Insults, violence, and the meaning of lytegian in the Old English Battle of Maldon

2011 ◽  
Vol 12 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 198-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentine A. Pakis
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Old English ◽  
Death Drive ◽  
History Of ◽  
Definition Of

The history of impoliteness — of which insults are a part — and violence are intertwined. In medieval Germanic cultural history, this link manifests itself in historical-pragmatic contexts such as sennur, whettings, and flyting-to-fighting scenarios, which are surveyed in this paper. The ethological origins of such interactions are called into question with reference to the Freudian death drive. Based on the connection between insults and violence, a novel definition of Old English lytegian in the Battle of Maldon is offered, namely ‘jeer, insult’, with comparative support from Icelandic.

Discourses about language and literacy education in Portugal: past and present

2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 (259) ◽  
pp. 15-38
Author(s):  
Clara Keating
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Labour Force ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Literacy Education ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
Language And Literacy ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
History Of ◽  
Definition Of

Abstract This article presents a historical analysis of discourses about language and literacy that have emerged during different periods in the political and cultural history of Portugal. It covers six periods, from the colonial era to the present, and it considers different geopolitical spaces, including the Portuguese mainland, the Atlantic archipelagos, former Portuguese colonies and diasporic spaces created as a result of emigration from Portugal. The article traces three kinds of discursive shift: (1) shifts in discourses in Portuguese society regarding the goals of language and literacy education, along with associated discourses about appropriate language and literacy pedagogies; (2) shifts in discourses about the specific nature and significance of literacy in Portuguese; and (3) shifts in discourses about the value and symbolic power of standardized forms of spoken and written Portuguese. It shows how each historical period has been characterized by distinctive political and ideological currents which have, in turn, shaped and re-shaped ways of thinking about the role of language and literacy education in the definition of citizenship and national identity, in the construction of heritage, in the creation of a “modern” democratic state and, more recently, in the retooling of human resources to create a flexible labour force.

A Cultural History of Memory in Antiquity

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Right ◽  
Remote Past

The ancient world is a paradigm for the memory scholar. Without an awareness that collective memories are not only different from individual memories (or even the sum thereof) but also highly constructed, ancient research will be fundamentally flawed. Many networks of memories are beautifully represented in the written and material remains of antiquity, and it is precisely the ways in which they are fashioned, distorted, preserved or erased through which we can learn about the historical process as such. Our evidence is deeply characterized by the fact that ancient ‘identity’ and ‘memory’ appear exceptionally strong. Responsible for this is a continuing desire to link the present to the remote past, which creates many contexts in which memories were constructed. The ancient historian therefore has the right tools with which to work: places and objects from the past, monuments and iconography, and textual narratives with a primary purpose to memorize and commemorate. This is paired with our desire to understand the ancient world through its own self-perception. With the opportunity of tapping into this world by way of oral history, personal testimonies are a desideratum in all respects. Memory of the past, however, is profoundly about ‘self-understanding’. This volume surveys and builds on the many insights we have gained from vibrant research in the field since Maurice Halbwachs’ and Jan Assmann’s seminal studies on the idea and definition of ‘cultural memory’. While focusing on specific themes all chapters address the concepts and expressions of memory, and their historical impact and utilization by groups and individuals at specific times and for specific reasons.

A History of African American Autobiography

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Life Writing ◽  
Personal Essays ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
History Of ◽  
Definition Of

This History explores innovations in African American autobiography since its inception, examining the literary and cultural history of Black self-representation amid life writing studies. By analyzing the different forms of autobiography, including pictorial and personal essays, editorials, oral histories, testimonials, diaries, personal and open letters, and even poetry performance media of autobiographies, this book extends the definition of African American autobiography, revealing how people of African descent have created and defined the Black self in diverse print cultures and literary genres since their arrival in the Americas. It illustrates ways African Americans use life writing and autobiography to address personal and collective Black experiences of identity, family, memory, fulfillment, racism and white supremacy. Individual chapters examine scrapbooks as a source of self-documentation, African American autobiography for children, readings of African American persona poems, mixed-race life writing after the Civil Rights Movement, and autobiographies by African American LGBTQ writers.

Sentimenti, emozioni. Potenzialitŕ e limiti della storia culturale

2012 ◽  
pp. 75-92
Author(s):  
Rolf Petri
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
History Writing ◽  
History Of Emotions ◽  
Theoretical Status ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
History Of ◽  
Definition Of

The first part of the essay tries to elaborate a reasonable itemisation of the three main streams in the history of emotions: that of individual emotions, the study of the role that emotions have in historical processes, and the reflection about the influence of emotions on history writing. The second part is devoted to the methodological and theoretical status of the study of past emotions. The author criticises the definition of emotions as merely cultural phenomena. He argues in favour to a cross-disciplinary and theoretical perspective, and maintains that cultural history of emotions should be able to deconstruct its own history and contextualise historically the very paradigms of "culture" and "emotion".

Mexican Women's Pelves and Obstetrical Procedures: Interventions with Forceps in Late 19th-Century Medicine

2005 ◽  
Vol 79 (1) ◽  
pp. 100-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Cházaro ◽  
Paul Kersey
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Mexican Women ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
Safe Delivery ◽  
Medical Instruments ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
Living Nature ◽  
Definition Of

This essay is an inquiry into the socio-cultural history of the use of forceps in 19th-century Mexico. It argues that the knowledge and practices that the use of such instruments implied were related to complex and controversial issues of the time regarding gender, race and national identity. In my study of operations involving forceps, I found that the adoption of medical instruments depended not only upon their supposedly greater operative efficiency but also upon the political and medical meanings attributed to the pelves of Mexican women. Early 19th-century obstetrics conceived the womb as an example of ‘living nature’ whose qualities assured that births were ‘normally happy events’ making the use of forceps and other instruments unnecessary. However, by mid-century, in the aftermath of independence, Mexico was desperately attempting to forge its identity as a nation. Due to European theories of race, Mexican women came to be characterized as having pathologically deformed pelves that evidenced possible defects of racial formation. The analysis of operative practices involving forceps reveals just how strongly such medical instruments became charged with a complex political definition of the ‘mestizo race’, which was seen to hold political promise for the future. In this context, forceps ceased to symbolize the threat of death, with which they had been associated since colonial times, and became artefacts that helped to assure the safe delivery of newborn mestizos by overcoming the problems of Mexican women's pathological pelves; although by the same token, the status of women as biologically inferior beings in need of medical assistance was reconfirmed.

Confessionalization and Literature in the Empire, 1555–1700

2007 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ute Lotz-Heumann ◽  
Matthias Pohlig
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Early Modern Literature ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Contextualization ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Complex Phenomena ◽  
History Of Literature

This article has a twofold aim: first, to explain the concept of confessionalization that has been developed in recent decades in German historiography as an interpretive tool for the period and to review the main lines of its critique, which raise important questions for the discussion of “confessionalization and literature”; and second, to explore the connections between confessionalization and literature as well as the applicability of the concept of confessionalization to the history of literature, a little-understood but increasingly important question for early modern cultural history. The understanding of the literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is greatly enhanced by the cooperation between literary scholars and historians. First, the literature of the age of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation was not yet an autonomous entity in society and therefore requires historical contextualization, particularly with regard to its social origins. Second, Germanists have extended the definition of early modern literature to include all kinds of Gebrauchsliteratur (functional literature), which are often important sources for historians. “Literature” and “confessionalization,” however, are difficult terms representing very complex phenomena. “Literature” is understood here as encompassing all printed works of the period, of which this article can of course only explore a sample; “confessionalization” denotes an interpretive concept, which has been criticized and modified in recent research. Given the exploratory purpose of this discussion, a good many questions will be raised for which we have no clear answers at the present time; we hope above all to further the exchange of ideas between literary scholars and historians working on the confessional age.

Review of The Curse: A Cultural History of Menstruation.

1989 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 413-413
Author(s):  
No authorship indicated
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
History Of
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