Rasselas: The Enigma and the "Agile Music"

IF 0.2 3区 文学 0 LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS
Mark Loveridge
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Abstract:

This essay reads Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas (1759) against the background of negative or apophatic theology and argues that it is unique among Johnson’s works in expressing a sense of life as an enigma. The silent or hidden symbol of the story is the Giza Sphinx, one of the foundational symbols of such theology: the second-century Church Father Clement of Alexandria, whose works Johnson owned, associated the enigmas of the Hebrew Bible with the mystery of the Egyptian sphinxes. More widely, Rasselas contains absent objects and symbols, enigmatic silences and responses, hidden images and paradoxes, self-defeating dualisms and habits of style, apophatic philosophy (“philosophy can tell no more”), and an enigmatic conclusion (“nothing”). The apophatic quality is embodied in the text through what Jorge Luis Borges refers to as Rasselas’s “agile music,” the subtle, flexible management of narrative voices, which generates a distinctive kind of attention in the reader.

拉塞拉斯谜语与 "敏捷音乐"
摘要:本文以否定神学或天启神学为背景,解读塞缪尔-约翰逊的《拉塞拉斯》(1759 年),认为该书在约翰逊的作品中独树一帜,表达了一种将生命视为谜的意识。故事中沉默或隐藏的象征物是吉萨狮身人面像,它是此类神学的基础象征物之一:约翰逊拥有的二世纪亚历山大教父克莱门特的作品将希伯来圣经中的谜团与埃及狮身人面像的神秘联系在一起。更广泛地说,《拉塞拉斯》包含了不存在的对象和符号、神秘的沉默和反应、隐藏的形象和悖论、自欺欺人的二元论和风格习惯、神谕式的哲学("哲学无法讲述更多")以及神秘的结论("什么也没有")。文本中的天启特质通过豪尔赫-路易斯-博尔赫斯(Jorge Luis Borges)所说的拉塞拉斯的 "灵动音乐 "得以体现,即对叙事声音进行微妙、灵活的管理,使读者产生一种独特的关注。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
0.30
自引率
0.00%
发文量
20
期刊介绍: Founded in 1903, Studies in Philology addresses scholars in a wide range of disciplines, though traditionally its strength has been English Medieval and Renaissance studies. SIP publishes articles on British literature before 1900 and on relations between British literature and works in the Classical, Romance, and Germanic Languages.
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