scholarly journals Walter Scott and the Islamic East: Ivanhoe and the Talisman

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 758-764
Author(s):  
Nisreen Tawfiq Yousef

This paper examines representations of the Islamic East in two novels by Sir Walter Scott: Ivanhoe (1820) and The Talisman (1825). The paper’s argument is that Scott’s representations of the Islamic East seems influenced in very specific ways by dominant nineteenth-century portrayals of the East. Scott’s two novels present ambivalent depictions of the East, some of which deviate from standard patterns of representation of earlier centuries. For instance, on the one hand his novels attribute positive spiritual qualities to Saracens such as generosity, bravery and kindness to animals, while on the other, and often in the same passage, they sometimes depict Saracens as violent and atavistic. I argue that, through his various narrators and characters, Scott depicts the relationship between the Islamic East and the Christian West as a significant form of cultural interaction whereby the East is presented as complementing the West. However, Scott’s portrayal of East-West relation is complex, and it would be inaccurate to claim that this denotes total acceptance of Islamic manners, customs and perspectives. 

1992 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-181
Author(s):  
James R. Lehning

The article focuses on the relationship between social and economic structure and household structure, on the one hand, and household structure and demographic behavior on the other. The analysis provides some insight into the factors that determined household structure and demographic behavior in the two nineteenth-century villages in the Loire district in France-one village agricultural and the other with a protoindustrial sector. Labor needs imposed on the household by the economy helped to determine the structure of that household, and, especially by way of nuptiality, such considerations could also affect reproduction. Nevertheless, it would be pressing the evidence much too far to suggest that only household structure determined demographic behavior.


2000 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 598-616 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul A. Pickering

The relationship between nationalism and the land, observes Philip Bull in his recent study of the Irish land question, “formed a nexus which was so strong that the one issue became effectively a metaphor for the other.” Any student of nineteenth-century Irish politics can appreciate the force of this eloquent conclusion. Nevertheless, the preoccupation with the land by contemporaries and historians alike has relegated an important strand of economic nationalism devoted to manufacturing industry to a footnote in Irish history. The fate of manufacturing industry in the aftermath of the Union of 1800 is the subject of controversy among scholars suggesting, at the very least, substantial regional and sectoral variations. Contemporaries, however, were in little doubt that Irish manufacturing industry was suffering from terminal decline, a perception that had formed a regular reprise in public comment throughout the previous century. As John O’Connell wrote in 1849 “the question of Irish manufacturing has been, for more than a century and a half, one of the chief grounds of bitterness and bickerings” between Ireland and England.


1988 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Yeo

The ArgumentFocusing on the celebrations of Newton and his work, this article investigates the use of the concept of genius and its connection with debates on the methodology of science and the morality of great discoverers. During the period studied, two areas of tension developed. Firstly, eighteenth-century ideas about the relationship between genius and method were challenged by the notion of scientific genius as transcending specifiable rules of method. Secondly, assumptions about the nexus between intellectual and moral virtue were threatened by the emerging conception of genius as marked by an extraordinary personality – on the one hand capable of breaking with established methods to achieve great discoveries, on the other, likely to transgress moral and social conventions. The assesments of Newton by nineteenth-century scientists such as Brewster, Whewell, and De Morgan were informed by these tensions.


2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 234
Author(s):  
Basil C. Gounaris ◽  
Marianna D. Christopoulos

The National Schism that erupted in Greece during World War I has already been thoroughly analysed in the bibliography as a crisis of national unification, defined by geographical, political and socio economic criteria. The aim of this article is to move a step forward, to support that the National Schism might also be considered as an act in the broader and much older Greek ideological drama, that of the tantalising and incomplete “return” to the East via the European West. It is argued that the Schism, far from being a bipolar confrontation between supporters and opponents of Europe, did select from the East–West debate whatever arguments were necessary to invest military and political choices with a “deeper” meaning. Our approach focuses mostly on the rhetoric produced by the two opposing camps, the Venizelists and the anti-Venizelist block, from 1914 to 1922. It is, however, complemented by a retrospective presentation of the nineteenth-century debateover the Enlightenment and liberalism, on the one hand, and German idealism, on the other.


2019 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Janowska

From an Adverb to a Prefix: The Case of the Polish współ-In the modern Polish language, it is difficult to determine in an unambiguous manner the word-formative status of formations which feature the element współ-. Such elements are treated as compounds or, more frequently, as prefixal forms. Historically, these elements, along with the constructions spół-, społu, constituted a class of compounds which were synonymous. The first attestations of the structures which are discussed in this article date back to as early as the Old Polish period (cf. społupomoc, społudziedzic), although their expansion occurred only in the nineteenth century (e.g. współdryblas, współdziałać, współinteresowany). The development of this derivative group is clearly associated with the evolution of adverbs of the type społu, pospołu, wespół, współ, wspołek; it mainly consists in the expansion of the forms which feature współ on the one hand, and in the slow process of disassociation of the relationship in question on the other. Owing to specialisation of the forms współ, spół in the derivational function (a process relatively discernible since the sixteenth century), we may speak about a slow process of their transformation into a prefix, which intensified along with the process of the obsolescence of the adverb wespół. Od przysłówka do przedrostka (na przykładzie polskiego współ-)We współczesnej polszczyźnie trudno jednoznacznie określić status słowotwórczy formacji z cząstką współ-. Są traktowane bądź jako złożenia, bądź – częściej – jako formy prefiksalne. W historii tworzyły razem z konstrukcjami ze spół-, społu klasę synonimicznych względem siebie złożeń. Pierwsze poświadczenia opisywanych struktur pochodzą już z czasów staropolskich (por. społupomoc, społudziedzic), jednak ich ekspansja następuje dopiero około XIX wieku (np. współdryblas, współdziałać, współinteresowany). Rozwój tej grupy derywacyjnej wyraźnie powiązany jest z ewolucją przysłówków typu społu, pospołu, wespół, współ, wspołek i polega przede wszystkim z jednej strony na ekspansji form z współ, z drugiej, na powolnym odrywaniu się od wspomnianego związku. Ze względu na dość wyraźną już od XVI wieku specjalizację form współ, spół w funkcji derywacyjnej, możemy mówić o powolnym ich przekształcaniu się w prefiks. Wraz z wycofywaniem się z języka przysłówka wespół proces ten nasilił się.


1975 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 55-69
Author(s):  
Eric Sharpe

The Hindu Renaissance is commonly regarded as having begun seriously in the 1870's, consequent upon the foundation in 1875 of the Ārya Samāj in the West of India.' But this is in many ways a date of convenience. The roots of the movement go back, particularly as far as Bengal is concerned, to the time of Rammohun Roy, when on the one hand there was created a serious, though small-scale. Hindu reform movement, and on the other there was introduced into Calcutta the remarkable catalyst of Western education. Hindu reform and Western education were closely linked for the greater part of the nineteenth century.  The early Hindu reform movements to a very great extent shared the same characteristics: small-scale and elitist, they were not designed to appeal, and did not appeal, to the masses. The Brāhma Samāj, for instance, never succeeded in achieving popularity; it began and continued very largely as a somewhat rarefied worship-society. But the years between 1893 and 1897 were the years of Swāmi Vivekānanda's "mission" to the World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago and his tours in the countries of the West. Perhaps it was in the figure of the Swāmi that the Indian national movement found its first powerful human symbol.


Archaeologia ◽  
1831 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 277-298
Author(s):  
Thomas Amyot

In an Enquiry which I addressed to you some years ago, concerning the death of Richard the Second, I took occasion to advert to the rumours prevalent after the date usually assigned to that event, relative to his supposed escape into Scotland, and his death and burial at Stirling. The story on which these rumours were founded, and to which no credit had been given by any English historian of established reputation, has lately been revived, and its truth defended with much plausibility and ingenuity, by Mr. Fraser Tytler, in an elaborate Dissertation subjoined to the third volume of his valuable History of Scotland. The name and authority of the writer would be sufficient to excite attention to his statements, even if they had not already attracted the notice of two of the most distinguished of his countrymen, though with different results as to the impression produced on them. Sir Walter Scott, on the one hand, has fully avowed his belief in the relation, while on the other, Sir James Mackintosh has, with equal decision, expressed his dissent from it. Had it fallen within the plan of the latter eminent person to state the reasons for his adherence to the common narrative more in detail, and with reference to the authorities on which they were grounded, any further attempt on my part to investigate the subject would have been superfluous. But, as the case now stands, I may be permitted to offer a more circumstantial reply to Mr. Tytler's arguments, bearing in mind the courtesy he has uniformly shown in his references to my former observations.


Forged in the age of empire, the relationship between Islam and liberalism has taken on a sense of urgency today, when global conflicts are seen as pitting one against the other. More than describing a civilizational fault-line between the Muslim world and the West, however, this relationship also offers the potential for consensus and the possibility of moral and political engagement or compatibility. The existence or extent of this correspondence tends to preoccupy academic as much as popular accounts of such a relationship. This volume looks however to the way in which Muslim politics and society are defined beyond and indeed after it. Reappraising the “first wave” of Islamic liberalism during the nineteenth century, the book describes the long and intertwined histories of these categories across a large geographical expanse. By drawing upon the contributions of scholars from a variety of disciplines – including philosophy, theology, sociology, politics and history – it explores how liberalism has been criticized and refashioned by Muslim thinkers and movements, to assume a reality beyond the abstractions that define its compatibility with Islam.


Modern Italy ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlotta Sorba

The revival of interest in music evident in recent historiography has led to an investigation of the specifically transnational nature of musical languages and practices. This article explores the possibility of re-reading in a transnational perspective the classical theme of the relationship between the Risorgimento and opera. It focuses on two different points of view: on the one hand, the construction of the librettos as a delicate balance between European romantic narratives and dramatic themes evoking nationalistic sentiments; on the other, the fact that ideas and practices of the theatre as a vehicle of political mobilisation developed in a broad international context where Mazzini and many other nationalists found inspiration in multinational political experiences and discourses. The article concludes by saying that the meanings of terms such as cosmopolitanism and nationalism need to be carefully weighed when we look at nineteenth-century opera production. Only in the closing decades of the century did genuine competition between national traditions arise, which led in Italy to a veritable ‘obsession’ with ‘Italianness’ in music.


2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theo Jung

This article traces the uses of zeitgeist in early nineteenth-century European political discourse. To explain the concept's explosive takeoff in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, two perspectives are combined. On the one hand, the concept is shown to be a key element in the new, “temporalized” discourses of cultural reflection emerging during this time. On the other, its pragmatic value as a linguistic tool in concrete political constellations is outlined on the basis of case studies from French, British, and German political discourse. Developing this two-sided perspective, the article sheds light on an important aspect of early nineteenth-century political discourse while also pointing to some general considerations concerning the relationship between the semantic and pragmatic analysis of historical language use.


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