Literatura y crítica
Theories of Interpretation: Classical to Romantic Hermeneutics
lunes, 26 de enero de 2015
Theories of Interpretation: Classical to Romantic Hermeneutics
These are the introductory lessons from a course on "Theories of Interpretation" at the University of Zaragoza, during the academic year 1993-94:
1993
Number of Pages in PDF File: 28
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Also here:
Contando cómo le paramos los pies: Relatos de Autoafirmación y Solidaridad de Grupo
miércoles, 21 de enero de 2015
Contando cómo le paramos los pies: Relatos de Autoafirmación y Solidaridad de Grupo
Un artículo más que aparece en el SSRN y seguidamente en otros repositorios:
Partimos del análisis de los relatos de autoafirmación frente a un tercero que presenta Neal Norrick en Conversational Narrative. Desde una perspectiva narratológica e interaccionista, examinamos estas narraciones de experiencias personales en tanto que ritos de autoafirmación, de reparación del rostro social, y de solidaridad de grupo.

Abstract - Telling Put-Down Stories: Narrative Rituals of Self-Affirmation and Group Solidarity:
A follow-up of Neal Norrick’s analysis of ’put-down stories’ in his book Conversational Narrative. These conversational stories of personal experience are examined from an interactional and narratological perspective as rituals of self-affirmation, face-grooming, and group solidarity.
Note: Downloadable document is in Spanish.
Keywords: Narrative, Narratology, Narration, Conversation, Conversational narrative, Interaction, Face, Self-affirmation, Group dynamics
El patrón que siguen estas historias, basado en el establecimiento de aliados frente a un tercero abyecto y excluido, se basa en realidad en un principio básico de la sociabilidad humana. Pues si hay algo que define al ser humano, es el establecimiento de alianzas sociales defensivas frente a terceros, a nivel de grupo. Este comportamiento reproduce la misma dinámica a nivel individual, creando enfrentamientos virtuales en los que se ensayan las maniobras de alianza y se reafirman los valores que han de sostenerla—valores éticos de los que carece la persona castigada con el cotilleo. El ritual consiste en el reforzamiento de la alianza estratégica, normalmente mediante la invocación de los valores de equidad y respeto mutuo que han de sostener toda alianza humana frente a los abusos de los parásitos sociales o free riders, que pretenden apropiarse de los bienes comunales o explotar la benevolencia mutua de los sujetos sociales.
Love for Sale
miércoles, 21 de enero de 2015
Love for Sale
Nos llega por el correo un anuncio de una nueva revista académica del grupo Macmillan:
The APC is as follows, plus VAT where applicable:
- USD $1200 (The Americas)
- GBP £750 (UK and Rest of World)
Palgrave Communications publishes open access content under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) License to support maximum dissemination and use etc etc....
Vamos que si lo entiendo bien, quien quiera hacerse con un currículum aceptable en esta revista, le sale a mil euros el artículo publicado. (En otros repositorios con menos prestigio, el SSRN por ejemplo, no te cobran nada). Claro que ya pueden vender el prestigio caro, mientras dure la mercancía, y se la compren. De momento no va mal la cosa: lejos de pagar a los autores, las editoriales académicas proponen ahora COBRARLES— por darles atención y difusión, que eso vale más que la ciencia. Y ojo que esto no pasa sólo en las humanidades: varias revistas DE PRESTIGIO en las ciencias vienen haciendo esto ya desde hace años. Con lo cual el open access y la facilidad de publicación y la abundancia de repositorios, lejos de acabar con el monopolio intelectual de los editores, van a reforzarlo: entre la abundancia hay que elegir, y quien dé argumentos para prestigiarse será el favorecido, y el destacado en el mercado de la atención. De los libros para qué decirles, ya es historia vieja que quien quiera un libro de una editorial académica tendrá que pagarle a la editorial— y allí van los fondos públicos de muchos proyectos de investigación que luego ni se molestan en colgar en la web en libre acceso los resultados de sus investigaciones, no sea que se vayan a desprestigiar con el tufo de la multitud. Por supuesto que es río revuelto y en transformación, todo esto de la publicación y la difusión, pero algunos se ve que se las ingenian para navegarlo con éxito, y vender humo perfumado en bote.
TIME AND THE CONWAYS y la falacia narrativa
martes, 20 de enero de 2015
Time and the Conways (y la falacia narrativa)
Un viejo articulillo mío sobre teatro y tiempo narrativo:
(Time and the Conways (and the Narrative Fallacy))
English Abstract:An analysis of the narrative structure of J. B. Priesley's drama Time and the Conways (1937). The paper analyzes its use of objective anachronies in relation to the retrospective hermeneutic structure inherent in any narrative representation, which gives rise to a temporal disjunction we dub the "narrative fallacy".
Number of Pages in PDF File: 9
Keywords: Narrative, Narrative structure, Hindsight, Hermeneutics, Narratology, J.B. Priestley, Drama, English literature, Time, Temporal structure
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2016
De las Crisis Juiciosas
martes, 20 de enero de 2015
De las Crisis Juiciosas
En exámenes, a ratos perdidos, voy leyendo el Arte de Ingenio: Tratado de la Agudeza de Baltasar Gracián, digo la edición de Madrid de 1642, firmada con el nombre de su hermano Lorenzo; me compré los facsímiles de esta y de la Agudeza y Arte de Ingenio (Huesca, 1646), editados y prologados ambos por Aurora Egido.
El conceptismo de Gracián, con su énfasis en el juego de ideas, y el análisis retórico que hace de los conceptos, se prestan a relacionarlo con la poética cognitiva de hoy. A mí me llama la atención la manera (un tanto escueta y enigmática ciertamente) en que percibe y saca a la luz la cuestión de los marcos de representación, y de las perspectivas cognitivas. Un suceso o situación se puede concebir de dos o más maneras alternativas, y en el juego de esas representaciones, los marcos que les subyacen, y la transformación o paso de una a otra, está muchas veces la agudeza. Agudeza que tiene el agudo citado por Gracián, agudeza que tiene el que capta la agudeza y la hace memorable (contagiado por el ingenio de la percepción) y agudeza la de Gracián que analiza en qué reside exactamente la agudeza, y a qué modalidad en concreto pertenece. No digo que sus clasificaciones sean coherentes o estancas; son más bien una perspectiva útil sobre una modalidad compleja de juego de ideas, y su descripción en cada apartado está solapada o es solapable con otras perspectivas que analizarían otros aspectos de la modalidad de agudeza estudiada. En cierto sentido el libro es también un florilegio de ideas exquisitas y una colección de chistes y anécdotas, además de un tratado de retórica cognitiva.
Veamos a título de ejemplo uno de sus capítulos o "discursos", el XXI, sobre las críticas que son a la vez ingeniosas (claro) y juiciosas. Corrijo a mi ayre algunas erratas, aunque conservo la ortografía original, dentro de un orden.
PArticipan igualmente de la sutileza, y prudencia las juiziosas calificaciones, consiste su artificio en vn juizio, en vna censura sutil de algun yerro, o acierto recondito, y nada vulgar. Desta suerte dixo vn soldado de Anibal, quando la vitoria de Canas: que el General sabia vencer, pero no vsar de la vitoria.
Quando el comun pondera vna conocida infelicidad, vn mal, o bien manifiesto, obseruar otro mas recondito, arguye gran viueza en el juizio. Assi el Duque de Alba, no ponderaua en Pompeyo el auer sido vencido de los contrarios, sino de los suyos en dar la batalla contra su parecer.
Conocer las eminencias, y calificarlas, es principal empleo desta sutileza. Desta suerte Augusto depreco a Cayo al embiarle a Armenia; la benueolencia de Pompeyo, la audacia de Alejandro, y su fortuna propia.
Tambien se califica, graduando las excelencias de los sujetos, y de las Prouincias, tal fue aquella de las Prouincias de España.
Boetica mittit equos, tauros Xarama feroces,
Insignes Cstella Duces, Aragonia Reges.
Censurase con una improporcion ingeniosamente. De Mario dixo Paterculo; murio aquel varon grandemente dañoso en la guerra para los enemigos, en la paz para los Ciudadanos: Morbo opressus decessit Marius vir in bello hostibus, in otio ciuibus infestissimus.
Con vna critica antitesi, dixo de Tiberio, disimulado vn atento cortesano, al reusar el Imperio. Los demas cumplen tarde, lo que prometen de presto, tu lo que temprano haces, tarde lo prometes. Caeteri quod pollicentur tardè praestant; tu quod praestas tardè polliceris.
Las dubitaciones son artificiosa forma del censurar. Del heroico Anibal, ponderò Valerio Maximo, dexandose lleuar del vulgar sentir de los estrangeros, que dexò en duda, si auia de ser tenido por maximo, o po pessimo. Insignem nominis sui memoriam relicturus, in dubio maior ne, an peior haberi deberet, poneret.
Ay vnas verdades plausibles y gustosas, que participan igualmente de la Agudeza, y de la prudencia; como aquella de Marcial a Emiliano, quando le dize: Si eres pobre, siempre seràs pobre, porque las dadiuas no se hazen sino a los ricos.
Semper eris pauper. si pauper es Ameilianei
Dantur opes nulli nunc nisi diuitibus.
Tienen algo de satiricas, y juntamente son sentenciosas. Dixo el mismo Marcial a vno que pleiteaua vna deuda: Tu has de presentar al juez, has de pagar al Abogado &c. Pareceme que es mejor pagar al acreedor, que es vno solo.
Et iudex petit, petit Patronus
Soluas censeo Sexte creditori.
El principal assunto deste modo de Agudeza, es vna censura extraordinaria, nacida de vna gran capacidad que alcança mucho. Tal fue el consejo que dio el Rey don Henrique de Castilla a su hijo, y el aprecio que hizo, y diuision de sus vassallos, en los que auian seguido sus partes las del Rey don Pedro de hermano, y los neutrales. Estremada fue la de Augusto, quando refiriendole que Alexandro a los treinta y dos años de su edad, auiendo conquistado el mundo, dixo: En que passaremos lo que nos queda de vida, se admirò de que no entendiesse Alexandro, que era mayor obra gouernar bien vn Imperio, que conquistarlo. Viendo Iulio Cesar vnos Estrangeros cargados de perrillos, estimandolos mucho, preguntò si en aquella tierra parian las mugeres hombres. Gran dicho fue el de Felipo a su hijo Alexandro: murmuraua de que su padre tenia muchas mugeres, y lleuaba mal tener tantos hermanos. Dixole Felipo, aumentandole el miedo, y estimulandole a la virtud: Procura o Alexandro, pues has de tener tantos competidores del Reyno, ser tal en la virtud, y en el valor, que merezcas ser antepuesto a todos. Dixo Pompeyo de si mismo, que todas las dignidades las auia conseguido antes de esperarlas, y las auia dexado antes que otros las esperassen.
ACCIÓN, RELATO, DISCURSO (Scribd)
lunes, 19 de enero de 2015
Acción, Relato, Discurso (SCRIBD)
Reaparece por la red mi libro sobre narratología literaria de 1998, esta vez en Scribd:
Third Culture in the Victorian Age
domingo, 18 de enero de 2015
Third Culture in the Victorian Age
From A Critical History of Literature, vol. 2, by David Daiches ("Prose: Newman to Morris").
Arnold's attempt to rescue Christianity from commitment to biblical fundamentalism—an attempt carried on in a a variety of ways by many liberal theologians of the period—was made necessary by the impact on religious orthodoxy of German biblical criticism and of developments in geology and biology. "There is not a creed which is not shaken, not an accredited dogma which is not shown to be questionable, not a received tradition which does not threaten to dissolve," wrote Arnold in "The Study of Poetry." Protestantism, whivh based itself on the Bible, was more vulnerable to the new biblical scholarship than Catholicism, and the application of textual and historical criticism to the books of the bible caused panic among many Protestant theologians, most of whom responded by insisting ever more shrilly on the divine inspiration and literal historical accuracy of the biblical text. Charls Hennell's Inquiry Concerning the Origin of Christianity (1838) was one of the first attempts in England to apply the results of new biblical scholarship to the study of Christian origins; its tremendous effect on young Marian Evans (George Eliot) is well known. Much more significant for the whole history of European religious thought was D. F. Strauss's Life of Jesus (1835) which Geroge Eliot translated (1844-46); this was a far more detailed and comprehensive study than Hennell's, and in its combination of anti-miraculism, sympathetic psychological interpretation of the growth of religious ideas and attitudes, and belief in the profound truth of the symbolic core of Christianity while denying the literal truth of biblical story, it laid the foundations of a "modernist" Christianity of the kind Matthew Arnold, from hi won special point of view, endeavored to construct. Meanwhile, Sir Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology(1830-33), Elements of Geology (1838), and Geological Evidence of the Antiquity of Man (1863) were having an even more disturbing effect, first in demonstrating the continuity of natural processes as demonstrated by the study of geology, secondly by adducing the compelling geological evidence for the earth's being much older and much more gradual in development than was compatible with a literal belief in the book of Genesis, and thirdly by showing that man must have lived on earth for a much longer period than biblical chronology would allow. Finally, the publication of The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin in 1859, putting forward with a mass of evidence his theory of natural selection and so relating man through evolutionary descent to the nonhuman animal world, and his Descent of Man (1871), dealing more particularly with the evolution of man and with sexual selection, outraged the orthodox and precipitated a debate that raged violently for many years. It is against this background that we must look at Arnold's attempts to save Christianity from fundamentalist and scientist alike by concentrating on its poetic significance, its meaning for spiritual experience, and leaving us, at the most, optional, literal belief in Old Testament chronology and New Testament miracles.
Darwin was not himself a skilled propagandist, though he could write with the charm that arises from absorbed interest in one's subject, as his early work, The Voyage of the Beagle (1839), an account of a voyage in southern latitudes to collect various specimens of plant and animal life, so clearly shows. He records in his informed autobiography the decay in middle life of his early taste for poetry, painting, and music. ("But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry: I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also almost lost my taste for pictures or music.") He was, in his own phrase, a "philosophical naturalist," and spent the large part of his life quietly and methodically collecting and interpreting data. He left controversy for others. Fortunately he found a champion who was a brilliant controversialist as well as a man who combined scientific knowledge and enthusiasm with broad humanistic interests. This was Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-95), one of the great figures of Victorian controversy.
Huxley was not only a distinguished biologist and a great popularizer of science; he was also an essayist and man of letters, master of a prose style both cogent and elegant. He was no militant atheist, condemning all religion as superstition, nor was he the kind of narrow scientist who dismisses with contempt the claims of imagination and the arts. Like John Stuart Mill, he was influenced (though at an early stage in his life) by Carlyle; he was well-read in English and European literature and was a good linguist. He called himself an agnostic, because he recognized the limits beyond which the human mind could not go in explaining the ultimate mysteries of the universe. He stood for what might be called the new enlightenment, as distinguished from the eighteenth-century variety—an enlightenment based on the claims of "natural knowledge" and an understanding of what such knowledge can do for man, a hatred of obscurantism of all kinds, a belief in man's ability to control his own destiny provided that education and government do their business properly. In his championing of the Darwinian theory of evolution, he engaged for a large part of his life in continuous battle with ignorance and prejudice and with all those who believed that Darwin's theory, by breaking down the absolute barrier between man and the rest of the animal world, was inherently wicked and blasphemous. In the course of his battle he had to meet every kind of scorn, hatred, and misrepresentation. In published essays and in public debates with the most formidable antagonists of his time he demonstrated his confidence, his good humour, his mastery of all relevant facts, his power of marshaling argument, his compelling lucidity. In education, he pleaded for the sciencs and opposed Arnold's insistence on the classics on the ground that even if taught as they should be taught the classics could not consittue a properly comprehensive study of man and the world, and that in any case most pupils never mastered the mechanics of classical knowledge sufficiently as to be able to enjoy the literature properly. The ordinary schoolboy "finds Parnassus uncomonly steep, and there is no chance of his having time or inclination to look about him till he gets to the top. And nine times out of ten he does not get to the top." Education he defined as "the instruction of the intellect in the laws of Nature, under which name I include not merely things and their forces, but men and their ways, and the fashioning of the affections and of the will into an earnest and loving desire to move in harmony with those laws." Huxley's views on liberal education and the place of science in it is expressed forcibly in an address he gave to the South London Workingmen's College in 1868 and published in the same year in Macmillan's Magazine,and also in the title essay of Science and Culture and Other Essays (1881); these essays, together with Arnold's reply, first given as the Rede Lectures at Cambridge in 1880 and published in theNineteenth Century in 1882 (he also delivered this lecture in America and included it in his American Discourses, 1885), constitute an interesting and instructive clash of opinion between two great Victorians, each passionately interested in reforming English education. Mill's was the Victorian secular mind operating on philosophy and political theory; Huxley's, the Victorian secular mind working through a basic interest in the natural sciences; Arnold, the Victorian apostle of culture seeking for new techniques for bringing the religious and literary heritage of the past into the modern world. All three were very much aware of the modernity of the modern world. Mill and Huxley looked forward with hope, while Arnold, though he sometimes appeared to do so, possessed a sensibility which, in spite of himself, remained rooted in nostalgia. In their differences as well as in their similarities (which are greater than might appear at first sight) they help to illuminate some of the finer reaches of the Victorian mind.

