English Deism and the Development of Romantic Mythological Syncretism

PMLA ◽  
1956 ◽  
Vol 71 (5) ◽  
pp. 1094-1116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert J. Kuhn
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Focal Event ◽  
Characteristic Features ◽  
Widespread Interest ◽  
New System ◽  
Sir William Jones

One of the characteristic features of English and of continental Romanticism was a widespread interest in the origins, nature, and meaning of the myths of the ancient world. Especially in England among classical scholars, antiquarians, and learned churchmen there was a zealous desire to resurrect divinities long forgotten and to find in them and their exploits a relevance for the modern age. One of the most characteristic and influential treatises on myth in the period was the Reverend Jacob Bryant's A New System, or, An Analysis of Antient Mythology (1774–76), an ambitious project whose purpose was “to rectify what time has impaired: to divest mythology of every foreign and unmeaning ornament, and to display the truth in its native simplicity.” He hoped thereby to give a “new turn to antient history, and to place it upon a surer foundation.” By hypothesizing that the Noachian Deluge was the focal event in ancient history and by seeking to show that its symbolism explained or elucidated the bulk of universal mythology, Bryant was confident that he was not only doing a service to knowledge but also that he was strengthening the premises of Christian truth. On similar diluvian hypotheses Thomas Maurice's Indian Antiquities (1793–1800), Edward Davies' The Mythology and the Rites of the British Druids (1809), and George Stanley Faber's The Origin of Pagan Idolatry (1816) attempted to achieve the same ends. Other notable researches in myth at the turn of the nineteenth century in England were those of Sir William Jones, the Orientalist, Sir William Drummond, the skeptic philosopher, and Richard Payne Knight, the art connoisseur. Well known also in learned circles was the more radically speculative mythologizing of such Frenchmen as Pierre Hugues (D'Hancarville), Jean Sylvain Bailly, and Charles François Dupuis.

The Contribution of Papyri to the Prosopography of the Ancient World: Evaluation and Prospects

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Michel Carrie
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
Documentary Sources

Some are familiar with the dictum often attributed to Mommsen at the end of the nineteenth century, according to which papyrology was destined to become the leading discipline of ancient history in succession to epigraphy, which had previously been dominant. During the century in which this new branch of knowledge of antiquity has been in existence, the contribution of papyri and ostraca to the documentation of ancient societies has justified the hopes thus placed in it. It is all the more surprising, then, to note that among historians there persists a certain failure to appreciate this contribution and a reluctance to exploit it. The truth is that papyri share the same fragmentary, random and lacunose character that is a feature of the majority of documentary sources available to us for the study of the ancient world.

Figures of Authority in Nineteenth-Century Ireland

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
First Century ◽  
Western World ◽  
Catholic Priests ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Emotional Politics ◽  
Print Cultures

This interdisciplinary collection investigates the forms that authority assumed in nineteenth-century Ireland, the relations they bore to international redefinitions of authority, and Irish contributions to the reshaping of authority in the modern age. At a time when age-old sources of social, political, spiritual and cultural authority were eroded in the Western world, Ireland witnessed both the restoration of older forms of authority and the rise of figures who defined new models of authority in a democratic age. Using new comparative perspectives as well as archival resources in a wide range of fields, eleven chapters show how new authorities were embodied in emerging types of politicians, clerics and professionals, and in material extensions of their power in visual, oral and print cultures. Their analyses often eerily echo twenty-first-century debates about populism, the suspicion towards scholarly and intellectual expertise, and the role of new technologies and forms of association in contesting and recreating authority. Several contributions highlight the role of emotion in the way authority was deployed by figures ranging from O’Connell to Catholic priests and W.B. Yeats, foreshadowing the perceived rise of emotional politics in our own age. This volume stresses that many contested forms of authority that now look ‘traditional’ emerged from 19th-century crises and developments, as did the challenges that undermine authority.

An Introduction to the History of International Law

1924 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 246-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Baron S. A. Korff
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Long Time ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
History Of International Law

For a long time writers on international law took it for granted that the subject of their studies was a relatively recent product of modern civilization, and that the ancient world did not know any system of international law. If we go back to the literature of the nineteenth century, we can find a certain feeling of pride among internationalists that international law was one of the best fruits of our civilization and that it was a system which distinguished us from the ancient barbarians. Some of these writers paid special attention to this question of origins and endeavored to explain why the ancient world never could have had any international law.

Structural changes in the modern urban lifestyle

2020 ◽  
pp. 37-42
Author(s):  
Madina Arif kyzy Mekhdieva
Keyword(s):  
Structural Changes ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
Geographical Environment ◽  
Urban Settlements ◽  
Migration Flows ◽  
Characteristic Features ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Historical Nature

The article deals with the issues of urban settlements and urban lifestyle from the point of view of structural changes under the influence of transformational processes in the development of productive forces, tools and means of production. The author notes the historical nature of this process associated with the geographical environment, resources and migration flows under the influence of the development of capitalist relations. Some peculiarities of lifestyle in Baku as a city with an ancient history, with a number of characteristic features of a distinctive way of life, combining the traditions of several generations and different civilizations, are analyzed.

Contemporary logomachies

2019 ◽  
pp. 53-76
Author(s):  
Marco Pinfari
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Al Qaeda ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
Terrorist Groups ◽  
Late Nineteenth

This chapter continues with the line of argument presented in chapter 2 about the role of monster images in framing “terrorist” actors and about the recurrence of monster metaphors that not only convey their “otherness” but also, more forcefully, their resilience and unmanageability. The first paragraph presents the pseudo-scientific framing of anarchists in the late nineteenth century as half-human, half-feral uncontrollable brutes. The following section reviews the resort to religious and “cosmic war” imagery in framing “terrorist” groups as part of ethnonationalist conflicts, including the biblical “beasts” cited by Ian Paisley, the unmanageable yakku of Sinhalese folklore, and the resilient people of Amalek who fought the Israelites throughout most of their ancient history. The final paragraph introduces the concept of global jihad and discusses the reasons why Frankenstein’s monster and the hydra proved to be the most popular metaphors for describing both al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.

Ireland: Realm of the Four Masters

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Rowley-Conwy
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
English Translation ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
Irish History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ancient Manuscripts ◽  
To Come ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
Or History

On 9 January 1843, Richard Griffith addressed the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) about some antiquities found in the River Shannon. The river was being dredged to render it navigable, and the artefacts were discovered during the deepening of the old ford at Keelogue. Griffith was the chairman of the Commissioners carrying out the work, and his expertise was in engineering rather than ancient history. He stated that the finds came from a layer of gravel; in its upper part were many bronze swords and spears, while a foot lower were numerous stone axes. Due to the rapidity of the river’s flow there was very little aggradation, so despite the small gap the bronze objects were substantially later than the stone ones. The river formed the border between the ancient kingdoms of Connaught and Leinster. The objects had apparently been lost in two battles for the ford that had taken place at widely differing dates; stressing that he was no expert himself, Mr Griffith wondered whether ancient Irish history might contain records of battles at this spot (Griffith 1844). This was probably the earliest non-funerary stratigraphic support for the Three Age System ever published, but it did not signal the acceptance of the Three Age System. Just as telling as Griffith’s stratigraphic observation was his immediate recourse to ancient history for an explanation; for, as we shall see, ancient history provided the dominant framework for the ancient Irish past until the end of the nineteenth century. The Irish had far more early manuscript sources than the Scots or the English, although wars and invasions had reduced them; the Welsh scholar Edward Lhwyd wrote from Sligo on 12 March 1700 to his colleague Henry Rowlands that ‘the Irish have many more ancient manuscripts than we in Wales; but since the late revolutions they are much lessened. I now and then pick up some very old parchment manuscripts; but they are hard to come by, and they that do anything understand them, value them as their lives’ (in Rowlands 1766: 315). In the seventeenth century various Irish scholars brought together the historical accounts available to them. Geoffrey Keating (Seathrú n Céitinn, in Irish) wrote the influential Foras Feasa ar Éirinn or ‘History of Ireland’ in c.1634, and an English translation was printed in 1723 (Waddell 2005).

Imperial Vision, Colonial Prisons:

2018 ◽  
Vol 77 (2) ◽  
pp. 146-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mira Rai Waits
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Primary Objective ◽  
Moral Reform ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Built Form ◽  
British Rule ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
New System

Prison construction was among the most important infrastructural changes brought about by British rule in nineteenth-century India. Informed by the extension of liberal political philosophy into the colony, the development of the British colonial prison introduced India to a radically new system of punishment based on long-term incarceration. Unlike prisons in Europe and the United States, where moral reform was cited as the primary objective of incarceration, prisons in colonial India focused on confinement as a way of separating and classifying criminal types in order to stabilize colonial categories of difference. In Imperial Vision, Colonial Prisons: British Jails in Bengal, 1823–73, Mira Rai Waits explores nineteenth-century colonial jail plans from India's Bengal Presidency. Although colonial reformers eventually arrived at a model of prison architecture that resembled Euro-American precedents, the built form and functional arrangements of these places reflected a singularly colonial model of operation.

We need to talk about Epizelus: ‘PTSD’ and the ancient world

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-54
Author(s):  
Owen Rees
Keyword(s):  
Traumatic Stress ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Medical Profession ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Diagnostic Model ◽  
Post Traumatic Stress ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
Shell Shock ◽  
Post Traumatic

In the pursuit to offer validity and lineage to the modern diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), non-historical scholars often remove ancient episodes from their social context and retrospectively diagnose them based on our modern diagnostic criteria. This approach reinforces our pre-existing ideas, and form a confirmation bias that does not help to grow our understanding of these injuries. As this article argues, the use of ancient precedents would offer greater benefit to the psychological and medical profession when used to ask new questions rather than reiterate old answers. This article addresses the use of ancient history in the psychological disciplines, especially concerning the topic of post-traumatic stress, and its earlier categorisation as shell shock. Before assessing the non-historical scholarship for the use of ancient precedents, this article sets out the historical debate around the topic and the methodological issues involved in using PTSD as a model with which to examine the ancient world. After which, the use of ancient history by psychological and medical researchers examining PTSD will be assessed. In turn, it will be shown how the removal of historical context has allowed misunderstandings of the original texts and for historical errors to permeate. The story of Epizelus, a man who went blind in battle without incurring any injury, will be used as a case study to show how ancient history has been misused, and vital parts of his life story have been ignored because they do not fit the modern diagnostic model. In particular this article will show how ancient episodes have been used to justify modern ideas and modern understanding, and propose new therapies, without the necessary historical due diligence.

Fates of Romes

2020 ◽  
Vol 110 ◽  
pp. 233-246
Author(s):  
Alain Bresson
Keyword(s):  
Turning Point ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Religious History ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
First Century ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Twenty First Century

Kyle Harper's book The Fate of Rome marks the thunderous entry of Nature into the world of ancient history of the twenty-first century. This is not the first book devoted to questions of climate and diseases in the ancient world, but its publication nonetheless represents a turning point. From now on, whether they work on political, social, economic, or even religious history, ancient historians will no longer be able to ignore these factors in their own writings. That is not to say that all the theses of the book, especially its natural determinism, should be accepted uncritically.

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