A View of Etruscan Origins

Antiquity ◽  
1966 ◽  
Vol 40 (159) ◽  
pp. 205-211
Author(s):  
Hugh Hencken

In recent years there have appeared a number of books about the Etruscans. These have for the most part been devoted to Etruscan art and culture of the historical period, and touch only lightly on the so-called mystery of Etruscan origins. This mystery is a peculiar thing, for no one regards the origin of other ancient peoples such as the Greeks or the Romans as mysterious. It is simply assumed that they developed where they are found at the beginning of history out of various prehistoric elements that had already arrived.The Etruscan mystery arises in part from the remarkable differences both in language and in civilization between the Etruscans and the other peoples of pre-Roman Italy. The ancients also speculated about it, and the puzzle is in part due to contradictory statements made by them. Herodotus in the 5th century B.C. said that the Etruscans came from Lydia, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus in the 1st century B.C. said that they did not come from anywhere but originated in Italy. The aim of much discussion in recent times has been to determine which was right. I should say at once that it seems to me that there is something in both views. But the statement of Herodotus can hardly be taken literally, since there is insufficient specific connexion between the ancient language and culture of Lydia and anything in Etruria. I shall return to that part of the story later.

Author(s):  
Nicolas Wiater

This chapter examines the ambivalent image of Classical Athens in Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ Roman Antiquities. This image reflects a deep-seated ambiguity of Dionysius’ Classicist ideology: on the one hand, there is no question for Dionysius that Athenocentric Hellenicity failed, and that the Roman empire has superseded Athens’ role once and for all as the political and cultural centre of the oikoumene. On the other, Dionysius accepted Rome’s supremacy as legitimate partly because he believed (and wanted his readers to believe) her to be the legitimate heir of Classical Athens and Classical Athenian civic ideology. As a result, Dionysius develops a new model of Hellenicity for Roman Greeks loyal to the new political and cultural centre of Rome. This new model of Greek identity incorporates and builds on Classical Athenian ideals, institutions, and culture, but also supersedes them.


Babel ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moheiddin A. Homeidi

Abstract This paper deals mainly with some of the difficulties the translator might encounter when translating some culturally bound pieces of information. These would include the translation of some idioms, and some culturally bound concepts. The paper starts with definitions of translation, language and culture followed by an extensive analysis of the examples provided. All the examples are drawn from Arabic and English. The examples include the translation of some idioms which violate truth conditions, which are easily recognizable, and some others which may be translated either literally or idiomatically with obviously different results. Then the analysis moves to the translation of some culturally bound expressions from both Arabic and English. Here, we find examples that cannot be translated into the other language simply for lack of cultural equivalents. The skill and the intervention of the translator are most needed in this respect because above all translation is an act of communication. Résumé Cet article traite principalement de certaines difficultés que le traducteur peut rencontrer quand il traduit des textes d’information qui présentent un aspect culturel. Ces difficultés ont trait à certaines locutions idiomatiques et concepts culturels. L’article commence par définir la traduction, la langue et la culture, puis analyse en détail les exemples fournis. Tous les exemples sont tirés de l’arabe et de l’anglais. Ces exemples comprennent la traduction de certaines locutions idiomatiques qui trahissent les conditions de vérite et sont facilement reconnaissables, et de quelques autres qui peuvent etre traduites soit litteralement, soit de manière idiomatique, mais avec bien sur des résultats différents. Puis l’analyse passe à la traduction de certaines expressions de nature culturelle, en arabe et en anglais. Nous y trouvons des exemples qu’il est impossible de traduire dans l’autre langue, tout simplement parce qu’il leur manque des équivalents culturels. L’habileté et l’intervention du traducteur sont des plus nécéssaires dans ce cas, parce que la traduction est avant tout un acte de communication.


1971 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 267-280
Author(s):  
Roger Ling
Keyword(s):  

SummaryCylindrical objects lying on their sides appear in a number of paintings and stucco reliefs in Roman Italy, and can be divided into three groups: those which serve as seats for actors in figure-scenes, those which appear amid groups of inanimate objects, and those which are provided with attachments resembling the handles of garden-rollers. (A full catalogue of known examples is given, not only in paintings and stuccoes, but also in other media.) Previous writers have tended to seek an all-embracing explanation, however fantastic, for these cylinders; but it is better to consider the groups separately. The first group are probably discarded column-drums, and the other two are probably rollers employed for preparing palaestra-surfaces (though, in origin, they too may be column-drums). The roller, unlike the simple column-drum, seems to have enjoyed only a temporary vogue as an artistic motif, and to have been confined to minor decorative work in the cities of Campania.


Author(s):  
Anna D. Bertova ◽  

Prominent Japanese economist, specialist in colonial politics, a professor of Im­perial Tokyo University, Yanaihara Tadao (1893‒1961) was one of a few people who dared to oppose the aggressive policy of Japanese government before and during the Second World War. He developed his own view of patriotism and na­tionalism, regarding as a true patriot a person who wished for the moral develop­ment of his or her country and fought the injustice. In the years leading up to the war he stated the necessity of pacifism, calling every war evil in the ultimate, divine sense, developing at the same time the concept of the «just war» (gisen­ron), which can be considered good seen from the point of view of this, imper­fect life. Yanaihara’s theory of pacifism is, on one hand, the continuation of the one proposed by his spiritual teacher, the founder of the Non-Church movement, Uchimura Kanzo (1861‒1930); one the other hand, being a person of different historical period, directly witnessing the boundless spread of Japanese militarism and enormous hardships brought by the war, Yanaihara introduced a number of corrections to the idealistic theory of his teacher and proposed quite a specific explanation of the international situation and the state of affairs in Japan. Yanai­hara’s philosophical concepts influenced greatly both his contemporaries and successors of the pacifist ideas in postwar Japan, and contributed to the dis­cussion about interrelations of pacifism and patriotism, and also patriotism and religion.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-69
Author(s):  
Ibrahima Sarr

Senegal is a melting pot of several civilizations mainly originated from the West (Europe) and the East (the Arab world). Assuming that language and culture are intrinsically related, the settlement of those people and their status as dominant minority sparked and strengthened the use of their languages in formal domains. In the long ran, as they became domesticated, thus now considered African languages because they have contributed to mold the cultural identity of younger generation, they involve in all linguistic interaction. Arab, in its classical form, remains a symbol of Islam which earns it a certain degree of sacredness. Nevertheless the contact situation with the other languages forced it to crossbreed in special ways like borrowings and interferences. As for the other foreign languages, namely French, English, Spanish, and German at a least extent, they are made to carry the weight of local cultures.


Diacronia ◽  
2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisc Gafton

Natural entities—plants and animals, on the one hand, society, language, and culture, on the other—emerge through an assiduous diachronic effort, respond to diachronically developed needs, exist and function diachronically. However, through the instruments at his disposal, man can only perceive and grasp the “fragment”, seizing it for a prolonged instant, which explains his objective tendency to segment the spatiotemporal reality according to his own proportions and abilities. Reality itself, however, cannot be subjected to the unnatural segregation of one of its own products and elements, and cannot be fully comprehended in any other way than how it exists: as a whole. At the end of the synchronic road, what offers comprehension and understanding of the ontologically-becoming whole is the path of the diachronic method.


2020 ◽  
pp. 36-40
Author(s):  
M. V. Ternova

The article analyzed concept of the study of art by Robin George Collingwood (1889-1943), a well-known English neo-hegelian philosopher. His significant part of the theoretical heritage is connected with the explanation of the nature of art and with the consideration of its condition during the period of the changing Oscar Wilde era to the era of Rudyard Kipling. The circle of problem such as content and form, character, image, mimesis, reflection, emotion, art and "street man" identified. All of them in Collingwood's presentation and interpretation significantly expanded the space of research not only English, but also European art criticism. The concept of study of art is "built" on the basis of an active understanding of historical and cultural traditions accented. The concept of art criticism of R.G. Collingwood – a famous English philosopher of the XIX-XX centuries, on the one hand, has self-importance, and on the other, although based on the traditions of contemporary humanities, still expands art history analysis of aesthetics through aesthetics and psychology. Recognizing the exhaustion of the English model of romanticism, R.G. Collingwood tries to outline the prospects for the development of art in the logic of the movement "romanticism – realism – avant-garde", which leads to the actualization of the problem of "mimesis – reflection". At the same time, the theorist's attention is consciously concentrated around the concept of "subject", the understanding of which is radically changing at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. Theoretical material in the presentation of R.G. Collingwood is based on the work of Shakespeare, Reynolds, Turner, Cezanne, whose experience allows us to focus on the problem of "artist and audience". It is emphasized that Collingwood's position is ahead of its time, stimulating scientific research in the European humanities. The existence of indicative tendencies, which are distinguished in the logic of European cultural creation of the historical period, is emphasized.


Author(s):  
Gabriele Kohlbauer-Fritz

This chapter illustrates the backwardness of Yiddish in the easternmost province of the Habsburg Empire. In Galicia, Yiddish language and culture developed quite differently and at a much slower pace than in the other parts of Poland and Russia. At a time when the works of Isaac Leib Peretz, Mendele Mokher Seforim, and Sholem Aleichem were flourishing elsewhere, Yiddish culture in Galicia was still underdeveloped, emerging only fleetingly at the beginning of the twentieth century, inspired by the political and social movements that encouraged Jewish national self-awareness. No doubt one reason for this long period of dormancy was the particular historical situation that resulted from the policies of the Habsburg regime. Thus, a history of the Yiddish-language movement in Galicia and the Austrian capital, Vienna, must also be an account of its failure. The chapter shows that it was precisely in Galicia that a thriving cultural symbiosis emerged among the coexisting national groups, and this symbiosis had a substantial impact on the Yiddish cultural movement. Yet competition from the Polish and German languages ultimately ousted Yiddish almost completely.


MANUSYA ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 38-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hongmei Wu ◽  
Sethawut Techasan

This paper examines the linguistic landscape (shop names) of Chinatown in Bangkok, a prosperous minority language (Chinese) community of diverse commercial establishments. Informed by an ethnographic framework, it explores the preservation of Chinese language and culture under the circumstance of language contact with Thai, the majority language, and globalization influence of English. Unsurprisingly, the inherited Chinese language (dialects as Teochew or Cantonese) was lost in the 2nd or 3rd generation of the Chinese descendants in Chinatown. However, the shop names suggest that in part because of its commodifying value and cultural awareness of the current proprietors, the Chinese shop owners are inclined to preserve the Chinese language and culture of the shops through the use of traditional Chinese characters, colors, layout and other marks of the shops. On the other hand, an analysis of the mutual translations of Chinese and Thai indicates that Chinese has more of a symbolic rather than informative function for Thai monolingual customers. Moreover, the ascendancy of English has contributed to the complexity of the multilingual landscape in Bangkok’s Chinatown.


2009 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 1325-1336
Author(s):  
Matthias Mahlmann

It is difficult to put a label on a historical period. Human history is full of variety, complexities and contradictory developments. Consequently, the precondition of grand theories of history is often their openness to unjustified simplification. On the other hand, some orientation is indispensable, and for this, general descriptions are helpful if one stays aware of their limited function and value. With this in mind it is possible to state that the post-war period is marked by what one may call a universalistic stance.


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