Hellenism? An Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Boris Chrubasik ◽  
Daniel King
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Cultural Exchange ◽  
Time Frame ◽  
Fourth Century Bce ◽  
History Of ◽  
Individual Contributions ◽  
Political Time ◽  
The Individual

This chapter introduces the themes of the volume and the individual contributions. It argues that the cultural history of the Hellenistic East transcends the political time frame often associated with the period in Anglophone publications. Therefore, the framework of this study is extended to include the fourth century BCE as well as the first three centuries CE in order to closely investigate the processes of cultural interaction often associated with the term Hellenism. It offers examples of the presence of adapted Greek cultural and political elements in the communities of the Eastern Mediterranean, it raises the question of cross-cultural exchange and its impact on Greekness itself, and it opens the debate on whether terms such as Hellenism, Hellenistic, and Hellenization are still useful to describe the cultural processes in the period under investigation.

The ‘Cleveland Medea’ Calyx Crater and the Iconography of Ancient Greek Theatre

2005 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARTIN REVERMANN
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Special Interest ◽  
Greek Tragedy ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Fourth Century Bce ◽  
History Of

This article examines a spectacular example of Greek theatre-related vase iconography, the so-called ‘Cleveland Medea’, by studying the ways in which a painter appropriates iconography for his own narrative purposes. Of special interest are the interactions called for by the vessel from its prospective viewers in the symposium context. Throughout, the artefact is treated as an important document of the cultural history of Greek tragedy in the fourth century BCE.

Cyprus

2019 ◽  
pp. 479-491
Author(s):  
Sabine Fourrier
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
History Of

This chapter concentrates on the Phoenician presence in the island of Cyprus in the Iron Age (from the eleventh until the end of the fourth century bce). After a brief overview, it addresses the question of identification of the Cypriot Qarthadasht and the issue of a supposed Phoenician colonization in Cyprus. The political and cultural history of the Cypro-Phoenician kingdom of Kition also receives particular attention. At the same time, the widespread and multifaceted aspects of Phoenician presences on the island are underlined: Phoenician presence was not confined to Kition and Phoenician influence did not exclusively spread in the island from Kition.

American Catholics and “The Use and Abuse of Reading,” 1865–1873

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-64
Author(s):  
Erin Bartram
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Social Order ◽  
American Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
Individual Liberty ◽  
American Catholicism ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Individual ◽  
American Catholic

ABSTRACTIn the wake of the Civil War, Father Isaac Hecker launched several publishing ventures to advance his dream of a Catholic America, but he and his partners soon found themselves embroiled in a debate with other American Catholics, notably his friend and fellow convert Orestes Brownson, over the “use and abuse of reading.” Although the debate was certainly part of a contemporary conversation about the compatibility of Catholicism and American culture, this essay argues that it was equally rooted in a moment of American anxiety over a shifting social order, a moment when antebellum faith in the individual was being tested by the rights claims of women and Americans of color. Tacitly accepting and internalizing historical claims of intrinsic and through-going Catholic “difference,” claims offered both by American Protestants and American Catholics like Brownson, scholars often presume that debates within American Catholicism reflect “Catholic” concerns first and foremost, qualifying their utility as sources of “American” cultural history. By examining American Catholic discussions of reading, individual liberty, social order, and gender in the 1860s and 1870s, this essay argues that Brownson's arguments against the compatibility of American and Catholic life were in fact far more representative of ascendant ideas in American culture than Hecker's hopeful visions of a Catholic American future made manifest through the power of reading. In doing so, it demonstrates the ways that American Catholicism can be a valuable and complex site for studying the broader history of religion and culture in the United States.

scholarly journals Art across Frontiers: Cross-cultural Encounters in America. Introduction

2013 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 301-311
Author(s):  
STEPHANIE LEWTHWAITE
Keyword(s):  
Visual Arts ◽  
Cultural Exchange ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Artistic Practice ◽  
Short Introduction ◽  
Cultural Encounters ◽  
Individual Contributions ◽  
The Individual

This short introduction provides a brief overview of the special issue, by addressing the main historiographical and theoretical concerns that unite the individual contributions and by placing the essays in comparative, inter-American and interdisciplinary perspective. What do comparative analyses tell us about patterns of cross-cultural exchange in the visual arts? More specifically, what do these analyses tell us about the role of ethnic agency and audience, and the complex relationship between artistic practice and the “mainstream,” the local and the global?

Gothic Literature

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vittoria Dolcetti Corazza
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Cultural Background ◽  
Gothic Literature ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Manuscript Tradition ◽  
Roman Provinces ◽  
History Of

This essay involves a review of Gothic literature through the presentation of the documents that have reached us today; the most important is the translation of the Bible completed by the Arian Visigoth bishop Ulfila in Moesia in the second half of the fourth century. To better understand the cultural background behind the composition of the Gothic documents, this essay also gives an overview of the cultural history of the Goths, in particular the process of their conversion to the Arian doctrine of Christianity, which came about in the multicultural, multiethnic environment in the Roman provinces of Dacia and Moesia. Particular attention is paid to the manuscript tradition that directs us to Ostrogothic Italy (in the fifth to sixth centuries), where the Bible enjoyed wide diffusion: it was copied several times, studied in Gothic and Latin exegetical schools, and used in the liturgy and catecheses.

‘All the World’s a Stage-Painting’: Scenery, Optics, and Greek Epistemology

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. F. Burnyeat
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Early History ◽  
Sense Perception ◽  
Phenomenal Experience ◽  
The World ◽  
Fourth Century Bce ◽  
History Of ◽  
Epistemological Debate ◽  
Underlying Reality

In the fourth century BCE, Anaxarchus and Monimus compared the world to stage-painting, to express scepticism about sense-perception and the worthlessness of human affairs, respectively. But the comparison traces back to Democritus’ discussion of Anaxagoras’ famous claim, a century earlier, that ‘appearances are a sight of things unseen’. According to Vitruvius, they were influenced by what Agatharchus had written about stage-painting, something that can be assessed properly only by considering the genre of technical treatises and the claims of those who were first to write on a subject. The comparison with phenomenal experience should ultimately be credited to Anaxagoras, though the points that he and Democritus make differ, owing to their different views of how the macroscopic world is related to underlying reality. These texts are thus not about the early history of perspectival painting, but stem from a fifth-century epistemological debate about what, if anything, sense-perception reveals about reality.

Hellenism and the Local Communities of the Eastern Mediterranean

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Greek Language ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
Individual Contributions ◽  
Local Engagement ◽  
The Many

This volume focuses on questions of Greek and non-Greek cultural interaction in the eastern Mediterranean and the ancient Near East during a broadly defined Hellenistic period from 400 BCE–250 CE. While recent historiographical emphasis on the non-Greek cultures of the eastern Mediterranean is a critical methodological advancement, this volume re-examines the presence of Greek cultural elements in these areas. The regions discussed—Asia Minor, Egypt, the Levant, and Mesopotamia—were quite different from one another; so, too, were the cross-cultural interactions we can observe in each case. Nevertheless, overarching questions that unite these local phenomena are addressed by leading scholars in their individual contributions. These questions are at the heart of this volume: Why did the non-Greek communities of the Eastern Mediterranean engage so closely with Greek cultural forms and political and cultural practices? How did this engagement translate into the daily lives of the non-Greek cultures of Asia Minor, the Levant, Mesopotamia, and Egypt? Local engagement differed from region to region, but some elements, such as local forms of the polis and writing in the Greek language, were attractive for many of the non-Greek communities from fourth-century Anatolia to second-century Babylon. The Greek empires and the Greek communities of the Eastern Mediterranean, too, were transformed by these local interpretations. The presence of adapted, changed, and locally interpreted Greek elements deeply entrenched in each community’s culture are for us the many forms of Hellenisms, but it is ultimately these categories, too, that this volume wishes to examine.

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