Humanistic and Renaissance Studies in Review

Traditio ◽  
1966 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 451-462
Author(s):  
Sesto Prete

In the past few years, literary studies on Humanism and the Renaissance have commanded ever-increasing attention. The research displays, broadly, two marked trends: one segment, which stations itself in the ranks of scholars such as Burckhardt, Voigt, De Sanctis, Gaspary, and others, interprets the intellectual and spiritual atmosphere of the era; the other uncovers new texts or, keeping step with the modern scientific approach to the study of manuscripts, reedits in more precise form already known texts — this group is dominated by the name of Sabbadini. In the following pages, several books which have appeared in the last few years will be assessed with a view toward their contributions in both areas.

Author(s):  
Carlos Rojas ◽  
Andrea Bachner

As conclusion to theHandbook, this chapter reflects on the ways in which Chinese literary studies can and does inform the broader fields of literary studies and the humanities as such. In the past decades, Chinese literary studies has been experiencing a double perspectival shift: on one hand it has extended and expanded the scope of the field with ever more complex definitions of “Chineseness,” on the other, it has striven to integrate itself into broader intercultural, global, and comparative frameworks. From this vantage point, the chapter critically probes the role Chinese literary studies plays within world literary, comparative, and area studies approaches. Instead of constituting merely another object of world-literary theories formulated elsewhere, or an exceptional test case for cultural comparison, Chinese literature—as the chapters in theHandbookpropose—can be read as a rich reservoir of models that formulate new methodologies and inspire new insights for literary and cultural study as such in dialogue and contestation with existing local, regional, national, intercultural concepts and frameworks.


2010 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 217-234
Author(s):  
Marc Reynebeau

Het historische debat over de collaboratie van de Vlaamse beweging tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog bleef lang verstoord door moralistische en politieke argumenten, wat het inzicht in de historische complexiteit van het onderwerp vaak versluierde. De voorbije decennia is echter ook op dit terrein een uitgesproken verwetenschappelijking merkbaar. Dat maakt het boek Verbrande schrijvers, een nieuwe bundeling opstellen over flamingantische schrijvers tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog, zo opmerkelijk. Enerzijds doet Marnix Beyen daarin een veelbelovend voorstel om een nieuw onderzoeksparadigma op dit terrein te introduceren. Anderzijds getuigen de inleiding en enkele cruciale bijdragen van een ingesteldheid die moeilijk te rijmen is met de academische presentatie van het boek. Die vallen niet alleen op door een opvallend gebrek aan wetenschappelijke rigueur en van weinig kennis van zaken. Ze getuigen vooral van een ‘neonationalistische’ bevlogenheid die de historiografie over dit onderwerp opnieuw in haar oude zwakten doet hervallen: moralisme en politieke vooringenomenheid.________A burning smell surrounding collaborationist authors: Old and new arguments for justification in the debate about Flemish collaborationThe historical debate about the collaboration of the Flemish Movement during the Second World War has long been perturbed by moralistic and political arguments, which often obscured the insight into the historical complexity of the subject. However, during the past decades a distinctly more scientific approach may be noted in this area as well. That is why the book Verbrande schrijvers, a new collection of articles about authors supporting the Flemish Movement during the Second World War is so remarkable. On the one hand, Marnix Beyen proposes in this book the introduction of a very promising research paradigm in this area. On the other hand, the introduction and several crucial contributions manifest a mentality that is hardly consonant with the academic presentation of the book. They are noteworthy not only because of a notable lack of scientific consistency and a lack of expertise. They particularly manifest a ‘neo-nationalist’ enthusiasm that causes the historiography about this subject to fall prey again to its old weaknesses: moralism and political bias. 


Author(s):  
K. T. Tokuyasu

During the past investigations of immunoferritin localization of intracellular antigens in ultrathin frozen sections, we found that the degree of negative staining required to delineate u1trastructural details was often too dense for the recognition of ferritin particles. The quality of positive staining of ultrathin frozen sections, on the other hand, has generally been far inferior to that attainable in conventional plastic embedded sections, particularly in the definition of membranes. As we discussed before, a main cause of this difficulty seemed to be the vulnerability of frozen sections to the damaging effects of air-water surface tension at the time of drying of the sections.Indeed, we found that the quality of positive staining is greatly improved when positively stained frozen sections are protected against the effects of surface tension by embedding them in thin layers of mechanically stable materials at the time of drying (unpublished).


Author(s):  
Prakash Rao

Image shifts in out-of-focus dark field images have been used in the past to determine, for example, epitaxial relationships in thin films. A recent extension of the use of dark field image shifts has been to out-of-focus images in conjunction with stereoviewing to produce an artificial stereo image effect. The technique, called through-focus dark field electron microscopy or 2-1/2D microscopy, basically involves obtaining two beam-tilted dark field images such that one is slightly over-focus and the other slightly under-focus, followed by examination of the two images through a conventional stereoviewer. The elevation differences so produced are usually unrelated to object positions in the thin foil and no specimen tilting is required.In order to produce this artificial stereo effect for the purpose of phase separation and identification, it is first necessary to select a region of the diffraction pattern containing more than just one discrete spot, with the objective aperture.


2010 ◽  
Vol 51 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 215-224
Author(s):  
Alexander Carpenter

This paper explores Arnold Schoenberg’s curious ambivalence towards Haydn. Schoenberg recognized Haydn as an important figure in the German serious music tradition, but never closely examined or clearly articulated Haydn’s influence and import on his own musical style and ethos, as he did with many other major composers. This paper argues that Schoenberg failed to explicitly recognize Haydn as a major influence because he saw Haydn as he saw himself, namely as a somewhat ungainly, paradoxical figure, with one foot in the past and one in the future. In his voluminous writings on music, Haydn is mentioned by Schoenberg far less frequently than Bach, Mozart, or Beethoven, and his music appears rarely as examples in Schoenberg’s theoretical texts. When Schoenberg does talk about Haydn’s music, he invokes — with tacit negativity — its accessibility, counterpoising it with more recondite music, such as Beethoven’s, or his own. On the other hand, Schoenberg also praises Haydn for his complex, irregular phrasing and harmonic exploration. Haydn thus appears in Schoenberg’s writings as a figure invested with ambivalence: a key member of the First Viennese triumvirate, but at the same time he is curiously phantasmal, and is accorded a peripheral place in Schoenberg’s version of the canon and his own musical genealogy.


2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kempe Ronald Hope

Countries with positive per capita real growth are characterised by positive national savings—including government savings, increases in government investment, and strong increases in private savings and investment. On the other hand, countries with negative per capita real growth tend to be characterised by declines in savings and investment. During the past several decades, Kenya’s emerging economy has undergone many changes and economic performance has been epitomised by periods of stability, decline, or unevenness. This article discusses and analyses the record of economic performance and public finance in Kenya during the period 1960‒2010, as well as policies and other factors that have influenced that record in this emerging economy. 


Author(s):  
Iryna Rusnak

The author of the article analyses the problem of the female emancipation in the little-known feuilleton “Amazonia: A Very Inept Story” (1924) by Mykola Chirsky. The author determines the genre affiliation of the work and examines its compositional structure. Three parts are distinguished in the architectonics of associative feuilleton: associative conception; deployment of a “small” topic; conclusion. The author of the article clarifies the role of intertextual elements and the method of constantly switching the tone from serious to comic to reveal the thematic direction of the work. Mykola Chirsky’s interest in the problem of female emancipation is corresponded to the general mood of the era. The subject of ridicule in provocative feuilleton is the woman’s radical metamorphoses, since repulsive manifestations of emancipation becomes commonplace. At the same time, the writer shows respect for the woman, appreciates her femininity, internal and external beauty, personality. He associates the positive in women with the functions of a faithful wife, a caring mother, and a skilled housewife. In feuilleton, the writer does not bypass the problem of the modern man role in a family, but analyses the value and moral and ethical guidelines of his character. The husband’s bad habits receive a caricatured interpretation in the strange behaviour of relatives. On the one hand, the writer does not perceive the extremes brought by female emancipation, and on the other, he mercilessly criticises the male “virtues” of contemporaries far from the standard. The artistic heritage of Mykola Chirsky remains little studied. The urgent task of modern literary studies is the introduction of Mykola Chirsky’s unknown works into the scientific circulation and their thorough scientific understanding.


1999 ◽  
Vol 150 (12) ◽  
pp. 484-488 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wolf Hockenjos

Concepts of near-natural forestry are in great demand these days. Most German forest administrations and private forest enterprises attach great importance to being as «near-natural» as possible. This should allow them to make the most of biological rationalisation. The concept of near-natural forestry is widely accepted, especially by conservationists. However, it is much too early to analyse how successful near-natural forestry has been to date, and therefore to decide whether an era of genuine near-natural forest management has really begun. Despite wide-spread recognition, near-natural forestry is jeopardised by mechanised timber harvesting, and particularly by the large-timber harvester. The risk is that machines, which are currently just one element of the timber harvest will gain in importance and gradually become the decisive element. The forest would then be forced to meet the needs of machinery, not the other way round. Forests would consequently become so inhospitable that they would bear no resemblance to the sylvan image conjured up by potential visitors. This could mean taking a huge step backwards: from a near-natural forest to a forest dominated by machinery. The model of multipurpose forest management would become less viable, and the forest would become divided into areas for production, and separate areas for recreation and ecology. The consequences of technical intervention need to be carefully considered, if near-natural forestry is not to become a thing of the past.


Author(s):  
Daiva Milinkevičiūtė

The Age of Enlightenment is defined as the period when the universal ideas of progress, deism, humanism, naturalism and others were materialized and became a golden age for freemasons. It is wrong to assume that old and conservative Christian ideas were rejected. Conversely, freemasons put them into new general shapes and expressed them with the help of symbols in their daily routine. Symbols of freemasons had close ties with the past and gave them, on the one hand, a visible instrument, such as rituals and ideas to sense the transcendental, and on the other, intense gnostic aspirations. Freemasons put in a great amount of effort to improve themselves and to create their identity with the help of myths and symbols. It traces its origins to the biblical builders of King Solomon’s Temple, the posterity of the Templar Knights, and associations of the medieval craft guilds, which were also symbolical and became their link not only to each other but also to the secular world. In this work we analysed codified masonic symbols used in their rituals. The subject of our research is the universal Masonic idea and its aspects through the symbols in the daily life of the freemasons in Vilnius. Thanks to freemasons’ signets, we could find continuity, reception, and transformation of universal masonic ideas in the Lithuanian freemasonry and national characteristics of lodges. Taking everything into account, our article shows how the universal idea of freemasonry spread among Lithuanian freemasonry, and which forms and meanings it incorporated in its symbols. The objective of this research is to find a universal Masonic idea throughout their visual and oral symbols and see its impact on the daily life of the masons in Vilnius. Keywords: Freemasonry, Bible, lodge, symbols, rituals, freemasons’ signets.


Worldview ◽  
1960 ◽  
Vol 3 (9) ◽  
pp. 7-8
Author(s):  
Will Herberg

John Courtney Murray's writing cannot fail to be profound and instructive, and I have profited greatly from it in the course of the past decade. But I must confess that his article, "Morality and Foreign Policy" (Worldview, May), leaves me in a strange confusion of mixed feelings. On the one hand, I can sympathize with what I might call the historical intention of the natural law philosophy he espouses, which I take to be the effort to establish enduring structures of meaning and value to serve as fixed points of moral decision in the complexities of the actual situation. On the other hand, I am rather put off by the calm assurance he exhibits when he deals with these matters, as though everything were at bottom unequivocally rational and unequivocally accessible to the rational mind. And I am really distressed at what seems to 3ie to be his woefully inadequate appreciation of the position of the "ambiguists," among whom I cannot deny I count myself.


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