Dirk Vanderbeke - Profile on Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Dirk Vanderbeke

Digressions of the Book for Allemannen

BRILL eBooks, 1990

Of fathers, sins and Holocaust: Milton's evil and its relevance for the debate of the Shoah

Winding up the Clock : The Conception and Birth of Tristram Shandy

Dario Maestripieri. Literature’s Contribution to Scientific Knowledge: How Novels Explored New Ideas about Human Nature

Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture, 2020

Empathy is generally understood to be a pro-social emotion and a significant aspect of social int... more Empathy is generally understood to be a pro-social emotion and a significant aspect of social intelligence. It allows us to step into another person’s shoes and to share that person’s emotions and perspective; as such, it is closely related to sympathy and compassion. This ability should guide us in our recognition of pro-social, antisocial or even sociopathic behaviour and, as social beings, we should tend to feel drawn towards pro-sociality, altruism and reciprocity and averse to egotism, cruelty, atrocities and anti-sociality in general. This is not always the case. Not only does empathy show some weaknesses, being limited in its scope, endowed with only a short-term memory, and biased towards “us” rather than “them, ” it also has its dark sides and can easily be manipulated and employed for downright dangerous or evil purposes. Among the cognitive features that can be exploited for such ends is a kind of mental inertia, a.k.a. the confirmation bias or myside bias: once we have f...

International Journal of Literary Linguistics, 2017

This paper discusses aspects of direct speech in James Joyce’s story “The Sisters”. The story is ... more This paper discusses aspects of direct speech in James Joyce’s story “The Sisters”. The story is often analyzed with special attention to the gaps and ellipses in the utterances, which are usually read as omissions, evasions, or uncomfortable silences, and thus as indicative of some transgressive behaviour of the dead priest who is at the centre of the dialogues. In this article we explore the hypothesis that the utterances in question show features that are quite common in natural spoken language and thus may also be read as literary techniques to create authentic oral discourse. This hypothesis is not intended to invalidate previous interpretations, but to introduce an additional aspect of interpretation that has been neglected so far. In the context of a literary work, features of natural spoken language acquire new meaning, and the very attempt to narrow the gap between literary and natural spoken language appears as inauthentic, ominous and as an artistic strategy to express th...

The Unlovely Little Sister Storytelling as an Exaptive Phenomenon

Telling Stories/Geschichten erzählen

Review: Eibl, Karl. 2016. Evolution—Kognition—Dichtung: Zur Anthropologie der Literatur

Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture, 2017

Eibl, Karl. 2016. Evolution—Kognition—Dichtung: Zur Anthropologie der Literatur. Munster: Mentis.... more Eibl, Karl. 2016. Evolution—Kognition—Dichtung: Zur Anthropologie der Literatur. Munster: Mentis. 284 pages. Paperback €38.00.

Literature, 2023

While fictional orality (spoken language in fictional texts) has received some attention in the c... more While fictional orality (spoken language in fictional texts) has received some attention in the context of quantitative register studies at the interface of linguistics and literature, only a few attempts have been made so far to apply the quantitative methods of register studies to interior monologues (and other forms of inner speech or thought representation). This article presents a case study of the three main characters of James Joyce’s Ulysses whose thoughts are presented extensively in the novel, i.e., Leopold and Molly Bloom and Stephen Dedalus. Making use of quantitative, corpus-based methods, the thoughts of these characters are compared to fictional direct speech and (literary and non-literary) reference texts. We show that the interior monologues of Ulysses span a range of non-narrative registers with varying degrees of informational density and involvement. The thoughts of one character, Leopold Bloom, differ substantially from that character’s speech. The relative heterogeneity across characters is taken as an indication that interior monologue is used as a means of perspective taking and implicit characterization.

Anglistik: International Journal of English Studies, 2021

Has the 'gift of tongues' somehow done away with instinct? Is Man, in short, the proverbial 'blan... more Has the 'gift of tongues' somehow done away with instinct? Is Man, in short, the proverbial 'blank slate' of the behaviourists-infinitely malleable and adaptive? If so, then all the Great Teachers have been spouting hot air. (Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines, 240) Introductions to interdisciplinary studies and programmatic papers usually stress the foundational requirement for all interdisciplinary work: an adequate knowledge about more than one academic discipline. Unless scholars are actually trained in two disciplines, the decision to engage in interdisciplinary research includes the necessity to access or acquire a sufficient understanding about the methods, epistemologies and paradigms of at least one more academic field. Of course, it cannot be expected that scholars who engage in interdisciplinary studies must be able to conduct research in each discipline. But a basic literacy in the respective area of inquiry is de rigueur. In disciplines that are close to home, that does not present a major problem, and every student or scholar of literature and culture has to be able to access the required knowledge in history, philosophy, sociology, psychology, or the arts, even though the paradigms and methods may differ considerably from those of our own academic environment. Interdisciplinary research between literature and the sciences, however, poses quite different demands, and even a very basic understanding of the respective concepts may require intensive work and a willingness to engage with unfamiliar and recalcitrant theories and practices. There are two ways in which sufficient knowledge in various disciplines can be achieved and provided. The first is cooperation. Once a question has been raised or a problem has been recognised, scholars from the different disciplines can put their heads and methodologies together to work on a solution. This, of course, requires that the problem is regarded as relevant in both disciplines and/or that the cooperation seems to be promising. Occasionally, the research will be asymmetric, with one dominant discipline in charge of the project while the other acts as an auxiliary discipline, providing necessary data, know-how, or technologies-such asymmetries should not be regarded as diminishing, and an auxiliary discipline of one project may well be dominant in a different context. Alternatively, the scholars will have to acquire interdisciplinary knowledge by an immersion into the specific theories and methods of the other discipline, which can be a very challenging and time-consuming process and, if conducted in splendid isolation without interdisciplinary interaction and some monitoring by scholars from the other discipline, it may easily lead to misunderstandings and erroneous conclusions. In literary and cultural studies, another phenomenon can occasionally be observed: Interdisciplinary studies may take place chiefly within the context of previous

Internationale Zeitschrift für Kulturkomparatistik, 2022

Der Artikel greift das Thema auf, das Wolfgang G. Müller in diesem Band für die Zeit vor dem 20. ... more Der Artikel greift das Thema auf, das Wolfgang G. Müller in diesem Band für die Zeit vor dem 20. Jahrhundert verfolgt hat, und führt aus, wie das Gedankenexperiment des Karneades seitdem in Philosophie, Wissenschaft, Jurisprudenz, Literatur und Film herangezogen und diskutiert wird. Es wird natürlich nicht möglich sein, hier alle möglichen Beispiele auszuführen – besonders in der Populärkultur findet sich das Dilemma des Karneades in immer neuen Formen und Metaphorisierungen – und es ist daher notwendig, dass ich mich auf einige theoretische Aspekte, einzelne Fallbeispiele und verschiedene wiederkehrende Motive und Muster beschränke, die in der Literatur und in Filmen von Bedeutung sind. Dabei tritt das Gedankenexperiment oft nicht in Reinform auf, und manche Elemente sind Veränderungen unterworfen, aber das Dilemma ist in seinen Grundzügen trotzdem immer noch klar erkennbar. Für die neuere Auseinandersetzung ist das sogenannte Trolley-Problem von besonderer Bedeutung und dabei auch Untersuchungen zu den kognitiven Reaktionen auf das Dilemma. Ein weiterer Ansatz findet sich in der Evolutionstheorie und der Diskussion um Altruismus und Selbstopfer, d.h. Phänomenen, die zunächst nicht mit dem darwinistischen Kampf ums Überleben vereinbar zu sein scheinen. Jenseits solcher theoretischen Fragen erforderte der Gerichtsfall von Mary und Josie Attard eine Entscheidung, ob es zulässig ist, bei gemeinsam nicht lebensfähigen siamesischen Zwillingen eines der Kinder sterben zu lassen, um wenigstens das andere zu retten. Auf einer ganz anderen Ebene muss sich die Gesetzgebung nach dem September 2001 damit auseinandersetzen, ob bei einem terroristischen Angriff ein entführtes Passagierflugzeug abgeschossen werden darf, um damit eine noch größere Katastrophe zu verhindern. Die theoretischen Konzepte wie auch die sehr realen Überlegungen hatten und haben ihren Widerhall in literarischen Texten und Filmen gefunden, und dieser Artikel stellt die wichtigsten Beispiele und die darin auftretenden Muster vor.

Introduction: Into the Zone 2000

Pynchon Notes, Mar 22, 2002

The idea was born in 1998, at the conference "Gravity's Rainbow: The First 25 Years,&quo... more The idea was born in 1998, at the conference "Gravity's Rainbow: The First 25 Years," in Antwerp: to tour the zone, following Slothrop's footsteps and visiting some of the places mentioned in Gravity's Rainbow. It took two years to realize, but in June 2000, the "Into the Zone" tour got underway. Some obstacles could not be overcome–because of the inexplicable ignorance and obstinacy of various officials, the recalcitrance of reality or the inflexible German laws. Thus we were unable to obtain a balloon for the trip from the Brocken to Berlin, there were no hotels to be found, much less any rooms available, in Bad Karma, the director of the Greifswald zoo stubbornly refused to provide any chimps for the boat trip to Peenemunde, and it was impossible to get a permit from the German authorities to sample six kilos of hashish for strictly literary purposes. But we pushed on in the face of adversity.

Reconsidering Tolkien, 2005

Within the framework of fantasy literature, aspects of magic may take on the garb of science and ... more Within the framework of fantasy literature, aspects of magic may take on the garb of science and serve as functional explanations of the principles and laws by which the world is governed. This raises the question of how knowledge about the world and its natural laws is acquired, used, transmitted or hidden. Knowledge, of course, is inevitably connected with language, and the basically creationist origin of Tolkien’s world indicates the existence of a true language with a non-arbitrary form of signification, the knowledge of which equals the knowledge of the world and its underlying principles. The quest for true knowledge then turns into a kind of archaeological endeavour, piecing together the fragments of ancient language and lore, while the search for new knowledge is inevitably destructive and thus linked to evil. This presentation of knowledge unquestionably adds to the internal coherence of the texts, but undermines all claims that Tolkien’s work might offer useful solutions to pressing modern problems, as the premises of his fictional world and ours are ultimately irreconcilable.

"The Flow of the Language it is. The Thoughts": On Time and Thoughts and Movement in Ulysses

James Joyce Quarterly, 2021