The paper examines the concept of imagination from a creative perspective, focusing on a central question concerning the author's level of control over the imaginative nature of his work. Using a ...comparative textual analysis approach, the discussion looks at specific writings to find similarities and differences in order to clarify the complex relationship between literature and imagination. The paper is organized into an introduction, two analytical sub-sections titled "Imagination" and "Analytical Imagination," and a conclusion. The introduction included a brief literature review as well as the methodological approach, which guided the main research questions about the relationships between literature and imagination and how those connections affect the interpretation process. It concludes with a reflection on the evolution of the Romantic notion of the poetic imagination in modern times (as envisioned by Pound and Beckett) and establishes a link between Aristotle's Mimesis and the concept of analytical imagination.
This article addresses the unusually elaborate dramatic context in Plato’s Protagoras and effect of sophistry on democratic Athens. Because Socrates evokes Odysseus’ κατάβασις in the Odyssey to ...describe the sophists in Callias’ house (314c-316b), I propose that Socrates depicts the sophists as bodiless shades residing in Hades. Like the shades dwelling in Hades with no connection to embodied humans on Earth, the sophists in the Protagoras are non-Athenians with no consideration for the democratic body of the Athenian πόλις. I conclude that sophistry can be detrimental to Athenian democracy because it can produce education inequality founded on wealth inequality.
This article aims to analyze the Decameron taking into account the relational and social dynamics of every human relationship. The work presents itself as a model of etiquette of speech, life, death ...and passions, because balance and respect for others, values that are hidden in all the stories, anticipate the sixteenth-century concepts of civilization and etiquette, both evolutions of the principle of courtesy. The relational dimensions are translated on the basis of an implicit and necessary social order, canceled by the plague, which must be maintained for there to be harmony; in this regard, Goffmanian sociology finds a coherent witness in the Decameron. Boccaccio’s anthropological choice - to entrust a possible ethical solution to the brigade - is the true distinctive feature of the equality represented by the Decameron.
LITERARY INTERPRETATION: A DEBATE BETWEEN INTENTIONALISM AND ANTI-INTENTIONALISM
The paper presents a controversy between three Anglo-American theories about the role of the author’s intentions in ...literary interpretation and about the goal of literary interpretations. Moderate anti-intentionalism (Beardsley) maintains that the meaning of the text is determined by the linguistic conventions, therefore the aim of interpretation is to reveal its meaning and not the author’s intentions. Hirsch’s intentionalism claims that the meaning of the text is determined by the author’s intentions and linguistic conventions, so the aim of the interpretation is to discover the author’s meaning. Hypothetical intentionalism (Carroll, Levinson) argues that the meaning of the text is determined by the best hypotheses of ideal readers about the author’s meaning. In the fifth heading, the paper rejects two arguments of anti-intentionalism that a literary work is autonomous and that the aim of literary interpretation should be interpretation of the text. The paper rejects the aesthetic argument by stating that the sole purpose of interpretation is not to show the aesthetic qualities of the work and that there may be other legitimate aims of interpretation. It further rejects the communicative argument that literary works, because of their fictional nature, merely imitate illocutionary speech acts, by offering the opposite argument that not all literature is fiction. Finally, it is argued that the fundamental error of some theoretical discussions is generalization and that intentionalism is acceptable. In conclusion, the acceptability and unacceptability of (anti) intentionalism is decided by the age and type of the text, figures of speech and interests of certain interpretive paradigms.
The article discusses the connections between classical rhetoric and speech act theory of John Austin and John Searle, with regard to genre and interpretive research on occasional works of early ...Slovak literature. It builds on the traditional aims of rhetoric and the role of the rhetorician (in the spirit of Aristotle, Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, and Marcus Tullius Cicero), as well as on insights into the connections between Aristotelian kinds of rhetoric and the typology of illocutionary acts highlighted by Walter H. Beale, Emmanuelle Danblon, and Cristina Pepe. The author applies selected tools proposed by Teun A. van Dijk for research into the pragmatics of literary communication: the notion of the indirect speech act in relation to the functional syncretism of early literature and the notion of the macro-speech-act in relation to the communicative function of the literary text as a whole. The article aims at defining occasional literary works on the basis of their pragmatic function and to characterise selected genres of occasional literature (supported by older theory of poetic and rhetorical theory). Following the work of the intellectual historian Quentin Skinner, the author outlines the ways in which speech act theory can be used in the interpretation of occasional literary works of Slovak literature of earlier periods.
The interaction of literary and linguistic approaches in the process of analyzing a literary text makes it possible to penetrate into the depth of the artistic work. This is the relevance of the ...study. The authors conducted a philological analysis of the ethical S. Zweig’s short story “The Governess” using these approaches. The following means were identified to characterize the psychological tension of the characters: climax and introspection. The analysis of linguistic-stylistic means in the description of the presented images of characters and their interactions is carried out. The analysis revealed the following tropes: direct nominations amplified by the epithets; repetitions of verbs and nouns; artistic comparisons; metaphors; metonymies; paraphrases; hyperboles; personifications; internal parallelisms; figures of “default”; internal monologues; rhetorical questions and exclamations. Three stages of dynamization of the emotional experiences of the main characters are identified with the help of linguistic-stylistic means: 1) slight suspicion, vague contradiction, caution; 2) distrust, suspicion, nervousness, agitation; 3) open protest, experience, grief, despair, disappointment, tears, silence, darkness. The conclusion states that S. Zweig made the best presentation of linguistic and stylistic means to characterize the main characters and the growth of their emotional tension.
Associate Professor, Department of Religious Logic and Understanding at Islamic Culture and Thought Institute One of the foundations of Amin Khouli’s literary interpretation theory is Neo-I’tizizali ...thoughts. This paper, using an analytical-critical approach based on documentary data, in addition to the introduction of Khuoli’s theory, has revealed and criticized the framework of the Neo-I’tizizali’s thought in Khouli’s theory, which has been effective in his later interpretive approaches. One of the advantages of the Khouli’s Neo-I’tizizali principle is the social interpretation approach of his theory. In contrast, due to the inherent shortcomings of this thought, some challenges have been made including the innovative view in all dimensions of religion, the disconnection with the interpretive tradition, the relative understanding of the Quran and the dominance of the text centrality in the interpretation. Also, the lack of a revelatory look on mind is one of the problems of this theory. In addition, the extremist attention to understanding of the primary audience and the ignorance of the Quran’s culturaliztion would lead to inclination towards cultural interpretation. The foundations of the Khouli’s Neo-I’tizizali theory such as lack of expurgation in textual understanding principles and explaining the worldview have made it subjective-oriented. In this view, regardless of its divine aspect, the Quran as an animated text was the subject of the current investigation; therefore, its revelatory identity was denied. The Khouli’s theory has not been secure from this problem, and this is observed in the works of students and researchers relying on his theory.
Reading, interpretation and analysis are closely connected in contemporary literary interpretation. Their syncretism is also influenced by narratology, which today acts as a useful theoretical ...mediator between (narrative) structures and interpretative approaches. Thus, contemporary literary interpretation includes two levels (assembling reference frames and filling the gaps) with several processes, and four elements, i.e., the author, the text, the reader and the context, the most important of which is the intention of the text. Interpretations of Cankar’s novels differ already on the first level of literary interpretation, mainly due to digressive narrative and a high degree of emotionality. For the future second level of interpretation of Cankar’s novels, the paper suggests the following elements: moral perspectivism, taboos or stereotypes, autobiography, the relationship between the narrator and the character, in other words the use of the latest approaches, such as e.g., narrative empathy, narratological analysis of poetics and postfeminist approaches.
This reprint, titled “New approaches to Qur’anic hermeneutics in the Muslim world”, discusses the approaches that play significant roles in modern Qur’anic interpretation in the Islamic world. The ...eleven articles in this reprint demonstrate the richness of resources in Qur'anic hermeneutics in the Muslim World. The authors from different backgrounds and regions have made a great contribution to Qur’anic studies and hermeneutics in the modern period. The following topics are covered throughout the reprint: Decolonizing Qurʾanic Studies, contextualist approach in the modern period and its theoretical origins in the classical Islamic scholarship, Qur’an hermeneutics and historicism (or contextualism in western context) in contemporary Turkey, transempirical exegesis in Said Nursi’s Risale-i Nur Collection, Fādil al-Samarrā’ī’s (b. 1933) contribution to literary and rhetorical Qur’anic exegesis, Shia scholar Ayatollah Yusuf Sanei’s (d.2020) broader jurisprudential approach, Comparative Theology and comparative readings (isrā’īliyyāt and direct Bible citations) in Qur’anic exegesis with special reference to the narrative of Prophet Yaḥyā (John the Baptist) in the Qur’an and the Bible, critique of the concept of naskh (abrogation) in contemporary Qur’ānic hermeneutics (Naṣr Ḥāmid Abū Zayd’s critique), thematic interpretation (tafsīr mawḍū‘ī) in Indonesia in the 2000s, inclusive Islamic interpretations in the light of rationalistic Maturidite theology, and violence and jihad in Islam: From the war of words to the clashes of definitions.
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