Dialectics, Irony, and The Well of the Saints

J. M. Synge ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 109-135
Author(s):  
Seán Hewitt
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Racial Difference ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Dialectical Structure ◽  
Political Impact ◽  
Jacob Boehme ◽  
Source Materials ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Final Synthesis

Beginning with a reading of a short manuscript fragment, A Rabelaisian Rhapsody (1898–1900), this chapter shows that this short dramatic dialogue affords us a unique and overlooked insight into the structures and key concerns of Synge’s entire dramatic oeuvre. In doing so, the chapter excavates many new influences on Synge’s work through a close reading of new source materials by Jacob Boehme, Spinoza, Blavatsky, Nietzsche, Hegel, Rabelais, Paracelsus, and a number of esoteric figures, reinforcing the continued importance of mysticism to his dramatic development. In The Well of the Saints (1905), we find the final synthesis of the dialectical structure of ‘A Rabelaisian Rhapsody’, and the preparation for Synge’s overt sociological statements regarding modernization in Ireland in his articles ‘From the Congested Districts’, published later the same year. Synge established a spiritual basis for his aesthetic, countering asceticism with pantheism, restriction with Rabelaisian excess. The various iterations of this conflict can be traced over numerous dialogues, scenarios, and plays in his oeuvre, and this dialectical structure became subsumed into a larger literary vision of nonconformity and multidirectional irony. In turn, Synge’s spiritual and aesthetic opposition to ascetic or conforming figures began to influence his understanding of political and social change in contemporary Ireland. Finally, this chapter demonstrates that by reading The Well of the Saints as a play based in Ossianic dialogues, nineteenth-century Celticist readings of racial difference, and conflicting modes of production, we can begin to understand Synge’s drama as one urging consciously towards protest and designed political impact.

Experiments with Khomeini's Revolution in Kargil: Contemporary Shi‘a networks between India and West Asia

2014 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 370-398 ◽  
Author(s):  
RADHIKA GUPTA
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Local Politics ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
Financial Flows ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Religious Networks ◽  
Insight Into

AbstractShi‘i scholars from India have been a sizeable presence in seminaries in Iran and Iraq, both historically and today. Yet there is a dearth of scholarship on Shi‘i linkages between India and West Asia, with the exception of historical work on the patronage of shrine cities in Iraq by centres of Shi‘ism in India. Departing from this geographical and historical focus, this paper lends insight into contemporary religious networks between India and West Asia, using the example of the Twelver Shi‘a in Kargil, a region located on India's ‘border’ with Pakistan in the province of Kashmir. Kargili scholars travelled overland via Afghanistan or by sea from Bombay to Basra to study in seminaries in Iraq and Iran from the nineteenth century onwards. Increasing fluency in Urdu in post-colonial India enabled them to connect with Shi‘i institutions in other parts of India, which mediate religious, cultural, and financial flows from a transnational Shi‘ite realm. These networks ofreligiouslearning are not only conduits for the transmission of textual, doctrinal knowledge, but also for politico-religious ideologies that are selectively harnessed, and often exaggerated, to effect significant social and political changes in micro-locales. While local conflicts are over-determined by the evocation of transnational links, they also reflect, even if only through rhetorical and partial reproduction, doctrinal and politico-religious schisms among Shi‘i leaders in West Asia. This is illustrated by an ethnographic account of the activities undertaken and contestations provoked by the Imam Khomeini Memorial Trust in Kargil, a modernist reform movement that has selectively appropriated Khomeini's revolutionary ideologies to instigate social change and shape local politics and religious practice in Kargil.

scholarly journals Convents as Transnational Education Spaces in the Long Nineteenth Century

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-205
Author(s):  
Deirdre Raftery
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Female Education ◽  
Transnational Education ◽  
Religious Women ◽  
Transnational Mobility ◽  
Women In Education ◽  
Internal Forces ◽  
Source Materials ◽  
Insight Into

This article draws on primary source materials to discuss the transnational spaces of nineteenth-century convent schools, which were founded and built by religious women (nuns). The article argues that it is necessary to study the teaching Sisters and their convent schools in order to glean insight into the transnational mobility of the teaching Sisters, and the exchange of ideas between women in education spaces. Equally, gendered readings of the convent as an education space are needed. This article attempts to contribute towards starting a discussion around the nineteenth-century convent school as a transnational female education space, which was defined and delineated by both external and internal forces.

scholarly journals MOZART'S BAWDY CANONS, VULGARITY AND DEBAUCHERY AT THE WIEDNERTHEATER

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 283-308
Author(s):  
DAVID J. BUCH
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Original Source ◽  
Popular Theatre ◽  
Source Materials ◽  
Insight Into

ABSTRACTMozart's bawdy canons and use of scatalogical parlance in his letters have been described as indicative of a personality given to crass expression. Moreover, his association with Emanuel Schikaneder's supposedly dissolute Theater auf der Wieden, a boisterous venue for German stage works, has been taken as further evidence of his profligate tendencies. A review of the original source materials reveals that these views are apocryphal, originating after Mozart's death and embellished in nineteenth-century commentary and scholarship. Examples of even raunchier canons, composed by musicians with connections to Mozart, Schikaneder and the Theater auf der Wieden, provide new insight into the genre. An examination of surviving bawdy Viennese canons in their social context, together with a reconsideration of the Mozart family letters and attitudes toward vulgarity in Viennese popular theatre, reveals that lewd expressions on the stage were relatively uncommon in this period, that Mozart's use of scatalogical language was relatively mild for the time and that accounts of the composer's debauchery in his last years have little evidentiary basis.

Institutionalizing Sectarianism: The Lebanese Ja'fari Court and Shi'i Society under the French Mandate

2008 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 371-407
Author(s):  
Max Weiss
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
The State ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Result State ◽  
French Mandate ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Personal Status ◽  
South Lebanon ◽  
Insight Into

AbstractThe French Mandate authorities in Greater Lebanon formally recognized the Ja'fari madhhab in January 1926. As a result, state-led shari'a courts in Beirut, South Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley, the Lebanese Ja'fari court, were authorized to adjudicate matters of personal status—marriage, divorce, nafaqa, inheritance and property. As the first Lebanese Shi'i institution to enjoy communal autonomy granted by the state, the records from the Ja'fari courts provide insight into the everyday life-worlds of ordinary Shi'i Muslims in Lebanon during a period of gradual social change. Through a close reading of some unique cases—dealing with inheritance, maslaha and zinā—this article invites a consideration of how both the bureaucratization and practice of Shi'i law in these courts were central to the institutionalization of a new kind of Shi'i sectarianism in Mandate-era Lebanon.

Clothing in Context — Nineteenth-Century Dress and Textiles in the Thomas Hardy Archive

Costume ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucy Johnston
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Thomas Hardy ◽  
Famous People ◽  
Tess Of The D'urbervilles ◽  
Textiles And Clothing ◽  
Insight Into

This article will consider how dress, textiles, manuscripts and images in the Thomas Hardy Archive illuminate his writing and reveal the accuracy of his descriptions of clothing in novels including Far from the Madding Crowd and Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Rural clothing, fashionable styles, drawings and illustrations will shed new light on his writing through providing an insight into the people's dress he described so eloquently in his writing. The textiles and clothing in the Archive are also significant as nineteenth-century working-class dress is relatively rare. Everyday rural clothing does not tend to survive, so a collection belonging to Hardy's family of country stonemasons provides new opportunities for research in this area. Even more unusual is clothing reliably provenanced to famous people or writers, and such garments that do exist tend to be from the middle or upper classes. This article will show how the combination of surviving dress, biographical context and literary framework enriches understanding of Hardy's words and informs research into nineteenth-century rural dress.

Literary Chronicles of the Qajars’ Epoch

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 170-173
Author(s):  
Gulnar Aqiq Jafarzade
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Original Source ◽  
Literary Movement ◽  
Literary Environment ◽  
Source Materials

Abstract Following a historical appraisal and the progress of literature and poetry during the Qajar era, this article focuses on the specific literary environment in nineteenth century. As literature has effect in all areas such as cultural, social and other affairs, it is important to remember that Qajars’ rulers Fathali Shah and Nasiraddin Shah had an influential role in the comprehensive evolution of the literary environment in this period. Literary chronicles covered the works written during Qajar dynasty can be considered the most important sources for researching literary processes. Circle of poets inside and outside of the court led the new founded literary movement “bazgasht” (“Return”), turning to the their predecessors for the inspiration in this period. The most important and wealthy genre of literature were tazkiras (biographical books of anthology), based on the original source materials in Arabian, Persian, and sometimes in Turkish, especially written about poets and poetry.

Oral Testimony as Historical Source Material for the Reconstruction of the Judicial History of Shipping in India (1600-1800)

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mir Kamruzzman Chowdhary
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Maritime History ◽  
Historical Source ◽  
Alternative Source ◽  
Oral Testimony ◽  
History Of ◽  
Judicial History ◽  
Source Materials

This study was an attempt to understand how the available alternative source materials, such as oral testimonies can serve as valuable assets to unveiling certain aspects of maritime history in India. A number of themes in maritime history in India failed to get the attention of the generation of historians, because of the paucity of written documents. Unlike in Europe, the penning down of shipping activities was not a concern for the authorities at the port in India. The pamphlets and newsletters declared the scheduled departure of the ship in Europe but, in India, this was done verbally. Therefore, maritime history in India remained marginalised. Hence, in this article, I make an endeavour to perceive how the oral testimonies can help shed some new light on certain aspects of maritime history in India, such as life on the ship, maritime practices, and perceptions among the littoral people in coastal societies. This article also outlines an approach on how the broader question on the transformation of scattered maritime practices among coastal societies can be adapted and transferred into an organised institution of law by the nineteenth century, and how these can be pursued in future. I also suggest in this article that the role of Europeans, especially the British, in the process of transformation, can be investigated further through oral testimonies in corroboration with the colonial archival records.

Women and Agency in Bankim’s Rajmohan’s Wife and Tagore’s The Home and The World

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Manju Dhariwal ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Self ◽  
Indian English ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
English Novel ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Status Of Women

Written almost half a century apart, Rajmohan’s Wife (1864) and The Home and the World (1916) can be read as women centric texts written in colonial India. The plot of both the texts is set in Bengal, the cultural and political centre of colonial India. Rajmohan’s Wife, arguably the first Indian English novel, is one of the first novels to realistically represent ‘Woman’ in the nineteenth century. Set in a newly emerging society of India, it provides an insight into the status of women, their susceptibility and dependence on men. The Home and the World, written at the height of Swadeshi movement in Bengal, presents its woman protagonist in a much progressive space. The paper closely examines these two texts and argues that women enact their agency in relational spaces which leads to the process of their ‘becoming’. The paper analyses this journey of the progress of the self, which starts with Matangini and culminates in Bimala. The paper concludes that women’s journey to emancipation is symbolic of the journey of the nation to independence.

The History of ‘the Reading Public’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Collini
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Reading Public ◽  
Reading Matter ◽  
History Of ◽  
Victorian Periodicals

This chapter argues that accounts of ‘the reading public’ are always fundamentally historical, usually involving stories of ‘growth’ or ‘decline’. It examines Q. D. Leavis’s Fiction and the Reading Public, which builds a relentlessly pessimistic critique of the debased standards of the present out of a highly selective account of literature and its publics since the Elizabethan period. It goes on to exhibit the complicated analysis of the role of previous publics in F. R. Leavis’s revisionist literary history, including his ambivalent admiration for the great Victorian periodicals. And it shows how Richard Hoggart’s The Uses of Literacy carries an almost buried interpretation of social change from the nineteenth century onwards, constantly contrasting the vibrant and healthy forms of entertainment built up in old working-class communities with the slick, commercialized reading matter introduced by post-1945 prosperity.

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