scholarly journals A Critical Disability Reading of Lermontov's "Taman'"

2021 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anastassiya Andrianova
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Young Woman ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
Critical Tradition

This paper provides a critical analysis of literary disability in Mikhail Lermontov's "Taman'," the most famous story in his semiautobiographical novel, A Hero of Our Time (1838-40). It focuses on three disabled characters: the blind boy, the deaf old woman proprietor, and the mad young woman. These characters have traditionally been treated as projections of the hero-narrator's imagination, as part of the story's Gothic aspects, or as metaphors meant to reveal something about him, thus reducing disability to a textual device. Even when central to the interpretation, disability tends to be read by Lermontov critics as figurative or counterfeit. This project aims, therefore, to reclaim the characters whose disabilities are undermined by the critical tradition. Through a contextualized close reading, it considers how these characters and the narrative events in which they are entangled shape—and ultimately unmake—Pechorin, the eponymous "hero of our time," whose perceptions of dis/ability are challenged by the events of the story he recounts. The paper finds that the depiction of disability in "Taman'" confirms some aspects of our limited historical knowledge about disability (invalidnost') in nineteenth-century Russia and tells us something about conceptions of Romantic literary disability more broadly.

A Reading of Westcott's Gospel of Creation: An Early Venture into Ecological Theology?

2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-202
Author(s):  
Duncan Reid
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Ecological Theology ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Science And Theology ◽  
Doctrine Of Creation ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

AbstractIn response to the contemporary ecological movement, ecological perspectives have become a significant theme in the theology of creation. This paper asks whether antecedents to this growing significance might predate the concerns of our times and be discernible within the diverse interests of nineteenth-century Anglican thinking. The means used here to examine this possibility is a close reading of B. F. Westcott's ‘Gospel of Creation’. This will be contextualized in two directions: first with reference to the understanding of the natural world in nineteenth-century English popular thought, and secondly with reference to the approach taken to the doctrine of creation by three late twentieth-century Anglican writers, two concerned with the relationship between science and theology in general, and a third concerned more specifically with ecology.

scholarly journals CARL SPITTELER A STOSUNKI POLSKO-ROSYJSKIE W DRUGIEJ POŁOWIE XIX WIEKU

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Zieliński
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Nobel Prize ◽  
Close Reading

“Carl Spitteler and Polish-Russian Relationships in the Second Half of the Nineteenth century”This paper deals with Carl Spitteler’s opinions, still not researched and descri- bed, about Polish-Russian relationships in the second half of the nineteenth century, it focuses on the issues of the Russification of former Polish territo- ries. Spitteler had an opportunity to get acquainted in depth both with Russia and the Kingdom of Poland The author reaches interesting conclusions from close reading of a writer who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1919.

scholarly journals Alone together: Cinematic (re)presentations of masculinity, friendship, and grief

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Costas Thrasyvoulou
Keyword(s):  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Traumatic Events ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Creative Work ◽  
Emotional Intimacy ◽  
Male Friend

<p>This project examines the links between masculinity, friendship, and grief in a combination of creative work and critical analysis. The creative component consists of a thirteen-minute short dramatic film entitled 'Brothers' (2014). This film explores the different ways in which three young men react to the death of a close male friend. The film contains no dialogue and emphasises the importance of gestures, actions, and other forms of behaviour.  The thesis is comprised of three main sections. The first situates masculine experiences of grief and friendship in a critical context by drawing on discourses from sociology and psychology. I argue that the feelings of individual men in relation to traumatic events such as bereavement are often hidden or repressed because of the need to present a stoic exterior, even during grieving rituals such as funerals. This kind of behaviour preserves the invulnerability often associated with dominant or idealised versions of masculinity. However, this tendency arguably inhibits male emotional intimacy and friendship, particularly during times of crisis.  The second part of the thesis considers how these interrelated issues are represented cinematically through a close reading of the John Cassavetes film 'Husbands' (1970). 'Husbands' is concerned with the dissolute behaviour of three male friends in the aftermath of the death of a friend. Although the men are garrulous, they struggle to articulate their feelings. I employ research on performance in cinema, as well as criticism of Cassavetes’ work to interpret the slips in their masculine bravado.  The final section engages in an exegesis of 'Brothers'. I reflect on the influence of Husbands on my project. I also discuss the ways in which 'Brothers' can be understood in terms of the critical frameworks established in the previous chapters.  A Note About 'Brothers': The creative component of this project, the film 'Brothers', is included alongside this thesis on a DVD. The film can also be accessed online at https://vimeo.com/99519967 using the password 'masterscut'. A copy of the final shooting script is also included in the thesis as an appendix.</p>

Marx, Central Planning, and Utopian Socialism

1989 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 160-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Scott Arnold
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Historical Materialism ◽  
Central Planning ◽  
Capitalist Society ◽  
The Other ◽  
Socialist Society ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Adequate Understanding ◽  
Utopian Socialism

Marx believed that what most clearly distinguished him and Engels from the nineteenth-century French socialists was that their version (or vision) of socialism was “scientific” while the latters' was Utopian. What he intended by this contrast is roughly the following: French socialists such as Proudhon and Fourier constructed elaborate visions of a future socialist society without an adequate understanding of existing capitalist society. For Marx, on the other hand, socialism was not an idea or an ideal to be realized, but a natural outgrowth of the existing capitalist order. Marx's historical materialism is a systematic attempt to discover the laws governing the inner dynamics of capitalism and class societies generally. Although this theory issues in a prediction of the ultimate triumph of socialism, it is a commonplace that Marx had little to say about the details of post-capitalist society. Nevertheless, some of its features can be discerned from his critical analysis of capitalism and what its replacement entails.

Kaleidoscopic Pedagogy in the Classroom Laboratory

2018 ◽  
pp. 3-23
Author(s):  
Ryan Cordell ◽  
Benjamin J. Doyle ◽  
Elizabeth Hopwood
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Data Analysis ◽  
Pedagogical Practices ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Learning Spaces ◽  
Text Encoding ◽  
Text Encoding Initiative ◽  
Classroom Laboratory ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
Interpretive Process

Ryan Cordell, Benjamin Doyle, and Elizabeth Hopwood’s essay seizes a nineteenth-century invention, the kaleidoscope, as a model and metaphor for pedagogical practices and learning spaces that encourage play and experimentation. Through examples that involve setting letterpress type, the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) encoding of nineteenth-century texts as an interpretive process, and the collaborative creation of Wikipedia pages, the authors describe how experiments with contemporary technologies help students claim scholarly agency over the texts and tools central to their study of the nineteenth century. Kaleidoscopic pedagogy encourages students to discover how C19 competencies like close reading and contemporary methods of coding and data analysis have the potential to be mutually constitutive, inspiring a more nuanced understanding of both periods.

Food Provisioning at Betty’s Hope Plantation, 1780s–1850s

2020 ◽  
pp. 68-82
Author(s):  
Geneviève Godbout
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Food Production ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Food Provisioning ◽  
Informal Trade

Throughout the colonial period, the occupants of the Betty’s Hope site relied a complex provisioning networks to obtain edible goods, tableware, and other necessities not only from the British Metropole and from local producers in Antigua but also from neighboring islands, including Guadeloupe, and from continental America. In this context, Betty’s Hope residents called upon food production and convivial hospitality were used to negotiate and stabilize their position within Antiguan society, both under slavery and after Emancipation (1834), under the particular constraints of absentee ownership and colonial trade regulations. The chapter combined the analysis of material cultural recovered at Betty’s Hope plantation with a close reading of correspondence relating to provisioning on the estate, to illustrate the enduring presence of informal trade, customary reciprocity, smuggling and illicit transactions on the estate throughout the nineteenth century.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis A. Pérez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Liberation ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
Historical Literature ◽  
History Of

The character of the history of Cuba was fixed early in the nineteenth century, at the about moment that Cubans imagined the need for a proper history of their own. From that time forward, historical knowledge of Cuba has hewed to a well-defined narrative arc, one shaped discursively around the formation of nation, something of a chronicle of national liberation given principally to the celebration of collective resolve and commemoration of individual valor. Much of the historical literature has been given to the heroic, an account of a people to whom is ascribed indomitable will confronting adversaries possessed of unyielding determination, from which are derived two principal narrative subsets of struggle: against colonialism (Spain) and against imperialism (the United States)....

scholarly journals Magical Realism as Feminist Discourse in Raja Alem’s Fatma: A Novel of Arabia

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laila Al-Sharqi
Keyword(s):  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Magical Realism ◽  
Gender Ideology ◽  
Female Character ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Central Theme ◽  
The Real ◽  
Feminist Discourse

<p>This article investigates Raja Alem’s <em>Fatma: A Novel of Arabia</em> (2002) as a narrative that appropriates magical realist techniques in the service of the feminist project of critiquing patriarchal notions and practices in contemporary Saudi society. Although Alem is credited by Arab and international critics as a major Saudi writer of the fantastical, it is <em>Fatma </em>that largely establishes her specific reputation as a magical realist. This article provides a close reading and critical analysis substantiating Alem’s extensive use of magical realist techniques. The fabulous and the real converge to create a mysterious universe wherein various times and spaces are merged together to question contemporary society’s assumptions around gender, gender ideology, and feminist issues—a central theme in contemporary Saudi fiction—thereby giving voice to the marginalized female character depicted in <em>Fatma.</em></p>

scholarly journals LEOPOLD RANKE'S ARCHIVAL TURN: LOCATION AND EVIDENCE IN MODERN HISTORIOGRAPHY

2008 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 425-453 ◽  
Author(s):  
KASPER RISBJERG ESKILDSEN
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
New Model ◽  
Political Realities ◽  
Important Site ◽  
German Historian

From 1827 to 1831 the German historian Leopold von Ranke travelled through Germany, Austria, and Italy, hunting for documents and archives. During this journey Ranke developed a new model for historical research that transformed the archive into the most important site for the production of historical knowledge. Within the archive, Ranke claimed, the trained historian could forget his personal predispositions and political loyalties, and write objective history. This essay critically examines Ranke's model for historical research through a study of the obstacles, frustrations, and joys that he encountered on his journey. It shows how Ranke's archival experiences inspired him to re-evaluate his own identity as a historian and as a human being, and investigates some of the affiliations between his model for historical research and the political realities of Prince Metternich's European order. Finally, the essay compares Ranke's historical discipline to other nineteenth-century disciplines, such as anthropology and archaeology.

“Big History” Old and New: Presuppositions, Limits, Alternatives

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 306-326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan Megill
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Innovative Approach ◽  
Human History ◽  
Comparative History ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Big History

In recent years David Christian and others have promoted “Big History” as an innovative approach to the study of the past. The present paper juxtaposes to Big History an old Big History, namely, the tradition of “universal history” that flourished in Europe from the mid-sixteenth century until well into the nineteenth century. The claim to universality of works in that tradition depended on the assumed truth of Christianity, a fact that was fully acknowledged by the tradition’s adherents. The claim of the new Big History to universality likewise depends on prior assumptions. Simply stated, in its various manifestations the “new” Big History is rooted either in a continuing theology, or in a form of materialism that is assumed to be determinative of human history, or in a somewhat contradictory amalgam of the two. The present paper suggests that “largest-scale history” as exemplified in the old and new Big Histories is less a contribution to historical knowledge than it is a narrativization of one or another worldview. Distinguishing between largest-scale history and history that is “merely” large-scale, the paper also suggests that a better approach to meeting the desire for large scale in historical writing is through more modest endeavors, such as large-scale comparative history, network and exchange history, thematic history, and history of modernization.

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