The ‘wild hunt’ in the long story by V. Korotkevich. A new interpretation of the medieval legend

2021 ◽  
pp. 154-167
Author(s):  
A. V. Khokhlova

The article considers a transformation of the Western European motif of the ‘wild hunt’ in V. Korotkevich’s story King Stakh’s Wild Hunt. The author gives an overview of folklore motifs typical of the ‘wild hunt’ phenomenon in the Western and Eastern European traditions. With origins in folklore, the ‘wild hunt’ motifs find their way into works of many writers in the late modern to contemporary period: the ‘wild hunt’ is localised on the edge of the mythological space and retains a fixed set of meanings. Most commonly, the ‘wild hunt’ features at the intersection of two domains. The first one is a complex of motifs inherited from the ancient myths and legends of the Germanic ‘Wütendes Heer.’ The second consists of the attributes of actual hunting. Taking a cue from The Hound of the Baskervilles — an obvious inspiration behind the story — and making use of the motifs traditionally associated with the legend, Korotkevich deconstructs the medieval myth, reducing it to an adventurous technique, only to reinstate it with new and unique meanings. The ‘wild hunt’ becomes a symbol of the ignorance, fear and despondency that have the world in their grip.

2006 ◽  
pp. 321-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuela Boatca

This paper claims that, since many of the concepts relevant to our analysis of systemic change were coined in and about the core, the potential with which solutions to world-systemic crisis are credited in the long run should be assessed differently depending on the structural location of their origin. In the periphery, such concepts as conservatism, socialism and even liberalism took forms that often retained nothing of the original model but the name, such that strategies of applying them to (semi)peripheral situations ranged from “stretching the ideology” to “discarding the (liberal) myth” altogether. In a first step, “the hypothesis of semiperipheral development” (Chase-Dunn and Hall), according to which the semiperiphery represents the most likely locus of political, economical, and institutional change, is amended to say that, at least for the late modern world-system, the strength of the semiperiphery resides primarily in the cultural and epistemic sphere. In a second step, this contention is illustrated with the help of major challenges that the Eastern European and Latin American (semi)peripheries have posed to the world-system’s political fields and institutional settings both in the past and to date—with different degrees of success corresponding to their respective structural position. In light of these examples, it is argued that a comparative analysis of continuities among political epistemologies developed in the semiperiphery can help us understand the ways in which similar attempts can become antisystemic today.


2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 100-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Bullivant

Commenting on the lack of self-conscious atheists in apparently secularised Western European societies, the British sociologist Steve Bruce has argued that strong expressions of unbelief are in fact symptomatic of religious cultures. In 1996’s Religion in the Modern World, for instance, he writes: ‘it should be no surprise that, though there are more avowed atheists than there were twenty years ago, they remain rare. Self-conscious atheism and agnosticism are features of religious cultures and [in Britain] were at their height in the Victorian era. They are postures adopted in a world where people are keenly interested in religion.’ (Bruce 1996: 58.) Likewise, discussing possible ‘endpoints’ of European secularisation in 2002’s God is Dead, Bruce states: In so far as I can imagine an endpoint, it would not be conscious irreligion; you have to care too much about religion to be irreligious. It would be widespread indifference (what Weber called being religiously unmusical); no socially significant shared religion; and religious ideas being no more common than would be the case if all minds were wiped blank and people began from scratch to think about the world and their place in it. (Bruce 2002: 42, my emphasis.)Paradoxical though it may sound at first, Bruce’s basic­ argument makes considerable sense. The idea that certain forms of particularly positive atheism – by which I mean a definite belief in the non-existence of a God or gods, as opposed to the simple absence of a belief in the same (negative atheism) – might be motivated, conditioned, or reinforced, by contrast with certain, socially prevalent religious beliefs or practices is scarcely controversial. After all, it would be strange to take one’s atheism seriously in a society where no one took theism seriously. A society that is indifferent to manifestations of religion (such as Bruce and others depict many late-modern western societies as being) ought, therefore, to be just as indifferent to manifestations of ‘nonreligion’.


2014 ◽  
Vol 155 (21) ◽  
pp. 833-837 ◽  
Author(s):  
József Marton ◽  
Attila Pandúr ◽  
Emese Pék ◽  
Krisztina Deutsch ◽  
Bálint Bánfai ◽  
...  

Introduction: Better knowledge and skills of basic life support can save millions of lives each year in Europe. Aim: The aim of this study was to measure the knowledge about basic life support in European students. Method: From 13 European countries 1527 volunteer participated in the survey. The questionnaire consisted of socio-demographic questions and knowledge regarding basic life support. The maximum possible score was 18. Results: Those participants who had basic life support training earned 11.91 points, while those who had not participated in lifesaving education had 9.6 points (p<0.001). Participants from former socialist Eastern European countries reached 10.13 points, while Western Europeans had average 10.85 points (p<0.001). The best results were detected among the Swedish students, and the worst among the Belgians. Conclusions: Based on the results, there are significant differences in the knowledge about basic life support between students from different European countries. Western European youth, and those who were trained had better performance. Orv. Hetil., 2014, 155(21), 833–837.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (6) ◽  
pp. 165
Author(s):  
Abdul Hamid Al - Eid Al - Mousawi

The central idea of Henry Kissinger's latest book, The Global System, is that the world desperately needs a new world order, otherwise geopolitical chaos threatens the world, and perhaps chaos will prevail and settle in the world. According to Kissinger, the world order was not really there at all, but what was closest to the system was the Treaty of Westphalia, which included about twenty Western European states for almost four centuries.


2017 ◽  
pp. 38-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ewa Cieślik

The paper evaluates Central and Eastern European countries’ (CEEs) location in global vertical specialization (global value chains, GVCs). To locate each country in global value chains (upstream or downstream segment/market) and to compare them with the selected countries, a very selective methodology was adopted. We concluded that (a) CEE countries differ in the levels of their participation in production linkages. Countries that have stronger links with Western European countries, especially with Germany, are more integrated; (b) a large share of the CEE countries’ gross exports passes through Western European GVCs; (c) most exporters in Central and Eastern Europe are positioned in the downstream segments of production rather than in the upstream markets. JEL classification: F14, F15.


Author(s):  
Rhodes Pinto

This paper advances a new interpretation of the manner in which Anaxagoras regards nous as producing motion and, in so doing, explains Anaxagoras’ emphasis on nous’s purity and offers a major reassessment of the explanatory value of nous. Based on a fresh examination of the evidence, I argue that Anaxagoras holds that considerable difference between things is itself productive of motion. On account of nous’s purity there is always a difference between nous and the mixture (comprising everything else) such as to produce motion, with the specific sort of motion being determined by nous’s intent (based on its judgement) or affect. Taking into account what nous brings about, including the cosmic vortex that orders the world and the preservation of living things (by being present in them as their soul), Anaxagoras can be recognized as having offered the framework for a wide-reaching teleology with his conception of nous.


2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Fletcher

Abstract This paper puts forward a new interpretation of the argument at Philebus 36c–40d that pleasures can be false. Protarchus raises an objection at 37e–38a, and in response Socrates presents the elaborate painter-scribe analogy (38e–40c). Most previous interpretations do not explain how the analogy answers Protarchus’ objection. On my account, Protarchus’ objection relies on the plausible intuition that pleasure is simply not in the business of assessing the world, and so it cannot be charged with doing so incorrectly. Socrates responds by demonstrating that pleasure can be mistaken about the world, despite not making an independent assessment of it. The painter-scribe analogy demonstrates how pleasure comes to be mistaken about the world by reproducing the mistake of a judgment. Socrates persuades Protarchus that pleasure can be mistaken in part by preserving his intuition that pleasure itself is not the source of the mistake.


1998 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 475-505 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Ertman

Almost none of the conditions that, according to the latest research, favor democratic durability were present in Western Europe between the world wars. Yet only four Western European states became dictatorships during this period, whereas the others remained democratic despite economic crisis, an unhelpful international system, and the lure of nondemocratic alternatives. Several recent works offer new explanations for this pattern of interwar outcomes. Insofar as these works analyze the entire universe of Western European cases, they represent an important methodological advance. However, they remain too wedded to a class-coalitional framework to provide both a parsimonious and a historically accurate account of why democracy collapsed in some states but not in others. This article proposes an alternative explanatory framework that focuses on how political parties can shape association life in such a way as to support or undermine democracy.


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