PHILHELLENISM AND THE FUROR ORIENTALIS

2004 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-358 ◽  
Author(s):  
SUZANNE MARCHAND
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Near East ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Historical School ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Western Imperialism ◽  
Dominant Tendency

Focusing on the study of the ancient Orient in fin-de-siècle Germany, this essay argues that “orientalism” had a wider range of cultural consequences than the term usually evokes in studies of Western imperialism and its ideologies. The essay describes the development of a generational movement in German scholarship that was characterized by its vigorous championing of the Orient over and against the dominant tendency to isolate and exalt classical civilizations, and especially ancient Greece, and by its role in destabilizing Western presumptions. It demonstrates that the furor orientalis did contribute to the decentering of the Greeks and the ancient Hebrews, bequeathing to the twentieth century both a much deeper and more diverse picture of the ancient Near East and an obsession with origins that could be mobilized by racist propagandists. The essay offers three case studies of groups which exemplified this furor—the Panbabylonists; the Religious-Historical School; and the iconoclastic mythographer Heinrich Zimmer, who represents a strong strain of Schopenhauerian Indology. It concludes by suggesting the more constructive directions taken by orientalists outside Germany in the 1920s–1940s, and poses the question: how long will the peaceful solutions they promoted last?

Winged Goddesses of Sexuality, Death, and Immortality

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Serinity Young
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Funeral Rites ◽  
Monstrous Feminine

The winged Egyptian goddess Isis is an ancient and complex deity, whose mythology presents her as bestower of fertility and immortality. This chapter follows up on these themes, and the linked relationship between fertility and immortality, by exploring the involvement of women with funeral rites, and concepts of the afterlife in the Ancient Near East and Ancient Greece involving goddesses, who combine sexuality and fertility, war and death, and the promise and hope of immortality. There is a further exploration of ancient bird goddesses demonized via the concept of the monstrous-feminine: furies, harpies, and sirens—all of whom pose a particular danger to men, not women.

Fin de siècle: the meaning of the twentieth century

1996 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 358-359
Author(s):  
Peter Lawler
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Fin De Siècle

The Balms of White Grief: Indian Doctors, Vulnerability and Pride in Victoria, 1890–1912

Itinerario ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-49
Author(s):  
Nadia Rhook
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Medical Practitioners ◽  
Care Giving ◽  
Indian Medical ◽  
Practice Of Medicine ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Emotional Dimensions ◽  
Politics Of Medicine

This article uses the 1898 manslaughter trial of two Indian medical practitioners in Victoria, Australia, as a lens to explore the settler colonial politics of medicine. Whereas imperial and colonial historians have long recognised the close and complex interrelationship of medicine and race, the emotional dimensions to care-giving have been under-appreciated – as has the place of the emotions within wider histories of sickness and health. Yet, this case studies shows, grief, vulnerability, catharsis and pride shaped the practice of medicine infin-de-siecleVictoria. In particular, I argue that, like other emotions, grief does racial work.

Modernismo, Spiritualism, and Science in Argentina at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

2020 ◽  
pp. 215-229
Author(s):  
Soledad Quereilhac
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Scientific Discourse ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Literary Modernism ◽  
The Social ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
The Status ◽  
Social Legitimation ◽  
Scientific Discourses ◽  
Growth Of Science

This chapter analyzes the uses and appropriations of scientific discourse in Argentine magazines from the fin de siècle: a period in which literary modernism coincided with the development of spiritualisms that aspired to the status of science (or “occult sciences”) like Spiritism and Theosophy. The aim is to examine concrete examples that relativize the sharp division between science, art, and spiritualism in the culture of this period. The main sources explored are La Quincena. Revista de letras (1893–1899), Philadelphia (1898–1902), La Verdad (1905–1911), and Constancia (1890–1905). In addition, the chapter focuses on how the astonishing growth of science in Argentina, as well as the social legitimation of scientific discourses, influenced other fields, giving shape to new literary expressions, beliefs, and utopian projections that synthesized the material and the spiritual.

The Belgian Revival and Japonisme in Scotland

2019 ◽  
pp. 88-142
Author(s):  
Michael Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Japanese Culture ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Traditional Cultures

Fin-de-Siècle Scotland is frequently associated with the ‘kailyard’ movement and, by extension, with small towns, insularity and sentimentality. Using Scottish writers and artists’ thorough engagement with Belgian and Japanese culture as case studies, this chapter reveals how deeply international and cross-cultural Scottish writing and art was in the late-Victorian period. I argue that Scottish cultural revivalists looked to these two nations to help them build counter-hegemonic connections that allowed them to defend the value of smaller nations and traditional cultures. Part of the reason some cultural revivalists looked to Japan and Belgium specifically was that these nations’ artists offered examples of how cultural revivalist work could fuse with modernity, rather than simply reject it. I focus on examining William Sharp’s self-conscious attempts to bring the decadent energy of La Jeune Belgique into Scotland to help resist metro-centric thinking, before illustrating the marked impact of Maurice Maeterlinck on Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald. The Glasgow School played a key role nourishing Scotland’s Japanese connection, and we often find japonisme fusing with Scottish forms in their work.

Regime Change in the Ancient Near East and Egypt

2007 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Regime Change ◽  
Near East ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Recent History ◽  
Third Millennium ◽  
History Of ◽  
Early Islamic

The manner in which government practices and personnel survive the violent disruption of regime change is an issue of current relevance, yet it is a subject that has largely been ignored by modern scholarship. These chapters, covering more than 4,000 years of history, discuss the continuity of administration and royal iconography in successful changes of regime in Egypt, Mesopotamia and Iran. Recurring patterns are identified in ten case studies, ranging from late third millennium Mesopotamia to early Islamic Egypt. A summary of the recent history of Iraq suggests that these regularities have lessons for modern geopolitics.

scholarly journals Contact Languages of the Ancient Near East – Three more Case Studies (Ugaritic-Hurrian, Hurro-Akkadian and Canaano-Akkadian)

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 293-334 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Andrason ◽  
Juan-Pablo Vita
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Near East ◽  
Written Language ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Theoretical Studies ◽  
Source Codes ◽  
Initial Stage ◽  
Dynamic Phenomena ◽  
Mixed Languages

This article describes and analyzes three situations of linguistic contact in the Ancient Near East, taking as its staring point three theoretical studies on contact languages which have been developed recently: the framework of mixed languages (Bakker and Matras, 2013; Meakins, 2013), the theory of written language contact (Johanson, 2013) and the approach to contact among genetically related languages (Epps, Huehnergard and Pat-El, 2013a). The authors argue that the contact systems selected for this article (Ugaritic-Hurrian, Hurro-Akkadian and Canaano-Akkadian), although distinct from the grammatical and sociolinguistic perspective, can all be viewed as expressions of the same dynamic phenomena, where each variety of mixing corresponds to a different stage of a universal continuum of languages in the situation of merger. Consequently, they can be located along the universal cline of mixing: Ugaritic-Hurrian matches the initial stage of intermingling, Hurro-Akkadian reflects gradually more intense blending, and Canaano-Akkadian corresponds to the phase of a profound fusion of the two source codes. By examining and comparing the three cases of mixing, the authors introduce new insights to the general discussion on mixed languages, written language contact and relevance of genetic relation in language intermingling, thus corroborating and/or refining certain hypotheses and propositions that have previously been formulated within the latest theoretical studies.

The Rise and Impending Demise of Wisdom Literature

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Will Kynes
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Near East ◽  
Dead Sea Scrolls ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Wisdom Literature ◽  
Experience Of God ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Biblical Texts

After summarizing the growing doubts about the Wisdom category, this chapter traces the development of Wisdom scholarship in the twentieth century, focusing on the question of the category’s limits. Despite efforts to limit its spread, in recent scholarship Wisdom has extended both across the Hebrew Bible and to the “heart of the Israelite experience of God.” As in the similar expansion of Wisdom in the Psalter, Dead Sea Scrolls, and ancient Near East (analogous to the spread of Deuteronomistic texts), attempts to define Wisdom resort eventually to the scholarly consensus concerning which biblical texts make up the category’s core. This factor carries all the weight in the current debates about Wisdom, and yet little research has been put into how this consensus developed or how it affects interpretation.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document