Intertextuality and Allusion

Ruth, Naomi, and Boaz thrive during a dark time in Israel’s history—the days when the judges governed. The final two segments in Judges (chaps. 17–21) summarily demonstrate that when autonomy prevails, people and society deteriorate into spiritual and moral chaos. According to many scholars, the book of Ruth stands as an independent novella encouraging random acts of love and kindness. On the other hand, many Bible interpreters contend that the book of Ruth whispers daringly as a diatribe of two industrious women who manipulate a male-dominated society through sexual prowess in order to survive. Through the grammatical-historical method and a close examination of the canonical text, I conclude that these books are integrally connected and that the characters in Ruth provide a stark contrast to those in the summary episodes of Judges. I show that through the use of historical setting, behavioral contrasts, and intertextual connections with Torah the author of the book of Ruth provides a subtle polemic against personal autonomy. This polemic, although specific to its historical backdrop when the judges governed, continues to cry out against personal autonomy and provide hope through obedience to the spirit of Torah.

A chiastic reading of Psalm 106 reveals its import for Israel and the present day. In addition, the psalms allusions to the period of the judges help the reader consider the psalm s current relevance. The interrelations between Psalms 106 and 107 suggest that Gods people should liturgically rehearse adverse cultural history as penitential intercession-penitence for analogous or related sin and intercession to excise the residual cultural implications. The current need for racial reconciliation within the evangelical church should be seen as an opportunity for the kind of peniten tial intercession urged by Psalm 106.

This is an annotated bibliography on important intertextual works. After this bibliography is given, an extensive general bibliography is also included. For interpreters, especially biblical interpreters intending to work on the subject or use intertextuality as their approach, this may be a useful tool.

In this paper, I argue that the traditional narrative of Iphigenia's sacrifice lies allusively behind the opening scenes of the Iliad (1.8-487). Scholars have long suspected that this episode is evoked in Agamemnon's scathing rebuke of Calchas (1.105-8), but I contend that this is only one moment in a far more sustained allusive dialogue: both the debate over Chryseis and her eventual return to her father replay and rework the sacrifice story. The Iliad begins by recalling the start of the whole Trojan war. [See https://twitter.com/Nellenist/status/1517245751679762435 for a brief summary of key points and please contact me for a correctly paginated offprint.]

R. Joel Kennedy’s, “The Recapitulation of Israel: Use of Israel’s History in Matthew 1:1–4:11” explains the New Testament’s use of the Old Testament in Matthew 1:1–4:11 in terms of recapitulation. Israel’s history is restated in the life of Jesus within Matthew’s narrative progressing Matthew’s Christology. According to Kennedy, the recapitulation of Israel’s history in Matt 1:1–4:11 is seen in the genealogy (1:1–17), the birth narrative (2:1–23) and the baptism narrative (3:1–4:11). Fitting Kennedy’s thesis is an instance of intertextuality between Matt 3:1 and Judg 21:25. In Matt 3:1, the phrase, “In those days,” Ἐν δὲ ταῖς ἡμέραις ἐκείναις alludes to Judg 21:25 “In those days,” Ἐν δὲ ταῖς ἡμέραις ἐκείναις, in order to recapitulate the summation of Israel’s need for a king in the days of the Judges, “in those days there was no king in Israel, everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judg 16:7; 17:1; 19:1; 21:25). This intertextual allusion has the effect of saying, “at this time” Israel needed a king just as they did during the era of the Judges. Rather than saying “at that time,” Matthew uses the unique construction Ἐν δὲ ταῖς ἡμέραις ἐκείναις in order to allude to Judg 21:25 “in those days.” Richard Hays’ standard criteria for detecting intertextuality substantiate the identification, interpretation, and significance of this allusion to the Old Testament. This intertextual allusion augments the significance of Christ as King in Matthew and clarifies what some understand to be a textual awkwardness.

This paper offers an introduction to 'multiforms' as associated systems of verbal elements that develop in the memory of an individual and are used in text production. It examines these in the highly conservative kalevalaic mythological poetry of Finns and Karelians, where such multiforms become are sufficiently conservative in social circulation that they can become referentially meaningful. This paper looks briefly at general variation in production, variation by dialect, variation by situation and also the meaningful application of kalevalaic epic multiforms in exceptional contexts to produce new meanings

This paper presents some of the same information in the Finnish language "Multiformit kalevalamittaisessa epiikassa" (2010), but it presents a more general introduction to the poetic system and does not open formal typologies of multiforms in this poetic system.

This article draws upon a reader-response and canonical-hermeneutical perspective in order to analyze the manner in which 2 Sam 22 and Ps 18 are embedded in their respective literary contexts. Psalm 18’s superscription functions both to guide the interpretation of the following psalm as well as evoke its “Doppelgänger” in 2 Sam 22 (and “behind” it the Song of Moses in Deut 32,1-43). It not only contains a prayer articulated in a situation of distress, as a song of thanksgiving it also retrospectively witnesses to divine acts of salvation that have an abiding validity. This analysis demonstrates that the intertextual reading of biblical texts as a significant moment of the “canon” is not a secondary imposition upon these texts from the outside.

The article surveys recent scholarship on the use of creation imagery in the Gospel of John, with the aim of presenting rather exhaustive register of possible references. Both the obvious and the less clear-cut allusions to Gen 1–3 are discussed, the main focus being to accumulate and assess evidence (for or against) all the apparent references to creation imagery. Included in this examination are several unconvincing and even far-fetched proposals advanced by some modern scholars, in order to give the fullest possible picture of current discourse on these issues. After discussing the creation theme in the Prologue (1:1–18), the article explores the presence of creation imagery in the Book of Signs (1:19–12:50) and the Book of Glory (13:1–21:25)

En este trabajo se estudian las características particulares del proyecto editorial y literario que, desde 1985, viene desarrollando Ediciones Vigía. La reflexión se centra en el análisis la obra Los graduados de Kafka (2008), del autor cubano Jorge Ángel Hernández Pérez, por medio de la cuál se exploran y distuten las características artesanales y los componentes artísticos que otorgan una intensidad dramática al contenido del libro. Se discuten aspectos paralelos como la apropiación, la forma en la que los libros de artista demandan una la relación diferente de sus lectores, la distribución y elaboración de libros artesanales y el papel particular que, en este caso, tiene la intervención del editor y los diseñadores. Asimismo, se reflexiona sobre las referencias cruzadas entre lo que se denomina «kafkiano», los elementos intertextuales y el mundo en el que se desarrollan los relatos que componen la obra de Hernández Pérez.

An allusion in the source text poses a serious problem for a translator. A relevance-theoretic approach would define an "allusion" as the re-use of language from a prior text such that, by calling the prior text to mind, an implied reader is aided in his/her attempt to plausibly reconstruct the alluding author's meaning. For this to happen, the reader's "context" in the relevance-theoretic sense must include the source of the borrowed language. To explicate the connection for the reader, however, can thwart the pragmatic effects of an allusion, since these often require maintaining some "openness" in the text; hence the translator's dilemma. Isaiah 40-55 (Deutero-Isaiah or DtI), a richly allusive text, furnishes an ideal test case for a descriptive translation study (DTS) focused on this source-text feature. This investigation of eleven Portuguese versions will attempt to determine whether and how the translators' decisions with regard to DtI's allusions might be accounted for. Source-oriented approaches to translating often tend toward lexical concordance; therefore, these approaches-in theory-should tend to preserve instances of vocabulary that is shared between an alluding-and an alluded-to text. Target-oriented approaches (e.g. "functional equivalence") are more interested in contextual clarity than lexical concordance; these could then be expected to produce target texts that are less allusive. Increased sophistication in translation theory should result in more sophisticated approaches to allusion in translating. Collaborative and coordinated translation projects should produce more allusive target texts than those whose procedures are more piecemeal. The investigation reveals less correlation than expected between general source-orientedness and allusiveness in the target text. Target-oriented approaches-e.g., classical functional equivalence-do tend to produce less allusive target texts. In addition, there is a correlation between a translation project's organization and the perspicuity of allusion in the target text, but it is mostly negative. That is, projects that do their work piecemeal produce unallusive versions, but more collaborative and coordinated projects still leave many inter-textual resonances inaudible. It appears that translations will preserve this source-text feature in a way that tends toward randomness unless the perspicuity of inter-textual allusions is articulated as a conscious value in translating. Above all, "allusion-friendly" translating will require target cultures that want more allusive Bibles. Translators, as "model readers" themselves, will need to recognize the presence and function of allusions in the source text and make the attempt to represent these in translation a priority. Stellenbosch University http://scholar.sun.ac.za Dit blyk dat hierdie brontekskenmerk slegs op 'n lukrake wyse in 'n vertaling tot sy reg sal laat kom, tensy die duidelikheid van intertekstuele sinspelings as ʼn bewuste waarde in die vertaling uitgespel word. Bowendien, "sinspelingsvriendelike" vertaling sal teikenkulture vereis wat meer sinspelende Bybels wil hê. Vertalers, as "modellesers" hulself, sal die teenwoordigheid en funksie van sinspelings in die bronteks moet herken en die poging om hierdie in vertaling te verteenwoordig ʼn prioriteit maak.

Christian appropriation of OT legal material is a perennial crux interpretum. Evident, is a spectrum of approaches, from Marcion-like dismissal on the one hand through to theonomist appeals for re-enactment on the other. Within Western Christianity, the Reformation served to enshrine one approach in particular: a threefold division of the Law that distinguished between civil, ceremonial, and moral commands. However, while undoubtedly neat, such compartmentalization is highly problematic and has resulted in a myopic view of OT legal material. Leviticus 11 is a case in point. While regulations regarding the eating and touching of (un)clean animals remain determinedly central to Judaism, Christian tradition since the early church has sidelined the pericope with equal determination. Even though the Reformation sparked a renewed interest in the reading of Scripture, the designation (and, arguably, dismissal) of Leviticus 11 as “ceremonial” merely served to perpetuate a lacuna regarding the enduring relevance of this text as Christian Scripture. In this article I tease out how Leviticus 11 might be better appropriated by employing tools derived from the fields of speech act theory and intertextuality. These tools allow for greater precision in describing what Leviticus 11 as a text is doing. It becomes apparent that while some illocutions performed by Leviticus 11 are supervened when read in light of the NT, other illocutions persist. These illocutions may be legitimately appropriated by Christian readers of the text with benefits for both faith and practice.

I propose a new instance of ‘stichometric allusion’ (when poets allude to a source using corresponding line-numbers) in the Culex. This example (an allusion to Catullus 64) is notable because it spans two lines, and because it contains a repetition. Since this makes coincidence very unlikely, we can consider the possible motives and potential implications.

The purpose of this paper is to present an analysis of certain episodes and motifs of Dante’s Purgatory which were partly inspired by the idea of the Otherworld and the category of space in the Book VI of Virgil’s Aeneid. In particular we examine the episode which takes place in the Valley of the Rulers (Pg. VII) and the concept of Dante’s Earthly Paradise to confront them with the idea of Virgilian Elysium. The intertextual dialogue of the Italian poet with the author of the Aeneid is sometimes polemical and based on aemulatio rather than on imitatio.

In 'Weapons of Words: Intertextual Competition in Babylonian Poetry' Selena Wisnom offers an in-depth literary study of three poems central to Babylonian culture: Anzû, Enūma eliš, and Erra and Išum. Fundamentally interconnected, each poem strives to out-do its predecessors and competes to establish its protagonist, its ideals, and its poetics as superior to those that came before them.

The first of its kind in Assyriology, Weapons of Words explores the rich nuances of these poems by unravelling complex networks of allusion. Through a sophisticated analysis of literary techniques, Selena Wisnom traces developments in the Akkadian poetic tradition and demonstrates that intertextual readings are essential for a deeper understanding of Mesopotamian literature.

Inspired by Said's methodology of contrapuntal reading, this article examines Edward Said's reference to Shakespeare's Hamlet (1604) in his memoir, Out of Place (1999) to shed light on his experiences of exile and displacement. We contend that Hamlet gives voice to Said's incestuous desire and his inability, like that of Hamlet, to live up to the standards required of him by his dominating father who, like Hamlet's father, is a ghostly figure that dominates Said's life even after his death. We argue that while Said points out that Shakespeare is an extension of imperial authority, his readings of Hamlet with his mother destabilises the colonising force of Shakespeare and displaces Western hegemony over performance and interpretations.

Apuleius certainly quotes some epigrammatic texts and fragments in his Apology on secondary points of the argumentation, but these quotations remain misleading, because they hide the real presence of the epigrammatic genre in this speech: a both silent and efficient intertext. We shall show how we can discern allusions to the satiric epigram (especially that of Martial), which eventually create an alternative speech in some passages of the text, used for polemical purposes and intended to distract the learned public. But while requesting the cultural memory of the public and manipulating epigrammatic techniques and themes (often scandalous and contrary to the ethos that Apuleius explicitly creates in his own defense), the author has to find a just balance between caution and hidden knowledge.

A reading of gendered violence, body horror, "hyperreality," and postmodern cinematic nostalgia in Quentin Tarantino's 'Death Proof' through Jean Baudrillard's 'Simulacra and Simulation' and 'America' as well as Gilles Deleuze's "Coldness and Cruelty" ('Masochism').

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Creation motifs stand out as an important link between the Pentateuch and texts that are commonly attributed to Wisdom literature. At the same time, in the Book of Job, references and allusions to divine acts of creation turn up frequently throughout the dialogue part, namely in God’s speeches (Job 38–41). Unequivocal references to Gen 1–3, however, seem to be very rare, Job’s desperate wish יהי חשך (Job 3:4) as inversion of God’s יהי אור (Gen 1:3) appearing as the most frequently mentioned case. In recent research, opinions are divided: Whereas on the one hand e.g. Beyer (2011) and Balentine (2013) emphasize the references in Job (1–)3 to Gen 1:1–2:3, Schmid (2007:244–5) and Kwon (2018:63–65) regard the connections between these texts as rather slight. In my paper, I re-evaluate the literary relation between the creation accounts in the Pentateuch and the creation motifs in the dialogue part of the Book of Job. In particular, I will focus on the motifs of “light” and “darkness” in Job’s initial lament (Job 3) and God’s first speech (Job 38–39). My aim is to show that God’s speech rhetorically functions as ironic rebuttal of Job 3, whereas Gen 1(–3) serves as essential background to which both Job’s lament and God’s answer subtly allude.

The palimpsest effect presupposes the existence of an obvious intention on the author’s part to superpose, within the same structure, multiple cultural layers, multiple “stories”, wagering everything upon a play of mirrors, that produces the meanings of the fictional universe. Drawing on the term introduced by Gerard Genette, in his fundamental work Palimpsestes. La litérature au second degré (Seuil, 1982), I explore only hypertexts, id est narratives that exist in explicit relation with other narrative(s), be it an independent work by another author, a myth, or a universally known “true history”.

The cultural myth of Cleopatra was central to the aesthetic sensibility of the Russian Silver Age. Few attempts, however, have been made to unfold the intricate workings of the image of Cleopatra as a fatal lover—an image that proved extremely influential among Silver Age writers and was di­rectly inspired by Alexander Pushkin’s series of prose and verse fragments devoted to the Egyptian queen. Because Cleopatra-like heroines some­times appear under different names and in different costumes, a rigorous framework for identifying and contrasting these images is in order. This essay outlines the structure, genealogy, and time frame of such a project.

Luc. DMar. 14: Perseus and Andromeda between iconography and theater (with an Appendix on DMar. 2)

This paper analyses Lucian’s DMar. 14, on Perseus and Andromeda, under a double perspective: intertextual and intervisual. On the one hand, it clarifies Lucian’s debts towards Euripides’ Andromeda – apparently, its main literary model. On the other hand, also through comparison with a passage from de domo (22-23), it shows how Lucian, in constructing his (as usually ironic and critical) version of the story, appeals to the visual memory of his audience almost in the same way in which he urges their literary memory, according to a technique often exploited by the rhetor. The analysis is concluded by some remarks on DMar. 12, the ‘prequel’ of this dialogue (it concerns Danae, abandoned at sea by her father with infant Perseus), in order to show that it is analogously influenced by the theatrical tradition and that it also has strong visual connotations.

The imagery and detail of John 18.1-21.25 imbue it with a number of important theological implications.  These include the concepts of substitutionary atonement, a new kingdom, a new power structure on the earth, and more besides.  In the present note, I discuss the extent to which our text depicts Jesus’ death and resurrection as the start of a new divine creation.  John’s narrative has a number of contact-points with Gen. 1.1-3.24, which cast it as a creation story, but not just any old creation narrative:  Jesus’ triumph in John’s ‘garden’ is set in deliberate contrast to Adam’s failure;  as such, it depicts a new redeemed creation as opposed to an old fallen creation.  New creation, then, is not an interpretation theme which must be superimposed on top of John’s narrative;  rather, it is an integral part of the plot and drama of John’s view of Christ’s crucifixion.

Framing the mission of Aeneas in the underworld, Palinurus’
disappereance in the waters of the Sirens at the end of Aeneid 5 and Circe’s indirect appearance at the beginning of Aeneid 7 mark the last stages of the Trojan hero’s journey. In both cases Vergil deviates and distances himself from Homer, excluding the Sirens and Circe from the narration. The aim of the article is to consider Circe’s and the Sirens’ ambiguous exclusion from the official plot of the Aeneid through a gender-informed perspective. While formally discrediting the figures of Circe and the Sirens, the author invites the reader to glimpse their presence beneath the surface of the text. If these characters, who stand for a problematic model of femina sapiens, lose body and voice, their figures are conveyed through symbols, and they end up embodying two complementary ways of reading Vergil’s epic: intertextuality
(the Sirens) and semiotics (Circe).

topoi romanzeschi, reminiscenze epiche e saffiche memorie È un dato critico ormai acquisito che l'ambientazione bucolica e l'eliminazione del viaggio costituiscano le peculiarità più evidenti che contraddistinguono i Pastoralia nell'àmbito della narrativa erotica 1 . Anche per altri aspetti, meno vistosi e proprio per questo efficacemente rivelatori del carattere di sofisticazione della sua prosa, Longo cerca di rinnovare la tradizione letteraria, rielaborando moduli narrativi tipicamente romanzeschi in modo accorto e consapevole. In parecchi casi l'operazione di rinnovamento viene realizzata attraverso una rilettura attenta, e al tempo stesso sottilmente ammiccante, del modello omerico. In altre parole, riportando i topoi romanzeschi direttamente a uno dei loro archetipi fondamentali, l'epos arcaico, Longo ottiene come risultato quello di avviare un processo di sostanziale rivisitazione di alcune abusate tematiche del romanzo.

Монография Л. Г. Пановой «Мнимое сиротство: Хлебников и Хармс в контексте русского и европейского модернизма» – попытка подвергнуть художественные произведения, манифесты и жизнетворческие практики первого авангарда непредвзятому рассмотрению, не зависимому как от культа авангарда, так и от сложившейся за столетие инерции его восприятия. В монографии проблематизируются: природа первого авангарда, легитимность того уникального места, которое он занял в сегодняшнем литературном каноне, и масштаб его новаторства (письмо с якобы чистого листа без опоры на предшественников). В развитие этой исследовательской программы прокладываются увлекательные интеллектуальные маршруты от существующих трактовок прославленных произведений Велимира Хлебникова («Заклятия смехом», «Мирасконца», «Ка», «Зангези» и др.) и знаменитой пьесы Даниила Хармса «Лапа» – через их контекстуализацию – к новым. В результате у обоих писателей обнаруживается богатейшая доавангардная родословная. Драматического пика анализ творчества Хлебникова и Хармса достигает при обсуждении их программных жестов разрыва с традицией, типа бросания Пушкина с парохода современности, долженствовавших отвлечь внимание аудитории от предшественников и сфокусировать его на грандиозном авторском «я». В целом оба писателя оказываются, сами того не желая, типичными представителями модернизма, разделяющими со своей эпохой интеллектуальные моды, сюжеты, мотивы, жизнетворческие и рекламные стратегии. Их принадлежность к модернизму демонстрируется и в разделе, посвященном нумерологическому топосу русской литературы. Почерпнув математический репертуар у современников-модернистов, Хлебников использовал его для создания своих автомифологем «Король времени» и основатель «звездного языка», на которые затем нетривиальным образом отреагировали обэриуты, а также другие модернисты, как авангардного, так и неавангардного толка, от Михаила Кузмина и Евгения Замятина до Вениамина Каверина и Осипа Мандельштама.
Для филологов, специализирующихся на авангарде и модернизме, и широкого круга читателей, интересующихся историей русской литературы. Второе издание, испр. и доп., - 2018.

Начало монографии см. здесь -  https://id.hse.ru/books/226935985.html ; там же ссылка на сайт, продающий электронную версию книги .

An Imaginary Orphanhood: Velimir Khlebnikov and Daniil Kharms in the Context of Russian and European Modernism (1st. ed. 2017, 2nd ed. 2018) by Lada Panova takes a new and revisionist look at the Russian avant-garde. It examines the literary works, manifestoes and life-as-art practices of Velimir Khlebnikov, Daniil Kharms and other avant-garde authors, countering various critical myths about the avant-garde (including its own), especially the notion that the movement arose ex nihilo, totally rejecting all authority or precedent and “writing from a clean slate.”
An Imaginary Orphanhood offers provocative readings of the most celebrated works by Khlebnikov (“Incantation by Laughter,” The World in Reverse, “Ka,” Zangezi, etc.) and of Kharms’ much discussed play Paw. In each case, analysis begins with an overview of accepted interpretations; goes on to contextualize the work by examining relevant intellectual fashions, cults and patterns of the epoch that came into play; and ends up offering some unexpected conclusions.
Among other things, this reexamination of Khlebnikov and Kharms’ works reveals the authors’ rich pre-avant-garde literary pedigrees. The demythologization of the “orphanhood” proclaimed by the first avant-gardists culminates in a discussion of Khlebnikov and Kharms’ programmatic gestures of rupture with tradition, such as the well-known call to throw Pushkin and the classics off the steamboat of modernity. These gestures aimed at deemphasizing the writers’ links to their predecessors and focused readers’ attention instead on their own grandiose selves. In reality, both Khlebnikov and Kharms emerge, unwittingly, as true sons of modernism who shared its intellectual concerns, as well as its strategies for self-advertising and for making art out of life (zhiznetvorchestvo).
The modernist manner of avant-garde thinking is also demonstrated in a section dedicated to the numerological topos in Russian literature. Khlebnikov reworked the modernist numerological repertoire, generating self-promotional mythemes and laying claim to such titles as “King of Time” and Founder of the universal “star language.”  These in turn provoked lively responses from Oberiu and other modernists, including Mikhail Kuzmin, Evgenii Zamiatin, Veniamin Kaverin and Osip Mandel’shtam.
An Imaginary Orphanhood targets specialists in Russian modernism and Russian avant-garde, as well as a wider readership interested in Russian literature.

本文對「浪子比喻」進行了深入分析後發現，它所使用的典故（約瑟故事） 、 關鍵字詞（ 「兒子」「饑荒/餓」 「遠」「誡命/命令」）和概念（ 「潔淨」「回家/ 、 回耶路撒冷」「先知以及其神國筵席信息遭拒」 、 ）應該會使受眾將它連繫於耶穌 的「第一講章」 （路四 16~30）有關外邦人得救和神子民的重新定義的主題，以 致我們有十分充分的理由去以外邦人得救的架構去詮釋這比喻，理解大兒子為猶 太人（或猶太基督徒） ，小兒子為外邦人（或外邦基督徒） ，而不落入初期教父的 寓意解經傳統裡。  這比喻在《路—徒》整體寫作架構內的位置，讓受眾以「旅途敘事」當中的 「回家」和「上帝國度的筵席會遭受拒絕」的角度去閱讀這個比喻，讓我們看到 猶太人失落救恩其實是自絕救恩門外。 「浪子比喻」的天國筵席信息告訴我們， 普世本是一家，無論猶太人或是外邦人，都可以回家。這是上帝的恩典、福音的 核心信息。這比喻在《路—徒》整體中用較隱晦的方式向當時拒絕福音、拒絕外 邦人的人提出挑戰：接受上帝國度筵席的福音嗎？接受外邦的弟兄姊妹嗎？願意 回家嗎？

The introduction of the concept of intertextuality into the critical discourse in the late 1960s transformed the discussion of all kinds of literature, including biblical literature. 'Intertextuality' is currently a hot topic among biblical interpreters. When evaluating early Jesus traditions within the New Testament, the letters of James, First and Second Peter may not immediately come to mind. Instead, it is often materials from the gospels -and usually the Synoptic Gospels -that one thinks of first, as these narratives focus upon Jesus' life and teachings. In recent times, the Letters of James, Peter, Hebrews, and Jude have been given more attention, and close studies of rhetoric and intertextuality emerged in part through methodological advancements, have placed the presence and function of 'Jesus traditions' within these 'catholic' epistles under the microscope. Concentration on shared Jesus traditions also opens up questions about the roles of Judean and Graeco-Roman influences upon the sayings, portrayals, and memories of Jesus that are incorporated into subsequent literature. How do other traditions from the ancient context

In his novel Neverwhere Gaiman depicts the modern city of London - London Above, and his inverted fantastic counterpart - London Below. London Below is the reflection of London Above in a heterotopic mirror: a fantastic version of the city, represented by its mythical identity. While London Above is “filled with colour”, and is “a city in which the very old and the awkwardly new jostled each other, not uncomfortably, but without respect”, London Below is “built of lost fragments of London Above: alleys and roads and corridors and sewers that had fallen through the cracks over the millennia, and entered the world of the lost and the forgotten”, and it is “inhabited by the people who fell through the cracks in the world”. This article aims to analyse the representation of London in terms of Lynch’s environmental image, Bakhtin’s study on chronotope and Foucault’s essay on heterotopias and heterochronies, and to examine Gaiman’s version of London in terms of myths and legends that forge the identity of the city.

The poster was presented at the 5th RaAM specialised seminar "Metaphors in/and/of translation", Leiden University, The Netherlands, 2015.

Proper name allusions were analysed in a study about proper names and titles in African and European translations of Shakespeare's 'Julius Caesar' and 'Macbeth'. The poster gives a short overview of the main results of this part of the research.

The complete study was published as follows:
Bock, Cornelia 2015.  Shakespeares Julius Caesar und Macbeth – Eigennamen und Titulaturen in Übersetzungen in afrikanische und europäische Sprachen. (Wortkunst und Dokumentartexte in afrikanischen Sprachen, 35). Köln: Köppe.

This doctoral dissertation on Book 4 of the Constantinopolis by Ubertino Posculo represents the first completed English translation of a book in an epic poem that has hitherto been only available in Latin, French, or Italian. The commentary also holds the distinction of being the first to systematically reach beyond historiographical questions with a specific interest in intertext and allusion. This document summarizes the central arguments and observations I make about the poem in the commentary and opening chapter.

Italo Calvino, il famoso scrittore sanremese, cresciuto nel nord d'Italia lontano dai volcani del sud, è spesso avvicinato simbolicamente più al frigorifero che non alla caldaia. I suoi racconti e romanzi sono definiti come asessuali, freddi, distaccati ed analitici e ci sembra che ci sia consenso tra i critici letterari sul fatto che il tema della sessualità è 'sempre tenuta in sordina' da Calvino. 1 Ma forse Calvino è, se si tratta di sessualità, semplicemente una stella più fiacca tra supernovae spettacolarmente esplodenti come Pier Paolo Pasolini, Alberto Moravia e Luciano Bianciardi. In questo articolo tenteremo di stabilire se Calvino si occupasse del tema, se l'eros magari fosse più presente, sottopelle, tra le righe, nelle sue opere di quanto non si creda. Analizzeremo pure come lo dipingesse nei suo racconti e lo trattasse nei saggi.

The Middle Ages greatly valued originality and creativity, although these qualities were not only linked in the long chain of imagination (as we usually do today), but they were also framed in the field of memory. Therefore, the usual assumption that memory is an exclusive resource of an oral society does not seem to be entirely satisfactory: in the Middle Ages the memory was equally present in the more cultured and literary social strata. In fact, during the medieval period, the influence of an inherited pedagogy (from Classical rhetorical roots) meant that the cultivated memory (and the affective appropiation of preexistent material) remained fundamental to medieval literary culture because it was understood as essential not only to reading and composition, but also to the formation of character. This paper suggest some thoughts and sacred and profane examples on this issue.

In 1968, the repressive maneuvers of the Czech and Polish regimes precipitated the rupture between the literary intelligentsia and the communist executives. By the same time, the censorial institution had modernized its operations to make it incumbent to the authors to restrain their own writings. The short decade that ranges from 1968 to the re-establishment of a network of clandestine printing and distribution of literary writings, around 1976, is therefore rich in official publications displaying a paroxysmal tension between the desire to denounce and the impossibility of doing so.

This tension gave way to a variety of literary strategies for coping with censorship. This thesis intends to compile a reasoned catalog of them and to reconstruct the historical sequence of their respective uses; and this in order to demonstrate that the succession of these strategies was part of a larger reflexion as to the obstacle, as well as the artistic opportunity, that censorship presented for writing.

Thus, the comparative analysis of the novels of Šotola, Kramer, Veis, Hrabal, Andrzejewski, Bocheński, Lem and Brandys reveals four types of writing, ranging from redemptive excess to the staging of the impotence of the artist, through the manufacture of eloquent silences or the use of carefully calibrated allusions.

This doctoral dissertation on Book 4 of the Constantinopolis by Ubertino Posculo represents the first completed English translation of a book in an epic poem that has hitherto been only available in Latin, French, or Italian. The commentary also holds the distinction of being the first to systematically reach beyond historiographical questions with a specific interest in intertext and allusion. This document summarizes the central arguments and observations I make about the poem in the commentary and opening chapter.