scholarly journals UTOPIA/WUTUOBANG AS A TRAVELLING MARKER OF TIME

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
LORENZO ANDOLFATTO

Abstract This article argues for the understanding of ‘utopia’ as a cultural marker whose appearance in history is functional to the a posteriori chronologization (or typification) of historical time. I develop this argument via a comparative analysis of utopia between China and Europe. Utopia is a marker of modernity: the coinage of the word wutuobang (‘utopia’) in Chinese around 1895 is analogous and complementary to More's invention of Utopia in 1516, in that both represent attempts at the conceptualizations of displaced imaginaries, encounters with radical forms of otherness – the European ‘discovery’ of the ‘New World’ during the Renaissance on the one hand, and early modern China's own ‘Westphalian’ refashioning on the other. In fact, a steady stream of utopian conjecturing seems to mark the latter: from the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom borne out of the Opium wars, via the utopian tendencies of late Qing fiction in the works of literati such as Li Ruzhen, Biheguan Zhuren, Lu Shi'e, Wu Jianren, Xiaoran Yusheng, and Xu Zhiyan, to the reformer Kang Youwei's monumental treatise Datong shu. Altogether, these sketches of utopia provide an imaginary counterpoint to the co-produced regimes of historicity whose genealogies are being traced in this issue.

Author(s):  
Tuğçe Elif Taşdan ◽  
Aslı Özlem Tarakçioğlu

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien is one of the most outstanding British authors and the creator of an imaginary world called “the Middle Earth”. Tolkien’s novels prominent with a new world and a fictitious language have become quite popular worldwide. However, the fictitious words and expressions in Tolkien’s novels are challenging for the translators since the equivalents of these words may not be found in the target language. Çiğdem Erkal İpek, the translator of The Lord of the Rings, is the first Turkish translator taking the responsibility of transferring Tolkien’s fictitious concepts into Turkish. During this transfer, she invented new fictitious concepts which are not used in the target language. By this way, The Lord of the Rings (Yüzüklerin Efendisi in Turkish) has become one of the most popular novels in Turkey. On the other hand, The Hobbit, Tolkien’s another novel about the Middle Earth, was translated into Turkish by a different translator. Since the above-mentioned two novels narrate the events occurring in the same imaginary world, a consistency may be expected in the translated versions of these books in terms of fictitious words and expressions. In this context, the present study aims to analyze the similarities between the Turkish translations of The Fellowship of the Ring and The Hobbit within the scope of intertextuality in terms of the transfer of fictitious language in Tolkien’s novels. Accordingly, the examples of fictitious words and expressions selected from these novels will be examined from the perspective of intertextual relations among the translated texts. By this way, the study will argue whether a translated text can go beyond the scope of the intertextuality and whether the translation can become a source text for future intertextual references in the target literature.


2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 214-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jana Černá

This article analyses the reception of knowledge about new world nature, and, more specifically, the reception of Iberian scientific knowledge of nature in the Americas, in the early modern Czech lands. It shows how the process of the reception of information about nature in the new world differed among the urban classes, intellectuals and the nobility; particular attention is paid to herbals, cosmographical works and travel reports. On the one hand, the study reveals that the efforts of Central European intellectuals to interpret new world nature were limited by the lack of necessary data and experience, which led to some misinterpretations and simplifications. On the other hand, it shows these Central European scholars to be fully-fledged members of an information network, whose works share many of the same characteristics as Iberian and, in general, early modern European science.



Author(s):  
Tamar Herzog

This chapter surveys how individuals were identified and whether their movement was controlled in early modern Spain and Spanish America. It argues that because Spanish (and Spanish American) structures assumed the existence of a freedom to immigrate, most processes aimed at registering identities were concerned not with immigration but with distinguishing ‘good’ from ‘bad’ movement, fraudulent changes in identity from honest reshaping of who individuals were. Although similar rules were applied in both the Old and the New World, nevertheless new regulations did emerge in the Americas, requiring identifying individuals as ‘Spaniards’ on the one hand, and limiting movement by natives as long as their civic and religious conversion was not guaranteed, on the other. As a result, in the New World, processes of identification were more acute and more frequent than in Spain.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-224
Author(s):  
李计伟 ◽  
刘燕婧

Abstract Based on Chao Foon (1955-1970), a Chinese literature Journal of Singapore and Malaysia, this paper describes the written features of Singaporean and Malaysian HUAYU in detail from the aspects of parts of speech and syntactic structures. In terms of research methods, based on the “chronological features” of this period, on the one hand, we explore the origin and follow the trail of the development and evolution, and find that some features have existed in Nanyang HUAYU since the late Qing Dynasty, and have their own development and changes. Some features correspond to the early modern Chinese, and the vast majority of "chronological features" still exist in today's Singaporean and Malaysian HUAYU; On the other hand, we make a horizontal comparison with modern Chinese in the same period through which we can not only confirm the origin of some features of HUAYU, but also provide an observation perspective for the study of the centennial changes of modern Chinese.


2021 ◽  
pp. 016344372110227
Author(s):  
Yingzi Wang ◽  
Thoralf Klein

This paper examines the changes and continuities in TV representations of Chinese Communist Party’s revolutionary history and interprets them within the broader context of China’s political, economic and cultural transformations since the 1990s. Drawing on a comparative analysis of three state-sponsored TV dramas produced between the late 1990s and mid-2010s, it traces how the state-sanctioned revolutionary narratives have changed over time in response to the Party’s propaganda imperatives on the one hand, and to the market-oriented production environment on the other. The paper argues that while recent TV productions in the new century have made increasing concessions to audience taste by adopting visually stimulating depictions and introducing fictional characters as points of identification for the audience, the revolutionary narratives were still aligned with the Party’s propaganda agenda at different times. This shows the ongoing competition between ideological and commercial interests in Chinese TV production during the era of market reforms.


Author(s):  
Fareed Moosa

Sections 45 and 63 of the Tax Administration Act 28 of 2011 (TAA) confer drastic information gathering powers on officials of the South African Revenue Service (SARS). On the one hand, section 45 permits warrantless routine (non-targeted) and non-routine (targeted) inspections by a SARS official in respect of records, books of accounts and documents found at premises where a taxpayer is reasonably believed to be conducting a trade or enterprise. The purpose of such inspection is to determine whether there has been compliance with specific obligations by the taxpayer. Section 63, on the other hand, permits, on the grounds of urgency and expediency in exceptional circumstances only, warrantless non-routine (targeted) searches by a senior SARS official of a taxpayer and of third parties associated with a taxpayer, as well as searches of a taxpayer's premises and those of third parties. In addition, section 63 permits the seizure of relevant material found at premises searched. All searches and seizures must occur for the purposes of the efficient and effective administration of tax Acts generally. A comparative analysis of sections 45 and 63 of the TAA reveals the existence of key differences in the substance and practical operation of their provisions. This article distils these differences through an in-depth discussion of the nature and extent of the powers of inspection and search conferred by these provisions, as well as by conceptualising the terms “inspection” and “search” for the purposes of sections 45 and 63 respectively.    


2020 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 101-110
Author(s):  
Mateusz Falkowski

The article is devoted to the famous The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude by Étienne de La Boétie. The author considers the theoretical premises underlying the concept of “voluntary servitude”, juxtaposing them with two modern concepts of will developed by Descartes and Pascal. An important feature of La Boétie’s project is the political and therefore intersubjective – as opposed to the individualistic perspective of Descartes and Pascal – starting point. It is therefore situated against the background of, on the one hand, the historical evolution of early modern states (from feudal monarchies, through so-called Renaissance monarchies up to European absolutisms) and, on the other hand – of the political philosophy of Machiavelli and Hobbes.


2015 ◽  
Vol 95 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 245-255
Author(s):  
Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin

This paper contrasts the very different roles played by the Catholic hierarchy in Ireland, on the one hand, and Turkish-occupied Hungary, on the other, in the movement of early modern religious reform. It suggests that the decision of Propaganda Fide to adopt an episcopal model of organisation in Ireland after 1618, despite the obvious difficulties posed by the Protestant nature of the state, was a crucial aspect of the consolidation of a Catholic confessional identity within the island. The importance of the hierarchy in leadership terms was subsequently demonstrated in the short-lived period of de facto independence during the 1640s and after the repression of the Cromwellian period the episcopal model was successfully revived in the later seventeenth century. The paper also offers a parallel examination of the case of Turkish Hungary, where an effective episcopal model of reform could not be adopted, principally because of the jurisdictional jealousy of the Habsburg Kings of Hungary, who continued to claim rights of nomination to Turkish controlled dioceses but whose nominees were unable to reside in their sees. Consequently, the hierarchy of Turkish-occupied Hungary played little or no role in the movement of Catholic reform, prior to the Habsburg reconquest.


2019 ◽  
pp. 249-260
Author(s):  
Oliver Morgan

This chapter examines the implications the turn-taking approach for our understanding of early modern performance practices. On the one hand, Shakespearean dialogue is full of subtle effects of timing and sequence that would seem to call for careful rehearsal and a detailed knowledge of the script. On the other hand, everything we know about early modern theatre suggests it was performed with minimal rehearsal by actors who did not necessarily know when, or from where, their next cue would arrive. This apparent mismatch I call ‘the performability gap’. The question is how it can be bridged. The explanation provided by Simon Palfrey and Tiffany Stern—that Shakespeare’s plays are designed to make artistic capital from their own under-rehearsal—does not entirely solve the problem. The second half of the chapter speculates about how else we might account for the gap.


2002 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donatella Porta ◽  
Dieter Rucht

Environmental movements and their activities are studied from various angles, by different methods, and at different levels. While both detailed studies on single incidents of conflict and broad overviews of movements are available, relatively little work has been done at the intermediate level between these extremes. We argue that it is fruitful to engage at this level by undertaking comparative analysis of environmental campaigns. Such studies could help deal with inconclusive observations and findings on the changes of environmental movements during the last three decades. We hypothesize that indeed environmental activism has changed remarkably. By and large, conflicts are no longer marked by a relatively simple constellation of one challenger facing one target or opponent. Instead, we find a complex web of involved actors reaching from local to international levels. These actors tend to form broad alliances, and to link on different issues. Also, their activities are not restricted to only one arena or strategy but involve all available channels, arenas, and action repertoires to have an impact. Quite often, we observe loose coalitions of groups that act in an implicit division of labor, thereby playing on their respective backgrounds, foci, and experiences. Given the variety of actors, their organizational forms and tactics on the one hand and their different contexts on the other, it is unlikely that a common pattern of conflict will emerge across various issues and geographical areas. This is all the more true when comparing environmental conflicts in the Western and Non-Western world.


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