Academic literature on the topic 'American Aphorisms and apothegms'
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Journal articles on the topic "American Aphorisms and apothegms"
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Vasilenko, Anatoliy P., and Alena V. Eliseeva. "Figurative Dyad TIME – MONEY in the Aphorisms of a Language as a Reflection of the Socio-Political Code of Culture." Vestnik of Northern (Arctic) Federal University. Series Humanitarian and Social Sciences, no. 3 (June 20, 2023): 66–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.37482/2687-1505-v265.
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This article discusses the national and cultural features of the perception of the world through a comparative analysis of aphorisms with the components time and money, using American, British and Russian aphorisms as examples. The authors hypothesize that the national and cultural features of aphorisms in the TIME – MONEY dyad are determined by the prevailing socio-cultural conditions, mentality and value system. The authors focus on the structural component of the metaphorical foundation TIME IS MONEY, which determines the composite content of the social and political aspects of the cultural code. Based on the analysis of the figurative TIME – MONEY dyad, as well as on the Englishlanguage and Russian contextual environment, it is established that the social code of culture in aphorisms not only conveys the material and consumer relations in society, but also motivates the creative and aesthetic potential of native speakers. The political code of culture in the figurative dyad under study is seen primarily in the people’s legal and public competence. The results are supplemented by the claim that culture in the aphoristic dyad metaphorizes, in most cases, Russian universal values in the time continuum and English-language material values that arise sporadically. This study is relevant as it considers the national and cultural features and extralinguistic factors that served as the basis for the semantic content of aphorisms in terms of the prevailing sociocultural conditions, mentality and value systems of different nations. The purpose of this article was to evaluate the denotative and, in particular, connotative knowledge contained in aphorisms with the components time and money, which served as the material for this research. The task was to determine the intercultural equivalents of the components under study and their significance within the considered linguistic cultures. The main methods used by the authors include linguoculturological interpretation of aphorisms, component analysis, analysis of the compatibility of linguistic signs as representatives of semiotic systems, and correlation analysis aimed to demonstrate the content of the composite cultural code.
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Łącka-Badura, Jolanta. "Metaphorical conceptualization of success in American success books, aphorisms and quotes." Lingua Posnaniensis 58, no. 1 (June 1, 2016): 39–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/linpo-2016-0003.
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AbstractThe paper seeks to investigate how SUCCESS is conceptualized metaphorically in popular American success books, aphorisms and quotes. The study is based on an analysis of a corpus comprising over 600 utterances in which the lexical entry SUCCESS is regarded as constituting part of a metaphorical expression. The utterances have been extracted from the initial corpus of 10 success guide books, as well as 150 success aphorisms and quotes by famous Americans. The study investigates two aspects of this conceptualization. In the first instance, it examines which metaphorical source domains, as understood within the framework of Conceptual Metaphor Theory, prove to be most productive in the corpus. Secondly, in line with the frequently expressed views that the significance of conceptual metaphor as an explanatory construct is sometimes overstated in cognitive linguistic research, the paper attempts to analyze examples of linguistic metaphors which appear to be motivated in ways that are, at least in part, independent of well-established conceptual mappings, with particular emphasis on the resemblance-based and image metaphors associated with the predicate nominative forms ‘X is a Y’.
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Zharkynbekova, Sh K., and E. В. Zadanova. "Certain specifics of the metaphorical representation of the concept "success" in American linguistic culture." Bulletin of L.N. Gumilyov Eurasian National University. PHILOLOGY Series 140, no. 3 (December 17, 2022): 57–69. http://dx.doi.org/10.32523/2616-678x-2022-140-3-57-69.
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The objective of the article is to analyze the metaphorical representation of the concept «success» in American linguistic culture. The material for the analysis is aphorisms, quotes, books on success in English. The study is based on the analysis of statements, in which the lexical unit «success», as well as its synonymic variants are considered as part of the metaphorical expression.
For American society «success» is one of the most important components of culture, so it is interesting to observe what place in the everyday consciousness of the American takes the advancement to success and how success is conceptualized by means of language. Consideration of the metaphorical content of the concept of «success» in different languages allows us to take a deeper look at its content and to describe the national and cultural peculiarities.
The methodology for studying cultural dominants is in the form of sampling lexical, paremic, phraseological units, sayings and quotations from success literature, blogs, and the electronic Corpus of Contemporary American English.
The results of the study showed that the concept «success» metaphorically acts as an object, is likened to a living being, has a moving intentionality, is verbalized by a variety of metaphors, including ontological. The basic projections of the concept «success» were revealed. The frequency of projecting success through failure is several times higher than the number of other projections. This indicates that for the ordinary consciousness of the American, failure is one of the essential markers of success.
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Musengi, Martin. "Vygotskian Resonances With the African Worldview of Ubuntu for Decolonial Deaf Education." American Annals of the Deaf 168, no. 1 (March 2023): 37–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/aad.2023.a904166.
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Abstract: The African worldview of Ubuntu predates Vygotskian theory, but the Ubuntu view that the community defines the person aligns uncannily with Vygotsky's biosocial proposition and contemporary conceptions of deaf ontology and epistemology. Unlike prevailing Euro-American thought, Ubuntu accentuates the view that it is not any physical or psychological characteristic of the individual that defines personhood. Instead, Ubuntu aphorisms, the containers of meaning in African epistemology, indicate that the reality of the communal world is at least equal if not superior to individual life histories. The author teases out similarities between Vygotskian thought and Ubuntu, illustrating deaf children's development along a different axis, facilitated by a holistic, diversified biosocial process in which neither their deafness nor disability indicates inferiority or coloniality. Grounded on the African principle No language is complete without other languages , the present article contributes to a nascent indigenous theorization of contemporary deaf education.
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Sakharuk, Inna V. "Status of Precedent Units in the System of Intertextual Means of Contemporary Ukrainian Media Discourse." Journal of Linguistics/Jazykovedný casopis 66, no. 2 (December 1, 2015): 127–43. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/jazcas-2016-0003.
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Abstract The article is devoted to the determination of the status of precedent units (precedent names and expressions) in the system of intertextual means of contemporary Ukrainian media discourse. There was analyzed the phenomenon of intertextuality in the broad and narrow senses; the functions of precedent units that realize the main media discourse purpose of informing and influence were revealed. The analysis of the essence of precedence in linguistics gives grounds to distinguish three types of precedent phenomena: precedent texts, situations and personalities, as well as two types of precedent units: precedent names and expressions. The connection of precedent units and related concepts – winged words, aphorisms and idioms – was established. Based on a comparative analysis of the views of European and American scholars on the phenomena of intertextuality and precedence in linguistics there were singled out the means of direct and indirect appeal to prototext, which enroll the quotations and references, as well as the precedent units and allusions respectively.
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T. Litovkina, Anna. "“Make love, not war…Get married and do both”: Negative aspects of marriage in anti-proverbs and wellerisms." European Journal of Humour Research 5, no. 4 (December 31, 2017): 112. http://dx.doi.org/10.7592/ejhr2017.5.4.litovkina.
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In the present study I am going to explore negative aspects of marriage and the ways it is viewed and conceptualized in the body of Anglo-American anti-proverbs (i.e., deliberate proverb innovations (also known as alterations, parodies, transformations, variations, wisecracks, mutations, or fractured proverbs) and wellerisms (a form of folklore normally made up of three parts: 1) a statement, 2) a speaker who makes this remark, and 3) a phrase that places the utterance into an unexpected, contrived situation. The meaning of the proverb, proverbial phrase or other statement is usually distorted by being placed into striking juxtaposition with the third part of the wellerisms). Another aim of the study is also to depict those who adhere to the institution of marriage, that is, wives and husbands, and analyse their nature, qualities, attributes and behaviours as revealed through Anglo-American anti-proverbs and wellerisms. My discussion is organized in two parts. The anti-proverbs and wellerisms discussed in the present study were taken primarily from American and British written sources. The texts of anti-proverbs were drawn from hundreds of books and articles on puns, one-liners, toasts, wisecracks, quotations, aphorisms, maxims, quips, epigrams, and graffiti collected in two dictionaries of anti-proverbs compiled by Anna T. Litovkina and Wolfgang Mieder (see Mieder & Tóthné Litovkina 1999; T. Litovkina & Mieder 2006). The texts of wellerims are primarily quoted from the dictionary of wellerisms (see Mieder & Kingsbury 1994).
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JOHNSON, LINCK. "EMERSON: AMERICA'S FIRST PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL?" Modern Intellectual History 2, no. 1 (April 2005): 135–51. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1479244304000368.
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As most readers of this journal will already know, 2003 marked the bicentennial of Ralph Waldo Emerson's birth in Boston on May 25, 1803. The occasion did not generate quite the hoopla that characterized the celebration of the centennial of his birth; then, as Lawrence Buell notes in his own generous tribute to Emerson, children in Concord were let out of school for the day, and there were major celebrations both there and in Boston. To the chagrin of some of Emerson's admirers, the bicentennial passed without official recognition: as one complained on a website, “It's Emerson's 200th Birthday—and there's no postage stamp,” an important indicator of cultural currency in the United States. In 1967, for example, the Post Office issued a stamp to commemorate the mere 150th anniversary of the other most famous Transcendentalist, Henry Thoreau. Nonetheless, like Thoreau, Emerson retains a tenacious foothold in American popular culture, though he is probably known there primarily for the inspirational aphorisms—usually collected under headings such as “action,” “confidence,” and “conformity”—on websites with names like Brainy Quote and Wisdom Quotes. Despite challenges from both the left and the right, Emerson also remains a central figure in American literary and cultural history; and he has been the focus of sustained scholarly attention, especially since the so-called “Emerson Renaissance,” the resurgence of interest in his life and writings beginning around 1980.
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Lysenko, Natalya. "GRAPHIC MEANS IN THE ENGLISH-LANGUAGE EXPRESSIVE COMPRESSED TEXTS." English and American Studies 1, no. 16 (September 7, 2019): 166–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.15421/381923.
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This article deals with the consideration of functioning of graphic means on the basis of the English-language expressive compressed texts. The types of abbreviations as well as other graphic peculiarities of the information presentation in the text have been investigated, using examples of English advertising texts, anecdotes, aphorisms, and contemporary American literature. English-language compressed texts have both leading and subordinate features. Their leading feature is increased informational saturation, while the subordinate signs usually include abbreviations, lack of auxiliary and emotionally coloured words. Among the main graphic means used in the English-language compressed texts, various cuts of words in the form of abbreviations, traditional or specific reductions should be noted. One can also mention a special system of the location of the material, which allows to highlight the main information and omit the secondary, significantly reducing the volume. The use of footnotes also helps to save a certain amount of text array. Punctuation marks in compressed text not only make it possible to reduce a certain part of the information, but may also carry additional information load. In general, the use of the mentioned graphic means in English-language compressed texts have been analyzed, the peculiarities of their functioning have been revealed in the article. As the perspectives of the research, it was offered to identify and investigate the existing graphic means in other types of the English-language compressed texts.
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Allan, Nigel. "F. Rosner (trans. and ed.), Maimonides' Commentary on the Aphorisms of Hippocrates, vol. 2, Maimonides' medical writings, Haifa, The Maimonides Research Institute, 1987, 8vo, pp. xv, 218, $14.95 + $2.00 p& p from the North American distributor, Israel Book Shop, Inc., 410 Harvard St., Brookline MA 02146, USA." Medical History 33, no. 3 (July 1989): 380–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0025727300049668.
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Butler, Stephen. "A personal experience learning from two pain pioneers, J.J. Bonica and W. Fordyce: Lessons surviving four decades of pain practice." Scandinavian Journal of Pain 1, no. 1 (January 1, 2010): 34–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.sjpain.2009.09.009.
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AbstractThis article was requested by the Editor, Professor Harald Brevik after listening to a lecture I gave in a similar vein. Harald wanted the information in print and I have done this in a partly autobiographical form to explain how I came to work and learn from both the late John J. Bonica and the late Wilbert Fordyce.Both of these men have been important in different ways to our present pain world. John J. Bonica made many contributions not only in pain but in regional anesthesia and obstetrical anesthesia but not on the same level. His conviction and drive in the pain field actually revolutionized pain research and practice. Dr. Bonica early on knew he needed help with difficult cases and began a multidisciplianary clinic that served as a model for all. He wrote and published the first really comprehensive text on pain (The Management of Pain) that has appeared in two subsequent revisions and a third revision is in progress. He succeeded in founding the International Association for the Study of Pain to bring clinicians and researchers together so that we could learn from each other. Again, Dr. Bonica felt that the multidisciplinary approach to research was the key to unlocking the secrets of pain. Dr. Bonica also succeeded in persuading the American Congress and the WHO that pain was a significant problem not only for all Americans but for all humanity. His drive was an inspiration to all who came in contact with him and he touched my life in several ways as a teacher, a colleague and a patient.Bill Fordyce was not a larger than life individual like John J. Bonica but he also had a profound effect on the pain world and on me. Bill was one of the first real champions of the application of behavioural principles to the treatment of chronic pain. His visionary and inventive use of operant behavioural therapy in a multidisciplinary pain setting set the mark for all comprehensive pain clinics and the principles he used are still in effect world wide and are making converts of more and more practitioners frustrated by the lack of advances using the biomedical model. Bill created a whole new area of treatment that has made pain rehabilitation a thriving business and has made practical use of the biopsychosocial model of Engel as an explanation for much of the disability and suffering in chronic pain.For me, John J. Bonica was an inspiration for hard work and constant learning. Bill Fordyce taught me new tools to use to understand many complicated pain patients but also many practical aphorisms to guide evaluation and treatment. I have been extremely lucky in being able to have had a long relationship with both of these pain giants who were always open to discussion and debate over the difficult problems. Their teaching both by example, discussion and in their writing had and still has a strong effect on my life as a physician, a pain practitioner and a teacher. I would like to pass on some of that information to all interested in research, teaching and pain management. As they say in Sweden, “Var så god!”.
Dissertations / Theses on the topic "American Aphorisms and apothegms"
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Pinto, Douglas W. "René Char's archipelagic speech /." Diss., Connect to a 24 p. preview or request complete full text in PDF format. Access restricted to UC campuses, 1998. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/ucsd/fullcit?p9917955.
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Henderson, Ian Herbert. "Sententiae Jesus : gnomic sayings in the tradition of Jesus." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1989. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:550d7f68-d96c-410c-80c4-2ce6bee2658a.
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This dissertation coordinates two problems which have hitherto resisted adequate synthesis: the form-critical problem of describing proverbial-sounding Synoptic sayings and the tradition-historical problem of assessing the rhetorical habits of Jesus and his immediate successors in oral tradition. The approach taken here to linking these qualifies not only form-critical assumptions of continuity between written forms - in Kleinliteratur - and identifies oral Sitze im Leben of mnemotechnical scholasticism, but also of the recent emphases on radical discontinuity between oral and writing modes of tradition. The connection proposed here between re-description of so- called Wisdom-sayings and oral traditional aspects of the gospels is in the Hellen educational category of gnome. Defined, exemplified and prescribed in basic Graeco-Roman educational texts as well as in technical, philosophical manuals of Rhetoric and in a rich collection-literature, gnome is superbly attested as an exercise in primary education, in all kinds of public-speaking and in cross-cultural (including Jewish) tradition. Moreover, Hellenistic cultivation of gnome primarily as a speech-type, indeed as a conversational means of argumentation in any Sitz im Leben, and only secondarily though still extensively as a literary technique makes it a particularly pertinent term of comparison for New Testament criticism. Recognizing gnomic continuity between oral and written Synoptic tradition allows discussion of the authenticity not only of individual sayings (on criteria of dissimilarity), but also collectively of the gnomic manner (on criteria of oral-literate continuity and multiple attestation): quite apart from the (in)authenticity of each gnome, gnomic style is central to Jesus' self-expression and earliest tradition. In this sense gnomai are a particularly valuable data-set for reassessing the critically controverted relationship between Jesus' rhetoric and law: in Synoptic tradition gnome is exploited suggestively as a non-legal means of addressing conventionally legal topics.
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Kaiser, Lesley. "Preserve, renew, invent [Light Bytes] an art exploration into disseminating aphorisms : this exegesis is submitted to Auckland University of Technology in partial fulfillment of the degree of Master of Arts (Art and Design) MAArtDes, 2008." Click here to access this resource online, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10292/410.
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The expanding potential for the dissemination and archiving of aphorisms is explored in this practice-based research thesis. An aphorism is a short statement that communicates an insight about the world (and can sometimes function as a guide to action). Eric McLuhan, interviewed in Signs of the Times: The History of Writing (Goëss Video, 1996), suggests that the future of the book is the aphoristic statement. Aphoristic knowledge has traditionally been transmitted through texts and through libraries, but this project brings into play various modes of recirculating aphoristic texts using contemporary distribution networks and digital media such as moving image, projection on to urban screens, artists’ books, archival digital photography and glazed ceramics. Texts ‘virally inhabit’ a number of sites and languages in a series of works situated in the interdisciplinary context of contemporary text art and artists’ books. The sayings rejoin the cultural river of ideas in local and international incarnations. Practice-based work (80%) and exegesis (20%)
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Lubimova-Bekman, Lada. "Rezeption von Aphorismen eine textlinguistische Studie /." Berlin : Schmidt, 2001. http://catalog.hathitrust.org/api/volumes/oclc/47209895.html.
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Slightly revised version of her dissertation (Ph. D.), Universität-Bremen, 1999--Cf. p. (7).Anhang presents the aphorisms chiefly discussed, those by Jean Paul, Novalis, and Friedrich Schlegel. Includes bibliographical references (p. 110-115).
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Tello, Brugal Joan. "Joan Lluís Vives's "Introductio ad sapientiam": Critical Edition and Philosophical Study." Doctoral thesis, Universitat de Barcelona, 2022. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/673932.
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Breaking new ground in advancing the work and thought of the Renaissance humanist Joan Lluís Vives (1492/3-1540), this dissertation includes the following materials: (1) an updated state of investigation in Vivesian studies; (2) a vindication of Vives as a philosopher rather than a pedagogue; (3) the first critical edition of the Introductio ad sapientiam (1524), his second most disseminated work; (4) an explanation of the philosophical content of the Introductio ad sapientiam through an exploration of three key aphorisms (numbers 1, 200 and 604) that shed light on items overlooked by previous scholarship; and, last but not least, (5) a probe into the meaning of the term animus through the lens of eleven Classical Latin and Renaissance authors.Aquesta tesi doctoral obre nous camins per avançar en l’estudi de l’obra i del pensament de l’humanista renaixentista Joan Lluís Vives (1492/3-1540), i inclou els materials següents: (1) un estat actualitzat de la investigació en els estudis vivesians; (2) una reivindicació de Vives com a filòsof més que no pas com a pedagog; (3) la primera edició crítica de la Introductio ad sapientiam (1524), la seva segona obra més difosa; (4) una explicació del contingut filosòfic de la Introductio ad sapientiam a través de l’anàlisi de tres aforismes clau (números 1, 200 i 604) que fan llum sobre temes desatesos per estudis anteriors; i, finalment, (5) una indagació sobre el significat del terme animus a través d’onze autors llatins clàssics i renaixentistes.
Books on the topic "American Aphorisms and apothegms"
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Florentin, Smarandache, ed. Caution: I drive like you do! : (collection of American paradoxist folklore). [United States]: ILQ, 2007.
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Bùi, Tiên Khôi. 20 poems & 1000 thoughts of Huy-Lực Khôi Tiên Bùi. Chapel Hill, N.C: Professional Press, 1994.
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Bernard, Schulak, ed. Faxwit: A collection of cynical, outrageously irreverent, curmudgeonly quotations : bulletin-board humor. [West Bloomfield, MI]: B. Schulak, 1989.
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Paterson, Don. Best thought, worst thought: On art, sex, work and death : aphorisms. Saint Paul, Minn: Graywolf Press, 2008.
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C, Larsen Miriam, ed. Oddball sayings, witty expressions & down home folklore: A collection of clever phrases. San Jose, CA: R & E Publishers, 1995.
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Mann, Margaret. Grandma Mann's miscellany: Quips, jokes, insights, and words of wisdom. [Bloomington, IN]: XLibris, 2009.
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Bender, Texas Bix. Wahoo!: Cowboys in love. Salt Lake City: Gibbs-Smith, 1999.
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Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph. Aphorisms. London, England: Penguin Books, 1990.
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Ferreira, Keith N. Aphorisms. New York: Vantage Press, 1994.
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Ramón Gómez de la Serna. Aphorisms. Pittsburgh, Pa: Latin American Literary Review Press, 1989.
Find full textBook chapters on the topic "American Aphorisms and apothegms"
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Rubinstein, Marv. "CHAPTER 2. Proverbs, Slogans, and Aphorisms." In American English Compendium, 19–72. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.5771/9781442232839-19.
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Edwards, Jonathan, and Abraham Lincoln. "The Emerging Ideal of Self-Improvement." In Making the American Self, 107–35. Oxford University PressNew York, NY, 1999. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195387896.003.0005.
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Abstract “It is the age of the first person singular,” Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in his journal at the beginning of February, 1827. Like so many of his aphorisms, this observation offers several levels of meaning. Antebellum white Americans not only asserted themselves in a variety of ways, they were increasingly able to define themselves through voluntary choice. Contemporaries were quite aware of this novel power and felt that it presented both opportunities and dangers. The origins of the goal of personal self-definition may be sought in evangelical Christian “new birth” and in the cultivated self of eighteenth-century politeness, but the ideal spread widely and took on new forms in the United States during the nineteenth century. A combination of weak institutional constraints and the market revolution, which multiplied occupational and consumer options, provided favorable conditions for such widespread personal autonomy. This chapter will outline broadly some of the forms that self-definition took. It was an age of self-reliance, but also of self-control and self-improvement. (On the other hand, it was not an era that celebrated self-indulgence; “the age of the first person singular” meant something quite different from the “me generation” of the 1980s.) Surprisingly, the Enlightenment model of the balanced character, in which reason reigned supreme over the passions, remained relevant and widely accepted, even in an era of democratic Romanticism.
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Schlarb, Damien B. "Dread, Foolishness, Wisdom." In Melville's Wisdom, 71–129. Oxford University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197585566.003.0003.
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This chapter explores Melville’s commentary on the collection of aphorisms known as the book of Proverbs and how he responds to its central propositions: fear of God as a prerequisite for attaining wisdom, the dichotomy between wisdom and folly, and the antinomian problem of God as the author of evil. Proverbs, it argues, enables Melville to frame his contemplation of theology and skepticism by confronting evil in its numerous guises as ontological fact. Because proverbs are portable and pragmatic, they allow Melville to comment politically on contemporary American reality (faith, economics, political and cultural institutions). The chapter discusses Mardi, “The Lightning-Rod Man,” The Confidence-Man, and Billy Budd, showing how proverbs initially connote revolutionary political potential in Melville’s work but soon are rendered ineffectual and used only to indict American political, economic, and cultural industries for successfully conspiring to purge wisdom from all personal interaction and jurisprudence.
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Bubb, Alexander. "Circulating." In Asian Classics on the Victorian Bookshelf, 63—C3P48. Oxford University PressOxford, 2023. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198866275.003.0003.
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Abstract This chapter explains how Asian literature circulated in nineteenth-century British and American society, showing how readers accessed copies of cheap and popular translations in bookshops and lending libraries. But the chapter also discusses their circulation in fragmentary form, not as entire texts but as individual lines and phrases, images or characters, which may be quoted or alluded to in writing, or dropped into conversation. This practice became habitual and ubiquitous by the turn of the century, and manifests particularly clearly in the dissemination of proverbs and aphorisms, which through their continuous reprinting in Victorian periodicals are repeatedly misquoted and misattributed. The chapter then turns to the urban environment, pointing out the numerous towns and streets in Britain and America whose names were derived from Asian literature, and the unobserved presence of statues of Asian authors or of their inscribed names on the façades of public libraries and museums.
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Gana, Nouri. "Melancholy Formations." In Melancholy Acts, 45–88. Fordham University Press, 2023. http://dx.doi.org/10.5422/fordham/9781531503499.003.0002.
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The aim of this inaugural chapter is to demonstrate the extent to which political and military defeats have spawned a psychoaffective disposition toward melancholy, and become the recurring site of creative and critical inquiry, exacerbated even further by a predominant sense of unstoppable technoeconomic belatedness and existential precarity. The chapter embarks on a series of analyses of an eclectic number of plays, novels, poems, films, and cites short critical statements and dictums and at times even aphorisms that best dramatize the cultural, political, and discursive gamut of the collective disposition toward melancholy. In the meanwhile, what becomes clear is that Arab subjectivity is unthinkable outside the collusion/collision between local authoritarianism and Euro-American imperialism. The melancholy turn of Arab subjectivity accompanies its commitment to the transformative project of liberation. From Nouri Bouzid and Chokri Mabkhout to Ghassan Kanafani and Annemarie Jacir through Youssef Chahine and Sonallah Ibrahim, the liberation of the individual emerges as one of the most urgent conditions of national liberation. In the end, the chapter fleshes out the notion of “melancholy acts” through sustained reflections on the question of iltizām or commitment in the aftermath of the ongoing Nakba and Naksa.