Historicism Along and Against the Grain: The Case of Wordsworth's "Michael"

1994 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 360-374 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tracy Ware
Keyword(s):  
The Past ◽  
Social Concerns ◽  
Aesthetic Ideology ◽  
Narrative Poem ◽  
As If

Geoffrey H. Hartman probably intended his brief discussion of Wordsworth's "Michael" less as a full reading than as a correction of received opinion. If so, he might be dismayed at his own success, for his discussion has now itself become received opinion, so influential that it is echoed even when it is not cited. Hartman's most compelling challege comes from Marjorie Levinson, who convincingly establishes a conflict between Wordsworth's social concerns and his poem's "aesthetic ideology." But Levinson conducts her argument with Hartman as if it were an argument with Wordsworth. Other interpretations of "Michael" are possible, including one that responds to Don H. Bialostosky's call for a "dialogic criticism" and that regards Michael as breaking his own covenant with the past. Because their attention is diverted to the induction, neither Hartman nor Levinson allows Michael any tragic complexity, and both emphasize the lyrical qualities of Wordsworth's narrative poem.

CAN JULIEN D’HUY’S COSMOGONIES SAVE US FROM YUVAL NOAH HARARI?

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 5-34
Author(s):  
Prof. Ph.D. Jacques COULARDEAU ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Short Circuit ◽  
Deep Roots ◽  
Intelligent Machines ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Tv Shows ◽  
Present World ◽  
As If

Over the last two decades, we seem to have been confronted with a tremendous number of books, films, TV shows, or series that deal with the past and the present, not to mention the future, as if it were all out of time, timeless, even when it is history. We have to consider our present world as the continuation and the result of the long evolution our species has gone through since we emerged from our ancestors 300,000 years ago. Julien d’Huy is a mythologist who tries to capture the phylogeny of myths, and popular or folkloric stories that have deep roots in our past and have been produced, changed and refined over many millennia. Can he answer the question about how we have become what we are by studying the products of our past and present imagination? But confronted to the prediction of Y.N. Harari that our species will simply disappear as soon as the intelligent machines we are inventing and producing take over our bodies, brains, and minds in just a few decades, Julien d’Huy sure sounds like the antidote because at every turn in our long history we have been able, collectively, to seize the day, and evolve into a new stage in our life, both biological and mental, not to mention spirituality. Let’s enter Julien d’Huy’s book and find out the power and the energy that will enable us to short-circuit and avoid Yuval’s nightmare.

Poetosphere and mythopoetics of the estate in A.A. Blok’s dramatic poem “Song of Fate”

2020 ◽  
pp. 186-205
Author(s):  
Ekaterina V. Kuznetsova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Russian Literature ◽  
Open Spaces ◽  
White House ◽  
Modern City ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Xix Century ◽  
The Hill ◽  
As If

As it noted by the researchers, the “Song of fate” accumulates painful thoughts of A.A. Blok about the fate of Russia and about his personal fate associat ed with the past, present and future of the Motherland. In addition to the ideological problems raised in it, the poem is interesting in an attempt to escape from the specifics of historical and national-cultural realities through their symbolization, combining the plans of life and being. The white house with a garden on the hill, in which the action of the play begins and the return to which is implied at the end, incorporates the most important features of Russia as a cultural, natural and spiritual space. The world of the estate is opposed by the space of the modern city and the big world of Russian open spaces. However, the estate for Blok is Russia the same. Therefore, Elena, the keeper of the estate, and Faina, the personalization of the world element, are two parts of one whole, as if the projection of an ideal Russia. The plot of the “Song of fate”, accord ing to D.M. Magomedova, I.S. Prikhodko, etc., is an artistic realization of the Gnostic myth of the captive Sophia, the Soul of the world. The imposition of the Gnostic myth in the “Song of fate” on the entire existing in Russian literature of the XIX century poetosphere of the estate leads to the creation of the author’s myth about Russia, the transformation of poetosphere in the mythopoetics.

Piecing Together a Past

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Bradley
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Present Account ◽  
The Past ◽  
Single Period ◽  
Previous Decade ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Single Method ◽  
Century Thought ◽  
With Memory ◽  
As If

Piecing Together the Past was one of the last books by Gordon Childe. It was published in 1955 and drew on a series of lectures he had given over the previous decade. Every chapter asked a question. The most difficult was: ‘What happened in prehistory?’ There might be disagreements over particular answers, but they would be based on a single method of analysis, for it seemed as if there was only one past to study. The authors of the present volume take a different view, for, no matter which monuments they consider, they find evidence of many separate pasts. Some of those histories were invoked at different times, and others were advocated simultaneously but by different groups of people. There was far more diversity than Childe allowed. It may have happened because his account was concerned exclusively with prehistory and with its significance for twentieth-century thought. What took place in between was overlooked, for in 1955 few scholars envisaged a past within the past. Those who did so were more concerned with the development of archaeology as a discipline. Childe’s procedure was like that of field projects which disregard later structures to focus on a single period. Childe was concerned with artefacts as well as monuments, but the present account considers the evidence of buildings and related structures. It is a vital distinction. Small objects might have been discovered by chance or could have circulated for a long time as heirlooms. Monuments, however, were impossible to overlook. They might be ignored as unacceptable beliefs were rejected, they might even be destroyed, but in every case their presence demanded some response. It is conventional to associate monuments with memory, as that invokes the Latin verb monere, to remind. This equation is problematical. It is implausible that a single version of the past would remain unaltered for long and more likely that it was revised as circumstances changed. At the same time, forgetting is an important cultural process (Forty and Küchler 1999) and ideas could lose their force surprisingly quickly.

Past Imperfect, Or the Pleasures and Perils of the Reenactment

2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (04) ◽  
pp. 929-942
Author(s):  
PAUL DURICA
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Public History ◽  
Site Specific ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Multiple Voices ◽  
Historical Reenactments ◽  
As If

From 2010 to 2015, Pocket Guide to Hell, a series of public history projects in Chicago, produced site-specific, participatory historical reenactments with the intention of treating the past as if it were a public space – an inhabitable site where multiple voices can be heard, meanings contested, and alliances forged. This paper narrates the process behind the production of the final Pocket Guide to Hell project, which marked the centennial of the Arts Club of Chicago, in order to reflect upon the origins of creative acts, the challenges of cocreation, and the possibilities and limitations of the reenactment form.

VICTORIAN MELODRAMA AND THE PERFORMANCE OF POVERTY

1999 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 443-456 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristen Leaver
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Frames Of Reference ◽  
Victorian Culture ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Cultural Formation ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Stability ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
As If

QUESTIONSABOUT THE PERFORMATIVE NATURE of Victorian culture have received extended attention in the past decade or so as critics have begun to examine the relationship between representation and subjectivity.1 By and large, such studies have fruitfully problematized our received assumptions about the private character of the Victorians. At the same time, however, they have also implicitly privileged the middle-class frames of reference that shape the distinction, for even as they complicate our understanding of performance by calling into question the distinction between public and private modes, critics who take up such issues tend not to question the stability of the categories of experience under scrutiny. As a result, while we gain important new insights into the cultural formation of identity or genre underwritten by the separation of public and private spheres, we also risk reading all Victorians as if their relationships to such ideological formations were identical with those of the emerging middle class.

scholarly journals Ligeti's ‘third way’: ‘Non–atonal’ elements in the Horn Trio

Tempo ◽  
2001 ◽  
pp. 17-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mike Searby
Keyword(s):  
Major Elements ◽  
Musical Language ◽  
Third Way ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ternary Form ◽  
Harmonic Language ◽  
As If

It is perhaps curious that only a year after this exchange took place in 1981, Ligeti completed his Horn Trio – which uses traditional ternary form, a passacaglia (although a disguised one), a strong melodic focus, and a harmonic language which contains clear triads and dominant sevenths in abundance. In spite of his assertions above, it does seem as if Ligeti, in addition to rejecting the Avant-garde, is looking to the past for major elements of his musical language.

Learning from Blindness

PMLA ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 130 (5) ◽  
pp. 1506-1509
Author(s):  
Chris Mounsey
Keyword(s):  
Family Member ◽  
Death And Dying ◽  
The Past ◽  
To Come ◽  
As If

Only when my friend kevin said, in an aside to his wife i was not meant to hear, that i was still grieving for my loss of sight did i realize that I was and had been for the past seven years. When a friend or family member dies, it is an obvious time to grieve; when someone you love dies, you have to get on as best you can without them. But when you are confronted with a disability, it is as if a part of you has died, and the rest of you has to get on as best it can. Learning how to come to terms with the change in your day-to-day life disguises the need for grief. So, seven years on, let me give you an inkling of what happens when one of your senses dies. The metaphor of death (or perhaps it's not a metaphor) is convenient since it leads to a framework for my explanation. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, in On Death and Dying, explored the ways we come to terms with death through five emotional stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

A Theological Ethic for Renewing Church-Labor Alliance

Horizons ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-91
Author(s):  
Patricia Ann Lamoureux
Keyword(s):  
Labor Movement ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Organized Labor ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Concerns ◽  
Future Viability ◽  
Negative Factors ◽  
American Labor Movement ◽  
American Labor

ABSTRACTThe contemporary American labor movement is in a state of crisis. Not only is the membership base at a low-point, but a host of negative factors and obstacles to growth present enormous challenges for its future viability. In the past, organized labor has been most effective when there was a strong alliance with the Catholic community. Since the middle of the twentieth century, however, this association has weakened, and in some cases has turned to opposition. The premise of this article is that a renewed church-labor alliance could provide needed assistance to reinvigorate the labor movement while also advancing the social concerns of the Catholic Church in this nation.

The Augurscope: Refining its Design

2006 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 278-293 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holger Schnädelbach ◽  
Boriana Koleva ◽  
Mark Paxton ◽  
Mike Twidale ◽  
Steve Benford ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Environment ◽  
Physical Environment ◽  
Mixed Reality ◽  
Iterative Design ◽  
The Past ◽  
Heritage Site ◽  
Museum Environment ◽  
3D Virtual Environment ◽  
As If

In this paper we explore the iterative design of the Augurscope, a mobile mixed reality device for open-air museum experiences. It allows a 3D virtual environment to be viewed as if overlaid on an outdoor physical environment. While exploring a heritage site, groups of visitors can experience simulated scenes from the past from a dynamic user-controlled viewpoint by moving, rotating, and tilting the device. The development focused on creating an interface to a visualization of a medieval castle as it used to appear in relation to its current, quite different site. We describe the development and application of the Augurscope through two iterative design stages. We discuss the issues revealed through public trials with the first prototype and how they informed the design of the Augurscope 2. The deployment of this second prototype then enables us to offer insights into what makes such a novel presentation device successful in an outdoor museum environment.

Mink’s Riddle of Narrative Truth

2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 346-370
Author(s):  
Chiel van den Akker
Keyword(s):  
Literary Theory ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Clear Distinction ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
The Past ◽  
Narrative Truth ◽  
As If

Abstract The problem how to ascertain the truth about the past is as old as history itself. But until the work of Louis Mink, no clear distinction was made between questions concerning the truth of statements on the past and questions concerning the truth of historical narratives as a whole. A narrative, Mink argues, is not simply a conjunction of statements on the past. Therefore its truth cannot be a function of the truth of its individual statements. The problem of narrative truth is according to him thus: although each statement (or set of statements) asserting a relation between events is subject to confirmation and disconfirmation, the combination of interrelations as established by the historical narrative is not, even though such combination of interrelations represents a real combination in past reality and is claimed to be true. As if to further complicate the problem, Mink maintains that history shares its form with fiction. Three and a half decades after Mink formulated the problem of narrative truth, it has not been dealt with in a satisfying manner. Mink does not solve nor dissolve the problem he posed. That task is taken up in this essay. It will move us away from the vocabulary of literary theory towards a pragmatist account of narrative truth.

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