‘To Destroy a City so Great and Remarkable’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Oldfield
Keyword(s):  
Urban Life ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
Crucial Point ◽  
Urban Living ◽  
Holistic Understanding

Medieval works of urban panegyric, some of which adhered to the so-called laus civitatis paradigm, ostensibly represented initiatives formed to praise and promote the profile of a given city. This literary genre flourished particularly in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and can be connected to fundamental transformations that were occurring in medieval urban life. Indeed, while in many cases these works served unexpressed agendas, they were not simple pieces of fiction and rhetoric. Their power lay in their reapplication of Classical and Christian traditions, in their reflection of some of the deep realities of urban living, and in their association with the heated conceptual debates surrounding the very idea of the medieval city. In this context, the inclusion of material which could lament or dishonour the name of a city, or which could imply a threat to its integrity may seem both incongruent and significant. Focusing primarily on Bonvesin della Riva’s celebrated De Magnalibus Mediolani (1288), this chapter thus explores the dissonant presence of lamentation and critique presented in works of urban panegyric in order to produce a more nuanced and holistic understanding of this literary genre as well as a new appreciation of the evidence it can offer for understanding medieval urban mentalities at a crucial point in the process of European urbanization.

The Relocation of Villagers into Public Housing: Some Suggestive Findings from a Singaporean Stud*1

1977 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-54
Author(s):  
Shimon E. Spiro
Keyword(s):  
Public Housing ◽  
Living Arrangements ◽  
Urban Fringe ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Rural Migrants ◽  
Nuclear Families ◽  
Urban Living ◽  
High Rise ◽  
Gradual Process ◽  
Housing Estates

AbstractThe relocation of villagers into modern high-rise housing estates is, in most countries, the exception rather than the rule. The urbanization of rural populations is, more typically, a gradual process. Rural migrants first settle in inner-city slums and squatter areas of the urban fringe, where they are often able to maintain some of the living arrangements and patterns of social organization which are characteristically rural Only after additional movements within these areas of first settlement, and after sufficient time had elapsed to allow for some assimilation into urban life, will some of the migrants, or their descendants, move into high rise public housing estates. This form of housing is, in many respects, the ultimate in urban living. It is characterized by nuclear families, occupying rigidly defined space, living among strangers, and subject to bureaucratic rules and controls. However, the fact that families typically move to housing estates after having experienced some form of urban living may ease the transition. Also, the fact that slum dwellings are often of physically inferior quality compared to estate housing3 may increase the willingness of new residents to accept some of the constraints of estate living.

scholarly journals Climate-conscious citizenship in a digital urban setting

2011 ◽  
Vol 27 (50) ◽  
pp. 24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophie Esmann Andersen ◽  
Anne Ellerup Nielsen
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Stakeholder Theory ◽  
Natural Environment ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Urban Setting ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
Urban Living ◽  
Ethical Virtue ◽  
Image Performance ◽  
Insight Into

Climate change has challenged urban life, and as an omnipresent force, Nature sets the agenda for urban living. Using stakeholder theory to conceptualise urban life, we approach Nature as both an omnipresent stakeholder and an issue to be continuously addressed and related to. Adapting the stakeholder focus to relations, stakes and values, we conceptually analyse the digital installation entitled CO2mmitment/CO2nfessions, which was a prominent part of the Aarhus CO2030 exhibition launching the vision of the Danish city of Aarhus to become carbon neutral by the year 2030. In the analysis, we explore how the citizen is framed and invited to enact his/her responsibilities to the natural environment in an urban setting and how the digital mediation facilitates various forms of relations and climate conscious positions, incorporating both narcissistic desires, universal anxiety, moral obligations, ethical virtue and image performance. Statements from the actual confessors/committers exemplify this. Thus, the paper provides insight into understanding the complexity of climate-conscious citizenship as a complex configuration of paradoxical, co-existing ethics and arguments.

Paradise City

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 58-78
Author(s):  
Chris Coltrin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Traditional Conception ◽  
Urban Living ◽  
Urban Structures ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
The City

Abstract In a century defined by the rise of cities, the early nineteenth-century painter John Martin broke artistic precedents and represented heavenly Paradise as a space premised on urban living. Though he did not entirely reject the more traditional conception of Paradise as a garden, he merged the rural vision of Paradise with urban structures and spaces. Martin’s widespread popularity, combined with the contentious discourses regarding the nature of the city, ensured that his representations engaged a set of public debates regarding the nature of urban life in profound ways. Martin’s paintings and prints suggested that God not only tolerates cities, but that God builds them and resides in them. In essence, his paintings and prints revealed an urban heaven that helped make a political and religious case for urban life in general.

scholarly journals Town and Country in John Galt: A Literary Perspective

2013 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-22
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Waterston
Keyword(s):  
William Wordsworth ◽  
Small Town ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
Scottish Literature ◽  
Random Form ◽  
John Galt ◽  
Contemporary Writers ◽  
Canada Company ◽  
Town Building

John Galt, town-planner and novelist, differed from contemporary writers such as William Wordsworth in his response to nature and to urban life. As agent for the Canada Company, he had the chance in 1827 to put some of his theories about town building into practice. Four years later, his novel Bogel Corbet presented a fictional version of that experiment in urbanism. All Galt's writings about the founding of a town emphasize community rituals and unity. His hope was that his settlement would move through an ascending order from village to town to garrison to city. The actual town of Guelph was of course unable to satisfy his ideal; in Bogle Corbet he adopts an ironic tone at the expense of the little town. But Bogle Corbet has another importance: in its random form as well as in its tone it emphasizes discontinuity. It foreshadows later treatments of small town life as well as has antecedents in English and Scottish literature. Since Galt's time, the ironic sequence sketch has proved a very appropriate literary genre for reflecting the disharmony of small Canadian towns.

‘Muddying the Wells’: Modernist Literary Instincts and the Operatic Ideal

2007 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-83
Author(s):  
Irene Morra
Keyword(s):  
Literary Genre ◽  
Billy Budd ◽  
Almost All

Irene Morra shows how the conflict between words and music that was contested in “Billy Budd” can be extended to almost all modern British opera. Morra argues persuasively that a number of modernist writers came to view the libretto “as an alternative literary genre, one that would allow for the expression of literary ideals of musicality”.

Pater's Parerga: Framing the Imaginary Portraits

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-135
Author(s):  
Giles Whiteley
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Formal Structure ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Liminal Space ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Similar Operation ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Relationship

Walter Pater's late-nineteenth-century literary genre of the imaginary portrait has received relatively little critical attention. Conceived of as something of a continuum between his role as an art critic and his fictional pursuits, this essay probes the liminal space of the imaginary portraits, focusing on the role of the parergon, or frame, in his portraits. Guided by Pater's reading of Kant, who distinguishes between the work (ergon) and that which lies outside of the work (the parergon), between inside and outside, and contextualised alongside the analysis of Derrida, who shows how such distinctions have always already deconstructed themselves, I demonstrate a similar operation at work in the portraits. By closely analysing the parerga of two of Pater's portraits, ‘Duke Carl of Rosenmold’ (1887) and ‘Apollo in Picardy’ (1893), focusing on his partial quotation of Goethe in the former, and his playful autocitation and impersonation of Heine in the latter, I argue that Pater's parerga seek to destabilise the relationship between text and context so that the parerga do not lie outside the text but are implicated throughout in their reading, changing the portraits constitutively. As such, the formal structure of the parergon in Pater's portraits is also a theoretical fulcrum in his aesthetic criticism and marks that space where the limits of, and distinctions between, art and life become blurred.

Late Antique Letter Collections

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Comprehensive Overview ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
The Social ◽  
Letter Writer ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Letter Collection ◽  
Latin Letter

This volume provides the first comprehensive overview of the extant Greek and Latin letter collections of late antiquity (ca. 300-600 C.E.). Bringing together an international team of historians, classicists, and scholars of religion, it illustrates how letter collections advertised an image of the letter writer and introduces the social and textual histories of each collection. Nearly every chapter focuses on the letter collection of a different late ancient author—from the famous (or even infamous) to the obscure—and investigates its particular issues of content, arrangement, and publication context. On the whole, the volume reveals how late antique letter collections operated as a discrete literary genre with its own conventions, transmission processes, and self-presentational agendas while offering new approaches to interpret both larger letter collections and the individual letters contained within them. Each chapter contributes to a broad argument that scholars should read letter collections as they do representatives of other late antique literary genres, as single texts made up of individual components, with larger thematic and literary characteristics that are as important as those of their component parts.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document