Each Man's Father Served as his Teacher: Constructing Relatedness in Pliny's Letters: In loving memory of Harry Bernstein (1913––2008)

2008 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil W. Bernstein

Recent scholarship has examined Pliny's efforts to embed his acts of patronage in the rhetorical context of paternity. This paper examines how Pliny employs the discourse of paternity in representing himself as a mentor and exemplary model for young men, with particular focus on Book 8 of the Letters. Though he lacks a child or adoptive heir himself, Pliny embeds his work in a tradition in which Roman writers from the Elder Cato onward presented literary authority as coextensive with paternal authority. In Ep. 8.14, Pliny presents an idealized image of education by fathers or paternal surrogates that legitimates both his receipt of benefits from his mentors and his own efforts to instruct young men in the manner of a father. Pliny presents his published work as a model for Genialis in Ep. 8.13 and his personal life as an example for Junius Avitus in Ep. 8.23. Ep. 8.10, 11 and 18 provide further contexts for Pliny's discourse of paternity. Two additional examples of the creation of relatedness in elite Roman culture (interactions with caregivers and the experience of contubernium) are briefly discussed. I consider in conclusion how study of Pliny's Letters may contribute to the larger cross-cultural project of understanding how otherwise unrelated persons, through informal activities such as mentorship, may construct relationships more salient to them than their biological or legal kinships.

2021 ◽  
Vol 90 (5) ◽  
pp. 375-414
Author(s):  
Adam Kubiś

The article surveys recent scholarship on the use of creation imagery in the Gospel of John, with the aim of presenting a rather exhaustive register of possible references. Both the obvious and the less clear-cut allusions to Gen 1–3 are discussed, the main focus being to accumulate and assess the evidence (for or against) all the apparent references to creation imagery. Included in this examination are several unconvincing and even far-fetched proposals advanced by some modern scholars, in order to give the fullest possible picture of the current discourse on these issues. After discussing the creation theme in the Prologue (1:1–18), the article explores the presence of creation imagery in the Book of Signs (1:19–12:50) and the Book of Glory (13:1–21:25).


KronoScope ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Barden Dowling

AbstractAt the end of the first century A.D., at the height of the Roman empire, a new abstract deity of eternal time, Aeternitas, appeared. This first discrete personification of abstract time was initially a female image represented on official coins and monuments, but in A.D. 121, a new male personification of eternal time appeared in imperial, state sponsored art. Both male and female depictions of eternal time were accompanied by a rich array of attributes that connected eternity, immortality, and earthly prosperity. This change in the image of time occurred simultaneously with tremendous changes in Roman culture: the creation of universal time keeping, the creation of elaborate beliefs in the afterlife, and transformations in Romans' expectations of life, lead to the embodiment of an ideal of eternity in the personification Aeternitas, and explain the radical transformations in her/his iconography. It is through a study of the representation of time that we identify a profound reenvisioning of the nature of time in Western thought, when human temporal and metaphysical experiences of time were expanded, laying the foundation for the successful spread of the Christian conceptions of eternal blissful time after the apocalypse.


2021 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Reyes

This article provides an overview of recent scholarship on postcolonial semiotics: processes through which linguistic and other signs are linked to the colonial and its ongoing relevance in the construction of value. After tracing the question of colonialism across scholarly lineages in linguistic anthropology, this article focuses on elite formations as a key realm within postcolonial semiotics and on “fake,” “mix,” and “excess” as central qualities that constitute chronotopically anchored dimensions of ambivalent, aspirational postcolonial eliteness. Linguistic anthropological work on postcolonial elite formations illuminates how economic interests are advanced through the creation of ambiguous value around emblems presupposed as colonial and attached to differentiated elite types in fractally recursive forms. Scholarship on postcolonial semiotics reveals how colonial hierarchies persist through the continuous production of divisible interior alterities that create nested categories of the formerly colonized, inventing elite types that are both denigrated and admired for their supposed approximation to imperial modes of being and speaking. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Anthropology, Volume 50 is October 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.


Jezikoslovlje ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-219
Author(s):  
Sanja Kiš Žuvela ◽  
Ana Ostroški Anić

Most conceptual metaphors that conceptualize musical pitch rely heavily on human perception, images and experience structured through spatial and orientation image schemas such as the schema of verticality. The paper analyses conceptual metaphors that structure pitch relations in terms of vertical space, thickness and size as they appear in the Croatian musical terminology. The image schemas of verticality and size are analysed within the conceptual metaphors pitch relations are relations in vertical space and pitch relations are relations in size in order to define to what extent their motivation is embodied and universal, and what can be attributed to cross-cultural and cross-linguistic influences present in the creation and understanding of music terminology in Croatia.


2015 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
HUGH WILFORD

In 1951, the CIA secretly funded the creation of an ostensibly private group of US citizens called the American Friends of the Middle East (AFME). Pro-Arab and anti-Zionist in orientation, AFME was repeatedly attacked by pro-Israel groups before seeing its links to the CIA exposed by investigative journalists in 1967. Drawing on recent scholarship about “state–private networks” and the cultural history of US–Middle East relations, this article examines the origins of AFME, its characteristic values and relations with the CIA, and the reasons for the decline of its influence vis-à-vis the emergent “Israel lobby.”


Author(s):  
Lindsay L. Kahle ◽  
Jill Rosenbaum

The emergence of feminist criminology several decades ago heralded the creation of theoretical and justice-involved spaces that are specifically centered and tailored to the unique needs of women. More specifically, this shift turned attention to issues that weren’t typically discussed, for example, female victims and offenders, male battery, and sexual assault, as well as sexual and familial violence. One of the greatest contributions made by feminist criminology is gender-responsive programming, which recognizes that unique “pathways to delinquency” exist for girls and that these pathways often involve trauma and abuse. As a result, this type of programming attends to the specific needs of girls and young women, as they differ from those of boys and young men. Although research shows that these programs work to improve the lives of girls, they often overlook how sexual orientation—as it intersects with gender—often compounds such pathways altogether.


2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holly A. Rine

This article analyzes the process of how Albany came to stand as a center of Anglo-Indian relations in the seventeenth century. Through the understanding of the diverse and changing geographical interpretations of particular places and spaces, this paper analyzes Iroquois, Dutch and English understandings of significance and uses of the Fort Orange, later Albany, courthouse to demonstrate how the Iroquois, Mohawks in particular, were able to both function within and contribute to the reinvention of this quintessential European institution to suit their own diplomatic purposes. Through understanding varying interpretations of the court as a diplomatically significant place, we gain a clearer understanding of the role of Native peoples in the creation of this cross-cultural courthouse as it became “the only appointed and prefixed place” of the Covenant Chain of Alliance between the Iroquois and English in 1677.


T oung Pao ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 101 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 335-362 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Kern

The intellectual history of the ancient philosophical “Masters” depends to a large extent on accounts in early historiography, most importantly Sima Qian’s Shiji which provides a range of longer and shorter biographies of Warring States thinkers. Yet the ways in which personal life experiences, ideas, and the creation of texts are interwoven in these accounts are diverse and uneven and do not add up to a reliable guide to early Chinese thought and its protagonists. In its selective approach to different thinkers, the Shiji under-represents significant parts of the textual heritage while developing several distinctive models of authorship, from anonymous compilations of textual repertoires to the experience of personal hardship and political frustration as the precondition for turning into a writer.
L’histoire intellectuelle des “maîtres” de la philosophie chinoise ancienne dépend pour une large part de ce qui est dit d’eux dans l’historiographie ancienne, tout particulièrement le Shiji de Sima Qian, qui offre une série de biographies plus ou moins étendues de penseurs de l’époque des Royaumes Combattants. Cependant leur vie, leurs idées et les conditions de création de leurs textes se combinent dans ces biographies de façon très inégale, si bien que l’ensemble ne saurait être considéré comme l’équivalent d’un guide de la pensée chinoise ancienne et de ses auteurs sur lequel on pourrait s’appuyer en toute confiance. Dans sa façon d’approcher sélectivement les différents penseurs, le Shiji tend à sous-représenter des secteurs significatifs de l’héritage textuel; en même temps il développe plusieurs modèles distinctifs de rapport entre texte et auteur, depuis la compilation anonyme de répertoires textuels jusqu’à l’expérience du malheur et à la frustration politique posées comme conditions pour devenir écrivain.



2006 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 643-675 ◽  
Author(s):  
GLYN PARRY

Recent scholarship on the ideological origins of the British Empire has emphasized the importance of John Dee's imperial writings in justifying the Elizabethan exploitation of English Atlantic discoveries. Yet a closer reading of these writings in the context of European politics, Elizabethan Court intrigues, and Dee's occult natural philosophy and magical imperialism reveals their covert purpose of recovering a lost British Empire in Europe. Dee wrote initially to address both the chronic and acute problems facing the regime in 1576, but rather than being an autonomous authority whose ideas commanded attention because of their intrinsic power, he was subordinate to the Court patronage system. Consequently his writings only gained attention when revised to align with the policies of powerful courtiers such as the earl of Leicester, and even then influential Catholic courtiers could exploit contingent political circumstances to counter his influence. Dee's writings remained problematic not only because restoring the British Empire in Europe would entail confronting Spain, but also because in their hidden centre they proposed the creation of an apocalyptic empire by magical means, particularly the philosopher's stone. In the end the contingent events that made Dee's writings briefly influential ensured their ultimate irrelevance to Elizabethan policy-making.


2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ying Zhang ◽  
Christopher Marquis ◽  
Sergey Filippov ◽  
Henk-Jan Haasnoot ◽  
Martijn van der Steen

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