Suchergebnisse

Should the progress in the biological sciences during the last decades give rise to a re-evaluation of literary analysis? The paper opens with a discussion of this question with reference to a fragment of Dagur Sigurðarson's poem "Takk takk Tobbi", pub-lished in Rógmálmur og grásilfur (1971). The question is answered partly affirmative-ly, mostly on the grounds that embodied cognition has to be taken into account when analysing literature. It is pointed out that among the factors that have contributed to a better understanding of the complex relation between the body and language is recent research on Tourette syndrome. The relationship between this neurological disorder and poetry is the main subject of the paper and it is discussed with refer-ence to a scaldic strophe from The Saga of Gisli Sursson. First, Tourette-syndrome is discussed briefly, including the medical profession's stance toward it during the 19thand 20th century and scholarly work on the common traits that the disorder shares with poetry. Subsequently it is considered how these writings can benefit literary scholarship, Gisli Sursson's strophe is analysed and it is proposed that this analysis can't rely on metrical rules alone. Then the aforementioned poem by Dagur Sig-urðarson is reconsidered, and finally a few points are recapitulated.

The late James Adam's edition of The Republic of Plato was published in 1902 and has long been out of print; it still remains among the most detailed and valuable critical editions available. D. A. Rees, Fellow and Tutor of Jesus College, Oxford, has written an introduction of 15,000 words for this edition. In it, he surveys Adam's work on The Republic and reviews subsequent work on the textual problems, language and meaning of the book. The book is divided into two volumes; Volume I, printed here, Introduction and Books I–V, and Volume II. Books VI–X and Indexes