The Uses of Obscurity

The Uses of Obscurity
Author: Allon White
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 211
Release: 2023-10-09
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1003821839

Originally published in 1981, this book examines why and how textual difficulty became a norm of modernist literature and questions how we can begin to account for the forms of obscurity and difficulty which developed in the late 19th Century and which became so important to modernism. The author argues that the decline of realism entailed the growth of ‘symptomatic’ or ‘subtextual’ reading which tended to treat fiction as compromised autobiography. This kind of reading left the author dangerously isolated and exposed in the midst of a newly sophisticated public. Within this general cultural perspective, the book traces the private anxieties that led George Meredith, Joseph Conrad and Henry James to conceal themselves within their complex and resistant fictions. It discusses opacity in the texts themselves – embarrassment and shame in Meredith; ‘engimas’ in Conrad; and the fear of vulgarity and knowledge in Henry James.

Obscurity and Clarity in the Law

Obscurity and Clarity in the Law
Author: Anne Wagner
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2008
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9780754671435

Exploring the intricate and multi-dimensional conception of clarity and obscurity in law, this volume presents and examines the most recent research and theories. It provides practical guidance on how to avoid obscurity in legal drafting, as well as legal interpretation at both the national and international levels.

Escaping Obscurity Napoleon Encounters Jesus

Escaping Obscurity Napoleon Encounters Jesus
Author: cynthia inniss
Publisher: Lulu.com
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2014-07-20
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1312347279

In this book, "Escaping Obscurity, Napoleon Encounters Jesus?" the author looks at the lives of a few who scaled the heights and found fame, fortune and uncommon success. With an eye towards examining the wisdom principles they've employed, she focuses on Napoleon in an effort to prove that all wisdom originates from God; and that this same Wisdom works for anyone who will employ it.

The Sense of Mystery: Clarity and Obscurity in the Intellectual Life

The Sense of Mystery: Clarity and Obscurity in the Intellectual Life
Author: Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P.
Publisher: Emmaus Academic
Total Pages: 399
Release: 2018-05-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1947792342

The Sense of Mystery highlights what is clear and what retains the character of mystery in the traditional and Thomistic solution concerning the great problems pertaining to our knowledge in general, to our knowledge of God (whether naturally or supernaturally attained), and to questions pertaining to grace. St. Thomas has fear neither for logic nor for mystery. Indeed, logical lucidity leads him to see in nature those mysteries that speak in their own particular ways of the Creator. Likewise, this same lucidity aids him in putting into strong relief other secrets of a far superior order—those of grace and of the intimate life of God, which would remain unknown were it not for Divine Revelation.

The Obscurity of Scripture: Disputing Sola Scriptura and the Protestant Notion of Biblical Perspicuity

The Obscurity of Scripture: Disputing Sola Scriptura and the Protestant Notion of Biblical Perspicuity
Author: Casey J. Chalk
Publisher: Emmaus Academic
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2023-03-07
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1645852296

Turn on Christian radio anywhere in the United States and see how long it takes before someone declares that “Scripture clearly teaches [fill in the blank].” There’s a reason for that, and it has to do with the very origins of Protestant Christianity more than five hundred years ago. The Protestant Reformation coalesced around five core doctrines: sola scriptura, sola fide, sola gratia, solus Christus, and soli Deo gloria. But another founding principle served as bedrock for all of them: the doctrine of clarity, or perspicuity. According to this doctrine, which was upheld in various forms by all the major Reformers and remains central to Protestantism today, the Bible is clear enough so that any Christian, relying on the Holy Spirit, will be able to determine at least what is necessary for salvation, if not much more. The Obscurity of Scripture: Disputing Sola Scriptura and the Protestant Notion of Biblical Perspicuity catalogues and analyzes the historical, theological, and philosophical dimensions of perspicuity and finds the doctrine not only confused but erroneous, destructive, and self-defeating. The Obscurity of Scripture exposes the hopeless dead ends of clarity and, through a consideration of Catholic teaching on the Bible, offers the only way out.

Infidel Poetics

Infidel Poetics
Author: Daniel Tiffany
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2009-10-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0226803112

Poetry has long been regarded as the least accessible of literary genres. But how much does the obscurity that confounds readers of a poem differ from, say, the slang that seduces listeners of hip-hop? Infidel Poetics examines not only the shared incomprensibilities of poetry and slang, but poetry's genetic relation to the spectacle of underground culture. Charting connections between vernacular poetry, lyric obscurity, and types of social relations—networks of darkened streets in preindustrial cities, the historical underworld of taverns and clubs, the subcultures of the avant-garde—Daniel Tiffany shows that obscurity in poetry has functioned for hundreds of years as a medium of alternative societies. For example, he discovers in the submerged tradition of canting poetry and its eccentric genres—thieves’ carols, drinking songs, beggars’ chants—a genealogy of modern nightlife, but also a visible underworld of social and verbal substance, a demimonde for sale. Ranging from Anglo-Saxon riddles to Emily Dickinson, from the icy logos of Parmenides to the monadology of Leibniz, from Mother Goose to Mallarmé, Infidel Poetics offers an exhilarating account of the subversive power of obscurity in word, substance, and deed.

The Book of Revelation and its Eastern Commentators

The Book of Revelation and its Eastern Commentators
Author: Thomas Schmidt
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 454
Release: 2021-09-09
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1009021028

In this volume, T.C. Schmidt offers a new perspective on the formation of the New Testament by examining it simply as a Greco-Roman 'testament', a legal document of great authority in the ancient world. His work considers previously unexamined parallels between Greco-Roman juristic standards and the authorization of Christianity's holy texts. Recapitulating how Greco-Roman testaments were created and certified, he argues that the book of Revelation possessed many testamentary characteristics that were crucial for lending validity to the New Testament. Even so, Schmidt shows how Revelation fell out of favor amongst most Eastern Christian communities for over a thousand years until commentators rehabilitated its status and reintegrated it into the New Testament. Schmidt uncovers why so many Eastern churches neglected Revelation during this period, and then draws from Greco-Roman legal practice to describe how Eastern commentators successfully argued for Revelation's inclusion in the New Testaments of their Churches.

Systematic Theology/Historical Theology Bundle

Systematic Theology/Historical Theology Bundle
Author: Wayne A. Grudem
Publisher: Zondervan Academic
Total Pages: 2178
Release: 2015-10-27
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0310530008

A collection that includes two of our most exemplary textbooks, Systematic Theology and Historical Theology. The ebook will provide an introduction to Biblical and Christian doctrine.

Form and Clarity in Euclid’s ›Elements‹

Form and Clarity in Euclid’s ›Elements‹
Author: Anna-Maria Gasser
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 676
Release: 2024-07-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 3110670593

As of yet, the remarkable and highly influential textual form of Euclidean mathematics has not been considered from a literary-aesthetic perspective. By its extreme standardization and seeming non-literariness it appears to defy such an approach. This book nonetheless attempts precisely a literary-aesthetic study of the language and style of Euclid’s Elements, focusing on book I. It aims to find out what is literary about the form and what motivates this form as form. In doing so, it employs the concept of clarity, asking: How is the textual form related to logical and communicative clarity? That is, how far is the omnipresent standardization necessary for the accomplishment and successful communication of the proofs? Based on a close analysis of the standardization at all levels of the text (lexicon, grammar, structure, and especially diagram), it argues that the textual form of the Elements is standardized beyond logical-communicative purposes, and that it is in this sense ‘aesthetic’. The book exposes the unexpected literary dimension of Euclid’s Elements, provides a new interpretation of the peculiar form of the work, and offers a model for determining the role of clarity (not only) in Greek theoretical mathematics.