English Alexanders and Empire from the Periphery

2019 ◽  
pp. 211-242
Author(s):  
Su Fang Ng
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Complex Pattern ◽  
Alexander The Great ◽  
Henry V ◽  
Imperial Identity ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
Classical History

This chapter focuses on Alexander the Great as the monarchical archetype for the medieval heroes of Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine Parts I and II (1587–8) and William Shakespeare’s Henry V (1599). In both plays, Alexander is used to negotiate a place for England on a global stage dominated by the twin poles of the Hapsburg and the Ottoman Empires. Marlowe imagines another northern tribe, Tamburlaine and his Scythians, invading the Ottoman center to build an empire from the periphery. Shakespeare relies on complex pattern of Alexandrian allusions to counterbalance classical history with an English medieval genealogy accompanied by a native heroism imagined capable of defeating the Ottomans. The chapter also shows how Marlowe and Shakespeare utilize Alexander to explore the complexities, ambitions, and limits of England’s imperial identity, and how their protagonists’ campaigns of imperial expansion foregrounded questions of cultural identity and intercultural encounter.

On Fluellen's Figures, Christ Figures, and James Figures

PMLA ◽  
1974 ◽  
Vol 89 (2) ◽  
pp. 302-311 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Levin
Keyword(s):  
Alexander The Great ◽  
Great Strength ◽  
Henry V ◽  
Positive Evidence ◽  
Christ Figures

The method used by some recent critics to prove that certain Shakespearean characters are “figures” of Christ (or of other biblical or Renaissance personages) was parodied by Shakespeare himself in Fluellen's comparison of Henry v to Alexander the Great. Its success is guaranteed in advance, since it allows the critic to select only the similarities between the two persons being compared without considering whether these are unique or whether they are more significant than the differences between them. The evidence is thus subjected to a double screening: the critic determines which events in the character's career can be compared to the historical personage, and then which aspects of those events are relevant to the comparison. Even the differences between them can be converted into positive evidence. It is therefore possible by this method to prove that almost any character is a figure of Christ or of King James or of almost anyone else, which is the great strength of “Fluellenism” and also its great weakness, since a method that can prove anything proves nothing.

Liberal Imperialism and Wilkie Collins’s Antonina

2018 ◽  
pp. 103-132
Author(s):  
Laura Eastlake
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
Liberal Imperialism

This chapter outlines how the British empire from the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries was transformed from a naval, commercialist enterprise, for which ancient Greece and the maritime Athenian empire had proven a much more fitting parallel, to an expansionist, land-based project, which drew increasingly on Roman models. It outlines how imperial expansion from the 1840s catalysed a shift away from the mercantile manliness of previous centuries, towards the privileging of militaristic masculinities more in keeping with a robust, expanding empire. The second part of the chapter looks in detail at Wilkie Collins’s first published novel Antonina (1850), which, in a marked departure from the ‘antique fictions’ of earlier nineteenth-century novelists, embraces Rome in order to celebrate a liberal imperial style of masculinity and a hybrid Romano-Germanic cultural identity for Britain’s imperial male.

Heirs to Rome

2019 ◽  
pp. 49-74
Author(s):  
Su Fang Ng
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
Alexander The Great ◽  
Southeast Asians ◽  
Trade Relations ◽  
Imperial Identity

This chapter explores the ways in which the Ottomans claimed Alexander the Great and saw themselves as heirs to Rome. More specifically, it examines how diplomatic and literary engagements with the Ottomans helped structure both British and Southeast Asian engagements with each other, coalescing around their competitive imitatio Alexandri. The chapter begins with a discussion of the flourishing diplomatic and trade relations between the peripheries and the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century and how such engagements framed trading ties that the British began to establish with Southeast Asians toward the end of the sixteenth century and in the early seventeenth. It then considers how early modern Ottomans borrowed from the Roman heritage of the Byzantines to forge a culturally-hybrid imperial identity. It suggests that Alexandrian imitations in the peripheries were possible responses to Ottoman claims to universal empire.

scholarly journals Freedom in Culture – Symbols and Myths in Building Cultural Identity

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (2(4)) ◽  
pp. 161-175
Author(s):  
Łukasz Krzak
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Alexander The Great ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Relationship

This article refers to a broadly understood issue of freedom usage in culture. It discusses the relationship between the Greeks and Macedonians, concerning the use of the name Macedonia and the image of Alexander the Great in the names, culture and symbols of both countries. The author reviews a problem of deriving benefits for one culture from another’s heritage, exemplified by Romania as the heir of the Roman Empire. Some consideration is offered also with regard to legality of such procedures and the reaction of the international opinion. The Author provides specific and undeniable examples of relevant behaviours and approximates possible scenarios of relevant situations in the future with consequences to which such conflicts may lead.

Ideologies of English in Shakespeare's Henry V

2009 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Seargeant
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
English Language ◽  
Henry V ◽  
Dramatic Narrative ◽  
The Way

This article examines the way in which the English language is conceptualized in Shakespeare's Henry V, and the role this conceptualization plays in the portrayal of an emergent national identity. By analysing how both the theme of language and the stylistic manipulation of language are foregrounded to effect the dramatic representation of cultural identity, the article considers the extent to which the play engages with early ideologies of linguistic nationalism, while also exploiting wider language ideological beliefs in its construction of character and dramatic narrative.

Marital Stability Among Jewish and Mixed Couples Following Immigration to Israel From the Former Soviet Union

2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 158-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yoav Lavee ◽  
Ludmila Krivosh
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Social Adjustment ◽  
Former Soviet Union ◽  
Marital Stability ◽  
Marital Instability ◽  
Factors Associated ◽  
Mixed Marriages ◽  
Marital Outcomes ◽  
Jewish Immigrants

This research aims to identify factors associated with marital instability among Jewish and mixed (Jewish and non-Jewish) couples following immigration from the former Soviet Union. Based on the Strangeness Theory and the Model of Acculturation, we predicted that non-Jewish immigrants would be less well adjusted personally and socially to Israeli society than Jewish immigrants and that endogamous Jewish couples would have better interpersonal congruence than mixed couples in terms of personal and social adjustment. The sample included 92 Jewish couples and 92 ethnically-mixed couples, of which 82 couples (40 Jewish, 42 mixed) divorced or separated after immigration and 102 couples (52 Jewish, 50 ethnically mixed) remained married. Significant differences were found between Jewish and non-Jewish immigrants in personal adjustment, and between endogamous and ethnically-mixed couples in the congruence between spouses in their personal and social adjustment. Marital instability was best explained by interpersonal disparity in cultural identity and in adjustment to life in Israel. The findings expand the knowledge on marital outcomes of immigration, in general, and immigration of mixed marriages, in particular.

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