Sincerity’s Champions

2019 ◽  
pp. 90-117
Author(s):  
Leonard Diepeveen
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Aesthetic Movement ◽  
The Past ◽  
Early Twentieth Century

This chapter looks at the different ways in which intent functions in aesthetic creation and experience, what counted as signs of sincere intent in the early twentieth century, and what aspects of modernism threatened the effortless functioning of such signs. It argues that in the early twentieth century the signs of sincere intent were under contention, as they always are at moments of cultural change and ideological contestation. In any new aesthetic movement or cultural context, one which appears to break with the past rather than just modulate it, the signs of sincere intent—because they are contextually and socially understood and negotiated—have to be renegotiated. Radically new works, works that are most in violation of the time’s default aesthetic, will present unclear signs of intent, clouding their sincerity.

The ‘Essence’ of Egypt

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse Schotter
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
The Past ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Naguib Mahfouz

The fourth chapter restores hieroglyphs to their historical and cultural context in post-Revolutionary Egypt, exploring how interpretations of the Pharaonic past and its hieroglyphs intervened in Egypt’s twentieth century struggles for cultural and national identity. The first novels by Naguib Mahfouz and Tawfiq al-Hakim, from the 1920s and 30s, draw on the ‘Pharaonicist’ movement of the period, co-opting the European Orientalist discourses with which Egypt was defined in order to forge their own definitions of the racial and cultural ‘essence’ of Egypt. Yet these national concerns remain linked with an interest in the ontology of media forms; the chapter concludes by focusing on Shadi Abd al-Salam’s film al-Mummia, from 1969, which looks back to early twentieth century Pharaonicism and connects its attempt to reclaim the past with film’s ability to record and preserve Egyptian hieroglyphs and artifacts.

The Obligation to Choose

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Crossland
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
The Past ◽  
Light Quanta ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Wave Particle Duality ◽  
Night And Day ◽  
Scientific Ideas

Chapter 1 explores Woolf’s writings up to the end of 1925 in relation to scientific ideas on wave-particle duality, providing the ‘retrospect of Woolf’s earlier novels’ which Michael Whitworth has suggested shows that she was working ‘in anticipation of the physicists’. The chapter as a whole challenges this idea of anticipation, showing that Woolf was actually working in parallel with physicists, philosophers, and artists in the early twentieth century, all of whom were starting to question dualistic models and instead beginning to develop complementary ones. A retrospect on wave-particle duality is also provided, making reference to Max Planck’s work on quanta and Albert Einstein’s development of light quanta. This chapter pays close attention to Woolf’s writing of light and her use of conjunctions, suggesting that Woolf was increasingly looking to write ‘both/and’ rather than ‘either/or’. Among other texts, it considers Night and Day, Mrs Dalloway, and ‘Sketch of the Past’.

scholarly journals ‘From Zionism to Communism’: Emilio Sereni and the Consiglio di Gestione in postwar Italy

Modern Italy ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Andrea Bonfanti
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Previous Experience ◽  
Past Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Postwar Italy

This essay demonstrates that it is impossible to appreciate the actions of the Italian communist Emilio Sereni without considering his Zionist background. Anyone who is interested in understanding the complexities of communism in the past century and to avoid simplistic conclusions about this ideology will benefit from the study. The problem at stake is that researchers often approach communism in a monolithic manner, which does not adequately explain the multiform manifestations (practical and theoretical) of that phenomenon. This ought to change and to this extent this essay hopes to contribute to that recent strand of historical research that challenges simplistic views on communism. More specifically, by analysing the Management Councils that Sereni created in postwar Italy, we can see that many of their features in fact derived from, or found their deepest origins in, his previous experience as a committed socialist Zionist. The study, then, also relates Sereni to and looks at the broader experiences of early twentieth-century Zionism and Italian communism in the early postwar years.

Christianity, Plurality and Vernacular Religion in early Twentieth-Century Glastonbury: A Sign of Things to Come?

2015 ◽  
Vol 51 ◽  
pp. 302-321
Author(s):  
Marion Bowman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Considerable Heterogeneity ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Past ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Vernacular Religion ◽  
Important Time ◽  
To Come ◽  
Shed Light

This essay focuses upon a significant place, Glastonbury, at an important time during the early twentieth century, in order to shed light on a particular aspect of Christianity which is frequently overlooked: its internal plurality. This is not simply denominational diversity, but the considerable heterogeneity which exists at both institutional and individual level within denominations, and which often escapes articulation, awareness or comment. This is significant because failure to apprehend a more detailed, granular picture of religion can lead to an incomplete view of events in the past and, by extension, a partial understanding of later phenomena. This essay argues that by using the concept of vernacular religion a more nuanced picture of religion as it is – or has been – lived can be achieved.

scholarly journals The Idea of Russian Symbolism about the Synthesis of Cultural Forms in the Context of Postmodern Culture

ICONI ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 126-136
Author(s):  
Nadezhda A. Tsareva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Information Technologies ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
The Past ◽  
Russian Symbolism ◽  
Postmodern Art ◽  
Cultural Forms ◽  
Synthetic Media ◽  
Integrity Of Life

The relevance of the topic is due to the attention to trends in the development of culture. The synthesis of cultural forms is one of the important factors in the dynamics of culture. The teaching of Russian symbolism about the synthesis of cultures was analyzed in the scientifi c literature of the entire twentieth century. The novelty of the research is to compare the idea of art synthesis in the early twentieth and twenty-fi rst centuries. Two aspects of the idea of synthesis are considered: 1) the relevance of the idea of art synthesis in the postmodern era; 2) music and the visual series as organizing centers of art synthesis in the era of information technology. The purpose of this article is to examine the teaching of Russian symbolism about the integration of various forms of art and the features of synthesis in the postmodern era. The idea of integrating cultural forms was one of the key elements in Russian symbolism at the beginning of the twentieth century and was interpreted as a real prospect for the development of culture. In a broad sense, synthesis in symbolism meant the integrity of life, the integration of all spheres of human activity, the “organic connection” of cultures of the past and present. The synthesis can be realized on the basis of the art of symbolism, which can create a new culture. The synthesis of arts was understood as the beginning of the formation of a new culture. The core of the synthesis of arts, the symbolists saw music. Postmodern art is characterized by synthetism. Computer and information technologies create new forms of synthetic media art. The video series becomes the center of integration construction of postmodern audiovisual culture forms. The symbolist idea of the synthesis of arts as the beginning of cultural change in the postmodern era remains a utopian project. But the creation of new art forms in postmodern culture i s based on integration. New technologies are becoming a factor that determines the specifi cs of the synthesis of arts and infl uences the dynamics of culture. Both in Russian symbolism and in modern art, the goal of art synthesis is to present an integral image of the world, to form a system of worldview attitudes.

Transgressing Boundaries; Transcending Bodies: Sublimation and the Abject Corpus in Uncanny Stories and Tales Told by Simpson

May Sinclair ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire Drewery
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Human Subject ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Personal Crisis ◽  
Textual Bodies ◽  
Psychoanalytic Theories ◽  
Subjective Identity

This chapter traces an early-twentieth century cultural change in perceptions of the nature and representation of reality, the breakdown of the dominant Victorian discourses of humanism and realism and the concurrent Modernist reconstitution of the human subject. I examine this epochal shift through a consideration of May Sinclair’s engagement with contemporary philosophical and psychoanalytical discourses, her personal crisis of Anglican faith and her growing interest in philosophical Idealism. The theme of guilt, this chapter will claim, is closely associated in Sinclair’s writing with the Modernist re-examination of both physical and textual bodies in the light of burgeoning contemporary discourses – both philosophical and scientific – surrounding subjective identity. Guilt is constantly evoked through an emphasis on spirituality and mystical themes and their frequent juxtaposition with psychoanalytic theories of sublimation.

Swanscombe: A Standard Stone-Age Sequence for Britain?

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne O'Connor
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
British Museum ◽  
Geological Survey ◽  
Research Centre ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
The Past ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Apparent Loss ◽  
Differences Of Opinion ◽  
Age Sequence

In the early twentieth century, Palaeolithic research seemed to be flourishing on the Continent. Commont was carrying out groundbreaking work in the Somme, and rich hauls were being recovered from the reindeer-caves of France and Spain. France could also boast a research centre: the Institute of Human Palaeontology, where Boule, Breuil, and Obermaier held posts. Britain, though, was weighed down by nostalgia: unfavourable contrasts were being drawn between current research and the glorious decades of the past when Evans and Prestwich had brought such renown to British investigations. This apparent loss of impetus was noted abroad. Boule considered the British to have sunk into insularity after 1875, never to regain their early brilliance; in 1912, Breuil remarked at a luncheon party in Cambridge that no one in England knew anything about prehistory. The British Museum’s Guide to the Antiquities of the Stone Age, published in 1911 at the height of Commont’s work, declared: ‘the French system has now been revised in the light of recent discoveries, and is the basis of all Continental classifications’. It was regretted that the English river drifts had still not received any systematic excavations, and that the implements in these sediments still lay in confusion. This Guide was produced by Reginald Smith of the British Museum under the direction of Charles Hercules Read (1857–1929). In 1912, the same year that Breuil made his disparaging comment, Read arranged for Smith to excavate in one of the most productive Palaeolithic localities of the Thames Valley: Swanscombe village. Smith was assisted by Henry Dewey (1876–1965) of the Geological Survey, but the negotiations that gained Dewey’s help would also reveal differences of opinion between their two respective institutions about the value of Palaeolithic research. The connections drawn by Smith to the Continental sequence after working at Swanscombe would lift the gloom about British backwardness. These connections would also help draw the Palaeolithic and geological sequences closer together.

The Women Who Wrote

Sweet Mystery ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Ellen M. Peck
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Physical Attractiveness ◽  
Musical Theater ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Victorian Era ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Press

This chapter introduces some of the female playwrights of the early twentieth century and examines some of the social conditions under which they worked. It argues that many of them represented a major cultural change for women of the period who were leaving the Victorian era behind and forging new paths in the young century. But the press frequently undermined their efforts by presenting them as wives instead of individuals, scrutinizing their physical attractiveness, and implying that playwriting was a hobby on the same level as gardening or homemaking. The chapter then shifts to the challenges of writing for the musical theater and collaborating with other writers. It concludes with examples of Young’s correspondence with the Shuberts and demonstrates her ability to navigate the business side of the theater.

scholarly journals The origins of quantum biology

2018 ◽  
Vol 474 (2220) ◽  
pp. 20180674 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johnjoe McFadden ◽  
Jim Al-Khalili
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Quantum Mechanics ◽  
Enzyme Catalysis ◽  
Quantum Biology ◽  
Classical Physics ◽  
The Past ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Biological Phenomena ◽  
Avian Navigation

Quantum biology is usually considered to be a new discipline, arising from recent research that suggests that biological phenomena such as photosynthesis, enzyme catalysis, avian navigation or olfaction may not only operate within the bounds of classical physics but also make use of a number of the non-trivial features of quantum mechanics, such as coherence, tunnelling and, perhaps, entanglement. However, although the most significant findings have emerged in the past two decades, the roots of quantum biology go much deeper—to the quantum pioneers of the early twentieth century. We will argue that some of the insights provided by these pioneering physicists remain relevant to our understanding of quantum biology today.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document