Oliver Goldsmith

Author(s):  
Michael Griffin

The life and work of the Irish poet, playwright, essayist, historian, and novelist Oliver Goldsmith (b. 1728–d. 1774) had not received a tremendous amount of attention since the 1960s, a decade that saw a substantial burst of editorial and critical work, and, in particular, the publication of Arthur Friedman’s five-volume edition of the Collected Works (Goldsmith 1966, cited under Editions) and Roger Lonsdale’s edition of The Poems of Goldsmith, Gray and Collins (Goldsmith, et al. 1969, cited under Editions). A good deal of the critical scholarship that has emerged since then has been in dialogue with, or in response to, those editions and to two-book length works of criticism by Ricardo Quintana (Quintana 1967, cited under General Collections and Studies) and Robert H. Hopkins (Hopkins 1969, cited under General Collections and Studies), which argued for a greater appreciation of the ironic registers of Goldsmith’s work. Indeed, much Goldsmith criticism has focused on the question of whether he should be understood as a sentimentalist or as a satirist, since the oeuvre as a whole exists along a seam between the satirical tenor of his Augustan predecessors and the emerging sensibility of his literary milieu and an expanding middle-class audience. As such, Goldsmith’s writings are in many ways highly representative of his mid-18th-century contexts. The relative lack of sustained scholarly and critical work on Goldsmith since the 1960s is also partly attributable to his work being in some senses too various to accommodate in single thematic or generic studies: he moved across the modes of 18th-century writing with considerable ease and success. The eclectic nature of his oeuvre, and the variety of tones and registers he used in writing across the genres, has resulted in his being characterized in various, often-inconsistent ways. That said, clusters of essays and articles have appeared since the late 20th century that have illustrated the richness and instructive ambiguities of his writing and thinking. Also, his Irishness has been intermittently, and with varying degrees of insight or success, studied throughout the critical heritage as a contributing factor in his social and political worldview. In this article, items that Friedman acknowledged and incorporated into the editorial apparatus of his 1966 edition—including earlier scholarship on the history and sources of Goldsmith’s Greek, Roman, and English histories, the prefaces to which feature in Friedman’s work—are largely omitted. The emphasis here is primarily on the biographical tradition, on criticism and scholarship published after 1966, and within that period on the substantial bodies of criticism surrounding the major poetry and Goldsmith’s one novel.

Author(s):  
Natalia A. Koshelyuk ◽  
◽  

Introduction. The article reviews background studies on the Mansi language and its dialects performed by European and Russian (Soviet) linguists. Goals. The paper seeks to provide a comprehensive historical description of Mansi language research. Methods. The descriptive and comparative-historical methods have been employed thereto. Results. The work arranges the studies chronologically — from earliest research activities to contemporary ones — highlighting most essential achievements. Mansi is one of the least studied languages with earliest written accounts dating to the 16th-17th centuries. The earliest Mansi dictionaries were compiled by explorers and missionaries (I. Kuroedov, S. Cherkalov, P. S. Pallas, etc.) in the 18th century. In the 19th century, the Mansi language officially became a subject of scientific research, and expeditions by Finnish and Hungarian linguists (Antal Reguly, August Engelbrekt Ahlqvist, Bernát Munkácsi, Artturi Kannisto) proved the first field studies. In the 20th century, quite a number of European scientists have contributed to Mansi language research, namely: W. Steinitz, L. Honti, K. F. Кarjalainen, M. Bakró-Nagy, K. Rédei, M. Szilasi, and others. In Russia, the first Mansi studies were initiated by Soviet scholars in the 1930s (V. Chernetsov, A. Balandin). Studies in spoken Mansi evolved into a national Cyrillic alphabet, and for the first time ever there were published comprehensive works dealing with Mansi studies, textbooks on Mansi phonetics, morphology, and grammar. Experimental phonetic explorations emerged in the mid-to-late 20th century resulting in new Mansi dictionaries (A. Sainakhova, T. FrankKamenetskaya, E. Rombandeeva, and others). Mansi studies in the 21st century in Russia and Europe have reached a brand new level: there appeared online research laboratories and linguistic platforms which make it possible to further investigate the Mansi language and verify up-to-date materials.


Author(s):  
Norman Etherington

Christianity came very early to Africa, as attested by the Gospels. The agencies by which it spread across North Africa and into the Kingdom of Aksum remain largely unknown. Even after the rise of Islam cut communications between sub-Saharan Africa and the churches of Rome and Constantinople, it survived in the eastern Sudan kingdom of Nubia until the 15th century and never died in Ethiopia. The documentary history of organized missions begins with the Roman Catholic monastic orders founded in the 13th century. Their evangelical work in Africa was closely bound up with Portuguese colonialism, which both helped and hindered their operations. Organized European Protestant missions date from the 18th-century evangelical awakening and were much less creatures of states. Africa was a particular object of attention for Evangelicals opposed to slavery and the slave trade. Paradoxically this gave an impetus to colonizing ventures aimed at undercutting the moral and economic foundations of slavery in Africa. Disease proved to be a deadly obstacle to European- and American-born missionaries in tropical Africa, thus spurring projects for enrolling local agents who had acquired childhood immunity. Southern Africa below the Zambezi River attracted missionaries from many parts of Europe and North America because of the absence of the most fearsome diseases. However the turbulent politics of the region complicated their work by restricting their access to organized African kingdoms and chieftaincies. The prevalent mission model until the late 19th century was a station under the direction of a single European family whose religious and educational endeavors were directed at a small number of African residents. Catholic missions acquired new energy following the French Revolution, the old Portuguese system of partnership with the state was displaced by enthusiasm for independent operations under the authority of the Pope in Rome. Several new missionary orders were founded with a particular focus on Africa. Mission publications of the 19th and 20th centuries can convey a misleading impression that the key agents in the spread of African Christianity were foreign-born white males. Not only does this neglect the work of women as wives and teachers, but it diverts attention from the Africans who were everywhere the dominant force in the spread of modern Christianity. By the turn of the 20th century, evangelism had escaped the bounds of mission stations driven by African initiative and the appearance of so-called “faith missions” based on a model of itinerant preaching. African prophets and independent evangelists developed new forms of Christianity. Once dismissed as heretical or syncretic, they gradually came to be recognized as legitimate variants of the sort that have always accompanied the acculturation of religion in new environments. Decolonization caught most foreign mission operations unawares and required major changes, most notably in the recruitment of African clergy to the upper echelons of church hierarchies. By the late 20th century Africans emerged as an independent force in Christian missions, sending agents to other continents.


Author(s):  
Michael Stoeber

The comparative study of mysticism began in the mid-19th century, with the development of the modern meaning of the word, which had begun to be used as a substantive, with the classification of “mystics” in the 17th century. This differed from the traditional Greek Christian use of the adjective mystikos, to qualify rituals, scriptures, sacraments, and theology as “mystical” contexts of the human encounter with the Divine. This modern shift highlighted the personal experience of ultimate Reality, rather than the sociocultural context. Certain individuals claimed to encounter the Divine or spiritual realities more directly, separate from traditional mediums of religious experience. The study of this phenomenon tended in the early 20th century to focus on the psychology and the phenomenology of the personal experience, generally described as an altered state of consciousness with specific characteristics, processes, stages, effects, and stimulants. This emphasis on common features influenced the development of perennialist and traditionalist theorists, who saw evidence of the same experiential origin, fundamental principles, or epistemology among major world religions. Some essentialist views of mysticism argued that a pure consciousness-experience of undifferentiated unity or non-duality is the core feature of all mysticism, in contrast to other religious experiences. Reaction to these positions led to contextualist or constructivist views of mysticism, which presume the sociocultural character of mysticism. In its most extreme form, the contextualist perspective suggests that all mystical experiences among traditions are different, given diverse socio-religious categories that overdetermine the experience. In turn, some critical scholarship has proposed qualifications to contextualism within the context of a general acceptance of many of its tenets, even among many theorists with essentialist tendencies. Up to the late 20th century, much scholarship in the area tended to downplay the sociocultural features of mysticism, emphasizing the psychological dynamics and an individual, disembodied, and radically transcendent ideal. This brought into question the relationship of morality to mystical experience and raised concerns about the status of entheogens—the use of psychoactive drugs in religious contexts. Interest in the comparative study of mysticism has also extended into the area of neuroscience, where researchers explore electro-chemical brain states associated with mystical experience, in proposing evidence of a mystical neurological substrate. But the essentialist/contextualist debate also moved the comparative study of mysticism beyond issues of epistemology, consciousness-states, ontology, and cognitive neuroscience, broadening the field to include other aspects of religious experience. Some studies have brought feminist concerns to bear on the discussion, insofar as women’s mysticism has been overshadowed and even repressed by men, and was seen to preclude legitimate experiential possibilities of a more embodied character. Related scholarship in history and depth psychology has focused creatively on the nature and significance of erotic elements of mysticism in comparative studies, with special attention to associated physical phenomena and their transformative dynamics. Similarly, more embodied features of comparative mysticism are the subject of transpersonal psychology, which draws on many humanistic disciplines and supports participatory approaches to the field. Transpersonal psychology remains open to claims that the ego can be transcended in movements into higher states of being that ideally involve personal/spiritual enhancement and integration. Also, some more recent proponents of new comparative theology advocate methods that engage the scholar in specific beliefs or practices of another tradition, and include subsequent clarification and elaboration of one’s own perspective in light of such comparative study, in exploring phenomena related to comparative mystical experience.


2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 211-224
Author(s):  
Nikola Kosto Minov

The article summarizes the known data about the localization and numerical distribution of various Vlach groups in Macedonia in the 19th and 20th centuries. Each Vlach group’s (Moscopolitan; Grammoustian; Farsherot and Moglenite Vlachs) migrations are analyzed separately, following them from their starting points from which they ventured forth and dispersed all over Ottoman Macedonia at the end of the 18th century, all the way to their dwellings in late 20th century in North Macedonia. In the second part of the article we review the thorough, yet unofficial statistics of Gustav Weigand and Vasil Kanchov about the number of Vlachs in Ottoman Macedonia, as well as the number and territorial distribution of the Vlachs in Macedonia, as shown in the 1921 census in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, the Yugoslav census from 1931, the six censuses conducted in socialist Yugoslavia in 1948, 1953, 1961, 1971, 1981 and 1991, and the two censuses in the Republic of Macedonia from 1994 and 2002. 


2021 ◽  

The academic study both of boys’ lives and of fatherhood has increased exponentially since the late 20th century, with both fields part of a wider expansion of masculinity studies, itself the product of a renewed focus on issues of gender and identity resulting from the rise of feminist studies in the closing decades of the 20th century. While some studies of fathering have paid attention to the topic of parenting boys, and a few of the growing number of studies of boys’ experiences have focused on relationships with fathers, research that brings the two topics together, exploring either fathers’ experience of raising sons, or boys’ relationships with their fathers, is a relatively new and developing field. This is by contrast with the situation in popular discourse, where a good deal of attention has focused on fathers and sons, often with a negative slant, viewing the so-called problem of boys (whether a supposed decline in educational achievement or a rise in antisocial behavior) as the result of father absence and a lack of positive male role models in the lives of boys in modern society. The topic of boys and fatherhood thus stands at the intersection of a number of important areas both of academic interest and of current policy debates and discourses, and this review seeks to include a cross section of those connected discussions from a range of intersecting disciplinary backgrounds. The primary focus is on aspects of boys’ relationships with their fathers, including the influence of those relationships on boys’ developing identities, and the role of fathers in responding to specific challenges in their sons’ lives. The emphasis on relationships complements the broader Oxford Bibliographies in Childhood Studies article on “Fathers” (by Esther McDermott), which focuses on social and structural aspects of fatherhood, as well as its representations. Any review of the academic literature on boys and fatherhood cannot avoid the vexed question of absent fatherhood, which is covered by two sections here: the first attempting to present diverse perspectives on the impact on boys, and the second examining the related debate surrounding the supposed absence of male role models in boys’ lives. The final section reviews the literature on another contentious issue, young fatherhood, and includes a range of perspectives on the implications of boys themselves becoming fathers. Although Oxford Bibliographies in Childhood Studies already includes a review of the literature on teenage fatherhood in the “Teenage Fathers” article (by Andrew M. Kiselica and Mark S. Kiselica), the primary focus there is North American, while the current review seeks both to expand the geographical scope and to reflect more-recent studies. An attempt has been made throughout this review to present a global perspective and to demonstrate the ways in which the issues under discussion play out for boys and their fathers from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds.


Author(s):  
Эльза Петровна Бакаева

В статье анализируются калмыцкие народные песни о паломничестве в Тибет на примере текстов «Зу гидг һазр» ‘Страна, называемая Тибет’, «Алта гидг һазрас» ‘Из местности, называемой Алтай’. На основе сравнительного исследования разновременных записей песни «Зу гидг һазр» (1897 г., 1903 г., а также записи конца XX в.) и сопоставления с историческими данными о посольствах и паломничествах в Тибет и вариантами преданий о Джиджетен-ламе сделан вывод о том, что религиозная песня посвящена паломническому посольству хана Дондук-Даши (1755‒1757 гг.) и в ней отражены сведения о пути в Тибет через Монголию и Кукунор. Анализ песни «Алта гидг һазрас» и данных наиболее полного текста песни «Зу гидг һазр» в записи Г. Й. Рамстедта позволил сделать вывод о том, что в них отражены сведения о двух основных путях в Тибет. Архивные и литературные материалы о паломничествах в Тибет свидетельствуют, что в XVII в., когда территория формирующегося Калмыцкого ханства была подвижной, к святыням Лхасы, называвшейся калмыками «Зу», отправлялись по традиционному пути через территории расселения ойратов — «из местности, называемой Алтай». С начала XVIII в. по ряду причин путь в Тибет пролегал через Монголию и Кукунор. И лишь в начале XX в. вновь был освоен путь в Тибет, бывший традиционным для их предков, который теперь назывался «новым». The article analyzes the Kalmyk folk songs about the pilgrimage to Tibet through the example of the texts titled “Zu gidg gazr” (“The Country Called Tibet”), “Alta gidg gazras” (“From the Land Called Altai”). The comparative study of records of the song “Zu gidg gazr” of different times (1897, 1903, late 20th century) and insights into historical data and versions of legends about Jijeten Lama conclude that the religious song is dedicated to the pilgrimage embassy of Khan Donduk-Dashi (1755‒1757) and contains information about the way to Tibet through Mongolia and Kokonor. The analysis of the song “Alta gidg gazras” and the data of the most complete text of the song “Zu gidg gazr” recorded by G. J. Ramstedt makes it possible to conclude that those reflect information about two main routes to Tibet. Archival and literary materials about pilgrimages to Tibet indicate that in the 17th century when boundaries of the emerging Kalmyk Khanate were still mobile, routes to the shrines of Lhasa (Zu) went through the traditional territories of Oirat settlement ― “from the area called Altai”. From the beginning of the 18th century, for a number of reasons, the way to Tibet lay through Mongolia and Kokonor. Only at the beginning of the 20th century the path to Tibet which had been traditional for ancestors (now called the “new one”) was mastered again.


Plaridel ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Feorillo A. Demeterio III, ◽  
June Benedict Parreno

The panopticon was originally a prison design made by Bentham in the late 18th century to efficiently reform offenders. Foucault appropriated Bentham’s panopticon in the late 20th century to conceptualize and critique the society and state’s coercive practices in making individuals conform to social and state norms. Although Foucault’s appropriation of Bentham’s panopticon was done prior to the full emergence of the digital age, a number of present day scholars use the panopticon in conceptualizing and critiquing digital surveillance. This paper problematizes the applicability of both Bentham and Foucault’s panoptic theories to such contemporary phenomenon. This paper dissected both panoptic theories into five components—subjects; observers; data gathering, storage, and analysis; goals and effects of the systems; and management of the systems—and compared and contrasted these to their corresponding components from three cases of digital surveillance representing state digital surveillance, social media digital surveillance, and e-commerce digital surveillance. This paper established that Bentham and Foucault’s panoptic theories have moderate resemblance to each other; that both Bentham and Foucault’s panoptic theories are applicable to the conceptualization and critique of state digital surveillance; and that both Bentham and Foucault’s panoptic theories are not applicable to the conceptualization and critique of social media and e-commerce digital surveillances. As a metacritique this paper is significant in the sense that its findings will hopefully enlighten other scholars about the actual levels of usefulness of both panoptic theories in conceptualizing and critiquing different modes of digital surveillance.


Author(s):  
Iurii Eduardovich Serov

The research subject is the symphonic works of an outstanding Russian composer of the late 20th century Boris Ivanovich Tishchenko (1939 - 2010). The article considers his compositions of the 1960s - 1980s: the first six symphonies with numbers and some symphonies with titles. The author studies such aspects of the topic as Tishchenko’s innovatory role in the renovation of Russian symphonic style of the 1960s, the interrelation of music and poetry in Tishchenko’s large orchestra compositions, and the significant influence of literary concepts on the development of his symphonic style. Special attention is given to the issue of Tishchenko taking over from the large Russian symphonic tradition. The main contribution of the research is the idea that Tishchenko is among the few of his generation who held true to the genre of large “pure” symphony, and took over from the symphonic line of his genius teacher D. Shostakovich. The author’s special contribution is the analysis of all symphonic works by B. Tishchenko. Such a detailed study is the first in Russia. The scientific novelty of the research consists in the fact that the author proves a close connection between Tishchenko’s symphonic style and his epoch, the controversial cultural and social processes suffered by his generation.


2019 ◽  
Vol 57 (6) ◽  
pp. 607-612 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergey Mikhailovich Slepchenko ◽  
Sergey Vladimirovich Bugmyrin ◽  
Andrew Igorevich Kozlov ◽  
Galina Grigorievna Vershubskaya ◽  
Dong Hoon Shin

The aim of this parasitological study is examining contemporary (the late 20th century) specimens of the arctic or subarctic areas in Western Siberia and comparing them with the information acquired from archaeological samples from the same area. In the contemporary specimens, we observed the parasite eggs of 3 different species: <i>Opisthochis</i> <i>felineus</i>, <i>Ascaris</i> <i>lumbricoides</i>, and <i>Enterobius</i> <i>vermicularis</i>. Meanwhile, in archaeoparasitological results of Vesakoyakha, Kikki-Akki, and Nyamboyto I burial grounds, the eggs of <i>Diphyllobothrium</i> and <i>Taenia</i> spp. were found while no nematode (soil-transmitted) eggs were observed in the same samples. In this study, we concluded helminth infection pattern among the arctic and subarctic peoples of Western Siberia throughout history as follows: the raw fish-eating tradition did not undergo radical change in the area at least since the 18th century; and <i>A</i>. <i>lumbricoides</i> or <i>E</i>. <i>vermicularis</i> did not infect the inhabitants of this area before 20th century. With respect to the Western Siberia, we caught glimpse of the parasite infection pattern prevalent therein via investigations on contemporary and archaeoparasitological specimens.


Author(s):  
Thomas D. Rogers

The Portuguese took sugarcane from their Atlantic island holdings to Brazil in the first decades of the 16th century, using their model of extensive agriculture and coerced labor to turn their new colony into the world’s largest producer of sugar. From the middle of the 17th century through the 20th century, Brazil faced increasing competition from Caribbean producers. With access to abundant land and forest resources, Brazilian producers generally pursued an extensive production model that made sugarcane’s footprint a large one. Compared to competitors elsewhere, Brazilian farmers were often late in adopting innovations (such as manuring in the 18th century, steam power in the 19th, and synthetic fertilizers in the 20th). With coffee’s growth in the center-south of the country during the middle of the 19th century, sugarcane farming shifted gradually away from enslaved African labor. Labor and production methods shifted at the end of the century with slavery’s abolition and the rise of large new mills, called usinas. The model of steam-powered production, both for railroads carrying cane and for mills grinding it, and a work force largely resident on plantations persisted into the mid-20th century. Rural worker unions were legalized in the 1960s, at the same time that sugar production increased as a result of the Cuban Revolution. A large-scale sugarcane ethanol program in the 1970s also brought upheaval, and growth, to the industry.


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