scholarly journals Lucretius, Epicurean and Poet

1908 ◽  
Vol 54 (225) ◽  
pp. 138-141
Author(s):  
John Masson ◽  
William W. Ireland
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Victor Hugo ◽  
Julius Caesar ◽  
Stepping Stones ◽  
De Rerum Natura ◽  
Wide Reading ◽  
Self Reliance ◽  
The Times

Lucretius was a contemporary of Julius Cæsar, as Epicurus was a contemporary of Alexander. Dr. Masson has read all about Lucretius and everyone else who lived in those stirring times. In going through such critical disquisitions it is difficult to avoid the attraction or the recoil from a host of commentators. In this respect it is to be wished that Dr. Masson had less modesty or more self-reliance. In quoting the “opinions of the highest living authorities” on Cicero and Cæsar, he in many places gives us a set of stepping-stones instead of a bridge. While we wish to get into the times of Lucretius, the notes entering into small controversies continually drag us down to the mediocrities of the present age. We know not whether Dr. Masson's wide reading, wandering from Plato to Shelley and Victor Hugo, will add interest to the book with the readers of the twentieth century. We hope, however, that in another edition Dr. Masson may have the courage to sweep away most of his footnotes, as a carpenter, having finished his work, sweeps away his shavings. At the same time it would be unfair to deny that this excursive part of the work is often well written. At any rate our review will be confined to Lucretius and his philosophy. Of the poet himself we know scarcely anything save a few traditions loosely gathered by Eusebius. He was said to have become insane by a philtre given by his wife or mistress, and to have written his wonderful poem at sane intervals, and to have died by his own hand at the age of forty-four. His poem De Rerum Natura is dedicated to Memmius, who gained the rank of tribune and praetor, and took side against Cæsar in the civil war.

The Rain Calls of Frogs and the Reigning Paradigm of American Herpetology

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-35
Author(s):  
Gordon L. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Animal Communication ◽  
The United States ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Breeding Sites ◽  
Gradual Disappearance ◽  
The Times ◽  
Traditional Natural ◽  
Breeding Seasons ◽  
The Comparative Study

American zoologists and herpetologists during the past fifty years have successfully deciphered the mating calls of frogs and toads with ever increasing precision and sophistication. However, the vocalizations most commonly termed “rain calls,” which typically occur beyond both normal breeding seasons and breeding sites, have remained a persistent puzzle. This article traces the gradual disappearance of rain calls, along with a corresponding decline in any mention of emotional states, from herpetological studies of anuran vocalizations in the United States from the middle of the twentieth century to the present and examines the historical roots of this disappearance. This evaporation of rain calls is indicative of a much larger change in the scientific climate of the times involving the transition from traditional natural history to the Neo-Darwinian, adaptationist paradigm of contemporary biology. Rain calls thus increasingly became anomalous, thereby eliminating a possibly fruitful line of inquiry in the comparative study of human-animal communication, in this case with evolution's earliest vocalizers. The contours and benefits of a more encompassing paradigm, envisioned by some leading early twentieth-century zoologists, are briefly discussed.

cAbdullah Yūsuf cAlī & Muhammad Asad: Two Approaches to the English Translation of the Qur'an

2000 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muzaffar Iqbal
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
Life Experiences ◽  
Academic Career ◽  
British India ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
English Translations ◽  
Political Milieu ◽  
The Times

This article attempts to present a comparative study of the role of two twentieth-century English translations of the Qur'an: cAbdullah Yūsuf cAlī's The Meaning of the Glorious Qur'ān and Muḥammad Asad's The Message of the Qur'ān. No two men could have been more different in their background, social and political milieu and life experiences than Yūsuf cAlī and Asad. Yūsuf 'Alī was born and raised in British India and had a brilliant but traditional middle-class academic career. Asad traversed a vast cultural and geographical terrain: from a highly-disciplined childhood in Europe to the deserts of Arabia. Both men lived ‘intensely’ and with deep spiritual yearning. At some time in each of their lives they decided to embark upon the translation of the Qur'an. Their efforts have provided us with two incredibly rich monumental works, which both reflect their own unique approaches and the effects of the times and circumstances in which they lived. A comparative study of these two translations can provide rich insights into the exegesis and the phenomenon of human understanding of the divine text.

Epilogue

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
The Public ◽  
Antebellum Era ◽  
Narrative Device ◽  
The Future

This conclusion explains how American temporalities changed after the war and sketches how expectations and anticipations of the future have alternated as the dominant view in American culture through the twentieth century to today. This chapter also shows how the short war myth, the story that Civil War Americans expected a short, glorious war at the outset, gained currency with the public and consensus among scholars during the postwar period. It contrasts the wartime expectations of individuals with their postwar memories of the war’s beginning to show how the short war myth worked as a tool for sectional reconciliation and a narrative device that dramatized the war by creating an innocent antebellum era or golden age before the cataclysm. It considers why historians still accept the myth and showcases three postwar voices that challenged it.

Political Autobiography and the Art of the Plausible: R. A. Butler at the Foreign Office, 1938–1939

1985 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 901-922 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Stafford
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Educational System ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
British Politics ◽  
Suez Crisis ◽  
Foreign Office ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Times ◽  
The Right ◽  
Enoch Powell

R. A. Butler has been one of the outstanding figures in twentieth-century British politics. After his death The Times described him as ‘the creator of the modern educational system, the key-figure in the revival of post-war Conservatism, arguably the most successful chancellor since the war and un-questionably a Home Secretary of reforming zeal’. His record of achievement was unequalled by his rivals in the contests for the party leadership in 1957 and in 1963, but on both occasions the leadership eluded him. How and why this happened was understandably of the greatest interest to those who reviewed Rab's memoirs, The art of the possible, which were published in 1971. These memoirs won unanimous praise for their literary excellence, but otherwise met with a rather mixed reception. Enoch Powell, one of Rab's supporters in 1963, described them as ‘a work of astonishing self-revelation [belonging] with the classic Confessions. Augustine and Rousseau were not more unsparing of themselves than Rab…’ The ‘large episodes’ of Rab's career, Powell went on, ‘are treated with a generous vision (including, it need not be added, a generosity to Rab) which leaves the reader with improved understanding and perspective’. Powell's comments were echoed by others on the Right, but the Left was more critical. Anthony Howard noted that ‘what tend…to get wholly left out are the mistakes and blunders’ – the now infamous Villacoublay meeting during the Suez crisis; and Rab's astonishing admission to the journalist George Gale during the 1964 campaign that the election was slipping Labour's way. Harold Wilson, who had offered Rab the mastership of Trinity, was perhaps the least charitable of all. He found The art of the possible disappointing because, he claimed, Rab underwrote the great occasions. Rab's reticence about Suez, however, upset Wilson less than the description of his tribulations at the hands of Labour MPs as government spokesman for the policy of non-intervention during the Spanish Civil War. Here was an issue which could excite the older soldiers of the British Left, and if Wilson was alone among Rab's reviewers in making more than passing reference to Rab's association with appeasement this was why.

The battles of October in Moscow: Through Witness' Eyes

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
В.В. Хутарев-Гарнишевский
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Mental State ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Behavioral Strategies ◽  
The Real ◽  
History Of ◽  
Unique Source ◽  
The Times ◽  
Economical Process

Публикуемый источник является отрывком из дневника депутата Московской городской Думы Н.П. Вишнякова (1844-1927). Автор лично не принимал участия в боевых действиях, но находился в самом эпицентре боевых действий между «красными» и «белыми», так как проживал с семьей в центре города. Именно эти события часто называют началом полноценной Гражданской войны. Его дневник отражает психологическое состояние мирного горожанина, оказавшегося заложником гражданского противостояния на улицах Москвы.Особый интерес представляют описания особенностей быта москвичей, циркулирующие среди них слухи, домыслы, их надежды и страхи, а также поведенческие стратегии различных социальных слоев. Особую ценность представляет то, что автор делал свои записи два-три раза в день, подробно фиксируя происходящее. Подобного рода источники крайне немногочисленны.Мемуарное и эпистолярное наследие Н.П. Вишнякова давно признано уникальным источником по истории общественно-политической, культурной и экономической жизни Москвы, но никогда не было опубликовано полностью. Лишь дважды публиковались небольшие отрывки.Данная публикация является частью работы по подготовке полного издания эпистолярного наследия Н.П. Вишнякова, который был вовлечен почти во все политические и экономические процессы Москвы времен правления императора Николая II. Он был депутатом (гласным) Московской Думы с 1873 по 1917 гг. с пятилетним перерывом в 1892--1897 гг., мировым судьей, известным ученым-геологом и краеведом.Для публикации были раскрыты многочисленные сокращения топонимов, а также расшифрованы индивидуальные, характерные для автора сокращения.Особую трудность представляет почерк Н.П. Вишнякова, подчас очень сложный для понимания и в отдельных случаях не поддающийся расшифровке.Эпистолярное наследия Н.П. Вишнякова весьма обширно, а сам дневник охватывает события с 1872 по 1918 гг. Published is an excerpt from a diary of N.P. Vishnyakov (1844–1927), a Moscow Duma deputy. Nikolay Petrovich has never personally participated in the events, but was in the epicenter of the October battles between the Red and the White movements, as he and his family lived in the centre of Moscow. Those events in particular are often referred to as the beginning of the real Civil War. His diary shows us the mental state of a peaceful citizen caught as a hostage during the civil confrontation on Moscow streets. Depicted are certain peculiarities of everyday life, rumors and doubts, hopes and fears of Moscovites, as well as behavioral strategies of different social groups.Most valuable is that the author made 2–3 diary entries a day, registering the events in details. Such sources are very few in number.N.P. Vishnyakov's memoirs and epistolary heritage have never before were fully published and were marked as a unique source on the history of political, cultural and economic life in Moscow between 1873--1918.This is a part of an upcoming publication of the complete texts of N.P. Vishnyakov's epistolary heritage. Nukolay Petrovich was fully engaged into almost every political and economical process in Moscow during the times of Nicholas II. He was a deputy of the Moscow Duma from 1873 to 1917, with a short break in 1892--1897, a magistrate judge, a well-known geology scientist and ethnographer.For this publication shorten forms of toponymies and some personalized abbreviations have been deciphered. It is sometimes very difficult to follow and understand N.P. Veshnyakov’s handwriting.

Battlefields, burials and the English Civil Wars

2018 ◽  
pp. 23-39
Author(s):  
Ian Atherton
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Social Memory ◽  
English History ◽  
Mass Graves ◽  
The Social ◽  
Civil War Soldiers ◽  
Parish Registers

Twentieth-century practices of battlefield preservation construct war graves as sites of memory and continuing commemoration. Such ideas, though they have led archaeologists in a largely fruitless hunt for mass graves, should not be read back into the seventeenth century. Hitherto, little attention has been paid to the practices of battlefield burial, despite the suggestion that the civil wars were proportionately the bloodiest conflict in English history. This chapter analyses the evidence for the treatment of the dead of the civil wars, engaging with debates about the nature and preservation of civil-war battlefields, and the social memory of the civil wars in the mid and later seventeenth century. It concludes that ordinary civil-war soldiers were typically excluded from parish registers as a sign that they were branded as social outcasts in death.

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