The invisible blackness of Harryette Mullen's poetry: writing, miscegenation and what remais to be seen

Este ensaio aborda a poética de Harryette Mullen, poetisa afro-americana cuja obra questiona os limites que moldam as expectativas pela inteligibilidade acessível na literatura afro-americana. Os poemas de Mullen exploram as bordas da inteligibilidade, avançando para além das expectativas por uma forma visível/ Rev. Let., São Paulo, v.52, n.1, p.101-120, jan./jun. 2012. 119 inteligível de linguagem que abarcaria a experiência da negritude. Argumenta-se que a escrita na poesia de Mullen funciona como um processo de miscigenação ao jogar com a ilegibilidade da negritude, para além de uma linha visível de distinção entre o que é ou que deveria ser considerado como parte apropriada da negritude, o que possibilita novas formas de reflexão sobre a poesia como um instrumento politicamente significativo para se repensar o papel da poetisa e do poeta negros no espaço da diáspora negra.

Rumores da escrita, vestígios do passado: uma interpretação fonológica das vogais do português arcaico por meio da poesia medieval

A proposta do presente livro é oferecer ao leitor uma descrição fonológica das qualidades vocálicas vigentes na primeira fase (período trovadoresco) do português arcaico a partir da análise das rimas e da grafia das Cantigas de Santa Maria, de Afonso X, o Sábio, Rei de Leão e Castela, elaboradas na segunda metade do século XIII.

The Invisible Blackness of Harryette Mullen's Poetry: Writing, Miscegenation, and What Remains to Be Seen

This essay addresses the poetics of Harryette Mullen, an awarded African-American female poet whose work questions the boundaries that shape the expectations for accessible intelligibility in African-American literature. Mullen’s poems skirt the edges of intelligibility by going beyond the expectations for a visible/intelligible form of language that would embrace the experience of blackness. I argue that writing in Mullen’s poetry works as process of miscegenation by playing on the illegibility of blackness, beyond a visible line of distinction between what is or should be considered part of blackness itself, which engages new forms of reflection on poetry as a politically meaningful tool for rethinking the role of the black (female) poet within the black diaspora.

A misosoginia medieval e seus ecos nos Lais de Maria de França

The Lais of Marie de France are a specific type of historical record about the medieval aristocratic society and enables us to decipher the hierarchies that govern the relationship between men and women in the period. As well explains Georges Duby, medieval society tends to present coated with a male character because, among other factors, its latent misogyny. Women were placed under male authority, convinced of their natural superiority , the men despised , mocked her sex , meanwhile feared them, after all, women were Eve’s daughters. So, Lais offer female images that cannot be ignored , since it express the author women’s idea. However , as we seek to demonstrate in this article, Maria of France reflects the representations of the Christian society aristocratic. One note here that this article does not aspire to reach the actual circumstances, but the historical significance of female images present in the Lais.

A Poética do amor em O Romance da Rosa

We aim with this article to analyze the poetics of love in The Romance of the Rose. We think that Guillaume de Lorris’s conception of love is associated with the flourishing of the French courtly society of the XIII Century, and that Jean de Meun’s conception of love is a result of the decline of this same society. Behind the virtues offered by Guillaume to the medieval lover we find the notion of courtesy, of the art of living in society, the understanding of the poetry as a form of ethics, and the medieval poetic of desire – intimately associated with the religious mysticism appeared from the XI Century and with the troubadours’ poetry. Jean is more influenced by the Ovidian tradition of thinking about the causes and effects of love. In the first part of the poem, Guillaume idealizes the conquest of the Rose; in the second, Jean describes the cueillette of the Rose, which could be read as a rape, in an allegorical way. It is this tension between different conceptions of love in a same poem that makes possible a better comprehension of the ways people used to think and feel in the Middle Ages.

A Sancta Sapientia Medieval: enigma e mistério no teatro cristão de Rosvita de Ganderseheim

Within the scope of Literary Studies, theory, criticism, and historiography about the literature produced in the Middle Ages developed considerably from 1940 on, with the works of Ernst Curtius, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Erich Auerbach. In spite of the progress made, some specific aspects remain in the shadow, with incursions which were punctual though meaningful: that is the case of the critic fortunes about women‟s literary production in that period. Rosvita was a canoness and lived in the Benedictine convent of Gandersheim (Germany), in the 10th century A.D. Coming under Terence‟s influence, she wrote theater plays in Latin in which she figuratively presented theological issues in order to spread the Christian doctrine. The martyrdom issue deserved to be put in relief and was the focal point of the play Wisdom, which took place at the time of the Roman emperor Adrian. This paper analyzes that dramatic text discussing, at the end, how the categories of symbol, enigma, allegory, and mystery are organized by the author as expressive resources and structural elements.

Bovine Teeth in Age Assessment, from Medieval Cattle to Belgian Blue : Methodology, Possibilities and Limitations

The overall aim of the present thesis was to develop and characterise an age assessment method based on incremental lines in dental cementum using contemporary bovine teeth and teeth from archaeological faunal assemblages. The investigations also included two other age assessment methods: tooth wear pattern and macroscopic dental measurements. The first permanent mandibular molar and lower jaws from 70 contemporary cattle of known age and 170 archaeological molar sets from ten different Swedish archaeological sites were used. The following conclusions were drawn: • The number of incremental lines in the dental cementum varied between different parts of the tooth root as well as within one and the same individual. The results from contemporary cattle of known age showed a strong relationship between age and incremental lines in the cementum of the distal part of the mesial root (R2=65.5%) and the known ages of the animals. • With the “best” model variation in age could be explained to 65.5% (R2) by the number of incremental lines. Thus, the remaining age variation (approximately 35%) could not be explained by these lines. Other factors than must thus be responsible. However, with the exception of calves born the present material did not reveal any such significant relationship. • The results from cattle of known age indicate that the method of assessing age on the basis of cemental incremental lines is more reliable than other methods such as tooth wear or tooth measurements. However, by combining counting incremental lines and one variable assessing tooth dimension (tooth height) a slightly stronger relationship could be obtained (R2=74.5%). The results from age assessment of the medieval and post-Reformation cattle emphasize the importance of supplementing any age estimation of archaeological assemblages based on dental indicators with characteristics for the particular assessment model. Furthermore, conclusions based on age assessment with such models can not be drawn with any more detailed time scale than about 2 years leaving at best only 25% (R2) of factors influencing the dental indicator(s) utilized in the model unexplained. The accuracy of the age assessment required by the particular historical context in which the archaeological remains are found should thus decide what level of accuracy should be chosen.

Studies on the dual in Mycenaean, in the Homeric poetry and in the Attic Theatre of the 5th century — morphological, dialectal and stylistical variations

The present dissertation focuses on the dual number in Ancient Greek in a diachronical lapse stretching from the Mycenaean age to the Attic Drama and Comedy of the 5th century BC. In the first chapter morphological issues are addressed, chiefly in a comparative perspective. The Indo European evidence on the dual is hence gathered in order to sketch patterns of grammaticalisation and paradigmatisation of specific grams, growing increasingly functional within the Greek domain. In the second chapter syntactical problems are tackled. After a survey of scholarly literature on the Greek dual, we engage in a functional and typological approach, in order to disentangle some biased assessments on the dual, namely its alleged lack of regularity and intermittent agreement. Some recent frameworks in General Linguistics provide useful grounds for casting new light on the subject. Internal Reconstruction, for instance, supports the facultativity of the dual in each and every stage of its development; Typology and the Animacy Hierarcy add precious cross linguistical insight on the behaviour of the dual toward agreement. Glaring differences also arise as to the adoption — or avoidance — of the dual by different authors. Idiolectal varieties prove in fact conditioned by stylistical and register necessity. By means of a comparison among Epics, Tragedy and Comedy it is possible to enhance differences in the evaluation of the dual, which led sometimes to forms of ‘censure’ — thus triggering the onset of competing strategies to express duality. The last two chapters delve into the tantalising variety of the Homeric evidence, first of all in an account of the notorious issue of the Embassy of Iliad IX, and last in a commentary of all significant Homeric duals — mostly represented by archaisms, formulae, and ad hoc coinages.

Soundward: Analisi e traduzione di una selezione di brani della jazz poetry

La letteratura e la musica hanno da sempre condiviso molti aspetti del processo creativo. Questa affinità intellettuale si è più volte espressa attraverso la produzione di opere che si incontrano a metà strada tra le due arti. All'interno di queste occorrenze si è delineata una frangia letteraria, la Jazz Poetry, che trova nel jazz e nei suoi esponenti le proprie muse. Questo lavoro analizza il fenomeno della Jazz Poetry e propone le traduzioni dall'inglese all'italiano di alcune opere esemplificative. Per essere in grado di affrontare questa sfida adeguatamente, la prima parte della tesi verte sullo studio di alcuni punti cardine della traduzione poetica e sulla costruzione di una cornice storico-culturale. All'interno di questa cornice viene analizzato il ruolo del jazz e della Jazz Poetry all'interno della società, con particolare focus sulla sua posizione rispetto ad alcune tematiche di rilievo del Novecento. Vengono evidenziati i principali autori e le distinte genesi storico-letterarie che hanno contribuito alla formazione di questo movimento. Nella seconda parte viene presentata al lettore la traduzione e la successiva analisi dei brani scelti. I sei testi sono stati divisi in due sottocategorie: la poetica di Kaufman e i Coltrane Poems. In entrambe le categorie un breve capitolo introduttivo evidenzia le tematiche affrontate e la rilevanza della cornice storico-sociale all'interno dei testi. Dopo ogni traduzione viene fornita un'analisi approfondita del testo e delle scelte operate a livello traduttivo, comprensiva di un'esegesi del brano. In linea di massima si è cercato di riprodurre il continuo dialogo tra il poeta e il soggetto poetico, sia esso musica o musicista, mantenendo un equilibrio costante tra la potenzialità orale e la realtà scritta del testo.