- Tel Aviv, Central District, Israel
David Fishelov
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Comparative Literature, Faculty Member
This article argues that the story of Echo and Narcissus as told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses can serve as a fruitful, suggestive metaphor or ›myth‹ of the translator, especially of the driving passion and the unavoidable frustrations... more
This article argues that the story of Echo and Narcissus as told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses can serve as a fruitful, suggestive metaphor or ›myth‹ of the translator, especially of the driving passion and the unavoidable frustrations characteristic of the translation process. The connection between Echo and the translator seems obvious – they both share the principle of repetition, »echoing« a primary text – but there are also interesting differences between the two: whereas Echo’s repetition is forced, partial, and mechanic, that of the translator is a creative and holistic choice. As for Narcissus, I suggest that both Narcissus and the translator are engaged in a magic yet futile dance of intimacy, reflection, and passion with their beloved (image or text). They both try to get as close as possible to their beloved while risking its loss paradoxically from getting too close. I conclude with a table, mapping important similarities and differences between the story of Echo, Narcissus, ...
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I am delighted that Maximillian E. Novak, an authority on Defoe, has found my discussion of surprise in Robinson Crusoe useful, and am grateful for the opportunity to offer further observation on the way that Defoe's classic invites... more
I am delighted that Maximillian E. Novak, an authority on Defoe, has found my discussion of surprise in Robinson Crusoe useful, and am grateful for the opportunity to offer further observation on the way that Defoe's classic invites its readers to re-think the opposition of nature and culture. Novak's highly informed, attentive readings of several passages from Robinson Crusoe not only highlight the different shades of surprise evident in the novel, but also demonstrate how this aspect of the reading experience is sometimes related to the cognitive and ideological impUcations of a seemingly simple adventure story, a point aptly encapsulated in Novak's formulation: "The reader is surprised into knowledge" (247).Novak's discussion of the encounter between Friday and his father is exemplary in this context. Everyone, including the reader, is surprised to find out that the man rescued from the hands (or rather teeth...) of the cannibals is in fact Friday's ...
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Abstract: This essay has two aims: first, to reexamine the assumption that literature is evolutionarily beneficial, and second, to argue that, rather than focusing on the alleged biological base of literature, we should examine the... more
Abstract: This essay has two aims: first, to reexamine the assumption that literature is evolutionarily beneficial, and second, to argue that, rather than focusing on the alleged biological base of literature, we should examine the similarities and differences between biological and literary evolution. To illustrate the usefulness of such examination, I briefly discuss terms such as “survival” and “lineage.” The article concludes with the suggestion that literature is good for us, not necessarily because it contributes to life but because it contributes to a life worth living.
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In this chapter I discuss how the title of “poet-prophet” was associated with Bialik at the beginning of the twentieth century and how this led to his canonical position. I also address the issue of his enduring popularity, despite major... more
In this chapter I discuss how the title of “poet-prophet” was associated with Bialik at the beginning of the twentieth century and how this led to his canonical position. I also address the issue of his enduring popularity, despite major historical and literary changes. Alongside the “top-down” institutional modes of commemoration (e.g., naming streets after him and teaching his works in the school system), I draw attention to several of the “bottom-up” literary and artistic dialogues with his works (e.g., composing music to his poems) that have kept him part of the living culture. In the conclusion, I point out that, although the aura of a poet-prophet played a major role in Bialik’s canonization, the Israeli public nowadays relates primarily to his lyric, love poetry.
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Dans la Chronique du roi David (1991) , Stefan Heym (1913-2001) propose une perspective favorable sur le potin, nonobstant la censure biblique de cette activité (ex : Proverbe 11:13). La réécriture satirique de Heym de l'histoire... more
Dans la Chronique du roi David (1991) , Stefan Heym (1913-2001) propose une perspective favorable sur le potin, nonobstant la censure biblique de cette activité (ex : Proverbe 11:13). La réécriture satirique de Heym de l'histoire biblique se concentre sur le personnage d’Ethan, un écrivain-historien nommé par le roi Salomon pour composer un rapport officiel sur la vie et l’arrivée au pouvoir du roi David. À un moment donné les deux fils d’Ethan, Sem et Sheleph, reviennent du marché et racontent à Ethan certaines rumeurs «savoureuses» qu'ils y ont entendues. Ces rumeurs, tandis qu’elles sont un peu exagérées et embellies, fournissent toutefois des aperçus de la situation politique qui sont beaucoup plus fidèles à la vérité que les inventions des porte-parole officiels. Pour justifier le portrait littéraire de Heym du potin comme une voie pour communiquer la vérité subversive dans les régimes autoritaires, je cite la recherche historique systématique de Robert Darnton au sujet...
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... 1990 by The Johns Hopkins University Press THE VANITY OF THE READER'S WISHES: REREADING JUVENAL'S SATIRE 10* ... Even Romano, with all of her exhaustive nomenclature of ironies in Juvenal, cannot finally resist the impulse... more
... 1990 by The Johns Hopkins University Press THE VANITY OF THE READER'S WISHES: REREADING JUVENAL'S SATIRE 10* ... Even Romano, with all of her exhaustive nomenclature of ironies in Juvenal, cannot finally resist the impulse to interpret positively the closure, al-...
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Research Interests: Art and Dialogue Studies
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... cit., pp. 17, 18. 12. Ibid, pp. 22, 25. 13. For a discussion of the ambivalent and complex nature of these represented communicative situations, see Boaz Arpali, The Flowers and the Urn,Amichai's Poetry 1948-1968 (Tel Aviv,... more
... cit., pp. 17, 18. 12. Ibid, pp. 22, 25. 13. For a discussion of the ambivalent and complex nature of these represented communicative situations, see Boaz Arpali, The Flowers and the Urn,Amichai's Poetry 1948-1968 (Tel Aviv, 1986), especially pp. 53-62. (In Hebrew). 14. ...
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A few contemporary theories of poetry (e.g., Culler, 1975; Fish, 1980) claim that texts do not have any poetic qualities prior to, and independently of, the institutional context in which they are presented. When a text, any text, is... more
A few contemporary theories of poetry (e.g., Culler, 1975; Fish, 1980) claim that texts do not have any poetic qualities prior to, and independently of, the institutional context in which they are presented. When a text, any text, is printed in verse form, in a book whose subtitle is “Poems,” then we start looking for poetic qualities. And what we look for, we are bound to find. In order to challenge this approach, and to argue for a more objective, text-oriented approach to the categorization of texts (Hanaor, 1996; Miall & Kuiken, 1996), I have conducted a test. My test was based on two types of questionnaires, the one in prose form, the other in verse, in which students were asked to identify those texts that were “originally” poems or prose. The results obtained corroborate the assumption that readers have quite definite intuitions about the poetic qualities of texts prior to and independently of the way they are institutionally presented.
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Un examen du traitement satirique de l'utopie revelant les profondes differences dans les implications morales et esthetiques de ces deux genres litteraires, a partir de la lecture de More, Swift, Orwell, Voltaire et Juvenal
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The article discusses parodies of six-word stories and locates them within the broader context of metagenre in general, and humorous metagenre in particular. Parodies of six-word stories offer a playful, ironic perspective on the genre’s... more
The article discusses parodies of six-word stories and locates them within the broader context of metagenre in general, and humorous metagenre in particular. Parodies of six-word stories offer a playful, ironic perspective on the genre’s form and its most famous example, the story (wrongly) attributed to Hemingway: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” The genre of six-word stories is a newcomer to the repertoire of narrative genres: it emerged in the 1990s and since then has become a fast-growing literary phenomenon with a great number of followers, both readers and writers. After describing the central characteristics of this peculiar mini-genre (e.g. the tip of the iceberg principle, the punch line structure, its poetic-like patterns), I focus on a detailed analysis of selected parodies of the form, and show how examples such as “For sale: this story format. Overused.”; “For sale. BMW. Blinkers never used.” and “Fr sal: Typwritr. In mint cnditin.” present a close imitation of conspicuous aspects of the generic model, in being embodied in its prototypical member, together with a comic, tongue-in-cheek, manipulation of that model. I conclude by arguing that parodies of six-word stories offer further indirect evidence of the diversity and productivity of this peculiar mini-genre.
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The article analyzes various aspects of poeticity in the concluding paragraph of James Joyce’s “The Dead,” and distinguishes between two related but autonomous textual dimensions responsible for producing the text’s poeticity: linguistic... more
The article analyzes various aspects of poeticity in the concluding paragraph of James Joyce’s “The Dead,” and distinguishes between two related but autonomous textual dimensions responsible for producing the text’s poeticity: linguistic patterns of parallelism and deep semantic contrasts, notably paradox. To illustrate my general argument about the dual source of poeticity, I also examine three paragraphs from Baudelaire’s Le Spleen de Paris and two poems by Amichai, which deliberately problematize the conventional distinction between poetry and prose. The heterogeneity of the examples chosen illustrates how poeticity “emerges” from texts differing in language and specific literary traditions as well as in their formal framing: a long short-story (Joyce), a self-declared hybrid of poetry-in-prose (Baudelaire), and texts printed as half poems and half prose paragraphs (Amichai). Still, all these modern texts evoke (or, at the very least, attempt to evoke) a poetic effect that challenges traditional distinctions of poetry and prose, and in all of them we can detect linguistic patterns of parallelism and/or semantic paradoxes. In many cases, we encounter both of these textual elements working together, reinforcing one another. When semantic paradoxes are developed in a text with almost no conspicuous linguistic patterns of parallelism, the role of an attentive reader becomes more important for detecting the text’s poeticity. Thus, the term poeticity, which involves formal (parallelism), semantic (paradox), and pragmatic (attentive reader) aspects, refers to the complex process by which a string of words is endowed with a poetic “aura,” and can help us understand how prose is sometimes “transformed” into poetry.
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Notwithstanding Rymer’s argument in The Tragedies of the Last Age Considered (1677) that the author of tragedy must “see justice exactly administered,” the literary genre that seems to illustrate most clearly the principle of poetic... more
Notwithstanding Rymer’s argument in The Tragedies of the Last Age Considered (1677) that the author of tragedy must “see justice exactly administered,” the literary genre that seems to illustrate most clearly the principle of poetic justice (i.e. rewarding good characters and punishing bad ones) is not tragedy but, rather, comedy. In comedy’s happy ending the “good guys” (comprised of the loving couple and their party) are rewarded, and the “bad guys” (comprised of all those who had stood in their way) are punished. The pleasure that the audience takes in the happy ending of comedy is associated with the impression that justice has been served: the good guys and the bad guys both get what they deserve. A closer look at comedy’s characters reveals a more complicated picture regarding the relationship between virtue, vice, and a happy ending: comedy’s good guys are often not that virtuous; and sometimes the only sin committed by comedy’s bad guys is that they have been planted in a comic plot. I argue that, contrary to an audience’s possible impression, comedy’s happy ending is not based on moral grounds but on a deep, archetypal emotion that favors the lovers’ union and reproduction. Thus, comedy’s happy ending often bestows on different characters rewards and punishments disproportionate to their actual virtues or sins. The rewarding of flawed characters in comedy is illustrated with Sir Toby in Twelfth Night and Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice; and the excessive punishment of characters is illustrated with Malvolio in Twelfth Night and Knemon in Menander’s Dyskolos. To conclude, I offer a table with a comparison of various maxims in general morality (e.g. impartiality) set against the special kind of morality created in the world of comedy (e.g. partiality: the loving couple get special treatment).
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Hanlon's article on Gulliver as a quixotic character calls attention to several interesting aspects of Gulliver's Travels (hereafter GT) and succeeds in opening up Swift's work "to readings attentive to its quixotic... more
Hanlon's article on Gulliver as a quixotic character calls attention to several interesting aspects of Gulliver's Travels (hereafter GT) and succeeds in opening up Swift's work "to readings attentive to its quixotic elements" (Hanlon 285) which, as the author points out, have not received sufficient critical attention. Hanlon reminds us of Swift's complex, multi-faceted art and offers a counterbalance to the critical preoccupation with Swift's politics. While acknowledging their usefulness, in my view Hanlon's emphases need a few qualifications on four issues: (1) Gulliver as a novelistic, complex character; (2) Gulliver as a Quixote; (3) satirical and novelistic elements in GT; and (4) exceptionalism in GT.(1) Gulliver as a novelistic, complex characterBy calling attention to certain life-like qualities of Gulliver and a few background details that Swift offers us (e.g. about Gulliver's training as a doctor), Hanlon highlights the fact that Gul...
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Adaptations: Dialogues and Logical RelationsIn this essay I will argue that adaptations of a literary work bring to light roads-not-taken (but suggested) by the initiating text, and demonstrate the argument by presenting three adaptations... more
Adaptations: Dialogues and Logical RelationsIn this essay I will argue that adaptations of a literary work bring to light roads-not-taken (but suggested) by the initiating text, and demonstrate the argument by presenting three adaptations of Samson's biblical story: Milton's play Samson Agonistes, Ze'ev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky's novel Samson, and Cecil B. DeMille's Hollywood film Samson and Delilah. I will also show how the close relationship between different adaptations and the notion of a road-not-taken support the idea that the literary text is a multi-layered system of realized and unrealized potentialities.The field of adaptations and rewritings is quite wide and heterogeneous.2 A useful way to approach this manifold phenomenon is by discerning three basic types of dialogue held between an adaptation and the initiating text: (1) echo dialogue, in which a text reproduces the main elements of the originating text, creating simple, predictable adaptations, tailo...
The story of Samson and Delilah has attracted throughout the ages the imagination of many readers as well as of a great number of authors and artists, who have offered their version of the story in different genres and media. It is a... more
The story of Samson and Delilah has attracted throughout the ages the imagination of many readers as well as of a great number of authors and artists, who have offered their version of the story in different genres and media. It is a story of intense love and national heroism, telling about a super‐hero who was subdued by a woman, a mythical story about the encounter between Eros and Thanatos, light and darkness. Women play a central role in Samson’s story: in the cycle of stories that constitute the Samson saga in the Bible (Judges 13–16) he has three problematic meetings with women. In the first encounter and the events that follow (Judges 14–15), he is betrayed by his Timnath wife (she reveals the answer of his riddle to his foes), forced to take dangerous actions (to pay the wager) and puts himself at risk in various confrontations with the Philistines; and in
This paper takes up the much-neglected figure of the closed simile, a simile in which the ground is explicitly stated, as in “the dress is as black as coal.” In the typical case, which we call standard, the ground is a highly-salient... more
This paper takes up the much-neglected figure of the closed simile, a simile in which the ground is explicitly stated, as in “the dress is as black as coal.” In the typical case, which we call standard, the ground is a highly-salient feature of the source term (e.g., black is a salient feature of coal), but our concern is with the non-standard closed similes, those in which the ground is a non- or low-salient feature of the source (e.g., “black as a building”). What is the purpose and the function of using a non-salient ground? We identify and discuss three types of non-standard similes, each exhibiting certain semantic and structural traits as well as a distinct pragmatic or communicative function. In the ironic simile, the ground is the antithesis of a salient feature (e.g., “as clear as mud”). In the humorous simile, the surprising ground comes as a punchline to solve a kind of riddle (e.g., “What do politicians and diapers have in common? Both need to be changed often”). And in the poetic simile, the introduction of a non-salient quality encourages the reader to rethink the source term itself (e.g., “waves as formal as scales on a fish”).
Research Interests: Psychology, Cognitive Science, Humor, Metaphor, Linguistics, and 3 moreVerbal Irony, Simile, and Irony
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In this chapter I discuss how the title of “poet-prophet” was associated with Bialik at the beginning of the twentieth century and how this led to his canonical position. I also address the issue of his enduring popularity, despite major... more
In this chapter I discuss how the title of “poet-prophet” was associated with Bialik at the beginning of the twentieth century and how this led to his canonical position. I also address the issue of his enduring popularity, despite major historical and literary changes. Alongside the “top-down” institutional modes of commemoration (e.g., naming streets after him and teaching his works in the school system), I draw attention to several of the “bottom-up” literary and artistic dialogues with his works (e.g., composing music to his poems) that have kept him part of the living culture. In the conclusion, I point out that, although the aura of a poet-prophet played a major role in Bialik’s canonization, the Israeli public nowadays relates primarily to his lyric, love poetry.
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Six-word stories present an intriguing case study to theorists of literary genres and narratologists alike. Despite the popularity of this peculiar narrative form—probably the latest newcomer to the club of narrative genres—and the fact... more
Six-word stories present an intriguing case study to theorists of literary genres and narratologists alike. Despite the popularity of this peculiar narrative form—probably the latest newcomer to the club of narrative genres—and the fact that it has produced many captivating texts, there is almost no critical discussion of this fast-growing literary phenomenon. After explaining why six-word stories deserve the title of a narrative genre, I offer a brief comparative discussion of such stories alongside traditional short literary forms like aphorisms and proverbs. I then discuss seven important characteristics of six-word stories. The first three comprise the "hard core" of the poetics of the genre, the next two are very common among six-word stories but are not an essential part of its poetics, and the last two are related to the reception and production of the genre: (1) A represented chain of events (the narrative element); (2) The tip of the iceberg principle; (3) The punch-line structure; (4) Poetic, rhythmic structures; (5) The realism of the stories; (6) The "contagiousness" of the form; and (7) The strong connection of the genre to English, the language in which it was first introduced. I conclude by pointing out that while many six-word stories illustrate witty, artistic achievements, there is also the risk that practitioners of the form will mechanically produce dull texts.
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This essay has two aims: first, to reexamine the assumption that literature is evolutionarily beneficial, and second, to argue that, rather than focusing on the alleged biological base of literature, we should examine the similarities and... more
This essay has two aims: first, to reexamine the assumption that literature is evolutionarily beneficial, and second, to argue that, rather than focusing on the alleged biological base of literature, we should examine the similarities and differences between biological and literary evolution. To illustrate the usefulness of such examination, I briefly discuss terms such as “survival” and “lineage.” The article concludes with the suggestion that literature is good for us, not necessarily because it contributes to life but because it contributes to a life worth living.
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In his article "The Indirect Path to the Literary Canon Exemplified by Shelley's Frankenstein" David Fishelov examines the indirect path of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to the literary canon. Fishelov offers a multi-dimensional model for... more
In his article "The Indirect Path to the Literary Canon Exemplified by Shelley's Frankenstein" David Fishelov examines the indirect path of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to the literary canon. Fishelov offers a multi-dimensional model for describing the dynamic process of acquiring, maintaining, and changing canonical status. The model emphasizes the important role played by artistic dialogues and echoes that certain works initiate or inspire in other authors and artists in the form of allusion, homage, parody, and adaptation. The data introduced in the article suggest that the popular cinematic versions of Frankenstein probably not only played a mediating role but also contributed to making Mary Shelley's novel part and parcel of the contemporary literary canon.
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Notwithstanding Rymer's argument in The Tragedies of the Last Age Considered (1677) that the author of tragedy must "see justice exactly administered," the literary genre that seems to illustrate most clearly the principle of poetic... more
Notwithstanding Rymer's argument in The Tragedies of the Last Age Considered (1677) that the author of tragedy must "see justice exactly administered," the literary genre that seems to illustrate most clearly the principle of poetic justice (i.e. rewarding good characters and punishing bad ones) is not tragedy but, rather, comedy. In comedy's happy ending the "good guys" (comprised of the loving couple and their party) are rewarded, and the "bad guys" (comprised of all those who had stood in their way) are punished. The pleasure that the audience takes in the happy ending of comedy is associated with the impression that justice has been served: the good guys and the bad guys both get what they deserve. A closer look at comedy's characters reveals a more complicated picture regarding the relationship between virtue, vice, and a happy ending: comedy's good guys are often not that virtuous; and sometimes the only sin committed by comedy's bad guys is that they have been planted in a comic plot. I argue that, contrary to an audience's possible impression, comedy's happy ending is not based on moral grounds but on a deep, archetypal emotion that favors the lovers' union and reproduction. Thus, comedy's happy ending often bestows on different characters rewards and punishments disproportionate to their actual virtues or sins. The rewarding of flawed characters in comedy is illustrated with Sir Toby in Twelfth Night and Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice; and the excessive punishment of characters is illustrated with Malvolio in Twelfth Night and Knemon in Menander's Dyskolos. To conclude, I offer a table with a comparison of various maxims in general morality (e.g. impartiality) set against the special kind of morality created in the world of comedy (e.g. partiality: the loving couple get special treatment).
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ABSTRACT
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In Metaphors of Genre, David Fishelov demonstrates the important role played by analogies in genre theory and provides a critical presentation of four specific analogies that permeate modern genre theory: the biological analogy, the... more
In Metaphors of Genre, David Fishelov demonstrates the important role played by analogies in genre theory and provides a critical presentation of four specific analogies that permeate modern genre theory: the biological analogy, the family "metaphor," the institutional perspective, and the "speech act" analogy. While making a critical presentation of the existing theories, Fishelov offers new perspectives and hypotheses within each analogy. The discussion in each case is accompanied with an analysis of some examples from the generic tradition most readily lending itself to that particular analogy: the epic for the biological analogy, the novel for the family "metaphor," comedy for the institutional perspective, and the lyrical carpe diem for the "speech act" analogy. Analogies are for Fishelov not just the tools with which people work but the organizing principles of their thought, so that if one can be clear on the limits and uses of certain analogies one has in effect mapped some fundamental conditions for discourse about genres. By understanding the limits of certain analogies one can also come to appreciate their capacity to make questions about genre compelling for themselves and as means to enhance the appreciation of literary works.
Fishelov advocates a pluralistic approach to genre theory. None of the four analogies is all-inclusive. Each succeeds admirably, however, in illuminating certain aspects of the heterogeneous field of literary genres.
Fishelov advocates a pluralistic approach to genre theory. None of the four analogies is all-inclusive. Each succeeds admirably, however, in illuminating certain aspects of the heterogeneous field of literary genres.