Eternalising Cultural Memory Through Cultural Parallels in Literary Narratives

IJOHMN ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 65-74
Author(s):  
Dr. Sumathi Shivakumar
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Indian Philosophy ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
The Real ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
What Matters

Cultural memory represents the collective perceptions and creations of the distant past. Such collective memories are best documented and secured in Literature. What matters is not the real facts but rather the consensus of conventions shared by both the cultural history and the literary creator. However, literary narratives do not always give a compilation of such memories under a single wrap. It is on this distinctive point that Jakkana stands out in eternalising cultural memory. BasavarajNaikar’s novella, Jakkanna is the retelling of the life and history of the AmarsilpiJakkannacharya, the famed architect of the Hoysala dynasty. The plot is replete with events that have been happening from the ancient times. Parallels of such incidents that have endured to the modern times can be drawn from the two great epics and other ancient Indian philosophy and literatures. This article aims at highlighting such aspects of our lives that seems to have been greatly influenced by the past. It also looks at such events that have endured eras.

A Cultural History of Memory in Antiquity

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Right ◽  
Remote Past

The ancient world is a paradigm for the memory scholar. Without an awareness that collective memories are not only different from individual memories (or even the sum thereof) but also highly constructed, ancient research will be fundamentally flawed. Many networks of memories are beautifully represented in the written and material remains of antiquity, and it is precisely the ways in which they are fashioned, distorted, preserved or erased through which we can learn about the historical process as such. Our evidence is deeply characterized by the fact that ancient ‘identity’ and ‘memory’ appear exceptionally strong. Responsible for this is a continuing desire to link the present to the remote past, which creates many contexts in which memories were constructed. The ancient historian therefore has the right tools with which to work: places and objects from the past, monuments and iconography, and textual narratives with a primary purpose to memorize and commemorate. This is paired with our desire to understand the ancient world through its own self-perception. With the opportunity of tapping into this world by way of oral history, personal testimonies are a desideratum in all respects. Memory of the past, however, is profoundly about ‘self-understanding’. This volume surveys and builds on the many insights we have gained from vibrant research in the field since Maurice Halbwachs’ and Jan Assmann’s seminal studies on the idea and definition of ‘cultural memory’. While focusing on specific themes all chapters address the concepts and expressions of memory, and their historical impact and utilization by groups and individuals at specific times and for specific reasons.

Violence and Risk in Medieval Iceland

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oren Falk
Keyword(s):  
Prospect Theory ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Power Analysis ◽  
The Past ◽  
Authorial Intent ◽  
Historical Authenticity ◽  
History Of ◽  
Interdisciplinary Study ◽  
Future Status

This interdisciplinary study of violence in medieval Iceland pursues three intertwined goals. First, it proposes a new cultural history model for understanding violence. The model has three axes: power, signification, and risk. Analysis in instrumental terms, as an attempt to coerce others, focuses on power. Analysis in symbolic terms, as an attempt to manipulate meanings, focuses on signification. Analysis in cognitive terms, as an attempt to exercise agency over imperfectly controlled circumstances, focuses on risk. The axis of risk is the model’s major innovation and is laid out in detail, using insights from prospect theory, edgework, and the calculus of jeopardy. It is shown that violence, which itself generates risks, at the same time also serves to control uncertainties. Second, the book tests this model on a series of case studies from the history of medieval Iceland. It examines how violence shapes present circumstances, future status, and past memories, and how it transforms uncertain reality into socially useful narrative, showing how Icelanders’ feud paradigm blocked the prospects of warfare and state formation, while their idiom of human violence domesticated the natural environment. Third, the book develops the concept of uchronia, the hegemonic ideology of the past, to explain how texts modulate history. Uchronia is a motivated cultural memory which vouches for historical authenticity (regardless of factual reliability), maintains textual autonomy from authorial intent, and secures a fit between present society and its own past. In medieval Iceland, as often elsewhere, violence played a key role in the making of uchronia

scholarly journals Un voyage d’oscar Milosz en Lituanie

Literatūra ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
pp. 26-33
Author(s):  
Genovaitė Dručkutė
Keyword(s):  
Full Article ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Travel Writing ◽  
Don Quixote ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Past ◽  
Literary Character ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Alter Ego

[full article and abstract in French; abstract in English and Lithuanian] Oscar Milosz, poète et écrivain français d’origine lituanienne, de 1920 à 1925 occupait le poste de Chargé d’Affaires de Lituanie en France et en tant que diplomate se rendit plusieurs fois en Lituanie. L’objet de cet article est le récit d’un voyage de Milosz en Lituanie, au cours du mois d‘août de 1922, en compagnie de Maurice Prozor, comme lui d’origine lituanienne, et de sa fille. Ce voyage est raconté par Greta Prozor, témoin oculaire. Le but de l’article est d’analyser le récit en faisant attention à quelques points : 1. l’image de Lituanie, telle qu’elle surgit au cours de la narration,2. la figure de Milosz comme son protagoniste. Summary The article analyzes the story of Oskaras Milašius’s journey to Lithuania which took place in August 1922. Accompanied by her father Maurice Prozor, the author of the story Greta Prozor is also the one who traveled alongside the poet and witnessed his journey first hand. As the analysis draws on the theoretical grounding for travel writing, the article seeks to define and interpret both the image of Lithuania and the figure of the protagonist of the story Milašius. The analysis comes to the conclusion that the author of the story reflectively foregrounds the geographical, historical, social, and cultural history of the country unknown to her before. It also comes to the realization that the “otherness” of Lithuania and its inherent “exotics” lie within the union between the past and the present. It is the union between the past full of life and the present times that determines the distinctive singularity of Lithuania in Europe, which the travelers seem to know well. During the cause of the story, the figure of Milašius is defined through the literary character of Don Quixote, the poet’s alter ego. His nostalgia-driven attempt at the reunion with the family’s past is, in fact, impossible; it cannot be accomplished in present reality. The real reunion with the past most yearned for is possible only throughout the oral and written story.

Fyodor Fyodorovich Martens (1845–1909) a humanist of modern times

1996 ◽  
Vol 36 (312) ◽  
pp. 300-314 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimir Pustogarov
Keyword(s):  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Mutual Aid ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ancient Record ◽  
Peace And War ◽  
The Ideal

In the history of humankind, no matter how far back we look into the past, peaceful relations between people and nations have always been the ideal, and yet this history abounds in wars and bloodshed. The documentary evidence, oral tradition and the mute testimony of archaeological sites tell an incontrovertible tale of man's cruelty and violence against his fellow man. Nevertheless, manifestations of compassion, mercy and mutual aid have a no less ancient record. Peace and war, goodneighbourly attitudes and aggression, brutality and humanity exist side by side in the contemporary world as well.

MODERN PERFORMANCE ON THE KAZAKH KOBYZ

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 176-180
Author(s):  
T. Zh. Yeginbayeva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Development ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
Musical Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ensemble Performance ◽  
Natural Tendency ◽  
New Development ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ancient Times

Global processes in the musical culture of Kazakhstan are the result of the numerous events that have taken place in the country over the past 20 years. The independence of the state has become a key factor that has had a decisive impact on the economic, socio-political and cultural development of the country. We have entered a new life, which has a rich cultural heritage and was carefully preserved by our ancestors. One of the proofs is the history of Kazakh kobyz art from ancient times to the present day. Modern kobyz art is closely connected with ancient history and has a rich natural tendency for new development, based on centuries of experience. Therefore, kobyz music of the XXth–XXIst centuries absorbed the traditions of European genres and styles, and is widely used in mass music, in various directions of ethnorock, art-rock, folk and others. Two lines of development of music for kobyz and music on kobyz existed in ancient times and nowadays. From here comes the divergence of creative direction among modern composers and in ensemble performance.

Allegorie della libertŕ e tipologie del sacro nell'iconografia rivoluzionaria russa

2012 ◽  
pp. 57-80
Author(s):  
Dogo Dunja
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Russian Revolution ◽  
Symbolic System ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Source Materials

Allegories of liberty and typologies of the sacred in the iconography of revolutionary Russia. Revolutionary iconography addresses a topic that crosses the field of studies of the Russian Revolution, whose scope in the past two decades has begun to investigate the cultural history of 1917, thanks to easier access to source materials that have re-emerged after the opening of the Russian archives. Above all, the essay attempts to reconstruct how three particular typologies (St. George, the Angel, Liberty) came into use in the Russian revolutionary symbolic system and underwent a metamorphosis, contributing to a phenomenon of syncretism. Such discourses can show how different political subjects – at times on opposing sides - employed a common imagery within a struggle for the conquest of the symbol.

Art. XIX.—An old Hebrew Romance of Alexander

1897 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 485-549
Author(s):  
M. Gaster
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Early Period ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Other ◽  
The West ◽  
The Real ◽  
History Of ◽  
Bibliographical Information ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
Great Mass

More marvellous and more remarkable than the real conquests of Alexander are the stories circulated about him, and the legends which have clustered round his name and his exploits. The history of Alexander has, from a very early period, been embellished with legends and tales. They spread from nation to nation during the whole of the ancient times, and all through the Middle Ages. Many scholars have followed up the course of this dissemination of the fabulous history of Alexander. It would, therefore, be idle repetition of work admirably done by men like Zacher, Wesselofsky, Budge, and others, should I attempt it here. All interested in the legend of Alexander are familiar with those works, where also the fullest bibliographical information is to be found. I am concerned here with what may have appeared to some of these students as the bye-paths of the legend, and which, to my mind, has not received that attention which is due to it, from more than one point of view. Hitherto the histories of Alexander were divided into two categories; the first were those writings which pretended to give a true historical description of his life and adventures, to the exclusion of fabulous matter; the other included all those fabulous histories in which the true elements were smothered under a great mass of legendary matter, the chief representative of this class being the work ascribed to a certain Callisthenes. The study of the legend centred in the study of the vicissitudes to which this work of (Pseudo-) Callisthenes had been exposed, in the course of its dissemination from the East, probably from its native country, Egypt, to the countries of the West.

scholarly journals “PLEASE PASS THE SALT” – AN ETHNOARCHAEOLOGICAL STUDY OF SALT AND SALT FERMENTED FISH PRODUCTION, USE AND TRADE IN NORTHEAST THAILAND.

2015 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Yankowski ◽  
Puangtip Kerdsap ◽  
Dr. Nigel Chang
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Historical Data ◽  
Mekong Delta ◽  
Northeast Thailand ◽  
Preparation Methods ◽  
Fish Products ◽  
Fermented Fish ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ethnographic Data

<p>Northeast Thailand is known for salt production, both today and in the past.  Prehistoric salt sites are found throughout the region and ethnographic and historical data demonstrates the importance of salt as a commodity as well as for preserving and fermenting fish. This paper explores the archaeology and cultural history of salt and salt fermented fish products in Northeast Thailand and the Greater Mekong Delta region.  Using archaeological, historical and ethnographic data, it addresses how the foods we eat and our preparation methods can be deeply rooted in our cultural history and identity, and discusses the ways in which they can be studied in the archaeological record to learn about the past.</p> <p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"> </span></p>

scholarly journals On Memory of Plates and Dishes

Fluminensia ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-136
Author(s):  
Krystyna Pieniążek-Marković
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Regional Identity ◽  
Literary Fiction ◽  
Western World ◽  
Individual Identity ◽  
The Past ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common

The aim of the article is to discuss how elements of food narratives meals and kitchen tools used for cooking are used in order to consolidate and shape the Croatian cultural memory, especially in the context of its Mediterranean heritage.For this reason, the texts by Veljko Barbieri, collected in the four volumes under the common and significant title Kuharski kanconijer. Gurmanska sjećanja Mediterana, are analysed. His circum-culinary narratives are a combination of encyclopaedic knowledge, references to historical and literary sources, personal memories and literary fiction. They can be easily inscribed in the Croatian (collective and individual) identity discourse since they are able to strengthen the collective (either national and supranational, or geo-regional) identity, and to construct the cultural memory. They also show Croatia's affiliation to the Western world along with its cultural-civilization rooting in antiquity, the Mediterranean region and Christianity, thus forming a part of the founding memory that develops a narrative about the very beginnings of Croatian presence on this land. The gastronomic narratives serve to create the cultural memory and this version of history which is to stabilize the social identity described by Pierre Nora and Andreas Huyssen. Through his stories, Barbieri shapes memory based on the representation of the past. In the analysed narratives, the memory carriers are dishes and plates which find reference to the oldest history of Croatia rendered by myths and other narratives. Associated with dishes, the pots enable the narrator to recall the past and the identity coded in individual dishes. They also participate in the processes of repeating, storage and remembering which generate a symbiotic relationship between man and thing. The memory carriers that is, food and plates depicted in Barbieri's culinary narratives do not convey their content in a neutral way, but construct their marked images.

scholarly journals Manipuri Lores: Folktales, Cultural History and Anthologies

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 140-143
Author(s):  
Yaisna Rajkumari ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Direct Link ◽  
The Past ◽  
The North ◽  
North Eastern ◽  
Indian State ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Times

The paper will establish a connection between folktales and the cultural history of a region, particularly with respect to the Indian state of Manipur. It is premised on the belief that a study of folktales can alert us not only to the various interconnections between folktales and the cultural history of a place but also help analyse the dynamics of the publication of the anthologies of folktales in relation to this cultural history. The paper will include analyses of Meitei and tribal tales pertaining to the nationalist phase and contemporary period in the history of the North Eastern Indian state of Manipur and look at how in the past few years, compilers and translators have incorporated versions of tales different from the earlier anthologies, establishing a direct link between the tales and the times of their publication.

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