Oath formulas in the Poetic Edda

This study examines oaths in the ON Poetic Edda primarily from a linguistic and rhetorical standpoint with the aim of deducing syntactic-rhetorical formulas for oath swearing. As J. Grimm (1816) said and Hibbitts (1992) reiterated, poetic formulations in oral performance cultures may have had mnemonic functions and likely closely resembled real performance, which lends further validity and benefit to this project. This report begins with an examination of the relevant scholarly literature on oaths from Indo-European through ON. Four examples of oaths from the Poetic Edda are then presented, compared, and read with rhetorical and syntactic strategies to discover the formulas. A discussion section presents three evident conclusions on the structure of oath formulas: oaths are indeed formulaic, formula pieces can be optional but ordering does not change, and certain morpho-syntactic choices are intricately tied to the setting of oaths. Finally, directions for future research are suggested.Germanic Studie

“It Sounds Like a Drama:” Hearing Stories of Chronic Low Back Pain Through Poetic (Re)presentation

A poetic voice develops in different ways and from different sources. In this paper, a poetic voice is brought to the experiences of patients and family members as recounted in the first phase of a UK National Health Service funded Q-methodological study, the key outcomes of which are summarized. Their stories are presented as a single poetic performance text crafted from the analysis of combined transcripts of three focus group discussions. The performance bears witness to the sadness, frustration, and resolve of those living with chronic low back pain, and offers an additional hearing to that provided by the main study

Challenging Perceptions of Disability through Performance Poetry Methods: The "Seen but Seldom Heard" Project.

This paper considers performance poetry as a method to explore lived experiences of disability. We discuss how poetic inquiry used within a participatory arts-based research framework can enable young people to collectively question society’s attitudes and actions towards disability. Poetry will be considered as a means to develop a more accessible and effective arena in which young people with direct experience of disability can be empowered to develop new skills that enable them to tell their own stories. Discussion of how this can challenge audiences to critically reflect upon their own perceptions of disability will also be developed

Guerrilla warriors on the Brooklyn Bridge: a case-study of the Unbearables' poetic terrorism (1994-2001)

On 13 September 1994, a loose collective of Downtown poets known as the Unbearables lined up on the Brooklyn Bridge pedestrian walkway, all the way from Manhattan to Brooklyn. During rush hour, they simultaneously ranted erotic poems in six-minute loops, so that, at least theoretically, "a few words from each reader would have reached each pedestrian's ear, and the whole string of phrases would add up to a single 'stochastic' poem, a different version for each and every passerby" (Bey 1994, n.p.). The Unbearables' thirty-minute performance was repeated in six consecutive years with only minor variations. The current article reconstructs the annual Brooklyn Bridge readings on the basis of previously unpublished sources that include personal interviews with the Unbearables and archival material from New York University's Fales Library Downtown Collection and the SUNY of Buffalo Poetry Collection. On the basis of this reconstruction, the article analyzes the event as a poetic implementation of anarchist philosopher Hakim Bey's theories on the Temporary Autonomous Zone, Poetic Terrorism and Artistic Disappearance

Integrating multiple representations: fighting asthma

This paper seeks to engage debates about integrating pluralisms regarding multiple forms/representations and how they might function smoothly if they are closely aligned. This paper offers, narrative poetry with an artistic impression aimed at seeing how these might interact with each other. Like poetry, visual images are unique and can evoke particular kinds of emotional and visceral responses. By offering narrative poetry together with an artistic representation it is not meant to de-value the importance of either, but it is aimed at seeing how these arts-based methods and creative analytical practices might unite as a narrative to offer knew ways of ‘knowing’ and ‘seeing

Pindaric Kleos

Artykuł porusza kwestię funkcjonowania pojęcia sławy - kleos - w „Odach zwycięskich” Pindara. Pierwszym problemem jest stosunek pomiędzy kleos Pindara a kleos epickim, w szczególności Homeryckim. Staram się odpowiedzieć na pytanie, dlaczego Pindar w bardzo ograniczony sposób korzystał z motywów pochodzących z „Iliady” i „Odysei”, natomiast bardzo często sięgał do poezji cyklicznej. Przeprowadzam dokładną analizę ostatnich wersów trzeciej „Ody Pytyjskiej” w świetle Homeryckiej koncepcji kleos oraz bardzo archaicznej formuły poetyckiej kleos aphthiton. Następnie rozważam relację Pindara z wcześniejszymi poetami lirycznymi, głównie na podstawie fragmentów z Ibykosa 282a (S151), „Elegii Platejskiej” Symonidesa, krótko wspominając Stezychora. Staram się pokazać jak koncepcje kleos w tradycji poetyckiej wpłynęły na Pindara.This article discusses the issue of how kleos works in Pindar’s epinician odes. Firstly, it deals with the relationship between Pindaric and epic, and specifically, Homeric kleos. It tries to answer the question why Pindar was rather reluctant to extensively use the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey” in his odes and much preferred the cyclic poems. I am providing a close analysis of the closing line of the “Pythian 3” in view of Homeric concepts of kleos and a poetic formula of kleos aphthiton. Next, I am discussing Pindar’s relationship with earlier lyric poets, mainly on the basis of passages from Ibycus’ 282a (S151) and Simonides’ “The Platea Elegy”, also briefly mentioning Stesichorus. I am trying to display how their understanding of the mechanics of poetic kleos influenced Pindar

The Essential Achille Mizzi, selected, translated, and introduced by Peter Serracino Inglott : a case for performative translation

Delivered on the occasion of the English publication of Achille Mizzi's essential poetry in Maltese, this paper discusses the issue of the translatability of literary works. One of its key arguments concerns the translated poem as an aesthetic orientation neither capriciously free of the original, nor yet restricted to a repeatable meaning. The paper argues that the literary translator, in this case Peter Serracino Inglott, must work at the associative and inferential level, careful not to replicate the identical devices of the original text in a new poetic context where they might be rendered ineffective, but equally careful to project the connotative reach and aesthetic potential inhering in the original work. One consequence of this creative engagement with the original text is the mutual growth of translator and translated work: the translator must submit to the artistically unfolding world of the original text, but also revives its progressive insight with intuitive contributions that maintain its connotative direction. The translator finds his ordinary self previously translated, as it were, by the poetic universe he inhabits, submitting his sensibility to the very archetypal flow and figurative trends that he now extends.peer-reviewe

The story of Oh: the aesthetics and rhetoric of a common vowel sound

Studies in Musical Theatre is the only peer-reviewed journal dedicated to musical theatre. It was launched in 2007 and is now in its seventh volume. It has an extensive international readership and is edited by Dominic Symonds and George Burrows. This article investigates the use of the ‘word’ ‘Oh’ in a variety of different performance idioms. Despite its lack of ‘meaning’, the sound is used in both conversation and poetic discourse, and I discuss how it operates communicatively and expressively through contextual resonances, aesthetic manipulation and rhetorical signification. The article first considers the aesthetically modernist work of Cathy Berberian in Bussotti’s La Passion Selon Sade; then it considers the rhetorically inflected use of ‘Oh’ to construct social resonance in popular song;finally, it discusses two important uses of the sound ‘Oh’ which bookend the Broadway musical Oklahoma!, serving to consolidate the allegorical and musico-dramatic narrative of the show

The art, poetics, and grammar of technological innovation as practice, process, and performance

Usually technological innovation and artistic work are seen as very distinctive practices, and innovation of technologies is understood in terms of design and human intention. Moreover, thinking about technological innovation is usually categorized as “technical” and disconnected from thinking about culture and the social. Drawing on work by Dewey, Heidegger, Latour, and Wittgenstein and responding to academic discourses about craft and design, ethics and responsible innovation, transdisciplinarity, and participation, this essay questions these assumptions and examines what kind of knowledge and practices are involved in art and technological innovation. It argues that technological innovation is indeed “technical”, but, if conceptualized as techne, can be understood as art and performance. It is argued that in practice, innovative techne is not only connected to episteme as theoretical knowledge but also has the mode of poiesis: it is not just the outcome of human design and intention but rather involves a performative process in which there is a “dialogue” between form and matter and between creator and environment in which humans and non-humans participate. Moreover, this art is embedded in broader cultural patterns and grammars—ultimately a ‘form of life’—that shape and make possible the innovation. In that sense, there is no gap between science and society—a gap that is often assumed in STS and in, for instance, discourse on responsible innovation. It is concluded that technology and art were only relatively recently and unfortunately divorced, conceptually, but that in practices and performances they were always linked. If we understand technological innovation as a poetic, participative, and performative process, then bringing together technological innovation and artistic practices should not be seen as a marginal or luxury project but instead as one that is central, necessary, and vital for cultural-technological change. This conceptualization supports not only a different approach to innovation but has also social-transformative potential and has implications for ethics of technology and responsible innovation