Conceptualization of Space within the Tang Landscape Quatrain

The thesis explores the poet’s creation of conceptualized space within the Tang landscape quatrain in the Tang dynasty (618-907) by usage of literary techniques, the focal point being that of temporal and spatial progression to create dynamic and static space. “Space” within the thesis is defined as the “matrix of which forms emerge, medium in which they are related,” a mentalization and visualization of breadth, depth, and width created within the artistic medium. I argue that the concision of Classical Chinese allows the poet to transcend the linguistic limitations imposed by rules of verse to create boundless, semantic space by constructing vivid tableaus of scene and emotion. In Classical Chinese, there are no verb tenses, no indication of plurality in nouns, and no gender or cases for pronouns. The poet must use language to mold intangible form into tangible existence. The deliberate application of ambiguity is a vital component in the creation of multi-layered dimensions of space within Classical Chinese poetry. The Tang dynasty is often known as the golden age of Chinese poetry, dominated by the emergence of new innovations and form as poetry writing became more ubiquitous. The breaking from traditional rules of verse allowed the poet to uniquely utilize space to further their reflections in their poetry. The thesis examines the poet’s creation of spatiality through two lenses of spatiality: creation of external space through landscape, and secondly, the creation of internal space through mental reflection upon that very landscape. The Tang poet approaches the landscape not only as a place setting, but also as an entire subliminal entity in which he aims to capture with his senses and perceptions to create space in which the reader can visualize. The descriptive poetry of the landscape quatrain is simply not a limitation as a medium of visual communication as Tang poets infuse layers of meaning with the economy of a few characters. The significance of framing this study within traditional poetic concerns is to understand the intersections of nature, landscape, literary technique, and aesthetic experience. There has been much academic scholarship on the poetry of the High Tang by scholars such as James J. Y. Liu, Stephen Owen, Burton Watson, just to name a few. However, the objective of this thesis is to offer a new perspective through the lens of spatial creation. Quatrains written by famous Tang poets, Li Bai (701-762), Wang Wei (701-761), and Meng Haoran (689-740) are selected to illustrate how the technique of progression is uniquely utilized to create depth and perspective of space.Asian Studie

Computational Stylistics in Poetry, Prose, and Drama

The contributions in this edited volume approach poetry, narrative, and drama from the perspective of Computational Stylistics. They exemplify methods of computational textual analysis and explore the possibility of computational generation of literary texts. The volume presents a range of computational and Natural Language Processing applications to literary studies, such as motif detection, network analysis, machine learning, and deep learning

Computational Stylistics in Poetry, Prose, and Drama

The contributions in this edited volume approach poetry, narrative, and drama from the perspective of Computational Stylistics. They exemplify methods of computational textual analysis and explore the possibility of computational generation of literary texts. The volume presents a range of computational and Natural Language Processing applications to literary studies, such as motif detection, network analysis, machine learning, and deep learning

Trans Action and Poetic Justice: Retrospective Trans Narratives of High School

Trans students are part of a heteronormative culture of shared spaces within secondary education. Spaces that are complicated by external and internal factors that simultaneously contradict and complement each other. Functioning within a Queer Theory framework, this qualitative study explores the complex relationships between student agency, student identity, and school function, as expressed in the retrospective accounts of five trans participants who all attended suburban high schools in New York. Poetic transcription challenges the extant research of trans students. Studies that predominately consolidate the transgender experience under the umbrella of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and questioning (LGBTQ), a conflation that creates confused understandings of gender identity. In addition to this, trans enumerated research primarily reports predictive factors that identify trans students as a higher risk marginalized population. Cumulatively, these research strands serve to perpetuate troubling discourses that influence educational practices on both the institutional and pedagogical levels. This study disrupts this discourse, sharing the retrospective narrative of trans student voices and exposing educational policy and methods that, at the very best, are well-intentioned, and at their worst, are oppressive or exclusionary. Participant trans actions serve as a call for poetic justice, empowerment, and positive representation of trans students

Introduction: Creating new worlds out of old texts

Despite initial expectations that globalization would eradicate the need for geographical space and distance, "maps matter" today in ways that were unimaginable a mere two decades ago. Technological advances have brought to the fore an entirely new set of methods for representing and interacting with spatial formations, while the ever-increasing mobility of ideas, capital, and people has created a world in which urban and regional inequalities are being heightened at an accelerating pace. As a result, the ability of any given place to reap the benefits of global socio-technical flows mainly hinges on the forging of connections that can transcend the limits of its material location. In contrast to the traditional "topographic" perspective, the territorial extent of economic and political realms is being increasingly conceived through a "topological" lens: as a set of overlapping reticulations in which the nature and frequency of links among different sites matter more than the physical distances between them. At the same time, a parallel stream of innovation has revolutionized the understanding of space in disciplines such as history, archaeology, classics, and linguistics. Much of this work has been concentrated in the burgeoning field of the "digital humanities", which has been persistently breaking new ground in the conceptualization of past and present places. When seen in the context of globalization-induced dynamics, such developments emphasize the need for developing cartographic approaches that can bring out the inherently networked structure of social space via a lens that is both theoretically integrative and heuristically sharp. We have decided to respond to these analytical and methodological challenges by focusing on ancient Greek literature: a corpus of work that has often been characterized as being free of the constraints imposed by post-Enlightenment cartography, despite setting the foundations of many contemporary map-making methods. In the 12 chapters that follow, we highlight the rich array of representational devices employed by authors from this era, whose narrative depictions of spatial relations defy the logic of images and surfaces that dominates contemporary cartographic thought. There is a particular focus on Herodotus' Histories - a text that is increasingly taken up by classicists as the example of how ancient perceptions of space may have been rather different to the cartographic view that we tend to assume. But this volume also considers the spatial imaginary through the lens of other authors (e.g. Aristotle), genres (e.g. hymns), cultural contexts (e.g. Babylon), and disciplines (e.g. archaeology), with a view to stimulating a broad-based discussion among readers and critics of Herodotus and ancient Greek literature and culture more generally. In fact, many of the disciplinary and conceptual perspectives explored here are at their inception, and have a more general relevance for the wider community of humanities and social science researchers interested in novel mapping techniques. The resulting juxtaposition of more "traditional", philological discussions of space with chapters dedicated to the exploration of new technologies may jar or appear uneven, especially since we have not set out to privilege one method over another. But it is through viewing these different approaches in the round and reading them alongside each other that, we maintain, we can best disrupt customary ways of thinking (and writing) about space and catch a glimpse of new possibilities

Oral features of the Qur’ān detected in public recitation

"This essay examines some of the textual features of the Qur’ān that emerge more prominently when listening to it, features that may enhance insight gained during slow or silent reading sessions."--Page 141

Shape, Space and Typeface: Mapping Black Subjectivity through Caribbean Aesthetics

The Caribbean is frequently imagined and aestheticized by the image of the basin, which limits the way the region is confined in geographic and historic terms. By conceptualizing the poets as mapmakers, the collections by Kei Miller, Olive Senior, and M. NourbeSe Phillip reference the container of the basin but remediate it in poetic terms. The movement towards a distinctive lack of containment illustrates the dynamic literary and geographical operations of the Caribbean, linking typography and topography. Reading with a new lens, including digital resources that re-spatialize these poems, demonstrates the complexities that characterize the formation of these texts and how they resist neat containers and containment, thereby charting new ways to redraw and reimagine places and spaces

Operatic Mysticisms: Mountains, Deserts, Waterscapes

Operatic Mysticisms: Mountains, Deserts, Waterscapes examines the ways we encounter environments as readers/viewers of operas, literature, film, and sound recordings, and how each medium requires different detail-gathering techniques. Respective to the previously mentioned mediums, Sun & Sea (2017), Mount Analogue (1952), El Mar La Mar (2017), and Energy Field (2010) are analyzed by engaging with environmental media studies and invention. Reflecting the nature of each landscape—summits of mountains, aporias of deserts, and mysteries of waterscapes—an elemental approach is taken in investigating how these spaces may be noticed, internalized, recorded, and traversed by both the artist and viewer. With an emphasis on limitations of mediums, language, and equipment, this thesis argues that artists/readers/viewers in turn inhabit these rendered environments—while a looped response (termed as operatic mysticism) threads ekphrasis and imagination before and during the production, in the art proper, and in our minds during and well-after consumption

Poetry and Prayer: Stotras in the Religious and Literary History of Kashmir

This dissertation investigates the close connection between poetry and prayer in South Asia by studying the history of Sanskrit hymns of praise (stotras) in Kashmir. It offers a broad introduction to the history and general features of the stotra genre, and it charts the course of these literary hymns in Kashmir from the ninth century to the present. Historically, Kashmir was one of the most dynamic and influential centers of Sanskrit learning and literary production in South Asia. This dissertation focuses on a number of innovative texts from this region, such as Ksemaraja's eleventh-century commentaries and Sahib Kaul's seventeenth-century hymns, which have received little scholarly attention. In particular, it offers the first study in any European language of the Stutikusumanjali, a major work of religious literature dedicated to the god Siva and one of the only extant witnesses to the trajectory of Sanskrit literary culture in fourteenth-century Kashmir. This dissertation also contributes to the study of Saivism by examining the ways that Saiva poets have integrated the traditions of Sanskrit literature (kavya) and poetics (alankarasastra), theology (especially non-dualism), and Saiva worship and devotion. It argues for the diverse configurations of Saiva bhakti expressed and explored in these literary hymns and the challenges they present for standard interpretations of Hindu bhakti. More broadly, this study of stotras from Kashmir offers new perspectives on the history and vitality of prayer in South Asia and its complex relationships to poetry and poetics