Diedrich Knickerbocker, Regular Bred Historian

2018 ◽  
pp. 29-55
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Insko
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
The Self ◽  
Washington Irving ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
History Writing ◽  
History Of ◽  
Chronological Sequence ◽  
Alter Ego ◽  
Rip Van Winkle

Chapter 1 analyzes the self-consciousness—and uncanny postmodernity—of Washington Irving in the various works attributed to his historian alter ego Diedrich Knickerbocker, particularly A History of New York and “Rip Van Winkle.” I argue that Irving’s Knickerbocker writings inaugurated an under-recognized tradition of antebellum writing devoted less to the creation of a coherent national past than to theorizing “history” itself. Irving’s A History of New York (1809) forms a kind of practical illustration of the dismantling of history writing in our own time. Irving’s metahistorical discourse, I claim, cannot be adequately accounted for by conventional historicist contextualization, by confining his works to a particular moment in time, much less one that has been superseded by or that is irretrievably distant and distinct from the critical present. Working in tandem with A History of New York’s disquisition on the mutability of historical knowledge is the experience of history “Rip Van Winkle” offers to its readers. A story of temporal dislocation, “Rip Van Winkle” exploits and critiques Rip’s—and the reader’s—desire to settle upon an orienting present and locate that present within a chronological sequence (before, during, and after the war).

Gujarat in the History of the Indian Ocean

2019 ◽  
pp. 52-67
Author(s):  
Lakshmi Subramanian
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Western Indian Ocean ◽  
Maritime History ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
History Writing ◽  
New Methods ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Indian Ocean

This chapter takes a stock taking exercise of the history writing on Gujarat and Indian maritime history over the last five decades. It identifies the major shifts and emphases that mark the nature of historical knowledge. What these hold for the discipline of history in general and how these inflect the case study of Gujarat in particular are examined. The intention of such a stock taking exercise is also to consider the importance of recovering and reading new and local archives and of incorporating new methods into standard historical work. The author also explores the most significant shifts that have emerged in the recent historiography of the Indian Ocean and of maritime Gujarat: study of law and piracy and Muslim seafaring and sailing practices in the western Indian Ocean.

Washington Irving

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Scraba
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
English Language ◽  
The United States ◽  
Washington Irving ◽  
Christopher Columbus ◽  
Hudson Valley ◽  
New Amsterdam ◽  
Critical Success ◽  
History Of

Washington Irving (b. 1783–d. 1859) had a long and diverse career as an author and public figure. Irving first published satirical essays (as “Jonathan Oldstyle”) for his brother Peter’s newspaper in 1802–1803. He collaborated with his brother William and James Kirke Paulding on the 1807–1808 satirical periodical Salmagundi, which was wildly popular in New York. A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty (1809), narrated by the fictitious xenophobic historian Diedrich Knickerbocker, was at once an accurate history of New Amsterdam, a satire on Thomas Jefferson’s administration, and a meditation on the writing of history. Irving moved to Europe in 1815 as an agent for his brothers’ business, but after the business went bankrupt in 1818, Irving set about making a living through his writing. The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819–1820) was published nearly simultaneously in installments in the United States and the United Kingdom to secure copyright in both; it was an immediate success and was lauded on both sides of the Atlantic. His attempts to follow up this initial success with similar collections of tales and sketches (Bracebridge Hall [1822] and Tales of a Traveller [1824]) met with considerably less commercial and critical success. Invited to Spain in 1824 to translate newly available documents from Columbus’ expeditions, Irving instead produced The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (1828), which became the standard English-language account of Columbus and went through 175 editions in the United States and Europe. Irving’s subsequent travels in southern Spain produced A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada (1829) and the immensely popular “Spanish Sketch-Book,” The Alhambra (1832). During this period Irving also produced a biography of the Prophet Muhammad, which was eventually published in 1849 as Mahomet and His Successors. Irving finally returned to the United States in 1832, almost immediately participating in an expedition preparing for Indian removal, which was recounted in A Tour on the Prairies (1835). John Jacob Astor then commissioned him to write Astoria (1836), a history of the fur-trading colony, while he also collected materials for another Western narrative, The Adventures of Captain Bonneville (1837). Apart from a period as American Minister to Spain (1842–1846), during which he mediated on behalf of Isabella II during the Carlist Wars, Irving spent much of the rest of his life building his Hudson Valley home called Sunnyside. His final work was the monumental five-volume Life of George Washington (1855–1859). Not only was Irving the first American writer to achieve international celebrity, but he served as a US ambassador; revived tourist interest in Andalusia; shaped the profession of authorship in America and Europe; produced the first comprehensive histories of New Amsterdam/New York, Columbus, and the founder of Islam in English; and wrote the first and perhaps best-known American short stories.

scholarly journals Historical Suggestions in the Ancient Hindu Epic, the Mahábhárata

1885 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 272-292
Author(s):  
Charles J. Stone
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
Paradise Lost ◽  
Washington Irving ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
Single Author ◽  
Waverley Novels ◽  
History Of

This word is a combination of mahá, great, and bhárata, supporter. Bhárata is the ancient name of northern Hindustan, and was derived from a celebrated early monarch. This ‘great supporter’ poem extends in length to about 215,000 longlines, as Professor Monier Williams of Oxford has observed. Milton's ‘Paradise Lost’ only contains about 10,600. Even the voluminous Spenser's ‘Fairy Queen’ has not more than some 30,000. It is ascribed to a celebrated ancient Sage, who is also recorded to have compiled the Vedas (i.e, books of knowledge), and to have written thePuranas (i.e. ‘ancient’ books of the Hindu religions), which belong to phases of religious thought subsequent to the Vedic but professing to be associated with the Vedas. As his name simply means ‘collector or compiler,’ it is suggestive of his being mythical. Introductory recitals, in the poem itself, assign it to Vyasa, just as Washington Irving ascribes his ‘History of New York’ to Knickerbocker. Vaisampayana is said to have recited it to a king, and may have been the author. Modern commentators of late years seem generally to have assigned it to several authors. Comparing it, however, with the Waverley novels, as the work of one man, it does not seem beyond the capacity of a single author. Fifteen years’ labour, about the time bestowed by Gibbon on his ‘History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,’ would complete the work at the rate of some fifty lines per diem, allowing for holy days. It is written in what is styled the classical Sanscrit.

The First Wave

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold D. Morales
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
The United States ◽  
Organizational Models ◽  
History Of

Chapter 1 introduces the history of Islamic Spain and the remembrance of it by the first Latino Muslim group in the United States, la Alianza Islámica, the Islamic Alliance. Although there have been several recorded instances of individual Latinos embracing Islam since the 1920s, no direct historical link exists between Muslims in Spain and Latino Muslims in the United States. Instead, the memory of Islamic Spain has been used to frame Latinos as historically connected to Islam rather than completely foreign to it. Additionally, the Alianza drew from other civil rights organizational models to develop several centers in New York where they worked to propagate Islam, provide social services, and engage in political activism. Additionally, the Alianza experienced marginalization from broader Muslim organizations and sought to develop autonomously from them. Through its unique origin histories and various activities, the Alianza helped to crystalize a first wave of Latino Muslims.

Staging Integration

2019 ◽  
pp. 32-71
Author(s):  
Rebekah J. Kowal
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Natural History ◽  
York City ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Educational Outreach ◽  
The Public ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

Between 1943 and 1952, the American Museum of Natural History sponsored a dance program called Around the World with Dance and Song. Chapter 1 focuses on the history of this program as evidence of the museum’s efforts to stage globalism. Drawing on extensive archival materials, the chapter documents the role of director Hazel Lockwood Muller to develop the program as part of the museum’s larger educational outreach activities. The chapter details how over the course of its history the program met growing cultural expectations that public institutions such as museums serve the public good. Serving in this capacity, the museum become a de facto concert dance venue, elevating the profile of international dance performance in New York City and for the nation and heightening a globalist consciousness among its audiences. Even so, the museum’s performances and the challenges the museum faced in sustaining them manifested the difficulties of putting globalism into practice. While the program was successful in elevating values of ethnic self-definition in embodied dance practices, it promoted an ideology of cultural integrationism that maintained dominant universalist assumptions about Western cultural superiority.

KARL POLANYI AT THE MARGINS OF ENGLISH SOCIALISM, 1934–1947

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-346
Author(s):  
TIM ROGAN
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Human Person ◽  
The Self ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Karl Polanyi ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
History Of

Growing interest among historians and social scientists in the work of Karl Polanyi has yet to produce detailed historical studies of how Polanyi's work was received by his contemporaries. This article reconstructs the frustration of Polanyi's attempts to make a name for himself among English socialists between his arrival from Vienna in 1934 and his departure for New York in 1947. The most obvious explanation for Polanyi's failure to find a following was the socialist historians’ rejection of his unorthodox narrative of the rise of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution inThe Great Transformation(1944). But this disappointment was anticipated in earlier exchanges revealing that Polanyi's social theory, specifically his conception of the self and its social relations, differed markedly from the views prevailing among socialists of R. H. Tawney and G. D. H. Cole's generation. As well as casting new light on the intellectual history of English socialism and variegating our understanding of the contexts in which conceptions of the human person were invoked in the interwar period, this article seeks to illuminate by example the importance of deep-seated, often tacit, commitments to particular conceptions of the self and its social relations in structuring mid-century intellectual life.

scholarly journals Sibawayhi

2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 128-131
Author(s):  
Rebecca B. Molloy
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
Short Account ◽  
Islamic Studies ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Religious Law ◽  
History Of ◽  
Technical Terms ◽  
Complex Subject

London and New York: I.B. Tauris and Oxford University Press India, inassociation with the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, 2004. 159 pages.In the “Foreword,” Michael Carter states that his book is aimed at the generalreader who is interested in the history of Arabic grammar and, in particular,in the achievement of Sibawayhi, the discipline’s architect and originator. This much-needed and long-awaited effort is a welcome addition to thefield of Arabic grammatical theory, for it contextualizes Sibawayhi’s grammaticalideas, as set forth in his Al-Kitab, by giving a short account of hisbackground and life (p. vii). The reader, whether advanced or novice, willappreciate how accessible the material has been made. To be sure, reducingSibawayhi’s complex and profound observations to 145 pages runs the riskof making it even harder to understand. But the author avoids such pitfallswith ease and grace. In fact, a knowledge of Arabic is not essential; but, asthe author says, “given the nature of the topic it will certainly be useful” (p.vii). All examples are transliterated and translated, and technical terms andbasic concepts are explained as often as possible.Despite the complex subject matter, Carter does a brilliant job describingthe Kitab’s place within the Arabo-Islamic system and the historical contextin which it was written. It is useful to spend some time on Sibawayhi’slife, even though little is actually known about it, and so chapter 1, “Sibawayhithe Person,” explores his importance through portraits in biographiesas well as from the contents of his own work. It has been convincinglyargued that the earliest form of Sibawayhi’s name (Amr ibn `Uthman Sibawayhi)is probably authentic (p. 9). That Sibawayhi was by origin a Persianwho ended up in Basra seems to be beyond contention, although neither thedate nor the place of his birth can be confirmed. All biographies agree thathe came to Basra to study religious law, either Hadith (traditions of theProphet) or basic principles of fiqh (jurisprudence), which were just beginningto take form. The details of his death are just as vague as those of hisbirth and personal history. Carter presents his readers with a short account ofthis problem, with which even the classical biographers had to wrestle (seepp. 15-16) ...

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document