The Guru as Śiva

2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
pp. 348-376
Author(s):  
Hamsa Stainton
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Prolific Author ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
History Of ◽  
Kashmir Śaivism ◽  
Supreme Deity

Abstract This article introduces and analyzes the Gurustutiratnāvalī, a sophisticated eighteenth-century Sanskrit hymn composed by Govinda Kaula of Kashmir in praise of his teacher’s teacher, the prolific author Sāhib Kaula. It evaluates the evidence for Govinda Kaula’s dating, lineage, and literary activity and presents the first published edition and translation of select verses of his Gurustutiratnāvalī based on four manuscripts. The analysis of the hymn focuses on the ways the author equates a specific guru in his lineage—Sāhib Kaula—with the supreme deity Śiva. Using this hymn as a starting point, the article considers the history of guru-praise (gurustuti) and guru-devotion (gurubhakti) in Kashmir as well as in South Asia more broadly. Lastly, it suggests that further work on this lineage and the religious dynamics of the eighteenth and nineteenth century will prove crucial for helping us understand the emergence of what came to be popularly known as “Kashmir Śaivism.”

The Modernities of H. Lawrence Freeman

2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 719-779
Author(s):  
David Gutkin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New York ◽  
Reception History ◽  
Black Press ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
White Press ◽  
Grand Opera

H. Lawrence Freeman's “Negro Jazz Grand Opera,” Voodoo, was premiered in 1928 in Manhattan's Broadway district. Its reception bespoke competing, racially charged values that underpinned the idea of the “modern” in the 1920s. The white press critiqued the opera for its allegedly anxiety-ridden indebtedness to nineteenth-century European conventions, while the black press hailed it as the pathbreaking work of a “pioneer composer.” Taking the reception history of Voodoo as a starting point, this article shows how Freeman's lifelong project, the creation of what he would call “Negro Grand Opera,” mediated between disparate and sometimes apparently irreconcilable figurations of the modern that spanned the late nineteenth century through the interwar years: Wagnerism, uplift ideology, primitivism, and popular music (including, but not limited to, jazz). I focus on Freeman's inheritance of a worldview that could be called progressivist, evolutionist, or, to borrow a term from Wilson Moses, civilizationist. I then trace the complex relationship between this mode of imagining modernity and subsequent versions of modernism that Freeman engaged with during the first decades of the twentieth century. Through readings of Freeman's aesthetic manifestos and his stylistically syncretic musical corpus I show how ideas about race inflected the process by which the qualitatively modern slips out of joint with temporal modernity. The most substantial musical analysis examines leitmotivic transformations that play out across Freeman's jazz opera American Romance (1924–29): lions become subways; Mississippi becomes New York; and jazz, like modernity itself, keeps metamorphosing. A concluding section considers a broader set of questions concerning the historiography of modernism and modernity.

Schopenhauer’s Pessimism in Context

2020 ◽  
pp. 283-298
Author(s):  
Mark Migotti
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century

In this chapter, the author attempts to establish what is philosophically living and what is philosophically dead in Schopenhauer’s pessimism. Against the background of the intriguing the history of the terms “optimism” and “pessimism”—in debates about Leibniz’s theodicy in the early eighteenth century and the popularity of Schopenhauer in the late nineteenth century, respectively—the author points up the distinction between affirming life, which all living beings do naturally, and subscribing to philosophical optimism (or pessimism), which is possible only for reflective beings like us. Next, the author notes the significance of Schopenhauer’s claim that optimism is a necessary condition of theism and explains its bearing on his pessimistic argument for the moral unacceptability of suicide. The chapter concludes that Schopenhauer’s case for pessimism is not conclusive, but instructive; his dim view of the prospects for leading a truly rewarding, worthwhile human life draws vivid attention to important questions about how and to what degree an atheistic world can nevertheless be conducive to human flourishing.

scholarly journals ‘Constitutions selection’: Darwin, race and medicine

BJHS Themes ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Suman Seth
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Skin Colour ◽  
Race Science ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Race ◽  
Descent Of Man

Abstract In the course of his discussion of the origin of variations in skin colour among humans in the Descent of Man, Charles Darwin suggested that darker skin might be correlated with immunity to certain diseases. To make that suggestion, he drew upon a claim that seemed self-evidently correct in 1871, although it had seemed almost certainly incorrect in the late eighteenth century: that immunity to disease could be understood as a hereditary racial trait. This paper aims to show how fundamental was the idea of ‘constitutions selection’, as Darwin would call it, for his thinking about human races, tracking his (ultimately unsuccessful) attempts to find proof of its operation over a period of more than thirty years. At the same time and more broadly, following Darwin's conceptual resources on this question helps explicate relationships between conceptions of disease and conceptions of race in the nineteenth century. That period saw the birth of a modern, fixist, biologically determinist racism, which increasingly manifested itself in medical writings. The reverse was also true: medicine was a crucial site in which race was forged. The history of what has been called ‘race-science’, it is argued, cannot and should not be written independent of the history of ‘race-medicine’.

scholarly journals The Materiality of English Suicide Letters, c. 1700 – c. 1850

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Ella Sbaraini
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Emotional Distress ◽  
History Of Emotions ◽  
Social Lives ◽  
Writing Practices ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Press ◽  
History Of ◽  
Insight Into

Abstract Scholars have explored eighteenth-century suicide letters from a literary perspective, examining issues of performativity and reception. However, it is fruitful to see these letters as material as well as textual objects, which were utterly embedded in people's social lives. Using thirty manuscript letters, in conjunction with other sources, this article explores the contexts in which suicide letters were written and left for others. It looks at how authors used space and other materials to convey meaning, and argues that these letters were epistolary documents usually meant for specific, known persons, rather than the press. Generally written by members of the ‘lower orders’, these letters also provide insight into the emotional writing practices of the poor, and their experiences of emotional distress. Overall, this article proposes that these neglected documents should be used to investigate the emotional and material contexts for eighteenth- and nineteenth-century suicide. It also argues that, at a time when the history of emotions has reached considerable prominence, historians must be more attentive to the experiences of the suicidal.

Geopolitics of Comparison: World Literature Avant la Lettre

2021 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 255-269
Author(s):  
Waïl S. Hassan
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Comparative Literature ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
History Of

Abstract According to a well-known narrative, the concept of Weltliteratur and its academic correlative, the discipline of comparative literature, originated in Germany and France in the early nineteenth century, influenced by the spread of scientism and nationalism. But there is another genesis story that begins in the late eighteenth century in Spain and Italy, countries with histories entangled with the Arab presence in Europe during the medieval period. Emphasizing the role of Arabic in the formation of European literatures, Juan Andrés wrote the first comparative history of “all literature,” before the concepts of Weltliteratur and comparative literature gained currency. The divergence of the two genesis stories is the result of competing geopolitical interests, which determine which literatures enter into the sphere of comparison, on what terms, within which paradigms, and under what ideological and discursive conditions.

French Influences on Germany’s Commercial Courts in the Nineteenth Century

2020 ◽  
Vol 88 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 469-494
Author(s):  
Thomas Vogl
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
French Law ◽  
Present Contribution ◽  
Legal Situation ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
State Of Research ◽  
Further Development ◽  
Commercial Courts

Summary The present contribution explores the extent of influence which French law had on the development of Germany’s commercial courts in the nineteenth century. Modern literature describes this influence as marginal, yet without further proof. The author takes this state of research as a starting point to compare the Napoleonic legislation on commercial courts with the German commercial court systems of the nineteenth century. However, the present contribution will start with an overview of the German legal situation at the end of the eighteenth century. This is followed by an examination of whether French law was transferred to Germany during the French occupation of large parts of Germany at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Against this background it is possible to fully analyse the influence which French law had on the further development of German commercial courts.

How violent was eighteenth-century Ireland?

1997 ◽  
Vol 30 (119) ◽  
pp. 377-392 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neal Garnham
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Ethnic Conflicts ◽  
Popular Protest ◽  
Ancient Regime ◽  
History Of ◽  
Typical Part ◽  
The Law

In his recent book dealing with the history of duelling in Ireland, James Kelly comes to the conclusion that eighteenth-century Ireland was essentially ‘a violent society’, peopled at least in part ‘by wilful men who put their individual reputations above their lives, their families, their religion, and the law’. Such comments seem to continue a well-established tradition of interpretation that goes back to the nineteenth century. However, this image of a society in which violence was endemic, and conflict a feature of everyday life, has not gone unquestioned by historians. For example, Thomas Bartlett and Sean Connolly have instead noted the relatively controlled nature of popular protest, the early disappearance of banditry, and the reliance, until the very end of the century, on local enforcement of the law, as possible indications that Ireland may not have been as disorderly a society as has been suggested. These differing interpretations have, in turn, an obvious relevance to the wider debate on how eighteenth-century Ireland should be perceived: as a society irreconcilably and uniquely divided by religious and ethnic conflicts, or as a more or less typical part of the European ancient régime.

scholarly journals pre-eighteenth-century traditions of revivalism: damascus in the thirteenth century

2005 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
konrad hirschler
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social History ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Current State ◽  
History Of ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Large Sections

this article examines whether it is possible to trace eighteenth- and nineteenth-century revivalist thought to earlier ‘medieval’ examples. the discussion is centred on the issue of ijtiha¯d/taqli¯d, which featured prominently in revivalist thought. taking the example of scholars in thirteenth-century damascus, it firstly compares the respective readings of ijtiha¯d/taqli¯d, by focusing on one individual, abu¯ sha¯ma (d. 1267). it secondly asks whether a scholar like abu¯ sha¯ma, who had adopted a reading similar to later revivalists, also took a critical and oppositional stand against large sections of his contemporary society, i.e. a revivalist posture. it is this article's main contention that the example of abu¯ sha¯ma shows the need to study in more detail possible revivalist traditions prior to the ‘grand’ movements. the combination of the history of ideas and social history might allow a deeper understanding of how and in what contexts calls for reform and opposition to the current state of affairs were expressed.

WILLIAM GELL AND POMPEIANA (1817–19 AND 1832)

2015 ◽  
Vol 83 ◽  
pp. 245-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosemary Sweet
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Position ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Domestic Life ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Personal Interests ◽  
Additional Income ◽  
Archaeological Approach

This article offers an analysis of the preparation, publication and reception of the two separate versions of William Gell's Pompeiana, texts that exercised a formative influence over Victorian understanding of not just Roman Pompeii, but of domestic Roman life more broadly throughout the nineteenth century, and that highlight a transition from eighteenth-century antiquarianism to a more ‘archaeological’ approach to the past in the nineteenth century. Using unpublished correspondence that has been overlooked by other scholarship on Gell, it argues that the form and content of the volumes responded to both contemporary fascination with the history of domestic life and the need for an affordable volume on Pompeii. But the volumes also reflected many of Gell's more personal interests, developed in a career of travelling in Greece, Asia Minor and Spain, and were a product of his circumstances: they were conceived in order that Gell (and his coadjutor John Peter Gandy in the first edition) might earn much-needed additional income, and were a means through which Gell could consolidate his social position in Naples by establishing his authoritative expertise on Pompeii.

AFRICAN IVORIES AND EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH ANTIQUARIANS

2019 ◽  
Vol 99 ◽  
pp. 347-362
Author(s):  
William Hart
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Specific Reference ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
Late Renaissance ◽  
Source Of Information

In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, artists in West Africa made sophisticated ivory carvings specifically for the early Portuguese navigators and their patrons. In researching the history of the ivories, the records of eighteenth-century English antiquarians are a neglected yet important source of information. Such sources help to bridge the gap between the earliest references to Afro-Portuguese ivories in Portuguese customs records (as well as the inventories of royal and princely treasuries of the late Renaissance) and their re-appearance in nineteenth-century museum registers and the collections of private individuals.Especially valuable in this regard are the eighteenth-century minutes of the Society of Antiquaries of London, which enable us to trace the history of several African ivories associated with Fellows of the Society – in particular, Richard Rawlinson, Martin Folkes, Sir Hans Sloane, George Vertue and George Allan. In this article, the author reassesses two African ivories, an oliphant and a saltcellar, with specific reference to the Minutes of the Society of Antiquaries of London, shedding new light on the history of these beautiful objects.

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