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sense that these crucial issues of his t h o u g h t are beginning to fade a w a y into history. After only one century, these issues have lost their relevance and p o i g n a n c y for us, perhaps because we are already b e y o n d the "threshold." It is Cancik's merit to have projected Nietzsche's antiquity into these larger topics of his t h o u g h t and shown the components of this image in a more diversified and critical m a n n e r than before. The chapter on The Anti-Christ, e.g., contains detailed textual criticism of the Montinari edition (p. 138 f.) and postulates an a n n o t a t e d n e w edition of the entire text (p. 148 f.). That one cannot always agree on Nietzsche, h o w e v er, derives from the nature of his text. Far from being an i m p e d i m e n t , this constitutes the real pleasure of Nietzsche interpretation. Ernst Behler Department of Comparative Literature University of W a s h i n g t o n
New Approaches to Ancient PoetrymTheory and Practice Irene J. F. de Jong & J. P. Sullivan (eds.), Modern Critical Theory and Classical Literature, M n e m o s y n e S u p p l e m e n t u m 130 (Leiden, N e w York & K61n: E.J. Brill, 1994), vii + 292 PP. The reader of this volume is likely to observe with surprise a couple of anomalies: 1.) The ancient authors and texts dealt with range chronologically from the beginning, i.e., Homer, to O v i d - - w h o certainly neither represents the e n d of ancient literature nor, obviously, is the last 'classical' author (to use the term from the title). That m a y be due to chance (not all the intentions of the editors could be fulfilled: cf. p. 21); 1 b u t it m a y also be symptomatic. 2 2.) The second peculiarity is scarcely the outcome of chance; and even if it were, that w o u l d be just as significant: Whereas the title announces critical theory and classical literature, th~articles deal exclusively with ancient poetry. Yet this fact is n o w h e r e stated explicitly~, let alone explained. It has a p p a r e n t l y not reached the editors' or contributors' threshold of consciousness. Are we to derive from that peculiar feature any general insights about m o d e m critical theories or about the state of c o n t e m p o r a r y classical studies? Do current literary theories lend themselves more readily or even exclusively to the s t u d y of poetical texts? 3 This certainly does not hold for narrative theories (narratology); narratological
1. 2. 3.
I should like to thank my American friend, Dr. Guenther Heilbrunn, for his unselfish help in correcting and improving my English. To the editor of this journal, Professor Wolfgang Haase, I owe substantial specifications and supplementations. References in parentheses are to pages of the book under review; for cross-references inside this review article "below" and "above" are added. In K. Galinsky (ed.), The Interpretation of Roman Poetry: Empiricism or Hermeneutics? (Studien zur klassischen Philologie 67), Frankfurt am Main, Bern, New York, Paris 1992, Ovid is also the latest author to whom a separate study is devoted. Glenn W. Most (this volume, p. 148) broaches the problem of the scope of the literary canon in different theoretical schools.
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discussions of ancient prose texts abound. 4 (But w h y then is the narratological article not, for example, on Caesar's Bellum Gallicum or A p u l e i u s ' Metamorphoses? W h y d i d it h a v e to be on the Odyssey?) H o w e v e r , all the other theories r e p r e s e n t e d in the v o l u m e a p p e a r to h a v e b e e n d e v e l o p e d with a view to poetry, either as the central or as the only p a r a d i g m . O n the other hand, if one is to explain not the fact that p r o s e w o r k s h a v e b e e n o m i t t e d b u t the strange silence about that fact, one m a y suspect that the editors a n d contributors, all of t h e m classical scholars, d a z z l e d b y m o d e m theories (which, as a rule, p r e s u p p o s e a m o d e m concept of literature), h a v e forgotten their v e r y o w n u n d e r s t a n d i n g of the scope of ancient literature, one in w h i c h classical scholars h a v e a l w a y s taken great and justified pride. Literature, according to that u n d e r s t a n d i n g , comprises p o e t r y a n d in prose fiction as well as non-fiction, i.e., the n o v e l a n d h i s t o r i o g r a p h y , e p i s t o l o g r a p h y and (auto-)biography, speech and diatribe, the philosophical treatise, the technical h a n d b o o k , scholarly writing, literary theory (for example, Aristotle's Poetics; the a n o n y m o u s On The Sublime). Or, possibly, the authors of the present collection w e r e aware of the difference b e t w e e n m o d e m a n d ancient notions of literature, b u t either felt unable to use m o d e m theories with r e g a r d to ancient p r o s e w o r k s or realized that that was not going to w o r k (for which see above). These are the first observations that will strike the reader. One gets the m e s s a g e a d m i t t e d l y an implicit one, not i n t e n d e d as such b y the editors or a u t h o r s (but interp r e t a t i o n of a text is not limited to reconstructing an a u t h o r ' s intention, if i n d e e d that n o t i o n is a m e a n i n g f u l o n e ) - - t h a t m o d e m critical theories and classicists w o r k i n g with t h e m are interested mainly in works of fiction. For since they d o not r e g a r d philosop h y a n d h i s t o r i o g r a p h y 5 as fiction and since the ancient novel n e v e r gained e n t r y into the "classical" canon, p o e t r y and fiction c o m e to be r e g a r d e d m o r e or less as identical (if the genre of didactic p o e t r y is neglected, as it is in this volume). A c o m p a r a b l e collection of papers, The Interpretation of Roman Poetry: Empiricism or Hermeneutics?, e d i t e d b y Karl Galinsky, 6 also limits itself to poetry. 4. 5.
6.
Add to the bibliography, section II.b., the Groningen Colloquia on the Novel, Vols. 1-6 (Groningen, 1988-95). But historiography (as a narrative that connects historical facts in order to build up a meaningful whole) is fiction or similar to fiction. Compare, in general, the discussion about the narrative character of historiography and, for the German-speaking world, the programmatic use of the term "Geschichtsmythos" to designate the result of historical reconstruction. For a modem theory of the fictionality of historiography cf. Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe, Baltimore 1973, Idem, Tropics of Discourse, Baltimore 1978, and Idem, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation, Baltimore 1987. The title of the German edition of White (1978), Auch Klio dichtet oder Die Fiktion des Faktischen, Stuttgart 1986 and 1991, underscores the thrust of White's argument. Cf. also, in the present volume, the pertinent remark of Most, p. 149. Galinsky (1992). Galinsky, in his Introduction, p. 3, attempts an answer to the questiorl why "American scholarship on Roman prose authors" has, with few exceptions, "declined to less than a subsistence level." We learn from Th. N. Habinek (ibid., p. 239) that the working title of Galinsky's conference had been "Roman Literature: Current Trends and Future Prospects"; the reduction and restriction is due, as he suspects, to "the longstanding Romantic tendency to limit, marginalize, and aestheticize Roman studies." Cf. E. Fantham, p. 195 in the same volume.
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What, then, is (modem) critical/literary theory? 7 W h a t are theories of that kind? And, above all, h o w are they related to each other? I take it for granted that all of those theories are m e a n t to explain w h a t literature is and to help in u n d e r s t a n d i n g literary texts. In this respect all the theories are "hermeneutical" (there is no literary t h e o r y that does not profess to promote " u n d e r s t a n d i n g ' ) - - h e r m e n e u t i c s itself not being a literary theory (cf. also p. 1 sq.)--and critical/literary theories m i g h t equally be designated as "hermeneutic theories." I do not believe that interpretation n e e d e d to be invented (as Glenn W. Most, p. 127, suggests, referring to the need for interpreting oracles a n d riddles in early Greece); interpretation takes place w h e n e v e r c o m m u n i c a tion is enacted, whether in linguistic signs or otherwise. We are interpreters in comm o n situations of e v e r y d a y life, in holding a conversation, in reading a letter, etc. With literary texts we feel this need for interpretation more consciously. A n d since these texts are rather more remote from our normal experience, we need help. This n e e d is catered to by scholarly interpretations and by theories of interpretation. W h a t does " m o d e m " in the title of the volume mean? Structuralism, the domin a n t theory only three decades ago, has not received a contribution s h o w i n g its capacity to provide possible help in u n d e r s t a n d i n g ancient poetry or narrative and is given short shrift in the general bibliography u n d e r the same h e a d i n g with Poststructuralist and Semiotic Criticism (p. 287 sq.; but cf. pp. 3-5). 8 " M o d e m " in the title, then, does not refer to m o d e r n i t y as a concept of historical periodization a n d specific historical consciousness, 9 but rather denotes a short span of time, one even shorter perhaps and more recent than that from the beginning of p o s t m o d e m i t y ; in the end it appears to m e a n n o t h i n g more than "current", "actual", " w h a t is a la mode today". 1~Structuralism is of yesterday, is d&nod~. "Ce qui paraftra bient3t le plus vieux, c'est ce qui d'abord aura paru le plus moderne. "ql The present volume opens with Sullivan's sensible, learned, and informative "Introduction." He begins with a short history of m o d e m critical theories, then offers an analysis of them and finally points out continuities of ancient and m o d e m critical practice and theory. It is impossible to summarize further a n d distil these dense pages. 12 Instead I will try to s u p p l e m e n t them by a slightly different approach, telling myself the story of the "genealogy" and "archaeology" of m o d e m critical/literary
7.
Here I should like to thank my son Benjamin: in literary theory I owe much to his critical help and encouragement. 8. Add to that bibliography, under the subtitle "classical application," Susana Reisz de Rivarola, Poetische Aquivalenzen. Grundverfahren dichterischer Gestaltung bei Catull (Beihefte zu Poetica. Heft 13), Amsterdam 1977, a structuralist study of Catullus, based on a combination and transformation of elements of the theories of Jakobson, Riffaterre, and Jurij Lotman. 9. I shall discuss that problem below p. 436. 10. This use of "modem," catachrestic in this context, might justify itself by referring to the original meaning of modernus in the late 5th century A.D. Cf. H.R. Jauss, "Literarische Tradition und gegenw/irtiges Bewut~tsein der Modernit/it," in: Jauss, Literaturgeschichte als Provokation (Edition Suhrkamp 418), Frankfurt am Main 1970, p. 16. 11. Quoting Jauss (1970), p. 15 with note 8, who quotes P. Robert, Dictionnaire alphabdtique et analogique de la langue francaise, Paris 1951-64, s.v. "Modernit6," who quotes from Andr6 Gide, Les Faux-Monnayeurs (1925). 12. However, in order to make available to the busy reader the rich information, of the introduction, I will insert references to it wherever helpful, especially in my concluding list of theories (below, p. 447 ff.).
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theories. Of course, this cannot be a full-fledged report, w h i c h w o u l d b o t h d e m a n d m o r e space than is available for a r e v i e w article and strain the c o m p e t e n c e of the reviewer. H o w e v e r , an attempt if only at presenting a superficial sketch m a y be welcome. 1) To begin with " a r c h a e o l o g y " (i.e., neither ab ovo n o r with prehistory): the preconditions that were necessary for m o d e r n theories to arise a p p e a r to h a v e d e v e l o p e d in the Romantic epoch: the change f r o m rhetoric to hermeneutics, 13 f r o m the principle of imitation (~t{~tllot9 "Nachahmung der Natur") to that of creatio, creative imagination, and fiction, 14 f r o m poetics (in the sense of generic titles like "poetics", "artes poeticae', "arts po~tiques," "Poetiken" written b y poets, critics, a n d scholars) to philological m e t h od. It is with these changes that one m a y judge the "Querelle des anciens et des modernes" ultimately to have been decided in favor of the m o d e r n s , and m o d e r n i t y (in its full m e a n i n g as o p p o s e d to and distant from the past, e m a n c i p a t e d f r o m the canons and n o r m s of ancient literature) to h a v e b e g u n as an epoch. 15 (The fact that the coinage of the n o u n s "modernitd" [1847] and "die Moderne" [1887] occurred later is irrelevant in connection with this statement.) The e n d of rhetoric a n d poetics c o n d i t i o n e d the beginning of Altertumswissenschaft in n i n e t e e n t h - c e n t u r y G e r m a n y . H e r m e n e u t i c s was elaborated b y classical scholars (as well as philosophers and theologians); philologische Methode was their d o m a i n and central credo. The s t u d y of ancient literature h a d n o explicit t h e o r y of its own, especially because it was simply an integral p a r t of research into all the manifestations of ancient life a n d culture, and because it was s o m e h o w g u i d e d b y a composite m a d e u p of ancient concepts and of notions s p r u n g f r o m the v e r y literature of the recent past. It was first with Friedrich Nietzsche and then after the crisis felt in the a f t e r m a t h of the First W o r l d War that n e w experiences began to enter the realm of classical studies. 16 Classics, at least in G e r m a n y , did not remain insensible to c o n t e m p o r a r y art
13. Glenn W. Most's essay "Rhetorik und Hermeneutik: Zur Konstitution der Neuzeitlichkeit," Antike und Abendland 30 (1984), pp. 62-79 is fundamental here. Cf. also H.G. Gadamer and G. Boehm (eds.), Seminar: Philosophische Hermeneutik, Frankfurt am Main 1976; H. Flashar, K. Gr6nder, A. Horstmann (eds.), Philologie und Hermeneutik im 19. Jahrhundert. Zur Geschichte und Methodotogie der Geisteswissenschaften, G6ttingen 1979. 14. Cf. Jauss, l.c., p. 13, criticizing the "philologische Metaphysik der Tradition" in E.R. Curtius, Europdische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter, Bern 1948, Chapter 18, w 5: "Nachahmung und Sch6pfung" (= Curtius, European Literature and the Middle Ages, trans. W.R. Trask, New York 1953 [reprint with new epilogue by P. Godman, Princeton 1990], Chapter 18, w 5: "Imitation and Creation"); H. Blumenberg et al. (eds.), Nachahmung und Illusion, Poetik und Hermeneutik I, Munich, first ed. 1964, second ed. 1969 (cf. program p. 7: "Prozess des Clbergangs von klassischer zu moderner Kunst" both in aesthetic theory and poetical practice in connection with the "Begriffe Nachahmung und Sch~pfung" from the 18th to the 19th century). For ~t~t~qc~t~cf. also Sullivan, pp. 12 and 18 sq. 15. Cf. D. Harth, "Ober die Geburt der Antike aus dem Geist der Moderne," in this journal (IJCT) 1.1 (Summer 1994), pp. 89-106, an article the perspective of which is not directed at modern literary theory. 16. Cf. H. Flashar (ed.), Altertumswissenschafi in den 20er Jahren. Neue Fragen und Impulse, Stuttgart 1995 (on which cf. also the forthcoming review article by H. Lloyd-Jones, this journal [IJCT] 4.4 [Spring 1998]) and titles given in E.A. Schmidt, "Lateinische Philologie als hermeneutische Textwissenschaft," in: E.-R. Schwinge (ed.), Die Wissenschaften vom Altertum am Ende des 2. Jahrtausends n.Chr., Stuttgart and Leipzig 1995, pp. 91-117; here: p. 115, n. 26.
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and literature or critical discussion. The paradoxical result was that ancient works of literature became more distant, more ancient, more different from, and even opposed to, modern times than for instance in Wilamowitz' interpretations, where the ancients often looked like contemporaries/7 Yet it was still the traditional philological method that was being used, and this holds true also, as far as I can tell, for most studies done in the so-called modern philologies. The triumphant advance of literary theory, both qua theory and as the successor to philological method, in all the philologies had in general to wait until the end of the Second World War. Literary theory conquered first the philologies of modern-language and post-ancient European national literatures, because it was as a rule developed with a view to m o d e m literature (which had emancipated itself from classical concepts) and b y scholars who were personally or institutionally connected with the study of modern literature. Literary theory is the modern successor of poetics after the interregnum of philological method. 2) To continue with 'genealogy': Modern literary/critical theories--being elaborated by modern scholars in modern times, with the experiences and the consciousness of modernity, and referring to modern literature as one of the essential expressions of modernity and as a subject in its own right which constitutes the domain of specialists of literature (Literaturwissenschaftler)--have a rich pedigree, but three ancestors stand out: Russian Formalism, structural linguistics, and psychoanalysis. These tended to form two distinct families of endogamous proliferation: structuralism being one family descended from structural linguistics and Russian Formalism, and psychoanalytic theories being the other. Some family members began early on to engender offspring exogamously with other theories and disciplines including traditional methods, approaches, and fields of interest; in our recent past we saw these families promiscuously mix with each other and create a colorful variety of different but manifestly related theories. It is not necessary here to retrace the w a y from Freud and others d o w n to all the theories which ultimately sprang from them. Since psychoanalysis is all-pervading in its claim exhaustively to explain the individual, society, culture, myth, and religion; since it is obvious that modern post-Freudian (or post-Jungian) literature is often indebted to psychoanalysis; since Freud himself used to refer to literature--the most suggestive example in my view found in his Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens (1912)--the influence of psychoanalysis on literary studies and its adaptation into literary theory were inevitable. Feminist and gender theories are among its offspring, born from its union with theories and programs of the emancipation of w o m e n (cf. p. 12). One parent of the other family is the Genevan scholar Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), whose Cours de linguistique g~n&ale, published posthumously in Paris in 1915, gave rise to linguistic structuralism or the structuralist theory of language. The other parent is Russian Formalism (1915 ff.), of whose adherents Roman Jakobson appears to be the figure most influential in regard to structuralism. Nearly as important a figure in connecting formalism and structuralism is Vladimir Propp, whose studies of folktale (Morfologija skazki, Leningrad 1928; in English as Morphology of the Folktale, trans. L. Scott, Bloomington 1958; 2nd ed., Austin 1968) are considered as a fundamental contribution to the theory of narrativity. Among the scholars w h o established a structuralist theory of literature, combining with each other as it were de 17. Cf. K. von Fritz, "Die neue Interpretationsmethode in der klassischen Philologie," Neue Jahrbiicherfiir Wissenschaft und lugendbildung 8 (1932), pp. 339-54.
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Saussure and L6vi-Strauss, 18 Roland Barthes has proved to be the most fascinating and productive. One of the successors of Russian Formalism, whose reception in the Soviet Union was retarded by Stalinism and whose influence in the West began only in the late sixties, is Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975). His books on Dostoevsky (1st ed., called Problemi tvorchestva Dostoevskogo, Leningrad 1929; 2rid ed., called Problemi poetiki Dostoevskogo, Moscow 1963) and on Rabelais (Tvorchestvo Fransua Rable i narodnaia kul'tura srednevekov'ia i Renessansa, published in Moscow in 1965, manuscript completed in 1940) and his essays on the novel of the thirties and forties (first published in Voprosy literatury i estetiki, Moscow 1975) appeared in English translations in 1968 (Rabelais and His World; a second translation in 1984), in 1981 (The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays), and in 1984 (Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics). 19 Cf. also P. Morris (ed.), The Bakhtin Reader, London and New York 1994.2~ The present era is characterized both by poststructuralist theories (indebted to structuralism) and by a multifarious pluralism of methods, for which see m y critical summaries of the studies in the volume under review here (below pp. 439-446) and m y concluding list of theories (below pp. 447-449). Given the modernity of the literary theories, given the modernity of their primary subject, given also the restricted scope of the modern concept of literature and of its practitioners" research in purely literary disciplines, and given furthermore the sometimes breathtaking speed (cf. p. 3) of the lampadophoria of "-isms," the fugacity of fashionable systems--given all these things, it is not in the least surprising that classicists should have been wary of following the modernist lead or at least slow and cautious in doing so. Having been taught to honor philological method, being committed to close reading, having learnt to regard as their primary virtue being attentive and precise observers, and having internalized the commandment to be "unzeitgemdJJ," to resist fashions and trends, there could not but rise a wall of resistance between them and those theories: a wall built of their own scholarly tradition--and what a great 18. Cf. G. Schiwy, Der franz6sische Strukturalismus. Mode, Methode, Ideologie (Rohwohlts deutsche
Enzyklop/idie), Reinbek bei Hamburg 1969, 2nd ed. 1984, p. 149. 19. German translations: 1969 (extracts from both books, with second edition in 1985: Literatur und Karneval. Zur Romantheorie und Lachkultur, Munich), 1971 (Probleme der Poetik Dostoevsh~s, Munich), and 1987 (Rabelais und seine Welt. Volkskultur als Gegenkultur, Frankfurt am Main). 20. Bakhtin and the Bakhtin reception should or might have been represented in our volume. There is only one entry in the General Bibliography (p. 288).; but cf. pp. 15 sq. and 23. However, discussion of his theories has been and still is lively. Cf., e.g., P. Stallybrass and A. White, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression, London 1986; D. Lodge, After Bakhtin: Essays on Fiction and Criticism, London 1990; cf. Lodge p. 4: "If [ . . . ] the 1960s was the decade of structuralism, and the 1970s the decade of deconstruction and other varieties of post-structuralism, then the 1980s have arguably been dominated by the discovery and dissemination of Mikhail Bakhtin's work." Bakhtin's ideas are important for ancient comedy, the phenomenon of laughter, folk culture, novelistic discourse, Roman culture in general, the notions of hetero-and polyglossia. Cf. on the convergence between Erich Segal, Roman Laughter (1st ed. Cambridge, MA 1968, 2nd ed. Oxford and New York 1987) and Bakhtin's theory of laughter before his western reception, E.A. Schmidt, "R6misches Lachen," in: G. Alf61dy et al. (eds.), Ri~mische Lebenskunst. Interdisziplin~ires Kolloquium zum 85. Geburtstag yon Viktor P6schl : Heidelberg, 2.-4. Februar 1995, Heidelberg 1995, pp. 79-99; here: pp. 8390.
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tradition from the Alexandrian scholars to Altertumswissenschaft as the paradigm of all the "historische Geisteswissenschaflen!'"--their professionality, philological virtues, caution, fear, and prejudice. Some pioneers have started pulling it down. The reasons are obvious: even classical scholars live in m o d e m times and are more or less m o d e m themselves. They begin to realize that m o d e m theories do not demand of them the sacrifice of their scholarly virtues (cf. p. 14). Most important, hermeneutics, even if imbibed only by osmosis, has taught classical scholars that understanding of a historical subject is always their o w n understanding, an understanding for themselves and for their o w n time. The theories represented in the present volume are not all on the same hierarchical level (cf. pp. 1 sq.); they are, therefore, not necessarily comparable, and the question of their compatibility or mutual exclusion has to be asked anew for each combination envisaged. Some of the "theories" are specific methods or techniques of literary criticism (e.g., narratology), some formulate a specific approach or central interest (e.g., feminist or gender studies), some claim to be a system and, therefore, a theoretical outlook that refers to much more than just literature (e.g., psychoanalysis, deconstruction). There are, then, two sets of basic questions: 1.) Is critical/literary theory something which can or must be applied to literary studies? Is application the relation between theory and scholarly reading? Is practice the application of theory? Is criticism the practice belonging to critical theory? 2.) Is eclecticism of theories possible in practice? What does it mean and entail? Some of the authors in this volume touch on several of these questions, above all Simon Goldhill, but also Charles Segal. 1.) The practice corresponding to literary theory is literature and not literary criticism b y itself. Literature as a practice encompasses the author and the author's production, the text, the reader, the process of reception and, consequently, also literary criticism and scholarly interpretation. While the editors formulate as their program for the collection "to show the applicability of the methodologies of various m o d e m theories of literary criticism to the study of Greek and Roman literature" (p. vii), it seems clear that literary criticism cannot be the arbitrary or random application of a theory to a text. 21 Literary criticism is the scholarly 22 reading and interpreting of a text after both literature and scholar have been changed b y the theory. You cannot apply a theory to a text which itself remains an unchanged object; you can't apply a theory in which you don't believe, i.e., which has not become the color of your thoughts about literature (and the world) and about yourself as a literary critic. Practical criticism, then, in the broader sense of "criticism in practice" (not as a distinctive historical and theoretical term as coined by Coleridge and developed by I.A. Richards and F.R. Leavis) 23 is "applied" criticism insofar as the critic orients and controls his exegetic work by principles he is convinced are true and has made his own. 21. A young scholar, Benjamin Marius Schmidt (above n. 7), who teaches literary theory at the University of Zurich, formulated in a conversation with me: "Theorie ist kein Werkzeugkasten, aus dem Instrumente gewfihlt und auf Objekte angewendet werden." 22. Although I am talking here of literary theory and classical scholarship I must not forget that as a rule the best instances of literary criticism we have ever come across were not written by scholars. 23. Cf. Michael Groden and Martin Kreiswirth (eds.), The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism, Baltimore and London 1994, s.v. "Practical Criticism" by Heather Murray, pp. 589-92.
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2.) M o d e m critical theories, as a rule, are neither monads nor closed systems among which one is impenetrable to followers of another (cf. p. 1). They are often themselves synthetic, an entire set of ideas, and there are partial overlappings with other theories. Moreover, they derive, as we have seen, if not from one stem, out of a common rhizome. Eclecticism, therefore, is logically and practically possible. But again, eclecticism of theories is not freely chosen and applied, scholar and text remaining the same as what they were before. Eclecticism of theories is the result of a scholar's personal mental history; and the text, regarded in that perspective, may again d e m a n d a specific combination and rearrangement of the elements of that eclecticism. Charles Segal's interpretation of Ovid in the volume under review, "Philomela's Web and the Pleasure of the Text: Reader and Violence in the Metamorphoses of Ovid," follows "an eclectic mix of reader-response, feminist, intertextual, deconstructionist, and even psychoanalytical approaches," because, as the author adds, "no single method can adequately interpret the range of meanings of a complex literary work and therefore the critic should be free to choose any method or combination of methods that seem most helpful" (p. 258). The allegedly free choice of methods is, of course, limited by the character of the text the scholar wants to understand, and by that scholar's guiding interest ("the area of meaning with which I am most concerned centers on the problem of violence and the reader's response to a narrative of violence," 1.c.). Even before that, the "free choice" of a literary text for interpretation has already been guided by the author's specific interests which again are mirrored in his or her eclecticism of theories. Let us now look at the individual essays. The first contribution is by Irene J.F. de Jong, one of the two editors, entitled "Between Word and Deed: Hidden Thoughts in the Odyssey." (Why "between?" Hidden thoughts are not between word and deed, but before or instead of both; cf., e.g., pp. 31 or 46.) The article demonstrates convincingly (but not at all surprisingly for those who know the poem) that there are a number of passages in the epic where the narrator informs the hearer/reader about thoughts of Odysseus, Telemachus, Penelope, or the suitors. In speaking of these passages, de Jong uses the term "embedded focalization," and that appears to be her reason for assuming her approach to be that of a modern critical theory, here specifically that of the narratological theories of Genette, the Dutch narratologist Mieke, and Bal (cf. p. 29). It is not, however. 24 The use of one technical term does not transform a traditional approach into an interpretation under the auspices of a critical theory. It is, of course, possible and permissible to take over a technical concept from a theory, but the term "focalization" without its theoretical background and context is not really helpful. It would have been enough had we been told that the study of certain narratological theories had sensitized the author and directed her attention to the phenomenon. De Jong's contribution neither elucidates a narratological theory nor does it change our view of the Odyssey. It does confirm our understanding of the poem (as developed in these last years) that besides being an epic it is also some kind of a novel ante litteram. 2s Had de Jong chosen another feature of m o d e m narratology, e.g., the "unreliable narrator," she might have been able to demonstrate that narratological theory can actually change our view of an ancient text. 24. De Jong's book Narrators and Focalizers. The Presentation of the Story in the Iliad, Amsterdam 1987, employs the full-fledged narratological theory of Bal which follows that of Genette. 25. Cf. U. H61scher, Die Odyssee. Epos zwischen Mfirchen und Roman, Munich 1988; 2nd revised ed. 1989.
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The opening of Simon Goldhill's article "The Failure of Exemplarity," whose "theoretical remit for this volume" (p. 53) is "deconstruction" or "post-structuralism," is one of the best pieces in the whole collection. It discusses the relation of different theories to one another and to critical practice. Worth quoting are, e.g., methodology is not "a supplement to reading," but "what makes reading possible," and "commitment to a methodology" is "inevitable" (p. 51). There follows an excellent exposition of speech-act theory as absorbed and developed b y deconstructionists. Goldhill points out the necessity of contextualization for understanding the meaning of an utterance and the problems that loom as a consequence of the difficulty of defining the b o u n d a r y of the relevant context (pp. 56--60). The next section discusses the blurring of the polarity of example and counter-example of w o m e n in the Odyssey (Clytemnestra and all womenwPenelope), both in itself and through the complexity of the valuation of Helen. Here, on pp. 65 sq., Goldhill gives a clear sketch of Derrida's theory of deconstruction. A third section probes "exemplary models and paradigms of behaviour" (p. 70) in Euripides' Electra and the problems involved in the narrativization of examples. What these sections have in common is "exemplarity." The reason for this choice is rather bizarre. The author harps on the expression "an exposition of a critical theory followed by an exemplary reading of a classical text" prescribed b y the editors as the format to be followed in the volume. Instead of taking issue with this on the grounds that deconstructionists "challenge the very possibility of maintaining the discreteness of theoretical exposition and literary reading" (which he also, in passing, does: p. 54), he objects to both "exemplary'--which he takes to mean "paradigmatic, canonic, normative"--and "classical'--which he connects with the claim to be exemplary. Both words, which had innocently been used in a catachrestic way--"exemplary" for "just an instance, a specific case" (cf. Goldhill himself, p. 53) and "classical" for "ancient" (Greco-Roman; see p. 1)--appear to have hit a post-structuralist nerve and thus, b y association, to have made Goldhill drift in the stream of deconstructing hierarchical polarities to which the hierarchical status and normative discourse of exemplarity belong. Goldhill's witty and clever essay is post-structuralist not only in its self-referential problematization, question-marking, and complacency, in its open ends and devotion to dots, its relishing coquettish self-contradiction, but also in its imitation of Derrida's "celebrated punning" (p. 66) founded on the belief "in the heuristic value of the pun" (p. 16). Where Stanford in a remark on Agamemnon's misogyny had used the conjunction "if," Goldhill comments, in brackets: "(The 'if' in 'wife?')." What the "interested neophyte" (p. 54) cannot but regard as blatant h u m b u g is a revelation to the initiate. He will detect (I am sure he will, because even I did find o u t - - a n d this is now my piling up some nonsense on top of Goldhill's), after the mystagogue has thus b e g u n to unveil the secret, that "if" in "wife" is framed b y "w-e," i.e., that the contextualization of "if" points at us, the men, "we": Agamemnon, Stanford, Goldhill, me and you, w h o are the reason for the wife's iffiness. And is not the daughter born to such a wife and such a husband, Iphigenia ("iffy'-genia)? Or, to take this other example: After some occurrences of the term "exemplification," the last section is headed by: " [ . . . ] Exemplifiction" (p. 66). The profane will here believe in a misprint26; the true mystes shudders with awe: What is lacking here is Derrida's A of his "diffdrance," "the Egyptian pyramid," "the tomb of the proper," "the economy of death," "the death of the ty26. However, I am told by a person on the verge between follower and apostate that a deconstructionist would take delight even in such an error as in a meaningful novel reading.
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rant. "27 And it is, of course, highly significant that the A of Derrida's "diff&ance" is missing, for it is the gap, the ellipsis, the repressed and concealed element which bears the decisive message. 28 In Richard S. Caldwell's "Aeschylus" Suppliants: A Psychoanalytic Study," the (allegedly) punctilious correspondence between the Aeschylean tragedy and Freud's theories may surprise the reader. Did Aeschylus know all that? Certainly not. But w h y is it there? Two possible answers offer themselves: Either myth is, without knowing it, psychoanalytical knowledge, or else all human experience and narrative, both of "normal" and of neurotic human beings, is open to psychoanalytical explanation. In either case, application of psychoanalytical theory means that one gets what one has put in before. If you are interested in psychoanalytical explanation you cannot but find it. In the case of Caldwell's psychoanalytic interpretation of the Suppliants we are offered a story of neurotic girls ("collective neurosis," p. 94). This reading is interesting for all those who are interested in psychoanalysis and who see in Freudian theory the key to all h u m a n events and stories. The author's main question is different from that asked above: "how (could) Aeschylus [ . . . ] write so revealingly and (from a psychoanalytic viewpoint) correctly about female psychology?" (p. 96). Caldwell presents, tentatively, two solutions: 1) Either "the genius of Aeschylus" was able to transform a given myth into a version that is seen "through the eyes of the oedipal daughter" (p. 97 sq.), or 2) the given m y t h itself owned already that structure as corresponding to "girls' initiation rituals" (p. 98). "Freud, Aeschylus, and initiation-theory all come together in the idea of breaking with the past so that society and individual can successfully advance" (p. 98). Finally, in addition to the obviously still inescapable rite de passage model for everything in ancient cultures, Caldwell is also fortunate enough to reconcile his exegesis with Lacan's notion of phallocentrism ("the central theme of Lacan and that of initiation rite are the same: [...] the exchange of the phallus within the family"), so that the last word of the article can be Lacan's French "le phallus" (p. 99). Nevertheless, m y scepticism cannot blind me to the merits of the paper. It is both knowledgeable and sober, it is able to supply a consistent explanation of some of the difficulties of the play (the roles of Danaos and Pelasgos, the way the Danaids speak of Zeus and Io) and to adumbrate the Aeschylean meaning of the trilogy: How is the past to be overcome and transformed into a livable future? In her well-written essay "Elektra's Kleos Aphthiton: Sopholdes into Opera," Marianne McDonald looks out for support for her positive interpretation of Elektra in Sophokles' drama ("a noble heroine" [p. 119], autonomous and "yearning for freedom" [p. 106], who fights for her genos and "frees the polls from tyrants" [p. 1091) and finds it in the opera Elektra by Hugo von Hofrnannsthal and Richard Strauss. Without using the term "reception" (McDonald speaks of "Nachleben') the author studies an ancient work's reception in a m o d e m re-creation as a help in interpreting and understanding the original. She does so without referring to a n y (specific) theory, and her article is indeed traditional--which is not a demerit but only a question-mark with 27. Jacques Derrida, "Diff6rance" (first published in 1968), in: Derrida, Marges de la philosophie, Paris 1972, pp. 1-29; English translation in: Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, trans. A. Bass, Brighton 1982, pp. 1-28; here: p. 4. 28. N.B.:The preceding parody is not intended as a mockery of deconstructionism per se, but is rather aimed at certain efflorescences of some fashionable deconstructionist writings: facile and silly calembours without method or truth.
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regard to the inclusion of the paper in this volume. I might add that McDonald does not demonstrate that Hofmannsthal's and Strauss' conception of the figure is true to the Sophoclean play, but rather lists a number of passages in the ancient drama which, taken together, suggest a reading corresponding to that of the modern opera. 29 Glenn W. Most, the author of a book on Pindar, The Measures of Praise (G6ttingen 1985), offers a convincing interpretation of Simonides' Ode to Scopas, demonstrating that it deals with praise and blame (in connection with the experience that " n o b o d y is perfect") and arguing that it is both a "theoretical reflection" upon encomiastic poetry (p. 145) and a specific encomium. The article pleads both theoretically and practically for acknowledging "the elementary truth that interpretation involves systematic recourse to both internal and external contextualizations, cooperating with one another as constant checks and confirmations" (p. 150). At the same time it is intended to demonstrate that basic concerns of both Deconstruction and N e w Criticism can and must be combined and (although that is not made explicit) in their .turn be supplemented and controlled by the rules and principles of traditional philological hermeneutics. The goal of the reconstruction of the internal and external contexts ("interpretation is nothing other than recontextualization," p. 132) is "to make sense" (p. 145) of the text. In her article "Intertextuality and Theocritus 13," A. Maria Van Erp Taalman Kip first sets out to sketch the concept of intertextuality she employs, which is that of the contributions of U. Broich and M. Pfister to the volume they jointly edited, Intertextualitiit. Formen, Funktionen, anglistische Fallstudien, Tiibingen 1985. Broich and Pfister's restricted version of intertextuality (a "de-ideologized" or "conventionalized" one, as it were) is more or less the opposite of what had been intended by the term's inventor Julia Kristeva, i.e., the death of the author and the enthronization of the reader-creator in the w a y of Roland Barthes' plea (cf. J.P. Sullivan's "Introduction", p. 8). Instead of deconstructing the author and the meaning of the text, with this modified "intertextuality" we get the resurrection of the author and even of the author's intention. Here I should like to suggest that we drop the author's intention as a critical category (and with it the author), replace it, yet in exactly the same function, by textual structure (which is all we can know about the author's intention), and enthrone the individual text as an individual voice in a kind of dialogue with the literary tradition or with specific voices of that tradition. It is true that intertextuality in this restricted meaning is not a revolutionary concept. However, Van Erp Taalman Kip states, referring to Broich's definition, that it is "intended primarily to rule out the notion of "influence'" (p. 155). And Sullivan in his introduction (p. 9) sensibly remarks: "Intertextuality [ . . . ] offered itself as a more dynamic form of Quellenforschung, the traditional search by philological commentators for models, parallels, allusions, echoes, borrowings, and even plagiarism in ancient authors. At the same time it connects with such ancient concepts as imitatio and aemulatio. Allusions and references are not a display of doctrina or, worse, gratuitous padding or evidence of a lack of inspiration or originality, but a positive trope, constitut29. I do not understand why McDonald does not name Karl Kerdnyi's essay "Geburt und Wiedergeburt der Trag6die. Vom Ursprung der italienischen Oper zum Ursprung der griechischen Trag6die" (in: Kerdnyi, Streifziige eines Hellenisten. Von Homer zu Kazantzakis [Zurich 1960], pp. 29-60) in her introduction nor why in her bibliography she has omitted Hellmut Flashar, Inszenierung der Antike. Das griechische Drama auf der Biihne der Neuzeit, Munich 1991.
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ing a rhetoric of its o w n and the assertion of a n e w w o r k ' s place in the literary history." This is a fair and helpful evaluation which shows that intertextuality has its antecedents b u t is able to transcend and to unite them; it cuts off their e r r o n e o u s notions of w h a t literary tradition, literary p r o d u c t i o n and literature itself are, thus changing decisively those concepts. Intertextuality in this sense is compatible w i t h a n d related to Rezeptionsgeschichte and the "implied reader," because they share Russian F o r m a l i s m as their c o m m o n b a c k g r o u n d and origin. B~ Van Erp T a a l m a n Kip, before entering her o w n analysis, gives as an e x a m p l e of intertextuality Vergil, Aeneid 1,92-101 in relation to H o m e r as described b y R.O.A.M. Lyne, Further Voices in Vergil's Aeneid, O x f o r d 1987, pp. 104 sq. She could h a v e c h o s e n a m o r e convincing example for the theory, for L y n e ' s exegesis falls sadly short of Vergil's riches and of the function of his dialogue with H o m e r . Vergil telescopes here t w o H o m e r i c scenes which are focal for the concept of the epic hero: Iliad 21,272--83 and Odyssey 5,297-312. Aeneas is thus b o t h the n e w Achilles and the n e w O d y s s e u s , b u t h e is different from both in that the crisis of his heroism is not o n l y s h o w n at the v e r y m o m e n t he enters the scene but is also m o r e f u n d a m e n t a l than that of his G r e e k predecessors. 31 Van Erp Taalman Kip's decoding of Theocritus' dialogue with H o m e r in Idyll 13 is, on the whole, convincing. H o w e v e r , in connection both with lines 10b-13 and with 48-49a (~0O6~3rl(J~v) she o u g h t to have realized that the H o m e r i c 01)~t6v k~K~r~0cu (II. 21,112 of Achilles" death) is t r a n s f o r m e d into love b y Theocritus (cf. Call., epigr. 41 Pf.). U n d e r the title "Speech-Acts and Sprachspiele: Making Peace in Plautus," Rip Coh e n examines three scenes of erotic reconciliation in Plautine comedies in the light and with the terminological instruments of speech-act t h e o r y 32 and Wittgenstein's Sprach30. Before Kristeva's new term (1969) could be known, the author of this review article in his book Poetische Reflexion. Vergils Bukolik (Munich 1972; submitted as Habilitationsschrift at the University of Heidelberg in 1969) had described the relation between Vergil and Theocritus in terms of the Russian Formalists in order to get rid of "influence" and "imitation" and to give allusions, quotations and structural coincidences their positive function. 31. Cf. Ernst A. Schmidt, "Rudolf Borchardts Vergilfeier 1930," Internationale Zeitschrift fiir Philosophie (1994, Heft 1), pp. 96-122; here: pp. 106 sq. 32. The term "speech-act" was not coined by J.L. Austin (1980), as Cohen writes (p. 172), but is the English translation of the German coinage "Sprechact" by Friedrich Schleiermacher (in the first draft, of between 1810 and 1819, for his lecture course on "hermeneutics": Fr. D. Schleiermacher, Hermeneutik, Nach den Handschriften herausgegeben und eingeleitet von Heinz Kimmerle [Abhandlungen der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philos.histor. Klasse, 1959, 2], Heidelberg 1959 [2nd ed., 1974], p. 58-9: "Daft der Inhalt der Anschauung beschriinkt wird fiir eine bestimmte durch den Zusammenhang schon gegebene Sphiire. Hierher geh6rt a) was von dem Sprechacte unter die Formel continuo pro contento J~llt. . . "; on the genesis of those lectures see Ada Neschke-Hentschke, "Mat6riaux pour une approche philologique de l'herm6neutique de Schleiermacher," in: A. Laks and A. Neschke [eds.], La naissance du paradigme hermdneutique. Schleiermacher, Humboldt, Boeckh, Droysen [Cahiers de Philologie 10], Lille 1990, pp. 29-67; cf. Eadem, "Le texte de Platon entre Friedrich August Wolf (1759-1824) et Friedrich Schleiermacher (1767-1834)," ib. pp. 245-276, esp. 262 ft.) and its terminological use in the theory of language of Karl Bi~hler (Die Krise der Psychologie, Jena 1927, p. xvii [3rd ed., Stuttgart 1965]). Most exasperating here and in other instances is the practice in the volume to refer to a work by the year of the edition (or of an English translation) which the authors happen to have used. Note, however, that Austin developed his theory of speech-act (not in 1980, but) in How to do things with words, Oxford 1962. Cf.
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spiele (language games). These interpretations of utterances as acts ("in saying x, a speaker does y," p. 172) a p p e a r to be correct, t h o u g h not v e r y exciting. The really exciting point of the e n c o u n t e r b e t w e e n Jupiter and A l c u m e n a in the Amphitruo (11.898945) is not w h a t speech-act theory and Sprachspiel help to analyze, b u t the i r o n y of the situation and the comical ambiguity of the utterances b r o u g h t a b o u t b y Jupiter in the guise of A m p h i t r u o . Austin's term " u n h a p p y speech-act" (p. 177) rather obscures the dialogue instead of illustrating it. M o r e or less the same holds true for the scene chosen f r o m the Cistellaria w h e r e again the comical element (which, after all, in a c o m e d y , is w h a t matters) is not elucidated b y the t h e o r y applied. And, once m o r e , it is n o t ' t h e feat of wit in the reconciliation scene of the Poenulus w h i c h C o h e n ' s analysis 33 helps us u n d e r s t a n d . C o h e n ' plea to use speech-act t h e o r y and the concept of Sprachspiel as a help in u n d e r s t a n d i n g literary utterances is certainly necessary and welcome, but w h e n h e e n d e a v o r s to hypostatize a set of m o v e s in the game into genres and to collect all the instances of a certain speech-act (e.g., erotic reconciliation) in ancient literature, that certainly runs counter to a meaningful system of literary forms. R u u r d R. N a u t a ' s article, "Historicizing Reading: the Aesthetics of Reception and H o r a c e ' s 'Soracte O d e , ' " is an excellent critical analysis of the Rezeptionsasthetik of H a n s Robert Jauss. M y o w n view differs only in that I w o u l d lay m o r e stress o n the heritage b o t h of Russian Formalism and of H a n s - G e o r g G a d a m e r ' s hermeneutics. The "aesthetics of negativity," for example, criticized b y Nauta, is neither a "typical p r o d uct of the r e v o l u t i o n a r y spirit of the late 1960s" nor, in its restricted form, s o m e kind of a bias (p. 211). Samuel Johnson might be q u o t e d as an authority, 34 b u t this aesthetics is the heir of the idea of literary n o v e l t y in Russian Formalism, of A d o r n o ' s aesthetic theory, of G a d a m e r ' s concept of the classical, and of the h e r m e n e u t i c concept of understanding: W h e n e v e r I come to u n d e r s t a n d something I h a v e either to correct a f o r m e r u n d e r s t a n d i n g or to replace ignorance by knowledge. In that w a y u n d e r s t a n d ing is always negative. 3s N a u t a ' s critical description of Jauss' theory (15 pages) is followed b y a short s u m m a r y of Lowell E d m u n d s ' not v e r y successful b o o k (!) on Horace, Odes 1,9, w h e r e "Jauss' m e t h o d is applied [ . . . ] to the reading of an ode of H o r a c e " ( E d m u n d s , p. x), and b y a sketch of the history of the interpretation of that poem. 36
33. 34.
35. 36.
article "Sprechakt" in Historisches W6rterbuch der Philosophie, vol. 9 (Basel 1995), cols. 153641 (W. Strube). Or, to give two other examples: Karl Marx becomes here an author of the seventies of our century (p. 72); Julia Kristeva drops a term in 1974 which she introduced in 1980 (p. 153). Speech-act theory such as expounded by Goldhill (pp. 56-60) would enable the critic also to account for the specific comical circumstances of words spoken in Plautine scenes. Samuel Johnson, "Life of Milton," in: Milton's "Lycidas': The Tradition and the Poem, ed. by C.A. Patrides, rev. ed., Columbia, MO, 1983, p. 60: "In this poem there is no nature, for there is no truth; there is no art, for there is nothing new." Or, to refer to a recent voice, cf. P. Alpers, What is Pastoral?, Chicago and London 1996, pp. 12 sq.: "Literary value consists precisely in breaking old molds, doing some kind of violence to received conventions and forms of expression." (On Alpers' book see the present reviewer's forthcoming review article, this journal [IJCT] 5.2 [Fall 1998].) Cf. H. Weinrich (ed.), Positionen der Negativitfit (Poetik und Hermeneutik VI), Munich 1975 and the more recent titles given in E. A. Schmidt (1995; cf. above n. 16), pp. 104-7. Getting out of the ruts of the traditional approaches and drawing on a lyrical procedure of Horace to produce complex unities E. A. Schmidt, "~2X~tc~Horatianum," Wiener Studien 103
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"Postmodernism, Romantic Irony, and Classical Closure" is the title of an article by Don Fowler in which the author attempts to undercut the idea of classical closure in ancient poetry a n d to replace it by Romantic Irony. A l t h o u g h I am not sure that the irony Fowler detects in his selection of texts is Romantic Irony 37 (neither is Fowler himself, but he goes on to call it that, more a n d more decidedly: "We need Romantic Irony," p. 254), and although I am not convinced that m a n y people believe in classical closure (neither is Fowler himself, w h o admits that classical studies "have always been m u c h more "open,'" p. 231), his interpretations are suggestive, and, to a certain extent, I am prepared to "believe the stories he wants to tell" (cf. p. 237). However, I cannot agree that Theognidea 236-254 is "one of the clearest examples of Romantic Irony as closural gesture" (p. 236). There is a simple mistake in Fowler's interpretation that has reversed the whole direction. It is w r o n g to regard as a promise conditioned b y something expected, w h a t is a clear prophecy which results from a given fact (1.236: ~01co~). Lines 253f. are not a prerequisite (prior in time) for fulfilling an offer b u t a reproach to a behavior which is (later than and) contrasted to w h a t the lover has d o n e a n d w h a t will last forever (1.236: (~o't ~*v k'/ch...--1.253: c~$z&p kycbv ~0~p& ~E~)... ). Another, more f u n d a m e n t a l flaw of the approach is the limitation of chosen examples to irony in closure. Thus one might get the impression that texts of another structure are (classically) closed or at least more closed. However, the message we have been learning even before Rezeptions~sthetik and reader-response, i.e., from the hermeneutic ancestry of those theories, is that it is typical of great texts and constitutive for t h e m to be fertile a n d open, to be fertile because of their openness and to be open because of their fertility. For Charles Segal's study see above (p. 440). I should like to close this review with an alphabetical (neither exhaustive n o r systematic) list of important m o d e r n and present-day theories a n d fields of research, a d d i n g bibliographical references and occasional remarks which m a y be helpful both in general for a first orientation a n d as pointers to the merits a n d limitations of the publication in question. In brackets the first entry regularly refers to Sullivan's intro(1990), pp. 57-98; here: p. 98 offers a new suggestion for solving the old problem of the unity of the Soracte ode. 37. "Romantic"/"Romanticism" seems to be a catchword in present-day academic discourse of the U.S. Its meaning appears to be floating, not being anchored in serious historical analysis. In Galinsky (1992) the first and last papers, by J.G. Zetzel and Th. N. Habinek, use it in an utterly homonymic way; for the latter, Winckelmann and Schiller are Romantics. Cf. above note 6. Professor Haase warns me not to rebuke too severely the use of an extended and as it were universal meaning of "Romantic," referring me to Friedrich Schlegel's developing concept of "Romantic" (cf. Alex Preminger and T.V.F. Brogan [eds.], The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poets, Princeton 1993, s.v. "Romantic and Postromantic Poetics" by Claudia Brodsky Lacour, pp. 1078 sq., 1083 sq.) as well as to Madame de Stall's notion which included Schiller and Goethe (cf. Dietrich von Engelhardt, "Romanticism in Germany," in: Roy Porter and Mikuhi Teich [eds.], Romanticism in National Context, Cambridge 1988, p. 109) and to recent serious studies on Romanticism and Goethe by, e.g., Owen Barfield or David E. Wellberry (respectively Romanticism Comes of Age, Middletown, CT 1986, and The Secular Moment. Goethe's Early Lyric and the Beginnings of Romanticism, Stanford 1996); cf. also, e.g., Maurice Cranston, The Romantic Movement, Oxford & Cambridge, MA 1994, p. 24: " ... Sturm und Drang, the first period of German romanticism".
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duction, the second to an author (and to the corresponding paragraph of this review article) or a passage in the volume, the third to the "General Bibliography"; after that (a) deals with theory, (b) with corresponding hermeneutical work in classics. Bakhtin and Historical Cultural Studies: (pp. 15 sq.;-; p. 288; cf. above p. 438) Canon, Theory of Canonization: (p. 14;-;-) - - (a) and (b) A. u. J. Assmann (eds.), Kanon und Zensur (Arch/iologie der literarischen Kommunikation II), Munich 1987. Deconstruction: (pp. 1.5.9.16; Goldhill, Fowler, and pp. 148 sq.; p. 287) Feminist and Gender Theory: (pp. 12 sq.; Segal in an "eclectic mix," p. 258, and Goldhill, pp. 52 and 60--66; pp. 285 sq.) - - (a) J. Butler, Gender Trouble. Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, New York / London 1990 (a deconstructionist gender theory in a "postfeminist' [cf. p. 5] period); (a) and (b) M. Skinner, "Literary Theorists at Second-Rate Universities," in: Galinsky (1992), pp. 215-226, and the titles quoted in the notes to her spirited remonstrance. Genre, Literary: theory of literary genres ("Gattungstheorie," "Gattungspoetik," including "Gattungsgeschichte'): (p. 14;-;-) - - (a) Klaus W. Hempfer, Gattungstheorie. Information und Synthese, Munich 1973; H.R. Jauss, "Theorie der Gattungen mad Literatur des Mittelalters," in: H.R.J. and E. K6hler (eds.), Grundriss der romanischen Literaturen des Mittelalters, vol. II,1, Heidelberg 1973; W. Hinck (ed.), Textsortenlehre--Gattungsgeschichte, Heidelberg 1977; (b) G.B. Conte, Virgilio. I1 genere e i suoi confini, Milan 1984 (English as "Genre and its Boundaries," Part Two of Conte, The Rhetoric of Imitation. Genre and Poetic Memory in Virgil and Other Latin Poets, ed. C.P. Segal [Cornell Studies in Classical Philology 44], Ithaca 1986, pp. 97-207); Conte, "Empirical and Theoretical Approaches to Literary Genre," in: Galinsky (1992), pp. 104-123, an admirable essay; R. Nauta, "Gattungsgeschichte als Rezeptionsgeschichte am Beispiel der Entstehung der Bukolik," Antike und Abendland 36 (1990), pp. 116-137. --For "genres of content" (as opposed to "genres of form," the traditional concept) cf. F. Cairns, Generic Composition in Greek and Roman Poetry, Edinburgh 1972 and articles by the same author. Intertextuality: (pp. 5 and 9 sq.; Van Erp Taalman Kip; p. 284) - - (a) U.J. Hebel, Intertextuality, Allusion and Quotation, Greenwood, CT, 1989; (a/b) Thomas Schmitz, Pindar in der franz6sischen Renaissance. Studien zu seiner Rezeption in Philologie, Dichtungstheorie und Dichtung (Hypomnemata 101), G6ttingen 1993, pp. 50-70 (with bibliography); John O'Brien, Anacreon Redivivus: A Study of Anacreontic Translation in Mid-Sixteenth-Century France, Ann Arbor 1995, Chapter I; Atti del Convegno internazionale Intertestualit& il "dialogo"fra testi helle tetterature ctassiche, Cagliari, 2426 novembre 1994, published in: Lexis. Poetica, retorica e communicazione nella tradizione classica 13 (1995). Literary History: Theory of Literary history: (p. 15;-;-) - - (a) H.R. Jauss, Literaturgeschichte als Provokation der Literaturwissenschafl (Konstanzer Universit/itsreden 3), Konstanz 1967; 2nd ed., 1969; reprinted in Jauss' collection Literaturgeschichte als Provokation (Edition Suhrkamp 418), Frankfurt am Main 1970 (English as Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, trans. T. Bahti, Minneapolis 1982); D. Perkins, Is Literary History Possible?, Baltimore and London 1992. Metaphor: Theory of Metaphor ("Metapherntheorie'): (-;-;-) - - (a) P. Ricoeur-E. Jiingel, Metapher. Zur Hermeneutik religi6ser Sprache. Sonderheft (special issue) of the periodical Evangelische Theologie, Munich 1974; A. Haverkamp (ed.), Theorie der Metapher (Wege der Forschung 389), Darmstadt 1983 (includes M. Black 1954, R. Jakob-
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son 1956, H. Blumenberg 1960 and 1979, P. Ricoeur 1972); books by H. Blumenberg; (b) C. W. M/iller, Erysichthon. Der Mythos als narrative Metapher im Demeterhymnus des Kallimachos (Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur Mainz, Abhandlungen der Geistes-und Sozialwissenschaftlichen Klasse, Jahrg. 1987, Nr. 13), Stuttgart 1987; E.A. Schmidt, Ovids poetische Menschenwelt. Die Metamorphosen als Metapher und Symphonie (Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse, Jahrg. 1991, Bericht 2), Heidelberg 1991. Morphopragmatics: (-;-;-). A new linguistic development with consequences also for stylistic analysis that combines morphology and pragrnatics and deals with the pragmatic aspect/meaning of morphemes. - - (a) W.U. Dressier, "Morphopragmatik--Ein neues linguistisches Teilgebiet im Spannungsfeld zwischen Geistes-, Sozial-und Biowissenschaften," Anzeiger der Osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse 131 (1994), pp. 1-14. "Nachleben" (also called "Wirkungsgeschichte'): (p. 11; McDonald;-). The conventional predecessor of "Rezeptionsgeschichte." ~ (b) The periodical Antike und Abendland. Beitrdge zum Verstfindnis der Griechen und R6mer und ihres Nachlebens, founded in 1945 by Bruno Snell (vols. I-XLIV, 1998). Narratology: (pp. 1.5.9; de Jong; pp. 282 sq.). Not one theory, but the designation for theories of narrative, mostly structuralist ones, after the fundamental work of V. Propp (cf. above p. 437) and R. Barthes, "Introduction h l'analyse structurale des r6cits," Communications 8 (1966), pp. 1-27; in English as "Introduction to the structural analysis of narratives," in: S. Heath (ed.), Image-Music-Text, London 1977, pp. 79-124 (both titles not in the General Bibliography). - - (a) and (b) L. Pepe (ed.), Atti del Convegno Internazionale "Letterature classiche e narratologia," Perugia 1981. Oral and Written Literature: Theory of Orality and "Schriftlichkeit": (p. 3;-;-) - - (a) Important title for a new theory: P. Koch and W. Oesterreicher, "Sprache der N~_he---Sprache der Distanz. Miindlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit im Spannungsfeld von Sprachtheorie u n d Sprachgeschichte," Romanistisches Jahrbuch 36 (1985), pp. 15--43; (b) Rich discussion in classical studies. Cf. more recently the series ScriptOralia (all philologies including classics); f~. Andersen, "Miindlichkeit u n d Schriftlichkeit im frfihen Griechentum," Antike und Abendland 33 (1987), pp. 29--44. Pragrnatics ('Pragrnatik'): (-; Goldhill, pp. 57 sq.;-). "That portion of semiotic which deals with the origin, uses, and effects of signs within the behavior in which they occur" (Ch. W. Morris, Signs, Language, and Behavior, New York 1946, p. 219). Related with Speech-Act Theory ('Theorie der Sprechhandlungen') - - (a) B. Schlieben-Lange, Linguistische Pragmatik, Stuttgart 1975; 2nd ed. 1979. Psychoanalytical Criticism: (-; Caldwell, Segal; p. 287). Psychosemiotics: (-;-;-) - - The union of Freudian psychoanalysis and structural linguistics/semiotics, esp. de Saussure and Jakobson. - - (a) J. Lacan, "L'instance de la lettre dans l'inconscient ou la raison depuis Freud," Lecture at the Sorbonne, Paris, May 9, 1957, first published in La Psychoanalyse 3 (1957), pp. 47--81. Also in J.L., ~crits, Paris 1966, pp. 493-528 with reprint in: J.L., ~.crits I (Collection Points), Paris 1970, pp. 249-89; in English as "The Insistence of the Letter in the Unconscious" (1966) in: D. Lodge (ed.), Modern Criticism and Theory. A Reader, London and N e w York 1988, pp. 79-106. Reader-Response Theory: (pp. 10-12.20 sq.; pp. 207-9; pp. 284 sq.) - - (a) W. Iser combining Gadamer's hermeneutics with a phenomenological approach. Besides the
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titles listed p. 284, cL his essay "The Reading Process: A Phenomenological Approach" (1972), in: D. Lodge (1988), pp. 211-228; (b) W. Killy, "Der Widerstand der Texte," Antike und Abendland 22 (1976), pp. 1-20 (pp. 1-14 on Horace, Odes 1,26). Reception: Theory of Reception ("Rezeptionstheorie," "Rezeptionsizsthetik'): (pp. 10-12; Nauta; pp. 284 sq.) - - (a) H. R. Jauss on the shoulders of Gadamer's hermeneutics and Russian Formalism; (b) Crossings with history of genres and intertextuality. Recontextualization: (-; Most;-). Most's term (cf. also Goldhill, p. 70) to designate his hermeneutic method of internal and external contextualizations (cf. also Goldhill, p. 58), as the program to combine the merits of New Criticism, Deconstruction, and New Historicism. Semiology, Semiotics: (p. 23;-; p. 287) - - CL article "Semiotik, Semiologie," in: Historisches W6rterbuch der Philosophie, vol. 9 (Basel 1995), cols. 601-9; U. Eco, La Struttura Assente, Milan 1968; in German as Einfiihrung in die Semiotik, Munich 1972. Speech-Act Theory ('Sprechakttheorie'): (-; Cohen and Goldhill, pp. 56--60;-). Structural Linguistics: (-;-; p. 287) - - (a) Cf. esp. the two papers of R. Jakobson (1956 and 1958/60) reprinted in: D. Lodge (1988), pp. 31--61. "Systemtheorie': (-;-;-) - - (a) H. de Berg and M. Prangel (eds.), Kommunikation und Differenz. Systemtheoretische Ansiitze in der Literatur-und Kunstwissenschaft, Opladen 1993; O. Jahraus/B.M. Schmidt, "Systemtheorie und Literatur," Archivfiir Sozialgeschicte der deutschen Literatur 23 (1998), pp. 66-117 (Forschungsbericht with extensive bibliography). Introductions and Collections: (pp. 1-26;-; pp. 281 sq.) - - (a) Shirly I. Staton (ed.), Literary Theories in Practice, Philadelphia 1987 (reprints). To return to the collection of papers: The volume certainly is not epoch-making, but it is often interesting and sometimes stimulating reading. Encouraging as the initiative is, one would decidedly have wished for more. Nevertheless it is to be hoped that the book will find sympathetic readers, bridge gaps, and bring divergent trends of scholarship closer to one another. Ernst A. Schrnidt Philologisches Seminar Eberhard Karls-Universit/it Tiibingen