History of Scholarship

2021 ◽  
pp. 130-141
Author(s):  
Jan Willem Drijvers

The manuscript of the Syriac Julian Romance was part of the Nitrian manuscripts which came into the possession of the British Museum in the 1830s. The Julian Romance received broader attention in 1874 in an important publication by the German orientalist Theodor Nöldeke. Six years later, J. G. E. Hoffmann published the complete Syriac work under the title Syrische Erzählungen; it is the only (non-critical) edition available of the Romance. In 1928 Hermann Gollancz published an English rendering. In 2016 a much better and reliable English translation of the Romance was published by Michael Sokoloff; besides a translation, it also includes the Syriac text of Hoffmann’s edition from 1880. This chapter offers a discussion of the scholarship of the Romance and deals with issues such as the place and date of origin of the text, the original language, the possible authorship, function, and genre of the text, as well as its place within Syriac literature. The Romance as we have it is generally accepted as having been composed in Edessa. The northern Mesopotamian city has a special place and a prominent role in the Julian Romance, in particular in the Jovian Narrative. One of the purposes of the text seems to have been to emphasize Edessa as the city of Christ par excellence, for which reason it deserves a special place in the world of Christendom, as well as to present Edessa as the model of Christian government for the whole empire.

Elenchos ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-232
Author(s):  
Christian Vassallo

AbstractSince the editio princeps, PSI XI 1215 has been recognized as a fragment of a Socratic dialogue. After the first studies on its philological aspects and probable authorship, however, the text has not drawn the attention of historians of ancient philosophy, and this important Socratic evidence has long been totally neglected. This paper reviews the history of scholarship on the Florentine fragment and presents a new critical edition, on the basis of which it tries to give for the first time a historico-philosophical reading of the text. This interpretation aims to demonstrate: a) that the Socratic philosopher who is writing had not a low cultural level, and the fragment presupposes an accurate knowledge of Plato’s political thought, as Medea Norsa and Girolamo Vitelli already supposed with regard to Book 8 of Plato’s Republic; b) that the fragment in question can be attributed to a Socratic dialogue which was most likely composed in the first half of the 4th century BC; c) that both philosophical and textual arguments support the attribution of the fragment to a dialogue of Antisthenes.


Author(s):  
Alexandra Wilson

La bohème is one of the most frequently performed operas in the world. But how did it come to be so adored? Drawing on an extremely broad range of sources, Alexandra Wilson traces the opera’s rise to global fame. Although the work has been subjected to many hostile critiques, it swiftly achieved popular success through stage performances, recordings, and filmed versions. Wilson demonstrates how La bohème acquired even greater cultural influence as its music and dramatic themes began to be incorporated into pop songs, film soundtracks, musicals, and more. In this cultural history of Puccini’s opera, Wilson offers a fresh reading of a familiar work. La bohème was strikingly modern for the 1890s, she argues, in its approach to musical and dramatic realism and in flouting many of the conventions of the Italian operatic tradition. Considering the work within the context of the aesthetic, social, and political debates of its time, Wilson explores Puccini’s treatment of themes including gender, poverty, and nostalgia. She pays particular attention to La bohème’s representation of Paris, arguing that the opera was not only influenced by romantic mythologies surrounding the city but also helped shape them. Wilson concludes with a consideration of the many and varied approaches directors have taken to the staging of Puccini’s opera, including some that have reinvented the opera for a new age. This book is essential reading for anyone who has seen La bohème and wants to know more about its music, drama, and cultural contexts.


2013 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rüdiger Arnzen

AbstractAlthough the existence of an Arabic translation of a section of Proclus' commentary on Plato's Timaeus lost in the Greek has been known since long, this text has not yet enjoyed a modern edition. The present article aims to consummate this desideratum by offering a critical edition of the Arabic fragment accompanied by an annotated English translation. The attached study of the contents and structure of the extant fragment shows that it displays all typical formal elements of Proclus' commentaries, whereas its conciseness and shortcomings raise certain doubts about its completeness. As a parergon, the article includes an analysis of a hitherto neglected letter by Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq, which is attached to the fragment in the manuscript transmission. In addition to providing some insight into the origins of the Proclian fragment, this letter sheds some light on the Syriac and Arabic reception of some works by Hippocrates and Galen, especially Hippocrates' On Regimen in Acute Diseases and the history of its Arabic translation.


2010 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 196-210
Author(s):  
Nilay Hosta ◽  
Birsen Limon

Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi was a philosopher who influenced our era with his ‘humanist’ thoughts, his invitation towards everybody to friendship and brotherhood and his ideas about love and humanism. The museum, opened in his name in 1926 in Konya, Turkey, has been converted into a special place, describing Mevlevi’s way of life, telling the history of the Mevlana Dervish lodge and exhibiting related works with religious historical values. This important Museum, attracting many visitors from all over the world, including Turkey, represents unique examples both in architecture and genuine works of arts from Seljuk and the Ottoman period.Today faith tourism, emerging as a business sector, due to the increasing number of travelling people everyday, fulfils the space of the religious obligations related to travelling and also shows itself in religious aspects, not only pertaining to the major dimensions of a religion, but also by affecting all other religion-related rituals. The Mevlana Museum has become one of the places affected by the faith tourism. It has turned into an economic resource and become an important place for advertising Turkey, having visitors any time of year.


Author(s):  
Augustine

This edition of St. Augustine's The City of God (De Civitate Dei) is the only one in English to provide a text and translation as well as a detailed commentary of this most influential document in the history of western Christianity. In these books, Augustine offers a Christian perspective on the growth of Rome, which its pagan apologists attribute to the providential protection of its gods. Book III spotlights both the injustices inflicted and the privations endured by the Romans, thus rebutting such claims. Book IV offers a withering account of the Roman deities, basing its analysis on the researches of Terentius Varro. This section of The City of God is a vital document for students of Roman history, and especially of Roman religion, for it provides the most detailed evidence of Varro's learned works. The volume presents Latin text with facing-page English translation, introduction and commentary.


2020 ◽  
pp. 104-139
Author(s):  
Sharon Zukin

Profiling New York–based venture capitalists and VC firms that have been established in the city since the early 2000s, the chapter examines their risky but privileged perch between Wall Street and Silicon Valley. Interviews with VCs are juxtaposed with the post–World War II history of venture capital as a distinctive form of investment and management. The VCs’ equally distinctive commitment to New York is then contrasted with the increasing geographical dispersal of their investment funds to other regions of the world. Meanwhile, the integration of some corporate and VC members of the tech “community” into New York’s business establishment suggests the formation of a local tech-financial elite, updating C. Wright Mills’s critique of the institutional bases of power.


Author(s):  
K. A. Nizami

The fascinating and chequered history of Delhi through the centuries has been a popular subject among authors. Yet, only a few other than K.A. Nizami record in rich detail the cultural, social, economic, and spiritual fabric of the city—the ‘gorgeous blaze of glory’ that was Delhi—between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries. He presents his accounts of the periods of the Delhi Sultanate, the Mughals, and the poet Ghalib through the analyses of wide-ranging sources: original literary, travel, biographical, hagiographical, and administrative accounts in Persian, Hindavi, and Urdu. This book is a compilation of the historian’s lectures delivered at the University of Delhi and the Ghalib Institute in Delhi, first published in Urdu in 1972. The author’s conversational style, replete with literary allusions, makes this an essential read for lovers and admirers of this beguiling city and its historic Sufi culture. Ather Farouqui’s English translation captures the true essence of Nizami’s work and now makes it easily available to a wider readership.


Archaeologia ◽  
1874 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-241
Author(s):  
Richard Henry Major

In the year 1861 I had the satisfaction of laying before the Society of Antiquaries, and thereby making known to the world for the first time, the important fact that the great continental island of Australia had been discovered in the year 1601 by a Portuguese navigator, named Manoel Godinho de Eredia. Up to that time the earliest authenticated discovery of any part of the great southern land was that made a little to the west and south of Cape York by the commander of the Dutch yacht the Duyfhen, or Dove, about the month of March 1606. Thus the fact which I announced in 1861 gave a date to the first authenticated discovery of Australia earlier by five years than that which had been previously accepted in history, and transferred the honour of that discovery from Holland to Portugal. The document on which this fact, so entirely new to the world, was based, was a MS. Mappe-monde in the British Museum, in which, on the northwest corner of a country which could be shown beyond all question to be Australia, stood a legend in Portuguese to the following effect:— “Nuça antara was discovered in the year 1601 by Manoel Godinho de Eredia, by command of the Viceroy Ayres de Saldanha.” This mappe-monde had the great disadvantage of being only a copy, possibly made even in the present century, from one the geography of which proved it to be some two centuries older. Still, the mere fact of its being a copy laid it open to a variety of possible objections, which fortunately I was able to forestall by arguments that I believe to be unanswerable, and which I think I need not repeat now, as they are already printed in the “Archaeologia,” vol. xxxviii. I will merely say that I had the good fortune at the time to find a happy confirmation of what was stated in the map in a little printed work which described the discoverer as a learned cosmographer and skilful captain, who had received a special commission from the Viceroy at Goa to make explorations for gold mines, and at the same time to verify the descriptions of the southern islands.


Archaeologia ◽  
1858 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 316-334 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arthur Ashpitel

There is scarcely a district in the world endowed with such singular beauty, and possessing such deep points of interest, as that extending about ten or twelve miles westward from Naples. A sky of such brilliancy as only Italy can shew; a sea of colours like the transparent hues of the sapphire and emerald; mountains on land and mountainous islands rising from the sea twice and thrice the height of those in Wales, and crowned with snow for a third of the year. The air of extraordinary clearness and purity, and redolent with the odours of the myrtle, orange, and citron. The earth covered with rich crops of maize, the vine hanging in a cordage of festoons from tree to tree, huge groves of figs and olives twisted in every fantastic form, and interspersed with the feathery palm, forests of pine, leccio, and cypress, all form a scene of beauty difficult to describe. But how is the interest heightened when we reflect on the history of the spot! We are in the scene so exquisitely described by Virgil in the Æneid. Here are the Isles of the Sirens and of Circe, the Tomb of Misenus, the Grotto of the Sibyl, the mysterious River Cocytus, the Lake Avernus, and the Elysian Fields. Here, too, the great poet is supposed to have been interred. The heights are crowned with the remains of sumptuous villas, where Caesar, Crassus, Pompey, Lucullus, and Augustus feasted, and where Cicero penned his best philosophical works.


2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (26) ◽  
pp. 98-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
MONICA LIMA

O artigo trata sobre aspectos que definem a importá¢ncia do sá­tio histórico e arqueológico Cais do Valongo, situado na cidade do Rio de Janeiro, para a história da escravização de africanos e seus descendentes nas Américas e, em especial, no Brasil. Além de ressaltar a relevá¢ncia desse bem, reconhecido em 2017 como Patrimônio Mundial pela UNESCO, também aborda o seu significado como sá­tio histórico de memória sensá­vel e lugar de memória do tráfico atlá¢ntico de africanos escravizados. Ao longo do texto, são abordadas ideias-chave, tais como passados sensá­veis, violência, dor e sofrimento em perspectiva histórica, indicando possibilidades de comparação com outros espaços no mundo, considerando tragédias humanas e conceitos utilizados nos estudos sobre esses processos. Finalmente, o texto analisa elementos em torno da história da região do Cais do Valongo como espaço de resistência e de afirmação das populações negras.Palavras-chave: Cais do Valongo. História da Escravidão. Passados Sensá­veis. Patrimônio Mundial. História dos africanos no Brasil.HISTORY, PATRIMONY AND SENSITIVE MEMORY:  the Pier of Valongo in Rio de JaneiroAbstract: The article deals with aspects that define the importance of the historical and archaelogical site of Valongo Wharf, located in the city of Rio de Janeiro, for the history of enslavement of Africans and their descendants in the Americas and especially in Brazil. In addition to highlighting the relevance of this property, recognized in 2017 as a Worl Heritage Site by UNESCO, it also addresses its significance as a historical site of sensitive memory and a place of memory for the Atlantic traffic of enslaved Africans. Throughout the text, key ideas such as sensitive past, violence, pain and suffering are discussed in historical perspective, which indicates possibilities of comparison with other spaces in the world, considering human tragedies and concepts used in the studies on these processes. Finally, the text analyzes other elements around the history of the Valongo Wharf region as space of resistance and affirmation of the black populations.Keywords: Valongo Wharf. History of Slavery. Sensitive Pasts. World Heritage. History of Africans in Brazil.HISTORIA, PATRIMONIO Y MEMORIA SENSIBLE:  el Cais do Valongo en Rá­o de JaneiroResumen: El artá­culo trata sobre aspectos que definen la importancia del sitio histórico y arqueológico Cais do Valongo, situado en la ciudad de Rá­o de Janeiro, para la historia de la esclavización de africanos y sus descendientes en las Américas y, en especial, en Brasil. Además de resaltar la relevancia de ese bien, reconocido en 2017 como Patrimonio Mundial por la UNESCO, también aborda su significado como sitio histórico de memoria sensible y lugar de memoria de la trata atlántica de africanos esclavizados. A lo largo del texto, se abordan ideas clave, tales como pasados sensibles, violencia, dolor y sufrimiento en perspectiva histórica, indicando posibilidades de comparación con otros espacios en el mundo y considerando tragedias humanas y conceptos utilizados en los estudios sobre esos procesos. Finalmente, el texto analiza elementos en torno a la historia de la región del Cais do Valongo como espacio de resistencia y de afirmación de las poblaciones negras.Palabras clave:  Muelle de Valongo. Historia de la Esclavitud. Pasados Sensibles. Patrimonio Mundial. Historia de los africanos en Brasil.


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