Modern Idiom in an Ancient Context

1962 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 134-141
Author(s):  
G. H. Donaldson

Since the Second World War we have been subjected to a flood of memoirs and counter-memoirs by generals, admirals, air marshals, and politicians. One of the direct results of this is that our vocabulary has been increased—if not enriched—by a military jargon. Most of the latter's terms have in fact very specialized meanings, and if they are used out of their proper context they can present a highly coloured view of a rather simple situation. Can these terms be applied with validity to historical situations of antiquity ? At first sight there is an attraction in theirvery modernity, for they seem to give a freshness of approach; but Professor Salmon's use of them in his recent article, ‘The Strategy of the Second Punic War’, has made the dangers of their use manifestly clear. By his use of these anachronisms—for that is surely what they are—Professor Salmon has given nothing new in the way of interpretation, but merely provided confirmation of Oman's dictum ‘Historians may have the most divergent views according to their predispositions’, and has exaggerated the capabilities of both sides beyond belief.

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 89
Author(s):  
Myroslav Shkandrij

<p class="EW-abstract"><strong>Abstract:</strong> When Dokia Humenna’s novel depicting the Second World War, <em>Khreshchatyi iar</em> (Khreshchatyk Ravine), was published in New York in 1956, it created a controversy. Readers were particularly interested in the way activists of the OUN were portrayed. This article analyzes readers’ comments and Humenna’s responses, which are today stored in the archives of the Ukrainian Academy of Science in New York. The novel is based on a diary Humenna kept during the German occupation of Kyiv in the years 1941-1943.</p><strong>Keywords: </strong>Dokia Humenna, <em>Khreshchatyi iar</em>, Second World War, OUN, Émigré Literature, Reader Response


Author(s):  
J.O. Urmson

J.L. Austin was a leading figure in analytic philosophy in the fifteen years following the Second World War. He developed a method of close examination of nonphilosophical language designed to illuminate the distinctions we make in ordinary life. Professional philosophers tended to obscure these important and subtle distinctions with undesirable jargon which was too far removed from everyday usage. Austin thought that a problem should therefore be tackled by an examination of the way in which its vocabulary is used in ordinary situations. Such an approach would then expose the misuses of language on which many philosophical claims were based. In ‘Other Minds’ ([1946] 1961), Austin attacked the simplistic division of utterances into the ‘descriptive’ and ‘evaluative’ using his notion of a performatory, or performative utterances. His notion was that certain utterances, in the appropriate circumstances, are neither descriptive nor evaluative, but count as actions. Thus to say ‘I promise’ is to make a promise, not to talk about one. Later, he was to develop the concepts of locutionary force (what an utterance says or refers to), illocutionary force (what is intended by saying it) and perlocutionary force (what effects it has on others).


2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-207
Author(s):  
STEPHEN G. GROSS

This forum explores continuities and transformations in the way Europeans thought about integrating their continent politically, economically and ideologically across the twentieth century. It questions the idea of aStunde Null, which sees European integration primarily as a response to the destruction of the Second World War. Instead, the forum shows how mentalities, ideologies, challenges and constraints that arose before 1945 shaped the way European elites conceptualised and pursued unification in the post-war decades. The European leaders who orchestrated integration after 1945 were looking both backward and forward, trying to revive older visions for a unified continent and overcome long-standing problems while simultaneously aspiring to a new, supranational regional order that would preserve Europe's position as a global power. In exploring such continuities, this forum adds a regionalist dimension to the burgeoning literature – by Patricia Clavin, Daniel Gorman, Mark Mazower and others – on the connections between interwar internationalism and the post-1945 global order, and on the continuity of intellectuals, experts and politicians through the middle half of the twentieth century.


Südosteuropa ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Svetlana Suveica

AbstractThe author outlines the way identity perspectives determine the understanding of World War Two in Moldovan society, and the role of historians in this conception. She discusses how historians have adjusted their writing to fit a certain political discourse and have influenced how and what should people ‘remember’. Further questions at stake touch on the standing of Moldovan history writing in comparison with World War Two research published outside the country; the new tendencies in history writing; and whether these emerging currents might lead in the near future to the transcendence of the politicised approaches that are currently dominant.


PMLA ◽  
1956 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-41
Author(s):  
J. Robert Loy

Since the second world war, journalistic critics and generalizing cultural pundits have been pointing out to us that serious French literature is headed, on the one hand, toward an eventually sterile period of realistic despair, and, on the other, toward an intensification of difficult writing characterized by a kind of supreme indifference to audience on the part of the creator. Examples to prove their point are not lacking. There would seem to be, however, at least one other trend in recent French writing which, although owing something, perhaps, in the way of formation or occasion for reaction to the two types mentioned, falls not at all into such categories. For lack of a better name, and in order to avoid painful jargon, this literature might best be called a literature of Things.


Ritið ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 187-215
Author(s):  
Hlynur Helgason

Þórarinn B. Þorláksson (1867–1924) has been credited with being the first Icelandic professional painter. His reception, both during his lifetime and posthumously, is therefore an interesting indication of the changes in the outlook and ideology surrounding the reception of Scandinavian fin­de­siécle art up to the present. He was honourably mentioned by his contemporaries and then was forgotten in the upheavals surrounding the adoption of modern styles, such as abstract art, in Ice­land around the Second World War. He re­gained attention in the sixties and has since then been revered as an important, though problematic, pioneer of Icelandic painting. This has in recent years been especially evident in the way he has been mentioned in the context of the revival of Nordic and Scandinavian late 19th and early 20th century art in Northern­Europe and America. The paper reviews and analyses the historical reception Þorláksson has received and the way his work has been inscribed into the narrative of Icelandic and Scandinavian Art History. This process is an attempt to understand and contextualise Þorláksson’s work in aesthetic terms, while at the same time function as a critical mirror of the trends and ideolo­gies surrounding the Nordic revival in recent years.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irena Grudzińska-Gross

Polishness in PracticeThere were two phases in the post-1989 Polish historical politics as projected abroad. The initially “normal” Poland gradually transformed itself around year 2004 into a Poland of suffering and redemption. An important role in that transformation was played by the reaction to the external vision of Poland’s role and fate during the Second World War, causing the “Holocaustization” of the Polish historical self-image. The article discusses the main elements of that self-image and the way it is used. Praktyki polskościSkierowana na zagranicę polityka historyczna państwa polskiego dzieli się, po roku 1989, na dwie fazy. Początkowo Polska przedstawiała siebie jako kraj „normalny”; około roku 2004 stopniowo przemieniała się w Polskę cierpienia i martyrologii. Ważną rolę w tej transformacji odegrał zewnętrzny obraz roli i losu Polski w czasie drugiej wojny światowej, powodując „holokaustyzację” polskiej tożsamości historycznej. W artykule analizowane są części składowe tej tożsamości i użytek z nich robiony w państwowej polityce historycznej.


Author(s):  
Sam Ferguson

This is the first study of the diary in French writing across the twentieth century, as a genre including both fictional and non-fictional works. From the 1880s it became apparent to writers in France that their diaries (or journaux intimes) – a supposedly private form of writing – would probably come to be published, strongly affecting the way their readers viewed their other published works, and their very persona as an author. More than any other, André Gide embraced the literary potential of the diary: the first part of this book follows his experimentation with the diary in the fictional works Les Cahiers d’André Walter (1891) and Paludes (1895), in his diary of the composition of his great novel, Le Journal des faux-monnayeurs (1926), and in his monumental Journal 1889–1939 (1939). The second part follows developments in diary-writing after the Second World War, inflected by radical changes in attitudes towards the writing subject. Raymond Queneau’s works published under the pseudonym of Sally Mara (1947–1962) used the diary playfully at a time when the writing subject was condemned by the literary avant-garde. Roland Barthes’s experiments with the diary (1977–1979) took it to the extremes of its formal possibilities, at the point of a return of the writing subject. Annie Ernaux’s published diaries (1993–2011) demonstrate the role of the diary in the modern field of life-writing, especially in comparison with autobiography. Throughout the century, the diary has repeatedly been used to construct an œuvre and author, but also to call these fundamental literary concepts into question.


Author(s):  
Javier Cervera Gil

Cuando terminó la Guerra Civil Española (1936-1939) los derrotados republicanos tuvieron que tomar el camino del exilio y una gran parte de ellos fijaron su residencia en Francia. El estallido de la Segunda Guerra Mundial fue entendido por la mayoría de estos exiliados españoles como la continuación de la lucha que hasta meses antes habían desarrollado en España. Por ello, muchos antifranquistas se implicaron en la resistencia contra los nazis creyendo que su victoria sobre ellos sería continuada inevitablemente por el fin del Régimen de Franco, aliado del Eje y por tanto enemigo de los Aliados.When finished the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), the defeated republicans had to take the way of the exile and a great portion of them took their residence in trance. The out break of the Second World War was understand by the most of these spanish exiled as the fight continuation that unta months before had developed in Spain. For it, many antifranquists helped in the resistance versis the nazis thinking that their victory over them would be continued for the end of Franco's Regime axis allied, and so allied enemy.


Author(s):  
Henry T. Chen

This chapter describes the enormous reconstruction and development of the Kaohsiung fishing port after the Second World War - plus ancillary industries such as shipbuilding, ice manufacturing, and fish processing - and the impact on Taiwanese Fishing. It also addresses the Taiwanese fisheries education programme and the way it supported their development. It concludes that the construction of the Kaohsiung fishing port was a catalyst for growth in the Taiwanese fishing industry, as it dominated the waters and led to the construction of the Cianjhen fishing port in 1967, an enormous technical achievement in the region.


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