scholarly journals In Search of a National Epic: The use of Old Norse myths in Tolkien's vision of Middle-earth

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-36
Author(s):  
Tommy Kuusela
Keyword(s):  
Second Life ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Old Norse ◽  
Literary Sources

In this article some aspects of Tolkien’s work with regard to his relationship to folklore and nationalism are presented. It is also argued, contrary to Lauri Honko’s view of literary epics, that pre-literary sources constitute a problem for the creators of literary epics and that their elements can direct the choice of plot and form. Tolkien felt that there was a British – but no English – mythology comparable to the Greek, Finnish or Norse ones. He tried to reconstruct the ‘lost mythology’ with building blocks from existing mythologies, and dedicated his work to the English people. In this, he saw himself as a compiler of old source material. This article considers his use of Old Norse sources. With Honko’s notion of the second life of folklore it is argued that Tolkien managed to popularise folklore material while his efforts to make his work exclusively English failed; for a contemporary audience it is rather cross-cultural.

The theory and history of ekphrasis. A summary and prospects of research, or, forty-five articles on ekphrasis

2019 ◽  
pp. 188-215
Author(s):  
N. M. Perlina
Keyword(s):  
Development Process ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Characteristics ◽  
Literary Evolution ◽  
History Of ◽  
Written Word ◽  
Similar Development

The article is devoted to ekphrasis, its historical and literary evolution, as well as aspects of its stylistic, cultural, and ideological origins. The research is based on the versatile collection of The Theory and History of Ekphrasis [Teoriya i istoriya ekfrasisa], which contains a number of previously little known texts and theories on ekphrasis, developed in regions with different ethnic and cultural characteristics. The author spares no effort in the examination of this monograph and, using the observations made by various scholars, discerns a similar development process of cross-cultural and cross-aesthetic transformations and transpositions, which, however, adopts divergent paths. Transpositions, the author suggests, occur in the model of a text awaiting a pictorial interpretation. The article concentrates on the ways to present an image anticipated in a written word, and to generate a new text, whose subject and content draw not only on poeticized observations of the source material, but also on metapoetic tales about its creators.

Wheat in thn Roman World: an addendum

1984 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 243-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Mayerson
Keyword(s):  
Source Material ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Specific Data ◽  
Wheat Production ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Bona Fide

J. K. Evans' well-documented article, ‘Wheat production and its social consequences in the Roman world’, correctly makes the point that ‘the evidence with regard to wheat yields is at once meagre and plainly contradictory’. The difficulty in assessing yields arises, of course, from the character of the available source material; namely, literary sources. The information comes from the hands of men such as Cicero and Varro who were concerned with matters other than specific data on the cultivation and production of grains, and who probably never sowed or reaped a modius of wheat. What was lacking until recently was a bona-fide document from the hands of a farmer or a community intimately concerned with the growing of wheat. We now have one such document, P. Colt 82 of the seventh century A.D., that fills a gap in the evidence for yields for both wheat and barley.

Questing for Standards

2011 ◽  
pp. 81-97
Author(s):  
Mark G. Elwell
Keyword(s):  
Second Life ◽  
Computer Games ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Role Play ◽  
Role Playing ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Social Dimensions ◽  
Role Playing Games ◽  
Life Issues ◽  
Role Playing Game

This chapter reports on movements toward de facto standards for role playing games in the freely accessible and configurable shared virtual environment of Second Life. All users can not only freely join, but also construct and implement role playing games of their own design. Consequently, new games are constantly emerging, and others either persisting or failing. The resulting body of practice has implications for business, technological, and social dimensions of computer games. To elucidate these implications, this chapter presents the case of the Role Play Nexus, a venue created for role playing game designers, managers, and players to share experiences, questions, resources, and proposals for sustainable ventures and communities in Second Life. Issues, controversies, and problems are identified, and solutions and recommendations discussed. Source material is drawn from transcripts of public lectures, discussions and demonstrations, from interviews, and from participant observation.

Enoch from Antiquity to the Middle Ages, Volume I

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Reeves ◽  
Annette Yoshiko Reed
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Third Century ◽  
The Third ◽  
Present Volume ◽  
Comprehensive Collection ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Textual Traditions ◽  
The Middle Ages

This book provides scholars with a comprehensive collection of core references extracted from Jewish, Christian, and Muslim literature to a plethora of ancient writings associated with the name of the biblical character Enoch (Gen 5:214). It assembles citations of and references to writings attributed to Enoch in non-canonical Jewish, Christian, and Muslim literary sources (ranging in age from roughly the third century BCE up through the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries CE) into one convenient thematically arranged repository, and it classifies, compares, and briefly analyzes these references and citations to develop a clearer picture of the scope and range of what one might term “the Enochic library,” or the entire corpus of works attributed to Enoch and his subsequent cross-cultural avatars. The book consists of two parts. The present volume, Volume 1, is devoted to textual traditions about the narratological career of the character Enoch. It collects materials about the distinctive epithets frequently paired with his name, outlines his cultural achievements, articulates his societal roles, describes his interactions with the celestial world, assembles the varied traditions about his eventual fate, and surveys the various identities he is assigned outside the purely biblical world of discourse within other discursive networks and intellectual circles. It also assembles a range of testimonies which express how writings associated with Enoch were evaluated by Jewish, Christian, and Muslim writers during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Volume 2, currently in preparation, will concentrate upon textual sources which arguably display a knowledge of the peculiar contents, motifs, and themes of extant Enochic literature, including but not limited to 1 Enoch (the Ethiopic Book of Enoch) and 2 Enoch (the Slavonic Book of Enoch).

Cattle, community and corrals

2005 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 132-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Creighton
Keyword(s):  
Southern Africa ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Archaeological Remains ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Imperial Power ◽  
Temperate Europe ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Area Of Influence

Jean and John Comaroff's paper provides an elegant narrative describing the processes at work behind the adoption of coinage amongst the Tswana of southern Africa under the influence of European missionaries and colonists. My own particular interests are set back two thousand years earlier with the adoption of coin in France and Britain. At this time Rome was the up-and-coming imperial power engaged in trade, and then conquest, stretching its area of influence and dominions from the Mediterranean littoral into temperate Europe. As such I envy the Comaroff's ability to use a rich array of source material that is unavailable to me with my much poorer archaeological remains and fragmentary literary sources. None the less, many of the themes have echoes of processes that must have taken place many years before in this other time and place.

Integrating cross-cultural interaction through video-communication and virtual worlds in foreign language teaching programs: is there an added value?

ReCALL ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvia Canto ◽  
Kristi Jauregi ◽  
Huub van den Bergh
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Second Life ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Added Value ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Cultural Interaction ◽  
Web Communication ◽  
Experimental Group

AbstractOrganizing and implementing telecollaboration projects in foreign language curricula is not an easy endeavour (Belz & Thorne, 2006; Guth & Helm, 2010), as pedagogical, organizational and technical issues have to be addressed before cross-cultural interaction sessions can be carried out (O'Dowd & Ritter, 2006; O'Dowd, 2011). These issues make many teaching practitioners reluctant to try to integrate telecollaboration in their teaching, as they are more aware of the burden such initiatives might impose than of the benefits they might have for language learners.Within the European project NIFLAR1 we have tried to study the added value that integrating synchronous collaboration projects through video-web communication or Second Life might have in language learning. The study presented in this paper measures the oral communicative growth of language students, who were allocated at random to one of three research conditions: (1) the VC experimental group carried out interactions with native peers through video-web communication; (2) the SL experimental group carried out the same tasks with native peers in Second Life and (3) the control group performed the tasks face to face with classroom peers and had no opportunity to interact with native experts. Communicative growth was measured by comparing oral pre- and post-tests across conditions. Results show significant differences, the experimental groups outperforming the control group.

scholarly journals Der Runen-Stein von Rök und Snorri Sturluson - oder 'Wie aussagekräftig sind unsere Quellen zur Religionsgeschichte der Wikingerzeit?'

1990 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 58-71
Author(s):  
Preben Meulengracht Sørensen
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Research Field ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Old Norse ◽  
Social Anthropology ◽  
Common Assumption ◽  
Source Criticism ◽  
The Common ◽  
Written Sources ◽  
The Middle Ages

The article contributes to the discussion on source criticism within the research field of Old Norse religion. It examines the common assumption that archaeological sources are always to prefer above written sources from the Middle Ages where the Viking Era is described as such accounts are invariably tendentious and biased. Influenced by theories from the field of social anthropology, however, the article argues for the worth of written sources as a complement to the material ones. As an example, the effort to interpret the inscriptions on the runic stone from Rök are introduced. The article suggests that different kinds of source material offer a spectrum of possibilities out of which none alone, but rather all taken together, can deepen the researcher’s knowledge about the object under study.

scholarly journals Religio-Culture, Fear, and Zimbabwe’s Leadership Perceptions

Perichoresis ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muchumayeli Bhebhe
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Interdisciplinary Research ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
African Philosophy ◽  
Cultural Perspective ◽  
Leadership Perceptions ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Ordinary Citizens

Abstract The study is a response to the call for papers on African issues and discusses the notion of leadership in the Zimbabwean context. Based on material drawn through an interdisciplinary research process, this article argues that the phenomenon of fear emanating from a Zimbabwean religio-culture cuts across the country’s socio-political structures and affects its different forms of leadership. Therefore, by drawing on primary and secondary as well as literary and non-literary, sources, the article examines how and why religio-culture and especially its elements, such as the phenomenon of fear, continue to influence the people’s understanding of leadership. The quest for a cross-cultural perspective leads to the consideration of both African and non-African scholarly views. In order to draw on concrete data, I focus on the perceptions and experiences of ordinary citizens whether professionals or non-professionals. Furthermore, the study considers arguments and propositions from disciplines such as history, political science, religious studies, anthropology, and African philosophy, among others.

scholarly journals Objects and Agency in the Medieval North: The Case of Old Norse Magic Swords

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 42-68
Author(s):  
Miriam Mayburd
Keyword(s):  
Active Role ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Old Norse ◽  
Cultural Constructions

Old Norse sagas" literary depictions of magic swords highlight the active role of objects in shaping and renegotiating cultural constructions of personhood and identities. By focusing on narrative portrayals of these artifacts and the psychosomatic dynamics of saga characters' interactions with said artifacts, this study illuminates the ecological entanglements between cognitive and material spaces across the medieval North, stressing cross-cultural variability and diversity inherent in medieval worldviews.

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