scholarly journals Parrot’s Journey to Mount Ararat: Some Observations

Author(s):  
Klaus Geus

In the year 1829 Friedrich Parrot (1792-1841), professor of physics at the University of Dorpat (modern Tartu), first climbed Mount Ararat. With him were the Armenian deacon Khachatur Abovian (the ‘father of modern Armenian literature’), two Russian soldiers and two local Armenian peasants. His account of the Journey to Ararat, published in German in the year 1834, is considered a classic of travel literature. The present papers analyses its debt both to the literary genre and to ancient sources, especially to the Geography of the ancient Greek historian and geographer Strabo (ca. 63 BCE-ca. 23 CE).

1991 ◽  
Vol 7 (28) ◽  
pp. 348-352
Author(s):  
Graham Ley

Is there a postmodernist theatre – and if so, what was the modernist theatre? What qualifies as avant-garde – and for how long? And why does the ‘established’ alternative theatre lean so heavily on appropriation, whether of ancient myths or contemporary ideologies – such as postmodernism? Graham Ley uses analogies from dance and design to explore our perceptions of and attitudes towards those contemporary theatre practitioners who may once have broken boundaries, but now often head the queue for lavish corporate finance. Graham Ley has taught in universities in England, Australia, and New Zealand, and his Short Introduction to the Ancient Greek Theatre will shortly appear from the University of Chicago Press.


Author(s):  
Tigran Simyan

В статье проводится семиотически-типологический анализ университетского пространства Ереванского государственного университета (ЕГУ). Данное исследование является продолжением дискурса «Университетское пространство». Культурные артефакты ЕГУ описываются не с точки зрения культурно-исторического подхода, а с использованием семиотического метода. Детально описывается пространственное «начало» университетского экстерьера, выявляются семантические и парадигматические особенности центральной скульптуры, а также интерьерный барельеф библиотеки ЕГУ и средневековые маркеры университетского пространства. Центральное пространство Ереванского государственного университета семиотизировано различными скульптурами, памятниками, барельефами, являющимися знаками социальной и культурной памяти, отсылающей к разным культурным пластам: от Средневековья до советской эпохи. «Начало» университетского пространства маркируется ключевыми фигурами армянской письменности, ставшими культурными константами интерьерного и экстерьерного пространства ЕГУ. В визуализации истории превалируют образы видных деятелей армянской средневековой университетской традиции. Изображённые фигуры Месропа Маштоца и Саака Партева отсылают к прошлому, на прагматическом уровне указывая на древность армянского алфавита и глубокие корни армянской схоластической университетской истории. Кроме средневековых деятелей культуры, в университетском пространстве представлены также видные деятели новой и новейшей армянской литературы (Абовян, Налбандян, Туманян, Чаренц), сыгравшие важную роль в становлении общественной и литературной жизни, приведшие к европеизации армянской литературы, а также к парадигматическим культурным переходам. Анализ эмпирического материла показал, что диапазон исторических артефактов вбирает в себя также и советскую эпоху (соцреализм). Подробный анализ барельефа соцреализма показал, что он является стереотипным артефактом советской эпохи, пропагандистской визуализацией советской тоталитарной идеологии.The article is semiotic-typological analysis of Yerevan State University (YSU) interior space and external grounds. It is a part of Yerevan City discourse, which depicts separate part of Yerevan downtown, and fragments of the interior and exterior space of YSU. Moreover, this article is a continuation of the discourse “University Space”. YSU cultural artifacts are described both by culturalhistorical as well as by a semiotic method. Russian reviews have described the semiotically labeled spaces of the university mainly by a cultural-historical approach. The cultural environment has become the meta-language concept of this approach. The cultural-historical methodology does not imply a semiotic metalanguage and analysis. This reveals psychological and cultural values, different historical eras and signs of identity, etc. The article is a detailed description of the starting point of the university exterior grounds represented by the central sculpture, interior works of art and bas-relief of the YSU Library. The central space of Yerevan State University is semiotized by various sculptures, monuments, and bas-reliefs. These are signs of social and cultural memory, referring to different cultural eras: from the Middle Ages to the Soviet Empire. The principal sculpture of the university garden represents the founder of Armenian alphabet Mesrop Mashtots and other prominent representatives of the Armenian medieval university traditions. The figures depicting Mesrop Mashtots and Sahak Partev refer to the past, pointing to the antiquity of the Armenian alphabet and the deep roots of the Armenian scholastic university tradition. Among medieval cultural figures, we see other renowned poets and writers of New and Contemporary Armenian Literature such as Abovyan, Nalbandyan, Tumanyan, and Charents. They played an important role in the formation of public and literary life, leading to the Europeanization of Armenian literature, as well as to paradigmatic cultural transitions. The analysis of empirical material demonstrated that the range of historical artifacts also incorporates the Soviet era (socialist realism). Detailed study of the basrelief of socialist realism showed that it is a stereotypical artifact of the Soviet era, a visual propaganda of Soviet totalitarian ideology.


Author(s):  
Sinan Abdulazeez AABDULRAHEM

Focalisation is one of the main concepts in narration; it is basically linked with the narrator in terms of the mechanisms that he follows in presenting views, their angle and the degree of interest in presenting one part to another. As for the narrator, he has full freedom and unique energy to talk about whatever and however he wants. He may have interests in shedding light on political, religious, social, intellectual, philosophical and psychological matters. He may also make the reader compelled to take his comments and points of view, as the narrator is meant to be the window through which readers overlook all events. Thus, the narrator adds his touches to the events in the narration doing things like commenting on events, deleting others to make things ambiguous or adding more details to make the events more interesting. Therefore, narration is always shaped and affected by the role of the narrator, specifically when he is a lonely well-educated and cultured person. The current research studies Focalisation in a specific literary genre, which is the travel literature. It selects three examples from three books authored by: Hassan Abd Radhi, Ahmed Zaki and Anes Mansour respectively and investigates the diversity of those authors' methods of Focalisation. Keywords: Author, Reader, Literature.


2019 ◽  
Vol 99 ◽  
pp. 271-295
Author(s):  
Peter N Lindfield

A remarkable controversy raged in the late 1780s concerning the authenticity of the Parian Chronicle, a supposedly genuine carved fragment recording ancient Greek history that was included in the 1667 Arundel bequest to the University of Oxford. Drawing in figures in British antiquarianism, including Richard Gough who, as Director of the Society of Antiquaries of London, intervened in the debate with a pamphlet that came out in support of the artefact’s authenticity, this was an important moment in eighteenth-century antiquarian study. Hot on the heels of the now much more well-known Ossian controversy of the 1760s, the Chatterton–Rowley–Walpole debacle from 1770, Chatterton’s subsequent death and the publication of his forgeries from 1777, the literature variously refuting and supporting the Parian Chronicle’s authenticity strikes at the heart of antiquarianism, in particular opening up to dispute assumptions made about or accepted interpretations concerning the authenticity of the fragments upon which subsequent antiquarian work and interpretation was based. This debate took the form of a very public attack upon, and defence of, the Parian Chronicle’s status as a genuine third-century bc antiquarian fragment, and the controversy within antiquarian circles that it occasioned is reconstructed here.


2000 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-52
Author(s):  
Sarah Bryant-Bertail

Charles Mee, before turning to playwriting, authored several well-known political histories. To the last of these, from 1993, he gave the ironically portentous title of Playing God: Seven Fateful Moments When Great Men Met to Change the World. With this deconstructive final word after two decades as a historian, he did not in fact abandon history, but began to write it in the medium of theatre. In doing so Mee has come to share a view articulated by Roland Barthes, who was once a university student of theatre and actor in Greek tragedies: the view that theatre, and Greek tragedy in particular, can illuminate our history as a story unfolding before us, allowing us to connect critically past with present as our best hope for the future. The American director Tina Landau, a frequent collaborator with Charles Mee, likewise believes that the ancient Greek tragedies helped constitute, articulate, and today still codify the structural base in myth and history of Western civilization. Accordingly, Mee and Landau have created a number of what they call ‘site-specific pieces’ adapted from Greek drama, site-specific in that they are created out of the specific material space and time at hand. One of these is The Trojan Women a Love Story which was developed and premiered at the University of Washington in Seattle in the spring of 1996. The production was based on Euripides' play The Trojan Women and Hector Berlioz's 1859 opera Les Troyens, which in turn retells the story of Aeneas and Queen Dido of Carthage from Virgil's epic, The Aeneid.


Author(s):  
Flavia Zaffora

In the Mediterranean basin, the archaeological presence is extremely relevant and diffuse. Together with this is a difficult intertwining with contemporary urban settlements, which archaeology, by tradition, has to be protected from. If conservation is the goal of restoration, the problem of the cohabitation between past and present use is still an issue. This paper will focus on the project of enhancement of the archaeological park of the Greek colony of Naxos, near Messina, in Sicily, led by the Department of Architecture of the University of Palermo in cooperation with the administrative head of the park. At the crossroads between the sea, the highway, a lemon orchard and the city of Giardini Naxos, the ancient Greek settlement could be an example of coexistence of the different layers composing the landscape, with the aim of making history and archaeology come to life as synchronous components of the contemporary fruition of the place.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neven Jovanovic ◽  
Nina Čengić ◽  
Irena Bratičević ◽  
Ninoslav Zubović ◽  
Petra Šoštarić ◽  
...  

A reader for beginners of Ancient Greek (university level). Contains 60 brief extracts from Greek prose authors, from Herodotus to Plotinus, with ample commentaries keyed to the Greek school grammar by A. Musić and N. Majnarić. In use at the University of Zagreb, under the imprint of Manualia Universitatis studiorum Zagrabiensis.


2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Matilda Roche

Link, Kelly, and Gavin J. Grant, eds. Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories. Somerville: Candlewick Press, 2011. Print. It's interesting to consider the steampunk trend in contrast with the steampunk genre. If one defines steampunk strictly as a trend then it would be easy to assume that it has reached and surpassed its pinnacle as a popular trend (and certainly a hipster one) after having reached a plateau of modest public awareness. All the gears, brass and buckles associated with its afficionados have been lightly mocked and the world has moved on. It might be easy to forget that, as a literary genre, steampunk has a genuine durability. Steampunk been around sparking writers’ and artists’ creative imaginations for some time and it seems probable that it will continue to do so as the more clichéd charms of the trend’s most recent manifestations fade. The diversity and quality of the stories included in Steampunk! are an indication of the rich and entertaining possibilities inherent in the genre. The stories range in subject from post-feminist-western-train-heist-with-time-travel (Last Ride of the Glory Girls, by Libba Bray) to Edwardian-romance-with-robots (Everything Amiable and Obliging, by Holly Black) and mechanical-Dickensian-doppelgangers (Clockwork Fagin, by Cory Doctorow). All these stories are mischievous and riveting action-packed fun. Co-editor, Kelly Link (The Summer People) and M.T. Anderson's (The Oracle Engine) contributions - utterly different from the previously mentioned stories and from each other - adeptly employ calculated pacing and succeed in being subtly sinister and thought-provoking. There are even two compelling, and again, completely different, graphic novels thrown into the mix (Seven Days Beset by Demons, by Shawn Cheng and Finishing School, by Kathleen Jennings). Steampunk is a genre infatuated with the novelty of conflating ideas and aesthetics from different periods of history, curiosity about technology and a precocious desire to upend conventional narrative and characterization. Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories benefits from the astute and mindful curation by its editors, avoids seeming over-thought and stilted, and succeeds in illustrating how steampunk as a genre is very amendable to imaginative and (mildly) transgressive literature for young adults. I'm at great pains to avoid the word "mash-up" but that is a bit of what steampunk is; a unconstrained, tart and pulpy mash of genres. Steampunk! is an exuberant and convincing sampling and a reminder not to dismiss the genre along with the fashion aviator’s goggles. Highly Recommended:  4 out of 4 starsReviewer: Matilda RocheMatilda spends her days lavishing attention on the University of Alberta’s metadata but children’s illustrated books, literature for young adults and graphic novels also make her heart sing. Her reviews benefit from the critical influence of a four year old daughter and a one year old son – both geniuses. Matilda’s super power is the ability to read comic books aloud.


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