TRANSLATING THE POET: ALEXANDER POPE'S ENGAGEMENT WITH THE HOMERIC BIOGRAPHICAL TRADITION IN HIS TRANSLATIONS OF THE ILIAD AND THE ODYSSEY

2021 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-207
Author(s):  
Paola Bassino

This article explores Alexander Pope's experience as a translator of the Iliad and the Odyssey, particularly his engagement with Homer as a poet and his biographical tradition. The study focuses on how Homer features in Pope's correspondence as he worked on the translations, how the Greek poet is described in the prefatory essay by Thomas Parnell and Pope's own notes to the text, and finally how his physical presence materializes in the illustrations within Pope's translations. The article suggests that, by engaging with the biography of Homer, Pope explores issues such as poetic authority and divine inspiration, promotes his own translations against European competitors, and ultimately establishes himself as a translator and as a poet. Throughout the process, Homer appears as a presence that forces Pope constantly to challenge himself, until he feels he can stand a comparison with the greatest poet ever.

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-54
Author(s):  
Clyde Forsberg Jr.

In the history of American popular religion, the Latter-day Saints, or Mormons, have undergone a series of paradigmatic shifts in order to join the Christian mainstream, abandoning such controversial core doctrines and institutions as polygamy and the political kingdom of God. Mormon historians have played an important role in this metamorphosis, employing a version (if not perversion) of the Church-Sect Dichotomy to change the past in order to control the future, arguing, in effect, that founder Joseph Smith Jr’s erstwhile magical beliefs and practices gave way to a more “mature” and bible-based self-understanding which is then said to best describe the religion that he founded in 1830. However, an “esoteric approach” as Faivre and Hanegraaff understand the term has much to offer the study of Mormonism as an old, new religion and the basis for a more even methodological playing field and new interpretation of Mormonism as equally magical (Masonic) and biblical (Evangelical) despite appearances. This article will focus on early Mormonism’s fascination with and employment of ciphers, or “the coded word,” essential to such foundation texts as the Book of Mormon and “Book of Abraham,” as well as the somewhat contradictory, albeit colonial understanding of African character and destiny in these two hermetic works of divine inspiration and social commentary in the Latter-day Saint canonical tradition.


2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 40
Author(s):  
Elvira Lumi ◽  
Lediona Lumi

"Utterance universalism" as a phrase is unclear, but it is enough to include the term "prophetism". As a metaphysical concept, it refers to a text written with inspiration which confirms visions of a "divine inspiration", "poetic" - "legal", that contains trace, revelation or interpretation of the origin of the creation of the world and life on earth but it warns and prospects their future in the form of a projection, literary paradigm, religious doctrine and law. Prophetic texts reformulate "toll-telling" with messages, ideas, which put forth (lat. "Utters Forth" gr. "Forthteller") hidden facts from fiction and imagination. Prometheus, gr. Prometheus (/ prəmiθprə-mee-mo means "forethought") is a Titan in Greek mythology, best known as the deity in Greek mythology who was the creator of humanity and charity of its largest, who stole fire from the mount Olympus and gave it to the mankind. Prophetic texts derive from a range of artifacts and prophetic elements, as the creative magic or the miracle of literary texts, symbolism, musicality, rhythm, images, poetic rhetoric, valence of meaning of the text, code of poetic diction that refers to either a singer in a trance or a person inspired in delirium, who believes he is sent by his God with a message to tell about events and figures that have existed, or the imaginary ancient and modern world. Text Prophetism is a combination of artifacts and platonic idealism. Key words: text Prophetism, holy text, poetic text, law text, vision, image, figure


1984 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-99
Author(s):  
Assad N. Busool

Reform movements are important religious phenomena which haveoccurred throughout Islamic history. Medieval times saw theappearance of religious reformers, such as al-Ghazali, Ibn Taimiyah,Ibn Qayim al-Jawziyah and others; however, these reform activitiesdiffered significantly from the modern reform movement. The medievalreformers worked within Muslim society; it was not necessary to dealwith the external challenge presented by Europe as it was for themodern Muslim reformers after the world of Islam lost its independenceand fell under European rule. The powers of Europe believed that Islamwas the only force that impeded them in their quest for world dominanceand, relying on the strength of their physical presence in Muslimcountries, tried to convince the Muslim peoples tgat Islam was ahindrance to their progress and development.Another problem, no less serious than the first, faced by the modernMuslim reformers was the shocking ignorance of the Muslim peoples oftheir religion and their history. For more than four centuries,scholarship in all areas had been in an unabated state of decline. Thosereligious studies which were produced veered far from the spirit ofIslam, and they were so blurred and burdened with myths and legends,that they served only to confuse the masses.The ‘Ulama were worst of all: strictly rejecting change, they still hadthe mentality of their medieval forebearers against whom al-Ghazali,Ibn Taimiyah and others had fought. Hundreds of years behind thetimes, their central concern was tuqlid (the imitation of that which hadpreceeded them through the ages). For centuries, no one had dared toquestion this heritage or point out the religious innovations it impaired.In conjunction with their questioning of the tuqlid, the modernreformers strove to revive the concept of ijtihad (indmendentjudgement) in religious matters, an idea which had been disallowedsince the tenth century. The first to raiseanew the banner of $tihad inthe Arab Muslim world was Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani; after himSheikh Muhammad ‘Abduh in Egypt, and after him, his friend and ...


Author(s):  
Agata Jakubowska

Narratives about women artists usually point to the obstacles they face in the development of their artistic careers. In her article, the author proposes an analysis that concentrates on how a woman artist – Zofia Kulik – presented herself as the heroine of a successful story of emancipation in the series of works titled The Splendor of Myself (1997, 2015, 2017). The self-image she presents is paradoxical: we deal with both her ostentatious presence and her absence as her physical presence is hidden behind the gorgeous but extremely stiff dress. It corresponds with Kulik’s understanding of her success as directly related with the wealth of images and the mastery of composition.


Author(s):  
Lucia Dacome

Chapter 4 follows Anna Morandi’s activities after her husband’s death, reconstructing the setting in which she consolidated her role as a celebrity and recipient of papal patronage. It situates Morandi’s waxworks within a diversified world of wax modelling that was characterized by patterns of continuity and discontinuity among devotional, artistic, and anatomical displays. Moreover, it reads the pope’s patronage of Morandi against the backdrop of his concerns for the authenticity of claims of divine inspiration in the context of saint-making. Likewise, it juxtaposes Morandi’s activities with those of Laura Chiarini, a Bolognese nun whose abilities as a wax modeller were taken to be the measure of her divine inspiration. It suggests that while Chiarini’s wax modelling performances represented a model of inspiration that was carefully scrutinized, Morandi’s activities as an anatomist and a trustworthy modeller of nature instantiated an example of female accomplishment that met with papal approval.


Author(s):  
Karin Schlapbach

The epilogue synthesizes the insights gained from the preceding chapters. The observation that non-representational dances trigger interpretations in the internal audiences highlights at once the capability of dance to go beyond representation and the need to find meaning in it. Just as the dancers are affected by the physical reality of their performance, so the spectators too are affected by the physical presence of the dancers. Dance is performative and dynamic, and its way to cognition and action is experience. Dance reconciles opposites by encapsulating vitality and disruption, rational patterns and sensory experience, presence and transience, active and passive. The mimesis of dance interacts in many ways with the pragmatic contexts of its performance, making it a powerful cultural force.


Author(s):  
Alice Mazzucchelli ◽  
Roberto Chierici ◽  
Angelo Di Gregorio ◽  
Claudio Chiacchierini

AbstractSocial networks are a driving force of digital transformation and offer firms the opportunity to market products and services to both international consumers and providers, establish durable relationships with them, and improve their own competitiveness. The study analyzes the role played by the use of Facebook for online advertising, building interaction and brand communities, implementing social CRM activities, and conducting market research, as well as a sales channel alternative to physical presence, in firms’ international export performance, both in terms of managers’ perceptions and Facebook buy button conversion rate. A survey-based empirical analysis of 105 fashion firms operating worldwide was conducted. The results of multiple regression analyses show that building conversations and brand communities positively affects international export performance, while advertising via Facebook yields mixed results. By comparing firms that have a physical presence with those that do not, the former turned out to benefit from especially in-store advertising and promotions to enhance their Facebook buy button conversion rate; while the latter can improve their performance mainly by adopting outdoor and transit advertising and digital marketing. The research contributes to the existing body of knowledge on social media marketing and international business and, by adopting a firm-level perspective, provides interesting insights for practitioners since it allows to understand how to develop an effective Facebook strategy to succeed in foreign markets.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 2640
Author(s):  
Tomer Fine ◽  
Guy Zaidner ◽  
Amir Shapiro

The involvement of Robots and automated machines in different industries has increased drastically in recent years. Part of this revolution is accomplishing tasks previously performed by humans with advanced robots, which would replace the entire human workforce in the future. In some industries the workers are required to complete different operations in hazardous or difficult environments. Operations like these could be replaced with the use of tele-operated systems that have the capability of grasping objects in their surroundings, thus abandoning the need for the physical presence of the human operator at the area while still allowing control. In this research our goal is to create an assisting system that would improve the grasping of a human operator using a tele-operated robotic gripper and arm, while advising the operator but not forcing a solution. For a given set of objects we computed the optimal grasp to be achieved by the gripper, based on two grasp quality measures of our choosing (namely power grasp and precision grasp). We then tested the performance of different human subjects who tried to grasp the different objects with the tele-operated system, while comparing their success to unassisted and assisted grasping. Our goal is to create an assisting algorithm that would compute optimal grasps and might be integrated into a complete, state-of-the-art tele-operated system.


2021 ◽  
pp. 003464462199268
Author(s):  
Anwar Ouassini ◽  
Mostafa Amini ◽  
Nabil Ouassini

One of the consequences of the emergence of COVID-19 has been the glaring racial and ethnic disparities that have defined the course of the spread of the virus. As a recent migrant-minority community in China, the Black community’s experience has been defined by vulgar racism, exploitation, and stigmatization. In the context of COVID-19, the Black community in China was again a target of multiple racial projects which sought to label their bodies as diseased and physical presence as a threat to the viability and safety of the Han majority. The global response was to mobilize online to expose how the Chinese government is systematically facilitating discriminatory policies against Black migrants in China. In the present paper, we explore how Twitter was utilized to mobilize awareness about anti-Black racism in China. We first present a brief history of African migration to China and then discuss the Han racial ideologies that are inspiring the anti-Black racism. We then use latent Dirichlet allocation as a topic modeling algorithm to extract underlying themes to discuss how anti-Black racism in the COVID-19 context was framed and subsequently challenged by the global community. Finally, we conclude with a brief discussion on COVID-19 and the future of the Black community in China.


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