After-Lives

2020 ◽  
pp. 585-598
Author(s):  
Nora Goldschmidt
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
Literary Biography ◽  
Classical Scholarship ◽  
Limits Of Knowledge ◽  
Roman Poetry ◽  
Literary Biographies ◽  
Creative Life

This chapter explores biographical receptions of Greek and Roman poets in the twentieth century. Classical scholarship has now begun to recognize ancient biography as a creative mode of reception in Antiquity. In the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, reading the texts of Greek and Roman poetry for the lives of their authors has been an especially rich and multifaceted mode of reception, providing for many readers a means of grappling with the ancient texts within the changing cultural landscape of modernity. Yet, unlike the medieval and early modern traditions of literary biography, in the twentieth century, academic and creative Lives have tended to part company. When it comes to Greek and Roman poets, though a few full-length literary biographies that still attempt to claim factual status have been produced, conventional narrative biographies that aim to set out the ‘facts’ are generally only found in isagogic contexts such as introductions to texts and translations, or textbooks of literary history. Moreover, partly because modern authors are acutely aware that there are few ‘facts’ beyond the poets’ works themselves on which to base their material, and partly as a broader consequence of modern preoccupations with fragmentation and the limits of knowledge, creative life-writing about the ancient poets in this period is found more frequently in ludic snapshots rather than full-blown narrative biographies.

scholarly journals Rāṅgey Rāghav’s Literary Biographies, Loī kā tānā and Ratnā kī bāt, in the 1950s and the Debates on the Status of Indian Women and Dalits

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabio Mangraviti
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Context ◽  
The Political ◽  
Literary Biography ◽  
Indian Women ◽  
The Status ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Literary Biographies

The article proposes to investigate the political and ideological uses of Hindi literary biography, with focus on two texts by Rāṅgey Rāghav, Loī kā tānā (“Loi’s Warp’’) and Ratnā kī bāt (“Ratna’s Speech”), based on lives of Kabir and Tulsīdās respectively. The relevance of Rāghav’s biographies goes beyond the merely literary and derives from the ideological and political functions played by these texts in the period they were written. Viewed by Rāghav as complementary works with a didactic and ideological value, they move away from the ‘brahmanical’ interpretations of the early modern Hindi poets by scholars of the 1920s and 1930s. To understand Rāghav’s motives and strategies, one needs to examine the ideological and political context in which he recast values linked to the main figures of the early modern devotional (bhakti) literature. As the 1950s witnessed debates on the status of Indian women and Dalit communities, the same becoming crucial to Hindi literary sphere, special attention needs to be paid to the representation, in Rāghav’s biographies, of Loī and Ratnā—Kabīr’s and Tulsīdās’ wives respectively—who embody some of the politically and ideologically progressive slogans which Rāghav projected on to these poets. The present work, based on recent studies on literary biography (Benton 2005, 2011, Middlebrook 2006, Miller 2001), is also an attempt to investigate some of the intellectual and ideological aporias which seem to have affected Hindi literary progressivism since the first decades of the postcolonial period.

Madness and the Romantic Poet

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Whitehead
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Medical Literature ◽  
Life Writing ◽  
Literary Biography ◽  
Romantic Poetry ◽  
Romantic Poet ◽  
Late Eighteenth

This book examines writing that has linked poetry and poets to madness, covering early literary criticism, biography, medical literature, and poetry itself, and moving between the late eighteenth and the twentieth century. More specifically, its purpose is to offer an account of the development and dissemination of the figure of the ‘Romantic mad poet’ in the nineteenth century, and to show how this figure interacted with coeval ideas about genius or creativity, and the varying fortunes in reception and reputation of Romantic poets, poetry, and conceptions of Romanticism generally. The opening sections address the currency of popular myths on the topic, and the relevance of modern psychological studies on mental illness and creativity. The greater part of the book focuses on reception, broadly conceived, discussing the Romantic conversation with classical and early modern ideas about poetic madness; attitudes towards the creative and literary mind in the psychiatric medicine of the period; contemporary reviews of Romantic poetry, and the hostile rhetoric of insanity they deployed; and life-writing, moving from early brief lives and popular anthologies of the ‘infirmities of genius’ to the larger narratives of irrationality in Victorian literary biography. Figures discussed include Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, Hazlitt, Byron, Lamb, Shelley, and Clare. The book reassesses how Romantic writers both contributed to and resisted the construction of the mad poet, or new and rediscovered mythologies of poetic madness. Finally, the Romantic mad poet is considered as an image of the artist in modernity, and the image’s long afterlife and importance are explained.

scholarly journals Reading the Forest: A history and analysis of Forest of Dean literature

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Jason Griffiths
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Travel Writing ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Significant Part ◽  
History Of ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
First Time

This research identifies for the first time a distinctive body of literary work that is Forest of Dean literature. It establishes a history of this literature from its first appearances at the beginning of the nineteenth century up until the end of the twentieth century. It begins to identify some of the persistent ideas and stories about the Forest in literature, and demonstrates how these relate to changing cultural and economic circumstances. By tracing the origins of the most persistent ideas and stories about the Forest to their first appearances in early-modern British topographies, travel writing, and early county histories, it demonstrates how these influenced subsequent writing set in or about the Forest of Dean. The research reveals how, emerging in the first half of the nineteenth century, four local writers produced novels and poems that began to describe the Forest as a distinctive place with a distinctive history, landscape and culture, and seeks to explain why this was: these are the first examples of Forest of Dean literature. A significant part of the thesis focuses on the development of Forest of Dean literature in the twentieth century and how this too responded to changing circumstances both locally and further afield. The final chapters of the thesis analyse key aspects of Forest of Dean literature: the myth of the Forest as isolated, the Forest as centre rather than periphery, and proposes the concept of a Forest gaze. This research makes a contribution to the understanding of a literature of place, and in particular to demonstrate that the specificity of the Forest of Dean demands that its literature be considered, in-part, on its own terms. It makes a contribution to literary history in general and opens up this rich seam of Forest literature to wider appreciation and scholarly scrutiny.

Espionage and Exile

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phyllis Lassner
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
The Political ◽  
International Crises ◽  
Popular Entertainment ◽  
John Le Carre ◽  
The Cold War

Espionage and Exile demonstrates that from the 1930s through the Cold War, British Writers Eric Ambler, Helen MacInnes, Ann Bridge, Pamela Frankau, John le Carré and filmmaker Leslie Howard combined propaganda and popular entertainment to call for resistance to political oppression. Instead of constituting context, the political engagement of these spy fictions bring the historical crises of Fascist and Communist domination to the forefront of twentieth century literary history. They deploy themes of deception and betrayal to warn audiences of the consequences of Nazi Germany's conquests and later, the fusion of Fascist and Communist oppression. Featuring protagonists who are stateless and threatened refugees, abandoned and betrayed secret agents, and politically engaged or entrapped amateurs, all in states of precarious exile, these fictions engage their historical subjects to complicate extant literary meanings of transnational, diaspora and performativity. Unsettling distinctions between villain and victim as well as exile and belonging dramatizes relationships between the ethics of espionage and responses to international crises. With politically charged suspense and narrative experiments, these writers also challenge distinctions between literary, middlebrow, and popular culture.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna-Maria Hartmann
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Literary History ◽  
First Generation ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Related Material ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The World ◽  
Early English

Mythographies were books that collected, explained, and interpreted myth-related material. Extremely popular during the Renaissance, these works appealed to a wide range of readers. While the European mythographies of the sixteenth century have been utilized by scholars, the short, early English mythographies, written from 1577 to 1647, have puzzled critics. The first generation of English mythographers did not, as has been suggested, try to compete with their Italian predecessors. Instead, they made mythographies into rhetorical instruments designed to intervene in topical debates outside the world of classical learning. Because English mythographers brought mythology to bear on a variety of contemporary issues, they unfold a lively and historically well-defined picture of the roles myth was made to play in early modern England. Exploring these mythographies can contribute to previous insights into myth in the Renaissance offered by studies of iconography, literary history, allegory, and myth theory.

scholarly journals Using KOCOA Military Terrain Analysis for the Assessment of Twentieth Century Battlefield Landscapes

Heritage ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 753-781
Author(s):  
Dirk HR Spennemann
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
Aleutian Islands ◽  
Terrain Analysis ◽  
World War ◽  
Physical Evidence ◽  
Aerial Warfare

Military terrain analysis serves as a tool to examine a battle commander’s view of a battlefield and permits to hindcast some of the rationale for actions taken. This can be augmented by physical evidence of the remains of the battle that still exist in the cultural landscape. In the case of World War II-era battlefields, such terrain analysis has to take into account the influence of aerial warfare—the interrelationship between attacking aircraft and the siting of anti-aircraft guns. This paper examines these issues using the case example of the Japanese WWII-era base on Kiska in the Aleutian Islands (Alaska).

Salvage

2015 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 845-859
Author(s):  
EVAN CALDER WILLIAMS
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Insurance Law ◽  
Future Possibility ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Personal Risk ◽  
Critical Approaches ◽  
History Of

This essay develops a history of salvage both as particular activity and as concept, arguing that it has quietly become one of the fundamental structures of thought that shape how we envision future possibility. However, the contemporary sense of the word, which designates the recuperation or search for value in what has already been destroyed, is a recent one and represents a significant transformation from the notion of salvage in early modern European maritime and insurance law. In that earlier iteration, salvage denoted payment received for helping to avert a disaster, such as keeping the ship and its goods from sinking in the first place. Passing through the dislocation of this concept into private salvage firms, firefighting companies, military usage, avant-garde art, and onto the human body itself in the guise of “personal risk,” the essay argues that the twentieth century becomes indelibly marked by a sense of the disaster that has already occurred. The second half of the essay passes into speculative culture, including fiction, video games, and film, to suggest that the most critical approaches to salvage have often come under the sign of science fiction but that the last decade in particular has shown how recent quotidian patterns of gentrification and defused antagonism have articulated stranger shifts in the figure of salvage than any speculative imaginary can currently manage.

Життєтворчість Іллі Саца у вітчизняному культурному просторі початку ХХ століття

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (36) ◽  
Author(s):  
O. Badalov
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Creative Activity ◽  
Analysis Method ◽  
Music Criticism ◽  
Comprehensive Understanding ◽  
Musical Life ◽  
Humanitarian Space ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Creative Life

The subject of the study is comprehensive understanding of the life and creativity by I. Sats – a significant figure in the national musical life of the early twentieth century.The purpose of the article is exploring the circumstances of I. Sats’ activity in the socio-cultural context of the era.The methodology of the article includes: historical and chronological method – for studying the events of the artist’s biography; source method – for research of archival materials, correspondence, reconstruction of composer’s creative life; hermeneutical analysis method – for interpretation of literary inheritance (libretto, music criticism) by I. Sats in the context of the early twentieth century; logic-generalization method – to summarize the results of the study.As a result of the research, a complex view on the multivectoral creative activity by I. Sats was formed, his significant role in the formation of new genres of musical and theatrical creativity, development of the humanitarian space of Chernihiv, Irkutsk, and Moscow was proved. The application of the results of the research in scientific, music-pedagogical and educational activities will significantly expand the established ideas about the development of the national musical culture.Key words: music for theater, Moscow Art Theater, satirical opera, I. Sats, Chernihiv region, Irkutsk music classes.

Unexpected Subversions: Modern Colonialism, Globalization, and Commodity Culture

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Burke
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Large Class ◽  
Consumer Culture ◽  
Global Culture ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Commodity Culture ◽  
Consumer Agency ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
History Of

Scholars studying the history of modern colonialism have been more reluctant to make strongly contrarian claims about consumerism and commodification similar to those made by early modern Europeanists because they are more unsettled by some of the implications of their own studies. Modern consumer culture is strongly mapped to ‘Westernization’ and globalization. There is a very large class of scholarly studies that in some respect or another discuss the association between colonialism and consumption in nineteenth- and twentieth-century global culture. Even constrained to the Western European states that created or extended formal empires in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific after 1860, studies such as Anne McClintock's intricate reading of British commodity culture indicate the extent to which colonial meanings and images were circulating within metropolitan societies. This article discusses modern colonialism, globalization, and commodity culture. It first examines the middle classes, nations, and modernity, and then considers consumer agency in the context of globalization.

Computer Reliability and Public Policy: Limits of Knowledge of Computer-Based Systems

1996 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
James H. Fetzer
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Technological Innovation ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Limits Of Knowledge ◽  
Computer Based ◽  
Computer Reliability ◽  
Computing Machines ◽  
Mental Exertion ◽  
Principal Contribution

Perhaps no technological innovation has so dominated the second half of the twentieth century as has the introduction of the programmable computer. It is quite difficult if not impossible to imagine how contemporary affairs—in business and science, communications and transportation, governmental and military activities, for example—could be conducted without the use of computing machines, whose principal contribution has been to relieve us of the necessity for certain kinds of mental exertion. The computer revolution has reduced our mental labors by means of these machines, just as the Industrial Revolution reduced our physical labor by means of other machines.

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