“Greeting Tablets” in Early China

T oung Pao ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 98 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 295-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maxim Korolkov
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Cultural Background ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Early China ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Social Stratum ◽  
Systematic Survey ◽  
Cultural Implications ◽  
Aristocratic Culture

Since the 1930s, Chinese archaeologists have discovered a number of inscribed wooden tablets from the early Han to the Western Jin, which were identified as “greeting tablets” of two types, ci 刺 and ye 謁. As attested in transmitted accounts, these tablets played an important role in the communicative etiquette of early imperial and early medieval officialdom; during a meeting ceremony, they were presented by the guest to the host. The present article offers a systematic survey of the available corpus of excavated greeting tablets and explores their wider socio-cultural implications. As a component of the communicative etiquette of the bureaucracy, greeting tablets were instrumental in the adaptation of elements of aristocratic culture to the needs of mass officialdom—a new social stratum that in terms of cultural background differed fundamentally from the hereditary aristocracy of the pre-imperial era but occupied a comparable position as a social and political elite.
Depuis les années 1930 les archéologues chinois ont découvert de nombreuses tablettes de bois inscrites datant du début des Han jusqu’aux Jin occidentaux, qui ont été identifiées comme étant des « tablettes de salutation ». Il en existe deux types, les ci 刺 et les ye 謁. Comme l’attestent les textes transmis, ces tablettes jouaient un rôle important dans l’étiquette régissant les communications entre fonctionnaires dans la période impériale ancienne et au début de l’époque médiévale: l’hôte les présentait à l’invité au cours du cérémonial marquant leur rencontre. Cet article propose un inventaire systématique du corpus des tablettes de salutation découvertes dans les fouilles et s’intéresse plus généralement à leurs implications socio-culturelles. Partie intégrante de l’étiquette des communications, ces tablettes ont joué leur rôle dans l’adaptation de certains éléments de la culture aristocratique aux besoins de la masse des fonctionnaires, autrement dit d’un groupe social nouveau dont le fonds culturel différait fondamentalement de celui de l’aristocratie héréditaire mais dont la position en tant qu’élite sociale et politique était comparable.

Rozanov’s Philosophical Essays

2019 ◽  
Vol 60 ◽  
pp. 15-29
Author(s):  
Vasily V. Vanchugov
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Cultural Background ◽  
Chronological Order ◽  
Life Circumstances

Both training in the classical gymnasium and education at the faculty of history and philosophy of Moscow University created a certain cultural background, which allowed Rozanov to apply the appropriate techniques of realizing himself in difficult life circumstances. One of the spiritual spheres that attracted his attention was philosophy. This present article examines in chronological order Rozanov’s plans and efforts to realize himself in philosophy, his formal failures and real achievements in this field

Movers and Shakers?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander O'Hara
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Background ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Medieval Ireland

This chapter considers Columbanus’s cultural background and how this influenced his dealings with women, both in early medieval Ireland and on the Continent. In particular, women as inspiration, patrons, and antagonists are portrayed as having had a formative influence on Columbanus, primarily in the Vita Columbani, written by Jonas of Bobbio. To what extent are these relationships true of Columbanus’s own experience? In order to tease this out more fully special attention will be given to women such as Columbanus’s unnamed mother as well as to the powerful queens, Brunhild and Theodelinda.

Urban Change in Early Medieval Italy: The Example of Pavia

1966 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 82-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. A. Bullough
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Social History ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Medieval Studies ◽  
Medieval Italy ◽  
Warm Hospitality ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

Prefatory Note.—My interest in Pavia goes back at least to 1951 when I was elected Rome Scholar in Medieval Studies. I began seriously to collect material for the history of the city in the early Middle Ages in the winter and spring of 1953 when I enjoyed the warm hospitality of the Collegio Ghislieri, thanks to the efforts made on my behalf by the late Hugh Last, to whose memory this article is dedicated. The published proceedings of the Reichenau and Spoleto congresses on ‘The early medieval town’ in the 1950s clearly underlined the need for detailed studies of particular towns; but the lack of adequate archaeological evidence discouraged me from attempting such a study of early medieval Pavia. In 1964, however, Dr. A. Peroni, Director of the Museo Civico invited me to read a supplementary paper on this topic to the Convegno di Studio sul Centro Storico di Pavia held in the Università degli Studi at Pavia on July 4th and 5th of that year. The present article is an amplified and corrected version of that paper: I have made no substantial alterations to my account of the ‘urbanistica’ of early medieval Pavia—written for an audience of architects and art-historians as well as of historians—but have dealt more fully with the social history of the city in this period. Professor Richard Krautheimer read a draft of the revised version and made some pointed and helpful comments. I am greatly indebted to Dr. Peroni, not merely for the invitation to present the original paper but also for supplying illustrations and answering queries at a time when he and his staff were engaged in helping to repair the ravages of the Florence floods.

(Super)matka wcielona w superbohatera(kę). O Grach domowych I Supermatkach Elżbiety Jabłońskiej.

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (49) ◽  
pp. 82-103
Author(s):  
Natalia Kotarba (Niciejewska)
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Virgin Mary ◽  
Compound Word ◽  
Transactional Analysis ◽  
Word And Image ◽  
Cultural Implications

The present article is an attempt to examine the projects of modern Toruń artist Elżbieta Jabłońska entitled Home games and Supermatka, co-creating a kind of cycle that his eloquence both fits perfectly into the discussion on the transformation / travesty myth superheros and his revelation in the form of “(syndrome) Superwoman” and revises the same problem / issue and all its cultural implications. In this text I made attempts to investigate the above-mentioned works of Elżbieta Jabłońska, pointing to the whole spectrum of issues and problems that this kind of analysis is initiates. Use by Jabłońska compound word and image, the phenomenon of visual resume, the problem of art as a statement of mass and soliloquy at the same time, the importance of lifetimes in the form of various superheroes, a reference to the types of representational of the Virgin Mary, the concept of the game in terms of Roger Caillosa and developed by Eric Berne’s transactional analysis

Nuova Panda schiavi in mano

2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 221-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorenza Monaco
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Theoretical Analysis ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Cultural Background ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Labour Relations ◽  
Global Capital ◽  
Corporate Strategies ◽  
Worth Reading ◽  
The Relationship

As the result of an interesting experiment in co-research, the crs1 group provides us with a short but pointed political pamphlet that is worth reading for several of its aspects. First, by explicitly adopting a labour perspective, it helps us to unravel the highly ideological design which lies behind the recent ‘politics of production’2 of the Italian fiat.3 Second, by trying to connect a theoretical analysis of the transformations undergone by labour under neoliberalism with the need for renewed and more effective labour organisation, it gives us the opportunity to rethink the relationship between theory and praxis, as originally envisaged by the Italian workerists.4 From this unique political and cultural background, and from Tronti’s theses in particular,5 the research derives not only its basic methodological tools, but also its overall interpretative key. Finally, at a broader level, the book can offer us a useful contribution to the current debate in Marxist political economy, by shedding light on issues concerning capital – labour relations, corporate strategies and resistance practices that are now globally characterising the production realm. The present article aims to highlight the relevance of the conflict lately emerged within the fiat plant under analysis, the possibility of reconsidering a workerist view, and the still strong need for antagonist positions to counter global capital strategies.

Locations of Authenticity: S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka and the Search for Indigeneity

2017 ◽  
Vol 76 (2) ◽  
pp. 383-400 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harshana Rambukwella
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Nationalist Discourse ◽  
British Rule ◽  
The People ◽  
Cultural Implications ◽  
The Face ◽  
Paddy Cultivation ◽  
Village Life

Visions of a grand hydraulic civilization and a pastoral ideal of paddy cultivation–based village life have shaped Sinhala nationalist discourse since the late nineteenth century. Derived from colonial sociology, the local political elite fashioned these ideas into a discourse of Sinhala authenticity that positioned themselves as legitimate representatives of the people while simultaneously placing them as custodians of national culture. However, this was a fraught dynamic given the elites’ highly Anglicized nature and their inability to maintain control over this discourse in the face of wider participation in public culture in the first half of the twentieth century. S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike, who became prime minister in 1956, eight years after Sri Lanka gained independence from British rule, is popularly seen as one of the few elite politicians of the late colonial period who sought to engage substantively in mass-based politics and is remembered as a heroic anti-colonial figure. This article explores the contradictions and ironies in Bandaranaike's turn to indigeneity and the political and cultural implications of this turn. It also briefly discusses authenticity's continued resonance in contemporary Sri Lanka.

Explicit and hidden zoological categories in early Chinese taxonomies

2020 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 609-634
Author(s):  
Federico Valenti
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Pivotal Role ◽  
Early China ◽  
Warring States ◽  
Taxonomical Classification ◽  
Zoological Classification ◽  
Eastern Han

Abstract The present article investigates the problems of zoological taxonomical categories in texts that range from the Warring States (ca. 453–221 BCE) to the Eastern Han periods (25–220 CE). It focuses its attention on the Erya (attested 3rd c. BCE), a work that had a pivotal role during the development of Chinese lexicography. This terse glossary is probably one of the first texts that deal with the problem of taxonomical classification in early China through the use of syntactical devices that I call “categorical markers”, i.e. normalised characters that introduce an ontologically independent category of entities. By dint of the analysis of selected case studies, it will be shown that along fairly well attested “categorical markers” that constitute dichotomous systems (such as shou 獸 “quadruped furred creatures” versus niao 鳥 “bipedal winged creatures”), early Chinese taxonomies reveal less explicit linguistic devices that are implied in zoological classification, e.g. the presence of “sub-categorical markers” as noun modifiers (chou 醜 “being physically similar” or shu 屬 “to belong to a category”) used in order to create embedded taxonomies within the standard “categorical markers”. This complexity reveals an organised taxonomical system that helps us to better define the early Chinese conception of the natural world.

scholarly journals Paremiae in fiction written in English by translingual writers of Chinese descent

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (6) ◽  
pp. 242-245
Author(s):  
Tatiana A. Lupacheva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Cultural Background ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Chinese Descent ◽  
Linguistic Means

In the present article paremiae are considered as linguistic means representing linguistic and individual worldview of a translingual writer. Ethnospecific representation reflected in paremiae as well as evaluative characteristics are identified. Such approach enables to interpret the cultural background which stands behind a paroemia and a translingual literary text in general.

scholarly journals Transylvanian Saxon Charms as Part of Old Germanic Folklore

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-40
Author(s):  
Andrea Bargan
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Early Medieval

Abstract The present article deals with archaic pieces of folklore, namely with Transylvanian Saxon (TS) charms recorded in the 19th century. The author, herself a speaker of the TS dialect, translated a number of those charms into English and added comments that were meant to indicate connections with similar pieces of the same genre recorded in Germany and England in early medieval times.

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