Dreams in Cultural History: Dream Narratives and the History of Subjectivity

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 126-147
Author(s):  
Isabel Richter
Keyword(s):  
End Of Life ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Death And Dying ◽  
Source Material ◽  
The Self ◽  
Last Judgment ◽  
History Of ◽  
Dream Narratives ◽  
Close Relatives ◽  
Heterogeneous Source

The article focuses on dreams as sources for European cultural history by showing how subjectivity can be historicized. Basing its analysis on twenty-one published dream narrations of the late eighteenth and the nineteenth century about death and dying, this article examines which versions of the self become recognizable when one faced death, dying, and the end of life. These dream narrations provide insights into individuals' patterns of interpretation in their ambivalent contexts of norms, wishes, ideals, and fears. The dream narrations focus on various topics: dreams and visions of resurrection, the Last Judgment, and deceased close relatives. And some authors also reflect on the themes of life as a shadow and as a dream. Despite the quite heterogeneous source material, all of these dream narrations involve views of the self, for dreams about the end of life, death, and dying are closely related to writers' quests for identity. It shows how dreams work as catalysts for shaping spaces of the self.

Byzantine Monasticism on the Black Mountain West of Antioch in the 10th-11th Centuries

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 408-451
Author(s):  
Joe Glynias
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Scholarly Activity ◽  
Primary Role ◽  
Similar Function ◽  
Scribal Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
Mountain West ◽  
Arabic Speaking ◽  
Black Mountain

This article sheds light on a hitherto unexplored phenomenon that alters our picture of Byzantine monasticism: the monastic culture of the Black Mountain outside Antioch. From 969-1084, the Black Mountain thrived as a destination for a variety of Chalcedonian monks: Greek-speaking Romans, Arabic-speaking Melkites, Georgians, and Armenians. I illustrate the prosperity of monastic life on the Black Mountain, the scholarly activity flourishing in and between languages, and the networks connecting the mountain to monasteries inside and outside of Byzantium. In this paper, I examine three bodies of source material: manuscripts produced at the Black Mountain, texts produced by its scholars, and the letters of Nikon of the Black Mountain. Colophons in Greek, Arabic, Syriac, and Georgian manuscripts display the active scribal culture of these monasteries. Scholars centered at St. Symeon produced scores of translations from Greek into Arabic and Georgian that illustrate the lasting impact of this multilingual intellectual atmosphere. Nikon’s letters provide the basis for a cultural history of Antiochene monasticism. From these and other sources, I show that the Black Mountain was a major hub in middle Byzantine monastic networks. At the same time when Athos was assuming a primary role in the western Orthodox monastic world, the Black Mountain was performing a similar function in the east.

scholarly journals Understanding Women-Nature Dynamics: Eco-consciousness as a Quest for Identity in Selected Texts from Assam

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Paloma Chaterji ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Women Characters ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
The Self ◽  
Individual Identity ◽  
Specific Behavior ◽  
Limited Space ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
History Of ◽  
Primary Focus

My paper will explore the constantly changing dynamics of women-nature relationship through social and cultural history of Assam. I will gradually explore the eco-consciousness and the changing principles of my subjects as I shift my focus from the Shakti cult, to the Vaishnavite, to the modern urbanised subjects of the texts. The women characters in these texts will be the primary focus of this study as I begin to explore how they struggle to recognize their individual identity and how their association with nature comes as a response to accommodate what has been rendered passive by patriarchy. I will reflect on how the ever ideal and nurturing image of nature is problematic. The place-specific behavior of the characters in my study will offer a better vision of how women combat the ever presence patriarchal horrors through interaction with nature. Such an interaction reveals how nature actually makes women conscious of their individuality. This study will convey how free spirited nature helps these women overcome their limited space laced with patriarchal beliefs of selfless nurturing where the self is denied. Building on postcolonial critics like Chandra Mohanty, I would like to explore the discursive limits set by the processes of homogenization to which Assamese women have been subjected by a range of texts. This paper will explore the changing configurations of these limits and their implications, especially with regard to their interpellation in patriarchy. Through gendered readings of representative texts like Indira Goswami’s The Man from Chinnamasta and The Moth Eaten Howdah of the Tuskar and Mitra Phukan’s The Collector’s Wife, I will try to dismantle the essentialist binaries of nature/culture, men/women. Finally, this paper aims to dilute the ‘feminine’ and the ‘masculine’ principles and looks beyond the gynocentric essentialism of both nature and women.

Genius in France

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Jefferson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Medical Literature ◽  
The Self ◽  
Full Account ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Realist Novels ◽  
History Of

This book spans three centuries to provide the first full account of the long and diverse history of genius in France. Exploring a wide range of examples from literature, philosophy, and history, as well as medicine, psychology, and journalism, the book examines the ways in which the idea of genius has been ceaselessly reflected on and redefined through its uses in these different contexts. The book traces its varying fortunes through the madness and imposture with which genius is often associated, and through the observations of those who determine its presence in others. The book considers the modern beginnings of genius in eighteenth-century aesthetics and the works of philosophes such as Diderot. It then investigates the nineteenth-century notion of national and collective genius, the self-appointed role of Romantic poets as misunderstood geniuses, the recurrent obsession with failed genius in the realist novels of writers like Balzac and Zola, the contested category of female genius, and the medical literature that viewed genius as a form of pathology. The book shows how twentieth-century views of genius narrowed through its association with IQ and child prodigies, and discusses the different ways major theorists—including Sartre, Barthes, Derrida, and Kristeva—have repudiated and subsequently revived the concept. The book brings a fresh approach to French intellectual and cultural history, and to the burgeoning field of genius studies.

Death and Dying

2018 ◽  
pp. 203-226
Author(s):  
Philip A. Mackowiak
Keyword(s):  
End Of Life ◽  
Old Age ◽  
Death And Dying ◽  
Assisted Dying ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
History Of

Chapter 9 (“Death and Dying”) concerns a number of issues related to the end of life: the age-old question of what happens to one after death, the litany of problems encountered in old age, the mixed benefits of defying death, and the long history of assisted dying. These weighty issues and others are addressed in a series of compelling works that celebrate dying in the presence of friends and family, both glorify and demonize death in battle, and question the value of ICU care that suspends patients in a web of tubes and wires simply to create a kind of purgatory between life and death.

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