Novel Commonplaces: Quotation, Epigraphs, and Literary Authority

Literary Competence and Biblical Authority

he story is told of a young boy who returned home from church one Sunday morning and, over lunch, talked with his parents about the events of the day. “And what did you study in Sunday school today, John?” asked his mother. “We learned about Daniel,” he replied, “about Daniel and his houses.” The devout lady knew quite a bit about the book of Daniel, but she had never heard of Daniel’s houses. ...

Does “‘Quotation’” Quote “Quotation”?

Getting a precise and accurate understanding of the mechanism of quotation is broadly important to contemporary philosophy, impacting on numerous research areas, and it’s deeply important, being foundational to truth-theoretic semantics (Saka 1998, 1991). It is gratifying, therefore, to see an upsurge in quotation studies that includes at least nine doctoral dissertations in the past fifteen ye...

Rhetorics of environmental sustainability: commonplaces and places

Although a rhetoric of sustainability is now widely used by government, nongovernmental organisations, and business in addressing the public, there is no evidence of a broad shift of behaviour in response to it. Yet most sustainability programmes at international, national, and local levels require broad public participation if they are to reach their goals. We argue that organisational communi...

Johnson and Macpherson: Cultural Authority and the Construction of Literary Property

Perfumed by golden lotuses: literary place and textual authority in the Brahma- and Bhāgavatapurāṇas

The creators of the Hindu scriptures known as the Brahmaand Bhāgavatapurāṇas lavished a great amount of descriptive detail on mythical and ‘mythologised’ places where important discourses were enunciated: the Naimiṣa forest, Mt Meru, Kurukṣetra, and Ānanda on the banks of the Ganges. At first glance this might appear to be idle expression of literary virtuosity, but I suggest that this careful ...