scholarly journals Fiction Film and History

2021 ◽  
pp. 17-35
Author(s):  
Rasmus Greiner

AbstractAs well as taking stock of the existing literature on film and history, this chapter aims to develop a terminological apparatus for describing the conceptual core of the historical film. The first section makes reference to a classic semiological model according to which a film’s production of meaning is determined by its specific arrangement of signs. It draws parallels to debates within historical studies that have enabled a reassessment of fiction film as a historiographical medium and mode of conceptualizing history. Building on these considerations, the second section posits a genre of popular fiction film defined by its referential relation to historical events, individuals, and lifeworlds. The third section argues that this is less a matter of incontrovertible factual accuracy than of generating a feeling of authenticity.

Author(s):  
David S. Potter

This chapter offers an analysis of how inscriptions can complement the narratives of Roman history from the third century BCE to the third century CE provided in literary sources. They reveal certain historical events or details that would otherwise be unknown, and they supplement the information offered by the surviving Roman historians .


2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Borsari

The book investigates the reflection of Arthur Schopenhauer on education, calling to mind some of the great figures who have underlined his value as educator: Nietzsche of the Third Untimely Meditation, Hadot and Foucault of the Art of Living and Care of the Self; or, from the opposite perspective, the roles that were projected onto the philosopher as a teacher: aesthetic educator who was master of artistic contemplation for numerous generations of artists and writers between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, master of wisdom, revealer of Eastern cultures, eudaemonological model of practical philosophy. The research also examines the recent renewed interest in «formation» (Bildung) in order to repropose the problem of how to return from the viewpoint of Schopenhauer's «anthropological results» to the very conceptual core – the relationship between the educational field and philosophical universe of Schopenhauer in connection with his notion of the human subject.


2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-67
Author(s):  
I. B. Teslenko

The Funa fortress is located in southern Crimea and is one of the reference architectural and archaeological complexes of the Northern Pontic Region with precise date of existence. The fortress was built by Mangup authorities near 1423 on the border with possessions of Genoese and was destroyed in a fire during the Turkish invasion of the Crimea in 1475. The detailed chronology of the site which includes three stages of its construction history — 1423, 1425—1450s and 1459—1475, has been developed so far. So it becomes possible to clarify the dating of ceramic finds in line with these periods also. Ceramic assemblages of the last stage from the layers of fire and destruction of 1475 are the most representative. There is the complex from courtyard 1 among them. The ceramic collection includes 101 and 163 fully or partially reconstructed vessels respectively. There are large and average household containers, various kitchen utensils and tableware, both of the local Crimean production and import (Miletus Ware, Spanish Luster and Blue and White Ware, Fritware). The comparative analysis of artefacts made it possible to establish the chronological changes in ceramic assemblages during 25 years. Moreover, statistical and typological studies of the pottery from the layer of fire demonstrated a set of vessels there is suitable for cooking and table setting for at least 40 people. Large number of luxury tableware for diverse using and their location in the context allow suggest that there was a large feast on the platform above the «kitchen», and the remains of this banquet were not removed. According to the archaeological evidence as well as analysis of historical events the inhabitants of the fortress could burn it themselves before Turkish invasion and retreat to the capital of the principality at Mangup. Perhaps the remains of a farewell feast arranged just before leaving was fixed archaeologically.


appealed to the Queen on being besieged by the wild sense, especially in the concluding cantos, of leaving Irish (see Vi4.1n). In reading this ‘darke conceit’, an iron world to enter a golden one. But do these no one could have failed to recognize these allusions. ways lead to an end that triumphantly concludes the The second point is that Spenser’s fiction, when 1596 poem, or to an impasse of the poet’s imaginat-compared to historical fact, is far too economical ive powers? For some readers, Book VI relates to the with the truth: for example, England’s intervention earlier books as Shakespeare’s final romances relate in the Netherlands under Leicester is, as A.B. Gough to his earlier plays, a crowning and fulfilment, ‘a 1921:289 concludes, ‘entirely misrepresented’. It summing up and conclusion for the entire poem and would seem that historical events are treated from for Spenser’s poetic career’ (N. Frye 1963:70; cf. a perspective that is ‘far from univocally celebratory Tonkin 1972:11). For others, Spenser’s exclamation or optimistic’, as Gregory 2000:366 argues, or in of wonder on cataloguing the names of the waters what Sidney calls their ‘universal consideration’, i.e. that attend the marriage of the Thames and the what is imminent in them, namely, their apocalyptic Medway, ‘O what an endlesse worke haue I in hand, import, as Borris 1991:11–61 argues. The third | To count the seas abundant progeny’ (IV xii point, which is properly disturbing to many readers 1.1–2), indicates that the poem, like such sixteenth-in our most slaughterous age, especially since the century romances as Amadis of Gaul, could now go matter is still part of our imaginative experience as on for ever, at least until it used up all possible virtues Healy 1992:104–09 testifies, is that Talus’s slaughter and the poet’s life. As Nohrnberg 1976:656 aptly of Irena’s subjects is rendered too brutally real in notes, ‘we find ourselves experiencing not the allegorizing, and apparently justifying, Grey’s atrocit-romance of faith or chastity, but the romance of ies in subduing Irish rebels (see V xii 26–27n). Here romance itself ’. For still others, there is a decline: Spenser is a product of his age, as was the Speaker ‘the darkening of Spenser’s spirit’ is a motif in many of the House of Commons in 1580 in reporting studies of the book, agreeing with Lewis 1936:353 the massacre of Spanish soldiers at Smerwick: ‘The that ‘the poem begins with its loftiest and most Italians pulled out by the ears at Smirwick in solemn book and thence, after a gradual descent, Ireland, and cut to pieces by the notable Service of a sinks away into its loosest and most idyllic’; and with noble Captain and Valiant Souldiers’ (D’Ewes Neuse 1968:331 that ‘the dominant sense of Book 1682:286). As this historical matter relates to Book V, VI is one of disillusionment, of the disparity between it displays the slaughter that necessarily attends the the poet’s ideals and the reality he envisions’; or that triumph of justice, illustrating the truth of the common the return to pastoral signals the failure of chivalry in adage, summum ius, summa iniuria, even as Guyon’s Book V to achieve reform (see DeNeef 1982b). destruction of the Bower shows the triumph of tem-Certainly canto x provides the strong sense of an perance. This is justice; or, at best, what justice has ending. As I have suggested, ‘it is as difficult not to become, and what its executive power displayed in see the poet intruding himself into the poem, as it is that rottweiler, Talus, has become, in our worse than not to see Shakespeare in the role of Prospero with ‘stonie’ age as the world moves towards its ‘last the breaking of the pipe, the dissolving of the vision, ruinous decay’ (proem 2.2, 6.9). In doing so, Book and our awareness (but surely the poet’s too) that his V confirms the claim by Thrasymachus in Plato’s work is being rounded out’ (1961a:202). Republic: justice is the name given by those in power Defined as ‘doing gentle deedes with franke to keep their power. It is the one virtue in the poem delight’ (vii 1.2), courtesy is an encompassing virtue that cannot be exercised by itself but within the book in a poem that sets out to ‘sing of Knights and Ladies must be over-ruled by equity, circumvented by mercy, gentle deeds’ (I proem 1.5). As such, its flowering and, in the succeeding book, countered by courtesy. would fully ‘fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline’ (Letter to Raleigh 8). Courtesy: Book VI

2014 ◽  
pp. 36-36

AJS Review ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-75
Author(s):  
Shaul Magid

Until now, the academic study of Lurianic kabbala has largely pursued three roads of inquiry. The first, following Scholem, has been the study of Lurianic kabbala as a mystical and eschatological response to the historical events of the Jewish expulsion from Spain in 1492, an event viewed as the root of the mystical heresy of Shabbtai Tzvi. The second pathway has been the scholarly analysis of Lurianic teaching as the most extreme example of kabbalistic theosophy, surpassing both the Zohar and Cordoverean Kabbala in its intricate and complex delineation of the cosmic world. The third approach has addressed the unusually complicated task of deciphering, categorizing, and pointing out the voluminous manuscripts of Luria's students, a literary oeuvre which is as diverse as it is complex. While all of these are important and contribute to the overall understanding of what is the most influential kabbalistic doctrine since the Zohar, I would like to approach the Lurianic material from a different perspective.


2021 ◽  
pp. 37-47
Author(s):  
Rasmus Greiner

AbstractThe aim of this chapter is to consider relevant theories of visual and audio history whose ontologies a histosphere absorbs and elaborates. The first section surveys the relatively new field of visual history. It argues that a histosphere creates not just disparate images but a visual sphere in which history is brought to life. Research into audio history is an even newer and less developed field. The second section therefore sketches the outlines of an audio history of film and examines the aesthetics and function of film sound, understood as an equally important expressive dimension of histospheres. The two aspects are brought together in the third section: The fusion of sound and vision makes the historical film not just a model of a historical world, but a form of perception in its own right.


Author(s):  
Olga V. Bogdanova

The paper provides a new interpretation of A. S. Pushkin’s poem “Poltava” offering a broader view of its idea. Whereas, according to critics, the Battle of Poltava is only “an episode from the love story of Mazepa” and is “asymmetrically” located in the poem (V. G. Belinsky), the paper shows that Pushkin’s poem is distinguished by a harmonious and thoughtful composition, associated not only with the image of events of the victorious Battle of Poltava, but also with memories of Poltava (Poltava region), linked by Pushkin with the addressee of the poem’s dedication — M. N. Raevskaya-Volkonskaya. The poem is formed by a three-part structure, each stage of which is connected with one of the passions that capture the characters and are subordinate to Pushkin’s special hierarchy. If the first part embodies the passion of love (images of Mary and Mazepa), the second explicates the passion of revenge (Kochubey and Mazepa) and then the third — the highest, according to Pushkin — the passion of serving the Fatherland, the desire to give it all the heart (Peter, Karl, Mazepa). Three stages of compositional construction embody axiological difference of the protagonist passion and, as a result, reflect stadiality of maturing of a central idea of the poem. Its final meaning is to depict not so much the victory of Peter’s army at Poltava, as the struggle of human passions (love, revenge, Motherland) and their commensurability with the grandiosity of historical events involving the main characters.


2018 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 242-266
Author(s):  
Dagmar Podmaková

Abstract The authoress, using two visual works, i.e. theatre production #dubček and film Dubček (both 2018), compares two different approaches to and forms of the work with the personality of Alexander Dubček against the backdrop of the reforms and political upheaval in Czecho-Slovakia1, in 1968. Theatre production #dubček (Aréna Theatre, Bratislava, direction Michal Skočovský) has three levels. The first one is acting game having the form of a rehearsal of a new text about the politician Alexander Dubček; its component part is the projection of period archival film shots. The second level involves the actors stepping out of characters and commenting on Dubček’s attitude and on historical events. The third level entails monologue scenes, in which actors reveal their personal attitudes via narrated stories at the time of normalization2 which had a negative impact on the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. In the film Dubček (Slovak-Czech co-production, direction Ladislav Halama), through Dubček’s reminiscing the past, political events interweave with the scenes from the life of Dubček’s family. Although both the works employ period image documentary material and fiction, they fail to create a dramatic conflict and they are illustrative for the bigger part.


2021 ◽  
pp. 49-73
Author(s):  
Rasmus Greiner

AbstractThis chapter describes the interactions and intersections between film experience and historical experience. The first section introduces the phenomenological theories underpinning the notion of film experience and applies them to the historical film. Focusing on concepts of embodied film perception, it discusses the spectator’s impression of making direct contact with a film’s historical world. This imaginary contact with history bears similarities to Frank R. Ankersmit’s theory of historical experience, which is examined in the second section. The interconnections between Ankersmit’s concept and Vivian Sobchack’s phenomenological theory of film experience are considered in greater depth in the third section. The aim is to develop a concept of histospheres in which sensuous and cognitive perceptions are fused into a unified cinematic experience of history.


This interview discusses Le monde incréé, defined as ‘poétrie’, which refers to a destructuring of conventional literary genres. It consists of three ‘unstageable’ plays, the final one of which is devoted to Marie Celat, who features in much of Glissant’s other work. Drama is a place of revelation, more openly than prose or poetry. The uncreated world is a world that proceeds from historical events rather than a creation or genesis: in other words, a ‘digenesis’. The third play also features the ‘déparleur’ or delirious speaker, who is searching for a poetics, and manifests the ambiguous presence of poetry combined with its impossibility. Glissant rejects postcolonialism because he thinks it implies that colonialism is over. Literature is threatened with disappearance, because it has become banal and consumable.


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