The Road to Literary Culture: Revisiting the Jurchen Language Examination System

T oung Pao ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 101 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 130-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xin Wen
Keyword(s):  
School System ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
Close Connection ◽  
Literary Canon ◽  
Selection Mechanism ◽  
Examination System ◽  
The Road ◽  
Conventional View ◽  
Cultural Ideal ◽  
Jin Dynasty

This essay contextualizes the unique institution of the Jurchen language examination system in the creation of a new literary culture in the Jin dynasty (1115–1234). Unlike the civil examinations in Chinese, which rested on a well-established classical canon, the Jurchen language examinations developed in close connection with the establishment of a Jurchen school system and the formation of a literary canon in the Jurchen language and scripts. In addition to being an official selection mechanism, the Jurchen examinations were more importantly part of a literary endeavor toward a cultural ideal. Through complementing transmitted Chinese sources with epigraphic sources in Jurchen, this essay questions the conventional view of this institution as a “Jurchenization” measure, and proposes that what the Jurchen emperors and officials envisioned was a road leading not to Jurchenization, but to a distinctively hybrid literary culture.
Cet article replace l’institution unique des examens en langue Jurchen dans le contexte de la création d’une nouvelle culture littéraire sous la dynastie des Jin (1115–1234). Contrairement aux examens civils en chinois, qui s’appuyaient sur un canon classique bien établi, les examens en Jurchen se sont développés en rapport étroit avec la mise en place d’un système d’écoles Jurchen et avec la formation d’un canon littéraire en langue et en écriture Jurchen. En plus de servir à la sélection des fonctionnaires, et de façon plus importante, les examens en Jurchen s’inscrivaient dans une entreprise littéraire visant à la réalisation d’un idéal culturel. Combinant les sources chinoises avec des sources épigraphiques en langue Jurchen, l’auteur met en question l’interprétation conventionnelle des examens en Jurchen comme mesure de “jurchénisation” et suggère que ce que les empereurs et les fonctionnaires Jurchen avaient en vue était une démarche conduisant non à une jurchénisation, mais à une culture littéraire se distinguant par son caractère hybride.


Verse Miscellanies in the Eighteenth Century

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carly Watson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Significant Contribution ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
Literary Canon ◽  
The Status ◽  
Critical Understanding ◽  
Distinct Kind

The eighteenth century was an age of miscellanies; thousands of miscellaneous collections containing verse appeared in print over the course of the century. This article considers miscellanies as a distinct kind of verse collection; whereas anthologies promote authorship as a category of literary definition, miscellanies invite readers to sample a variety of poetic forms and genres and often include poems without authorial attribution. The eighteenth-century tradition of miscellanies devoted exclusively to poetry has its roots in the late seventeenth century, and many aspects of seventeenth-century miscellany culture persisted well into the next century. This article looks at a number of ways in which verse miscellanies offer fresh perspectives on eighteenth-century literary culture. The popularity and reception of particular poems and poets, the formation of the English literary canon, and the status of authorship are all areas in which miscellanies make a significant contribution to critical understanding.

Shaping History in the 1st and 2nd Centuries CE in Its Literary Culture

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eve-Marie Becker
Keyword(s):  
Literary Culture ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Substantial Contribution ◽  
Literary Canon ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Western History ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Literary Phenomenon

This chapter studies the interrelation of history-writing and literary culture. It considers the function of history-writing within the context of Hellenistic literary culture, as historiography at the time can be seen as a literary phenomenon. History-writing represents a substantial contribution to ancient literature; it circulates within the sphere of the ancient literary canon. Chronologically speaking, Mark and Luke follow in the literary tradition set by the earliest in Western history-writing, yet literary tradition among the earliest Christian authors also differs from the Greco-Roman world. Where historiographical topics and concepts vary significantly from one author to the next, in Mark and Luke, the subject of the narrative, namely, the gospel, remains surprisingly constant.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Margree ◽  
Daniel Orrells ◽  
Minna Vuohelainen
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Short Stories ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
Economic Value ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Popular Fiction ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Literary Canon ◽  
Literary Production ◽  
Professional Authorship

The introduction to the volume sets Richard Marsh in his historical context and argues that our understanding of late-Victorian and Edwardian professional authorship remains incomplete without a consideration of Marsh’s oeuvre. The introduction discusses Marsh as an exemplary professional writer producing topical popular fiction for an expanding middlebrow market. The seeming ephemerality of his literary production meant that its value was not appreciated by twentieth-century critics who were constructing the English literary canon. Marsh’s writing, however, deserves to be reread, as its negotiation of mainstream and counter-hegemonic discourses challenges our assumptions about fin-de-siècle literary culture. His novels and short stories engaged with and contributed to contemporary debates about aesthetic and economic value and interrogated the politics of gender, sexuality, empire and criminality.

Reforms to Schooling in the UK: A Review of Some Major Reforms and their Evaluation

2005 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 287-296 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra McNally
Keyword(s):  
Secondary School ◽  
School System ◽  
Comprehensive System ◽  
Market Reforms ◽  
Examination System ◽  
Compulsory Schooling ◽  
System A ◽  
The Uk

Abstract We aim to give a brief overview of some important reforms to the school system in the UK and existing evidence on their consequences. These reforms include a change in the type of secondary school open to pupils - from a selective to comprehensive system; a change in the examination system; quasi-market reforms; area-based initiatives; reforms to the content and structure of teaching; payments to encourage the pursuit of education beyond compulsory schooling.

scholarly journals Intermediate schools today : an examination of certain aspects

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
John D. Hallum
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Primary School ◽  
School System ◽  
Present Position ◽  
Examination System ◽  
Intermediate School ◽  
Intermediate Schools ◽  
Original Intention

My original intention, when I was a member of the staff of a post-primary school, was to carry out an investigation into the Post-primary Examination system in this country, but on my appointment to my present position at the beginning of this year, I decided that the best and quickest way of becoming acquainted with the Intermediate School system in New Zealand would be to make a survey of the schools of this country as they are at present.

scholarly journals NEWSBOYS: SPANISH AMERICAN PATRIOT CHILDREN AND ‘THE HAZELWOOD MAGAZINE’ IN BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND, 1820s

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. e35358
Author(s):  
Karen Racine
Keyword(s):  
Public School ◽  
School System ◽  
Public School System ◽  
Close Connection ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Pedagogical Strategies ◽  
Desirable Characteristic ◽  
Industrial Age ◽  
The Press

There was a close connection between the expansion of the press and experiments with new pedagogical strategies in the early industrial age. An expanding public school system required textbooks thus creating a whole new category of demand which appealed to printers who always on the lookout for reliable markets. At the same time, literacy was increasingly understood to be a desirable characteristic for a productive, patriotic citizenry. For a period of five years or so in the 1820s, several sons of important Spanish American patriot leaders were sent abroad to study in a progressive school called Hazelwood, near Birmingham in the heart of industrializing England. While there, the boys and their friends wrote and published a monthly periodical called the Hazelwood Magazine that clearly imitated the contents of professional newspapers andshared the underlying values of the medium.

Modes of Manuscript Transmission (Ninth–Fifteenth Centuries)

2021 ◽  
pp. 681-706
Author(s):  
Inmaculada Pérez Martín
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
Literary Canon ◽  
Multiple Functions ◽  
Manuscript Transmission ◽  
Center Periphery

The chapter presents some patterns of the transmission of Byzantine texts in their cultural context. It stresses the importance of material causes to explain the conservation or loss of texts, such as the use of a particular support or the conservation in a specific library; thus, e.g., the use of fragile Eastern paper undoubtedly explains the scarcity of manuscripts preserved from such a rich literary culture as that of the Komnenian period. It also analyzes the transmission of texts in miscellanies and the beneficial combination of ancient and Byzantine works; the role of the author and his circle, especially his disciples, in the conservation and transmission of his works; the center/periphery dialectic in an empire like Byzantium, where the learning and the literary canon promoted by the administration determined not only the texts that were most widely circulated but also those that were not. To sum up, the study of transmission offers a likely window into the values and goals of those who purchased, owned, read, and wrote books, and it can illuminate the multiple functions of books in Byzantium.

scholarly journals Dostoevsky, Siberia, and the Russian Person in Donna Tartt’s Novel The Goldfinch

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Olga Turysheva
Keyword(s):  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Russian Literature ◽  
Considerable Importance ◽  
Close Connection ◽  
Creative Work ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Main Character ◽  
The Road ◽  
Russian Literary ◽  
American Author

This article considers the Russian motifs present in the narrative of The Goldfinch (2014), a novel by the American author Donna Tartt. These include the depiction of the main character’s Russian friend, allusions to the creative work of Dostoevsky, the interpretation of his novel The Idiot made by the characters, and a detail testifying to the Siberian descent of the second main character. The author makes an attempt to analyse previously unstudied motifs connecting the story of the character with the Russian context. More particularly, she substantiates the importance of Boris Pavlikovsky’s Siberian roots. The author concludes that Tartt portrays the Russian person not only as a complex of stereotypes found in culture but in close connection with the Russian literary tradition. The article combines immanent analysis of text with hermeneutic, mythopoetical, intermedial, and intertextual methods. The author concludes that by referring to the Siberian descent of the second main character, Tartt introduces the Siberian myth into the receptive context of her novel formed on the basis of the whole corpus of Russian literature. It is a myth of Siberia as a space of liminal death and Christological initiation (acc. to V. I. Tyupa). It is proved that relying on this mythologeme makes it possible for the reader to decode the underlying semantics of the novel. It relates to the idea of the resurrection of the character facing the tragedy of death. The plot of The Goldfinch is interpreted as a plot of returning to life through the experience of staying in the land of the dead, crime, and dying. Additionally, the author analyses the function of motifs connected with Dostoevsky’s novel The Idiot. It is not only present as an allusion in Tartt’s work but as an object of the characters’ reflection. For Theo Decker, this reflection results in the acceptance of Dostoevsky’s idea of the resurrection of a great sinner. It is demonstrated that relying on his perception of Dostoevsky’s works, the character realises the circular plot of accepting life and redemption. This interpretation makes it possible to reconstruct the evangelical subtext of the novel. The novel’s ekphrastic aspect also proves it by means of the character’s reflection on The Goldfinch, a painting by Carel Fabritius. Apart from the liminal chronotope, the author analyses other chronotopes of the character that are also of considerable importance: the Christmas chronotope and the road chronotope. The poetological peculiarities revealed prove that Tartt’s works belong to the genre tradition of Bildungsroman (initiation novel). This is illustrated by other images of Dostoevsky’s works, including the ones Tartt used in her first novel The Secret History (1992).

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