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Metaphors in the Muspilli Neophilologus Pub Date : 2024-03-15 Tina Marie Boyer
This study delves into the metaphorical nature of the OHG Muspilli. Employing cognitive linguistics, the research aims to explore the deeper implications of metaphors, which are believed to be deeply ingrained in our thought processes and reasoning about the world. According to Lakoff and Johnson’s theory, metaphors are more than just linguistic tools; they are integral to understanding and interacting
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Cervantes y los servicios de inteligencia: Espías e informantes en “La gitanilla” Neophilologus Pub Date : 2024-02-28 Matías A. Spector
Miguel de Cervantes had firsthand experience with spying techniques in North Africa, first as a captive in Algiers and later as a royal envoy on a secret mission in Oran. In this paper, I examine how the author articulated his knowledge on espionage in “La gitanilla” (“The Little Gypsy”) (1613). Firstly, I propose that, by 1610, Cervantes found himself in an auspicious geopolitical context to bring
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Dante, American-Style: Seymour Chwast’s Graphic Adaptations of the Divine Comedy and European Literature Neophilologus Pub Date : 2024-02-24 Guylian Nemegeer, Mara Santi
In 2010, the American graphic designer Seymour Chwast (New York, °1931) published Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Graphic Adaptation, which condenses Dante’s masterpiece into 127 pages. Previous scholarship has mainly focused on how Chwast adapts the Comedy and the specific passages he chooses to include. Chwast has been viewed as just one of many interpreters within a long tradition of Dante adaptations
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A Hard-Boiled Hero in an Atomized World: Manuel Vázquez Montalbán’s El hombre de mi vida and Milenio Carvalho Lament Neoliberal Alienation Neophilologus Pub Date : 2024-02-09 José Ortigas
Abstract Manuel Vázquez Montalbán’s Pepe Carvalho detective novels comprise a seminal series, spanning eighteen novels from 1972 to 2004, that consolidated the novela negra as a popular, denunciatory genre in Spain. While much has been written about the early entries in the series, the latter novels, namely El hombre de mi vida (2000), Milenio I: Rumbo a Kabul, and Milenio II: En las antípodas (2004)
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"Il y a un lutin dans le Bois aux Roches!": Formes et sens du merveilleux dans la série Johan et Pirlouit de Peyo Neophilologus Pub Date : 2024-02-07
Abstract This article examines the forms and functions of the medieval and medievalized marvelous in Peyo’s bande dessinée series Johan et Pirlouit. As the travels and adventures of Johan and his companion Pirlouit gradually reveal more fantastic creatures and landscapes, the occurrences of the marvelous constructed by Peyo evolve as well. Relying on tropes and topoï directly summoned from medieval
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Glossing Abbo with Ælfric’s Grammar/Glossary Neophilologus Pub Date : 2024-01-27 David W. Porter
The essay identifies the Grammar/Glossary of the homilist Ælfric as the source for the continuous Old English gloss to the prose version of Abbo of St Germain’s Bella Parisiacae urbis Book III, which occurs in two manuscripts. The borrowings are very frequent, amounting to more than 250 in an edited text of just 90 lines. Analysis shows Ælfrician Old English matching sometimes Abbo’s main text, sometimes
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Spectres of Virginia Woolf: Rhythmic and Heterotopic Haunting in “A Haunted House” Neophilologus Pub Date : 2024-01-25 Demet Karabulut Dede
In this paper I offer a reading of Virginia Woolf’s story “A Haunted House” from the perspectives of hauntology and heterotopic spatiality. I argue that, initiating with this story, spectrality prevails in Virginia Woolf’s writing and haunts her literary corpus. By examining the mystical element rhythmic practice brings to the story, and by linking it to thencept of haunting and spectrality, I discuss
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The Purpose of Double Accenting in the Ormulum and a Possible French Connection Neophilologus Pub Date : 2023-12-19 Jannis Jakobs
Based on a study contrasting the spellings of the Ormulum’s (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Junius 1) Hand C with those of Orm, this article proposes that final < tt > did not necessarily indicate a short preceding vowel in the hypothesized spelling system which Orm sought to reform, and that the Ormulum’s double accent marks might serve to prophylactically counteract a spelling habit present in Orm’s
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La separación de los esposos vista por la mujer en la literatura caballeresca germánica y romance de la Edad Media: un análisis comparado Neophilologus Pub Date : 2023-12-09 Miguel Ayerbe Linares
Marriage and the relationship between husband and wife in medieval literature have often been analyzed from many different points of view. However, there is an aspect which remains unexplored and this is the analysis from a discursive perspective of the conversation between the knight and his lady before he departs in search of adventures, war or whatever other reason. This study aims to verify if
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Cómo lograr el éxito con una reedición: 1964, el Ferdydurke de Sudamericana y Ernesto Sabato Neophilologus Pub Date : 2023-11-22 José Luis Nogales Baena
In 1964, Sudamericana Publishing House printed in Buenos Aires the second edition of the Spanish version of the novel Ferdydurke (1937) by Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz. Apparently, it was identical to the first publication in Spanish (by Argos Publishing House, Buenos Aires, 1947); however, the text had been extensively revised according to Ernesto Sabato’s indications. Furthermore, a new prologue
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‘And You Shall Know That I am the Lord’: The Wanderer and the Book of Ezekiel Neophilologus Pub Date : 2023-11-18 Rachel A. Burns
The ruined-city motif in the Old English poem The Wanderer (lines 73–87) has long been read as a reflex of traditional Germanic diction, and as a symbol of material transience. In line with more recent biblical readings of the poem, this paper identifies a number of analogues and possible sources for both the excidio urbis image and other images of transience, in the biblical Book of Ezekiel. Among
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El proyecto de edición del Poema del Cid del Marqués de Pidal para la Real Academia Española Neophilologus Pub Date : 2023-11-07 Martín Zulaica López
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Beowulf and Ragnarǫk: A Reassessment Neophilologus Pub Date : 2023-10-24 Chenyun Zhu
The extent of the Beowulf poet’s knowledge of pre-Christian Germanic mythology is a matter of considerable dispute. The present article reconsiders the claims of Ursula Dronke’s 1969 essay “Beowulf and Ragnarǫk” and corroborates her argument that the poet, instead of unwittingly transmitting pre-Christian mythological traditions, knew and deliberately utilized the myth of Ragnarǫk. Parallels between
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In Defence of Böðvarr bjarki Neophilologus Pub Date : 2023-10-21 Tom Grant
For almost two centuries, Böðvarr bjarki has been a household name in Beowulf studies. The exploits of this monster-slaying champion of the Danish king match those of the epic hero at many points, and this has made Bjarki the subject of critical fascination. Many scholars have viewed the correspondences between Beowulf and Bjarki as evidence that certain aspects of Beowulf’s career may have been modelled
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Depolarizing the Polarized: Elif Shafakʼs Three Daughters of Eve and Turkey Neophilologus Pub Date : 2023-10-19 Ali Yiğit
The modern Republic of Turkey has been plagued with political, cultural, and religious polarization due in large part to the antithetical interpretations of modernization by different regimes in the history of the country. In recent years, it has been exacerbated by the ascendancy of the religious right, particularly after the attempted coup in 2016, which has created a volatile situation that is almost
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The Old English Phoenix as a Model of Saintly Embodiment Neophilologus Pub Date : 2023-10-11 Sharon M. Wofford
The Old English poem The Phoenix is often read as a straight-forward allegory for the eternal life that awaits Christians. There has been some recent interest in the poem from scholars working on landscape and animal studies; the poem is frequently put in conversation with the Old English Physiologus because it is also an “animal poem.” This article argues that returning The Phoenix to its manuscript
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The Role of Richard Hakluyt’s The Principall Nauigations (1589) in the Introduction and Dissemination of Spanish Loanwords in the English Language Neophilologus Pub Date : 2023-09-28 Sara von der Fecht-Fernández, Alicia Rodríguez-Álvarez
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Did Old English Verse Have a “Morphological” Metre? Neophilologus Pub Date : 2023-09-20 Nelson Goering
The revision of the four-position theory of Old English metre by Yakovlev (2008) has had a considerable impact, both for its simplification of Sievers’ (1893) metrical principles, and for its supposed shift to a “morphological” rather than an “accentual” metrical type. I contextualize Yakovlev’s important contribution to metrical theory, highlighting that his main innovations are to eliminate the principle
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La Voz De La Hechicera: De La Narración Oral Al Registro Judicial Neophilologus Pub Date : 2023-09-11 Susana Gala Pellicer
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Tense and Tension in Alice Munro’s “In Sight of the Lake”: A Cognitive Study Neophilologus Pub Date : 2023-09-08 Roghayeh Farsi
This study applies Carolin Gebauer’s theory of fictional present to short fiction, focusing on Alice Munro’s “In sight of the lake” (2012) which is rendered in present-tense narration. Gebauer identifies immersive, rhetoric, communicative, and synchronizing functions for the use of present tense in narratives. The paper investigates how all these contribute to the thematic function. It detects instabilities
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The Heremod Digressions in Beowulf: A Reassessment Neophilologus Pub Date : 2023-08-28 Leonard Neidorf
The present article reassesses the legend of Heremod and its relevance to Beowulf. It argues on the basis of analogues preserved in Saxo Grammaticus’s Gesta Danorum that the legend of Heremod was principally concerned not with the theme of avaricious hoarding, but with themes of popular sentiment, regime change, and the relationship between a king and his most illustrious subjects. Understood as such
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From Agnostic Heathen to Christian Convert: Trust in One’s Own Might and Main in the Viking Age Neophilologus Pub Date : 2023-08-28 William Sayers
Four Icelandic narrative texts with historical and thematic ties to the conversion of Norway and the Faroe Islands to Christianity are examined from the vantage-point of converts’ prior statements of their belief only in their own might and main. Disillusionment with the ‘old gods’ is the common reason given for such professed self-reliance, which does not, however, exclude opportunistic assistance
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The Name of Thor and the Transmission of Old Norse poetry Neophilologus Pub Date : 2023-08-19 Haukur Þorgeirsson
The Old Norse name of the thunder god has the monosyllabic form Þórr in the extant manuscripts. However, one Eddic poem, Hymiskviða, and one skaldic poem, Þórsdrápa, have verses which metrically indicate a disyllabic form with a short first syllable, hypothetically restored as *Þóarr, *Þóurr, *Þonarr or *Þunurr. The existence of such a disyllabic form has been dismissed by recent editors who have resorted
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Una refundición moretiana de una comedia de Claramonte: El valiente justiciero y El rey don Pedro en Madrid Neophilologus Pub Date : 2023-08-09 Javier Castrillo Alaguero
Agustín Moreto is one of the most outstanding authors of our Golden Theatre, because he was, in addition to Calderón, the main exponent of a form of composition that, together with collaborative writing, constitutes one of the most common dramaturgical modalities among secular poets: the rewriting. In this sense, the dramatic production of Agustín Moreto includes numerous motifs and arguments that
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The Glossary in London, British Library, Harley 107, fol. 72v Neophilologus Pub Date : 2023-07-15 Claudio Cataldi
This study provides a new edition of, and commentary to, the Latin-Old English glossary preserved in London, British Library, Harley 107. This glossary, which comprises three introductory entries, a chapter on bird names, and a chapter on fish names, belongs to a group of Latin-Old English glossaries organized by subject (class glossaries), rather than alphabetically. According to scholarship, the
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Las visionarias castellanas y la llegada de la Contrarreforma: el discurso y las emociones Neophilologus Pub Date : 2023-07-15 Pedro García Suárez
This paper aims to shed light on the transformation of the female visionary spiritual model that originated in the wake of the Counter-Reformation by focusing on the power of discourse and the textual representation of emotions. To this end, I analyse the lives of the visionaries Juana de la Cruz (1481–1534) and María de Ajofrín (?-1489) that appear in different documents, both before and after the
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The Criminal, the Advocate, and the Judge in 2 Samuel 13 and Tirso’s La venganza de Tamar Neophilologus Pub Date : 2023-07-06 Luigi De Angelis Soriano
This article examines the tragic story of Tamar–the only daughter of King David mentioned by name in the Bible–through a comparison between the passage from 2 Samuel 13 and the play La venganza de Tamar (Tamar’s revenge), by the Spanish playwright and friar Tirso de Molina (1579–1648). Through close-readings of excerpts from both texts, I emphasize the transition of the story from biblical drama to
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Chambers of Consciousness and Houses of Life: Nietzschean Hermeneutics in Arthur Machen’s The Great God Pan Neophilologus Pub Date : 2023-06-25 Eduardo Valls Oyarzun
This article provides a comparative study of the underlying cognitive structures laid out in Arthur Machen’s decadent novella The Great God Pan (1894) and Friedrich Nietzsche’s “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense” (1873). It scrutinizes the images of the “chamber of consciousness” and “the house of life”, deployed by the German philosopher and the Welsh author respectively, and explores how the
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Análisis comparativo del Coro como personaje en tres tragedias griega y tres dramas españoles del Corpus DraCor Neophilologus Pub Date : 2023-06-20 María Teresa Santa María Fernández, Monika Dabrowska
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Emblematic Language: A Multilingual Perspective on Wulfstan’s English and Latin Baptismal Homilies Neophilologus Pub Date : 2023-06-03 Jacob W. Runner
Prominent as both a religious and legal figure, the writings of archbishop Wulfstan (d. 1023) can elude easy categorization. They are, moreover, indebted to both Latin rhetorical and Old English vernacular traditions. Drawing together studies of Wulfstan’s surrounding cultural atmosphere and critical evaluations of Wulfstan’s personal style, this article first assesses the complexity of Wulfstan’s
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Transforming Attitudes Towards the Turk in Edward Ravenscroft’s Mamamouchi, or The citizen turn’d gentleman (1672) and Molière’s Le bourgeois Gentilhomme (1668) Neophilologus Pub Date : 2023-06-02 Eneas Caro Partridge
When Edward Ravenscroft approached the polarising figure of the Turk in The citizen turn’d gentleman (1672), an adaptation of Molière’s Le bourgeois gentilhomme (1668), he inherited certain structures and motivations that stem out of very specific attitudes towards the Ottomans that were not easily transposed onto the English context. This did not stop him from penning one of the most successful plays
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Déclin et célébration du vivant dans l’écriture d’Émile Verhaeren Neophilologus Pub Date : 2023-06-02 Dominique Ninanne
This article is an ecopoetic reading of a selection of works (poetry and theatre) of the Belgian symbolist Émile Verhaeren. Its aim is to highlight the critical discourse and the constructive discourse of the author about the environmental question and the relationship between culture and nature. We will start with his “social trilogy”, Les Campagnes hallucinées, Les Villes tentaculaires and Les Aubes
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Torture and Metamorphosis in Exeter Book Riddle 261 Neophilologus Pub Date : 2023-06-01 Jasmine Bria
The Exeter Book Riddles provide insight into how early English medieval people felt about their place in the non-human world by giving voice to many non-human creatures. Riddle 26 depicts the creation of a manuscript from the perspective of a sheep becoming a page. A close reading of the riddle reveals that the poem is divided into two nearly identical sections, which are built around the contrast
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Andreas, Intertextuality, and Three Modes of Philology: Traditional, Oral, Digital Neophilologus Pub Date : 2023-05-20 Paul Battles
This essay examines the intertextual relationships between Andreas and other Old English poems. One reason for the current lack of consensus about these relationships stems from the different philological paradigms—traditional, oral, and digital—that have been applied to the poem. The present study has three aims: to demonstrate that, appearances to the contrary, the different paradigms are compatible;
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Hidden Hoards, Past Pains: Treasures, Ancestors, and Ghosts in Beowulf and in the Nibelungenlied Neophilologus Pub Date : 2023-05-13 Eduardo Correia
The respective heroes of Beowulf and the Nibelungenlied, Beowulf and Siegfried, display contrasting attitudes towards the treasures ubiquitous in the two poems. A comparative analysis of these behaviours has not been attempted yet. Using a Maussian model of gift exchange, this article argues that their distinctive behaviours are closely linked with the dissimilar outcomes of each narrative. Furthermore
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Luis Alberto de Cuenca el Bárbaro: mitos, sagas y tradición germánica Neophilologus Pub Date : 2023-04-19 Massimiliano Bampi, Adrián J. Sáez
Resumen Dentro de la explosiva combinación de elementos de la poética de Luis Alberto de Cuenca, este trabajo estudia la presencia de la mitología y la tradición nórdicas: luego de un repaso de las ideas y lecturas del poeta, se realiza un rastreo panorámico y una clasificación de los ingredientes nórdicos en su poesía, que se examinan detalladamente.
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El discurso fúnebre de Quevedo a la muerte del rey Gustavo Adolfo de Suecia: nuevos datos y manuscritos Neophilologus Pub Date : 2023-03-31 María José Alonso Veloso
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Intertextual Potential and the Reader in the Bevis Tradition: Boeve de Haumtone, Bevis of Hampton and Beuve de Hantonne Neophilologus Pub Date : 2023-03-27 Mary Bateman
This article investigates the role that reader-oriented, unlimited intertextuality – that is, intertextual references only as perceived or even mis-perceived by readers – might have had to play in the transmission, adaptation, and development of the Bevis of Hampton narratives across English and Francophone traditions. In recent years, a number of studies have demonstrated the importance of the multi-text
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“Savage” and “Medieval” in C. S. Lewis’s The Discarded Image Neophilologus Pub Date : 2023-03-22 Thomas Klein
This essay examines C. S. Lewis’s The Discarded Image (1964), in which he describes the structure of the medieval conception of the universe. C. S. Lewis remains a figure of significant interest and influence. However, his evocation of the Medieval Model is framed by a series of problematic analogies, in which he attempts to recover the “medieval” from its association with the “savage.” Lewis’s references
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Óðinn as Cargo-God: a Suggestion from Beowulf Neophilologus Pub Date : 2023-03-10 Leonard Neidorf, Na Xu
One name for Óðinn that has long produced disagreement among scholars is Farmatýr (“god of cargoes”). Some construe the name in connection with the equation of Mercury and *Wōðanaz during the Common Germanic period, while others construe the name in connection with kennings associated with Óðinn. Drawing on a passage in Beowulf to which the name has never been related, we propose that Farmatýr refers
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2103, le retour de l’Éléphant: la science-fiction utopique en dialogue avec l’Écologie Neophilologus Pub Date : 2023-03-07 Sara Buekens
When contemporary literature seeks to warn the reader against the environmental threats that haunt the planet, it often turns to end-of-the-world scenarios that express themselves through a catastrophic register and fall within the science-fiction genre. In this article however, I will focus on the literary genre of ecological utopia and on the way in which this genre offers concrete solutions to present-day
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The Old English Pharaoh: A Neglected ubi sunt Poem Neophilologus Pub Date : 2023-02-11 Francisco J. Rozano-García
The Old English poem Pharaoh has been largely unconsidered in critical literature owing to its formal and interpretive obscurities, which have led to its relegation to a secondary place in the Old English poetic canon. The text has traditionally been read as an unsuccessful attempt at replicating Latin models of dialogic literature to invite reflection on the typological associations of the crossing
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Recuperating Ruíz de Alarcón: Los empeños de un engaño as Source Text for Calderón de la Barca and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Neophilologus Pub Date : 2023-01-19 Erin Alice Cowling
This paper considers a little-studied play, Los empeños de un engaño by Juan Ruíz de Alarcón, as a possible source text for both Calderón de la Barca’s Los empeños de un acaso and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s Los empeños de una casa. The phonetic similarities of the latter two titles have relegated Ruíz de Alarcón’s unique drama to obscurity. However, the unusual details of both the Alarcón and Sor
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The Wanderer and the Legacy of Pathetic Fallacy Neophilologus Pub Date : 2023-01-18 Harriet Soper
The Old English poem known as The Wanderer has long been said to rely on the device of ‘pathetic fallacy’ in its descriptions of stormy and frozen land- and seascapes. This piece of literary-critical terminology has strong ties to both Romantic and realist aesthetic ideals of the nineteenth century, and this paper outlines the assumptions which underpin the term and questions our continued use of it
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The Battle of Brunanburh: The Lanchester Hypothesis Neophilologus Pub Date : 2023-01-09 Paul Cavill
The location of the battle of Brunanburh in 937 remains a source of disagreement among investigators. In recent years many places have been identified as Brunanburh. This article interrogates the claims of Andrew Breeze, in several works, to have securely located the battle at Lanchester in County Durham. The methods by which Breeze reaches his conclusion are analyzed, and the arguments he cites for
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Un poema europeo en el romanticismo español: El bulto vestido del negro capuz (1835) de Patricio de la Escosura Neophilologus Pub Date : 2023-01-07 Raquel Gutiérrez Sebastián
The article studies the narrative poem by Patricio de la Escosura El bulto vestido del negro capuz (1835), relating it to the European romantic literature of his time, which the author knew well from his stays as an emigrant in France. The work analyzes the themes and the form of a composition that is always cited but scarcely studied by contemporary and current critics. The analysis shows the connection
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The Invisibility of the Soul and the Rhetoric of Dissent: Conscience and the Wycliffite Heresy Neophilologus Pub Date : 2022-12-29 Liam Michael Plimmer
This essay argues that the use of conscience as a justification for dissent has an even longer history than has often been assumed by intellectual historians of the Reformation. Through a close examination of the English Wycliffite Sermons (c.1380s–1390s) and the Testimony of William Thorpe (1407), it offers the first extended consideration of the use of the word “conscience” in Wycliffite texts, using
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New Ways of Identification: Black Diaspora and Memory in Caryl Phillips’s In the Falling Snow Neophilologus Pub Date : 2022-12-26 Deniz Kırpıklı
As a second-generation immigrant author Caryl Phillips often depicts the distress of black British people of Afro-Caribbean descent in Britain in his works. His novel In the Falling Snow, published in 2009, illustrates the evolution of the notion of black Britishness through the memory of the post-war generation and more recent transcultural connections. A network of transcultural connections involving
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Scripted Revolution: Aspects of the Carnivalesque and Grotesque in Tirant lo Blanc and Curial i Güelfa Neophilologus Pub Date : 2022-12-26 John Lucas
The fifteenth century Catalan chivalric romances, Tirant lo Blanc and Curial e Güelfa, constitute two literary landmarks in the evolution of the early modern novel. The use of Bahktin’s concepts of the carnivalesque and the grotesque deepen our understanding of the two texts by helping us understand both the subversion of traditional social order and its ultimate restoration. We explore the theoretical
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La traducción al español de las Questioni d’amore (Filocolo) de Boccaccio: del texto “vicioso” (Laberinto de amor) a la edición revisada (Trece cuestiones muy graciosas) Neophilologus Pub Date : 2022-12-21 David González Ramírez
In the sixteenth century, a partial Spanish translation of Boccaccio's Filocolo was published with a double title: Laberinto de amor and Trece cuestiones muy graciosas. This change has to do with an interesting editorial plot, since the translation was published first in Seville (1541) "a hurtadas" (on the sly) and then in Toledo (1546), in an edition authorized by its translator. The complete collation
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Window Women: A Way into Nineteenth-Century English Literature Neophilologus Pub Date : 2022-12-21 A. Ferràndez López
The topic of the ‘woman at the window’ has never been thoroughly studied in nineteenth-century English literature despite the attention that related issues of the separation between the public and private spheres and the gendered usages of space during this period have received. In order to present how the window may constitute a space of its ‘own’, i.e. neither belonging to public nor private spaces
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Hear No Sievers, See No Sievers: Metrics and the Eddic Commentary Tradition Neophilologus Pub Date : 2022-12-16 Mikael Males
This article explores a gradual shift towards metrical and linguistic imprecision in the four major commentaries on the Old Norse Eddic poems produced from the 1930s to today. This trend both affects and reflects the state of Eddic scholarship at large. Many scholars today do not avail themselves of metrical and linguistic criteria in the dating and textual restitution of Eddic poems but approach these
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Un soneto olvidado de Calderón de la Barca para el Equilibrio cristiano político y moral de Gaspar Agustín de Lara (1680) Neophilologus Pub Date : 2022-12-02 Luis Gómez Canseco, Fernando Navarro Antolín
In 1680 Pedro Calderón de la Barca wrote a sonnet for Gaspar Agustín de Lara’s Equilibrio cristiano político y moral. This paper edits the sonnet, completely unknown in Calderonian studies, and also analyzes the figure and the work of Lara.
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The Pilgrim’s Carnivalesque: The Textual Chaucer and the Negation of Narration in The Canterbury Tales Neophilologus Pub Date : 2022-11-23 Joshua C. Wright
The organizing principle of The Canterbury Tales is a carnivalesque dynamic akin to that which is formulated by the theories of Mikhail Bakhtin. In this storytelling bacchanal, the tales themselves function as carnivalesque masks which create a performative union of fleshly narrator, historical composite characterizations, and institutionally generic features, out of which the textual pilgrims are
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Exciting Storms: Weather Phenomena as Catalysts of Chivalric Adventures Neophilologus Pub Date : 2022-11-03 Philip Reich
The tempest is a conventional figure in epic tradition. This essay examines the narrative position of weather phenomena in Middle High German courtly romances and their relation to the adventures of the active characters–most of them knights. In particular, storms, as severe meteorological perturbations, seem to excite heroic exploits as they mark the difference between the space of origin and a space
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To and Fro Between Eros and Thanatos: What Where and the Death Drive Neophilologus Pub Date : 2022-11-03 Jooyeup Lee
This paper tries to read What Where as Beckett’s realistic and pessimistic presentation of the ontological conditions of the human history, which the play defines as investigation, exploitation and quest for the ultimate truth. Its analysis finds that this presentation has important threads in common with the criticism of civilization in the later Freud’s metapsychology, which formulated “an all-embracing
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Grendel’s Mother and the Women of the Völsung-Nibelung Tradition Neophilologus Pub Date : 2022-10-31 Alison Vowell
Interpretation of Grendel’s mother, one of the most complex and enigmatic figures of Beowulf, is especially fraught with difficulty. The search for analogues to Grendel’s mother has traditionally focused on the trolls of the Old Norse sagas, emphasising her non-human qualities. This article argues that the Germanic heroic women of the Völsung-Nibelung tradition are the key to understanding Grendel’s
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The Lonely Afterlives of Early English Queens Neophilologus Pub Date : 2022-10-31 Matthew Firth, Cassandra Schilling
Queens were important figures within the court communities of pre-Norman England, their status defined by their relationship to the king, whether as queen-consort, queen-mother, queen-regent, or queen-dowager. These were positions with an attendant degree of prestige and authority, but a vulnerability to the vicissitudes of the king’s fortunes. Often this would lead to periods of exile from the court
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Exiles: Medieval Experiences of Isolation Neophilologus Pub Date : 2022-10-15 Erin Sebo
For most people alive today, the COVID-19 pandemic was our first experience of widespread isolation. However, among medieval cultures, with low population density and limited urbanisation, isolation, especially through exile, was common as a political expedient or even, as now, as a method of controlling the spread of illness. This is reflected across myriad aspects of medieval culture, from pilgrim
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Paris’s Choice (1670) by Charles Davenant: A Seventeenth-Century Play Preserved in a University Manuscript Miscellany Neophilologus Pub Date : 2022-09-11 Nora Rodríguez-Loro