A History of Alexander the Great in World Culture

2022 ◽  

Alexander III of Macedon (356-323 BC) has for over 2000 years been one of the best recognized names from antiquity. He set about creating his own legend in his lifetime, and subsequent writers and political actors developed it. He acquired the surname 'Great' by the Roman period, and the Alexander Romance transmitted his legendary biography to every language of medieval Europe and the Middle East. As well as an adventurer who sought the secret of immortality and discussed the purpose of life with the naked sages of India, he became a model for military achievement as well as a religious prophet bringing Christianity (in the Crusades) and Islam (in the Qur'an and beyond) to the regions he conquered. This innovative and fascinating volume explores these and many other facets of his reception in various cultures around the world, right up to the present and his role in gay activism.

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 334-351
Author(s):  
Alex MacFarlane

The 17th-century manuscript M7709 (held in the Matenadaran, Yerevan, Armenia) includes an Armenian copy of the History of the City of Brass, to which an unknown scribe has added short poems about Alexander the Great. The first of three articles that together present the Alexander poems of M7709 in full, with English translation, for the first time, this article introduces the manuscript and considers the first six poems: the seduction of Olympias, and Alexander’s encounter with plant-men at the edge of the world. It adds commentary on the poems’ relationship to the corresponding part of the History of the City of Brass on each page, proposing textual reasons why the scribe added the poems where he did. Across the three articles, this commentary delves into textual relationships beyond the pages of M7709, linking the Armenian History of the City of Brass, Alexander Romance and other texts and traditions, to show how this manuscript is situated amid wider networks of circulating literature. As a microhistorical study, it seeks to provide illumination into the macrohistory of medieval and early modern literature in and beyond the Caucasus.


2019 ◽  
pp. 218-255
Author(s):  
T.Yu. Kobischanov

Quite often in the course of historical events, social and economic changes obscure the changes in cultural psychology of ethnic groups and their representatives. The historical science explains what happened, how and why it was happening but very rarely gives us a chance to understand what people were feeling in this respect, what processes were going on in their individual and common consciousness and in the subconscious. The drama that the Christians of the Middle East are going through, the final act of which we are probably witnessing these days, urges us to look for its roots in the distant past. The Ottoman period in the history of East Christian communities is of particular significance. The Middle East Christians got under the Turkish rule as a discriminated minority pushed out on the curb of sociopolitical life, but by the beginning of the 20th century the Christians of the Middle East as a whole, and Christian communities of Syria and Lebanon in particular, were flourishing and were perfectly well adapted to possibilities that inclusion of the Ottoman state into the world capitalist system had to offer. The upgrade of the Christians status was accompanied by gradual changes in their social psychology including self identification of the members of the Christian communities, remodelling of their behaviour patterns in everyday life and in conflict situations as well as psychology of introconfessional relations. This research is an attempt to describe and analyse this cultural and psychological transformation.Нередко в ходе исторических событий социальноэкономические изменения затмевают изменения в культурной психологии этнических групп и их представителей. Историческая наука объясняет, что произошло, как и почему это происходило, но очень редко дает нам возможность понять, что чувствовали люди в этом отношении, какие процессы происходили в их индивидуальном и общем сознании и в подсознании. Драма, которую переживают христиане Ближнего Востока, заключительный акт которой мы, вероятно, наблюдаем в эти дни, побуждает нас искать ее корни в далеком прошлом. Османский период в истории восточных христианских общин имеет особое значение. Ближневосточные христиане попали под турецкое правление как дискриминируемое меньшинство, вытесненное на обочину общественнополитической жизни, но к началу 20 века христиане Ближнего Востока в целом, и христианские общины Сирии и Ливана в частности, процветали и были прекрасно приспособлены к возможностям, которые могло предложить включение Османского государства в мировую капиталистическую систему. Обновление статуса христиан сопровождалось постепенными изменениями в их социальной психологии, включая самоидентификацию членов христианских общин, перестройку их моделей поведения в повседневной жизни и в конфликтных ситуациях, а также психологию внутриконфессиональных отношений. Это исследование является попыткой описать и проанализировать эту культурную и психологическую трансформацию.


Author(s):  
José G. Vargas-Hernández

This chapter aims to critically analyze both the world economy and the deglobalization processes under the assumption that they are the result of a dialectical evolution of economic, financial, political, and sanitary crises. This dialectical movement of the history of the globalization and deglobalization processes is always a very complex phenomena of interactions between the economic agents and political actors, leading to both progressive and regressive events of economic growth, social development, and environmental sustainability. After a period of intensive economic, trade, and financial integration in the creation of a world economy system, suddenly the economic, financial, and sanitary dysfunctionalities emerged at the interior and created a reactive deglobalization process. However, what has been at the center are the international cooperation and trade relations determined by the need to expand the possibilities of satisfying human needs, including culture.


2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 329-356 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter J. Yearwood

AbstractOriginally intended to provide an accessible overview for colleagues in Papua New Guinea, this article outlines the emergence of the continental division of the world in classical antiquity. In medieval Europe this survived as a learned conception which eventually acquired emotional content. Nevertheless, the division was still within the context of universal Christianity, which did not privilege any continent. Contrary to the views of recent critics, the European sense of world geography was not inherently ‘Eurocentric’. While Europeans did develop a sense of continental superiority, Americans, Africans, and many Asians also came to identify themselves with their continents and to use them as weapons against European domination. The application of the division to Melanesia is also considered.


2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. J. Silva ◽  
Tatiane Medeiros Souza ◽  
Rosa Lía Barbieri ◽  
Antonio Costa de Oliveira

The pear (Pyrus communisL.) is a typical fruit of temperate regions, having its origin and domestication at two different points, China and Asia Minor until the Middle East. It is the fifth most widely produced fruit in the world, being produced mainly in China, Europe, and the United States. Pear belongs to rosaceous family, being a close “cousin” of the apple, but with some particularities that make this fruit special with a delicate flavor. Thus, it deserves a special attention and a meticulous review of all the history involved, and the recent research devoted to it, because of the economic and cultural importance of this fruit in a range of countries and cultures. Therefore, the purpose of this literature review is to approach the history of the origin, domestication, and dispersal of pears, as well as reporting their botany, their current scenario in the world, and their breeding and conservation.


2019 ◽  
pp. 21-38
Author(s):  
Martin Stokes

A glance at the ethnomusicology of the Muslim-majority Middle East might suggest it is peculiarly exposed to historiographical problems now familiar thanks to decades of orientalism critique. Namely, that music is understood in this part of the world via a peculiarly objectivising colonial ethnography, that it is understood in ways that deny its historical circumstances, and that it is subject to a relentless aestheticisation, which is to say, treated in analogous way to the Islamic art objects and miniatures ripped out of context and put on display in the museums of the western metropolis. The history of ethnomusicology suggests a long line of exceptions to this ‘rule’. The chapter explores the work of Villoteau, Lachmann and more recent work in and around sound archives asking to what extent we might see this work prefiguring recognisably modern and critical dispositions towards ethnography.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Дарья Сергеевна Маркосян ◽  
Мария Никитична Морозова

Интерес к проблеме осмысления и интерпретации литературного произведения при помощи иллюстраций носит устойчивый характер на протяжении уже многих столетий. Уникальным явлением в истории мировой культуры становится образ Саломеи, созданный О. Уайльдом и А. Бердсли. На примере этого синтеза лингвистических и графических средств выразительности, перевода слова в зримый ряд прослеживается особая лингвистическая визуализация образа Саломеи, позволяющая исследовать уникальную сочетаемость идиостиля писателя и художника. The problem of comprehending and interpreting a fictional work of art with the help of illustrations has been being an object of intense interest for many centuries. The image of Salome created by O. Wilde and A. Beardsley is a unique phenomenon in the history of the world culture. On the example of this synthesis of linguistic and graphic means of expressiveness, translation of a word into a visual identity, a special linguistic visualization of the image of Salome is traced, which allows one to explore the unique compatibility of the idiostyle of the writer and the artist.


Author(s):  
José G. Vargas-Hernández

This chapter aims to critically analyze both the world economy and the deglobalization processes under the assumption that they are the result of a dialectical evolution of economic, financial, political, and sanitary crisis. This dialectical movement of the history of the globalization and deglobalization processes is always a very complex phenomena of interactions between the economic agents and political actors, leading to both progressive and regressive events of economic growth, social development, and environmental sustainability. After a period of intensive economic, trade, and financial integration in the creation of a world economy system, suddenly the economic, financial, and sanitary dysfunctionalities emerged at the interior and created a reactive deglobalization process. However, what has been at the center are the international cooperation and trade relations determined by the need to expand the possibilities of satisfying human needs, including culture.


1971 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 112-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. B. Bosworth

Propaganda and history are often inseparable. Most governments are in a position to control the dissemination of evidence, and if an event is embarrassing or damaging, the relevant evidence is certain to be distorted or withheld. Moreover the writers of history, however innocent their motives, cannot disregard the official apologia of their rulers. One notes with interest that the learned authors of the official Soviet history of the world portray the invasion of eastern Poland on 17 September 1939 as a crusade of liberation. Of course it might be true that the people liberated by the Red Army were glad to be rid of ‘the arbitrary despotism of the Polish Pans’ and that in the subsequent elections there was absolute freedom of choice and overwhelming support for union with the Ukraine, but the fact remains that it was impossible for membersof the Moscow Academy to contradict their government's justification of the invasion.


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