, has been extensively revised and up-dated.
130 citations