Päivi Mehtonen

Academy Research Fellow

PhD, Docent (University of Tampere
and University of Helsinki)

Pinni B 2048
Tel. +358 (0)3 3551 8946
paivi.mehtonen[at]uta.fi


A verbal passport photo:

A comparatist who feels attracted by the co-existence of philosophy, poetics and rhetoric in literary composition and analysis.

Projects

Illuminating Darkness: Rhetoric, Poetics, and European Writing
Literature, Transcendence and Avantgarde

Publications in English

Books | Articles


Books (only those in published in English are listed here):

Old Concepts and New Poetics: Historia, Argumentum, and Fabula in the Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Latin Poetics of Fiction . COMMENTATIONES HUMANARUM LITTERARUM 108. Helsinki: The Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters 1996.

Lehtonen, Tuomas M. S. and Päivi Mehtonen (eds.), Historia: The Concept and Genres . COMMENTATIONES HUMANARUM LITTERARUM 116. Helsinki: The Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters 2000.

Obscure Language – Unclear Literature. Theory and Practice from Quintilian to the Enlightenment . Helsinki: The Finnish Academy of Sciences and Letters 2003. (For electronic reviews in English, see Rhetorical Review and Mirator)

Mehtonen, Päivi (ed.), Illuminating Darkness: Approaches to Obscurity and Nothingness in Literature . (Forthcoming 2007)

Articles (only those published in English are listed here):

”Trichotomies of Representation: History of Poetics, Fiction, and Reality.” In: Methods of Reading . Proceedings of the International Conference on Methods of Reading at the University of Tampere. Eds. I. Koskinen, E. Oe­sch and T. Vadén. (Fitty 58) Tampere 1995, 157–169.

”Obscurity as a Linguistic Device: Introductory and Historical Notes”. Danish Yearbook of Philosophy 31, Copenhagen 1996, 157–168.

”Scriptural Difficulty and the Obscurity of Historia .” In: Historia: The Concept and Genres. Edited by P. Mehtonen and T. M. S. Lehtonen. COMMENTATIONES HUMANARUM LITTERARUM 116. Helsinki 2000, 51–67.

“Obscurity I & II.” Two essays in the Web artwork Black & White . Jan-Erik Andersson, Amos Andersson's Art-museum in Helsinki. 3.10.–2.11. 1997. Click the image on the main page!

”'When Is Obscurity Apposite?' George Campbell at the Crossroads of Rhetorical Theory and Modern Epistemology.” In: Intelligibility and Communication. Edited by Lars Lundsten, Arto Siitonen and Bernt Österman. ACTA PHILOSOPHICA FENNICA 69. Helsinki 2001, 159–169.

“Theories of Obscurity in Quintilian and in the 18th Century.” In: Ten Nordic Studies in the History of Rhetoric . Edited by Pernille Harsting and Stefan Ekman. (Nordic Studies in the History of Rhetoric 1 . ) Copenhagen 2002, 95–108.

”The Poetics of the Confusion of Tongues: De vulgari eloquentia and De poësi Fennica.” In: Perspektiv på Dante II . Ed. Anders Cullhed. Stockholm: Nordic Dante Studies 2004 (2005), 221–228.

”Poetics, Narration and Imitation. Rhetoric as ars aplicabilis.” In: The Rhetoric of Cicero in its Medieval and Renaissance Commentary Tradition. Eds. Virginia Cox and John O. Ward. Leiden: Brill 2006, 289-312.

“Essential Art: Matthew of Linköping's Fourteenth-Century Poetics.” Rhetorica (University of California Press) 25:2 (2007), 125-139.

(In addition several monographs and tens of articles in Finnish and Swedish on the history of poetics, theories of interpretation, rhetoric, medieval literature, mysticism, Bram Stoker and – as an eccentric extra – the theme of railroads in literature).