scholarly journals The October Revolution as the Passion of Christ: Boris Pasternak’s Easter Narrative in Doctor Zhivago and Its Cultural Contexts

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 461
Author(s):  
Svetlana Efimova
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Russian History ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
End Of History ◽  
Condensed Representation ◽  
Cyclical Time ◽  
Historical Cycles ◽  
New Interpretation

This article offers a new interpretation of Boris Pasternak’s novel Doctor Zhivago in the cultural and historical context of the first half of the 20th century, with an emphasis on the interrelationship between religion and philosophy of history in the text. Doctor Zhivago is analysed as a condensed representation of a religious conception of Russian history between 1901 and 1953 and as a cyclical repetition of the Easter narrative. This bipartite narrative consists of the Passion and Resurrection of Christ as symbols of violence and renewal (liberation). The novel cycles through this narrative several times, symbolically connecting the ‘Easter’ revolution (March 1917) and the Thaw (the spring of 1953). The sources of Pasternak’s Easter narrative include the Gospels, Leo Tolstoy’s philosophy of history and pre-Christian mythology. The model of cyclical time in the novel brings together the sacred, natural and historical cycles. This concept of a cyclical renewal of life differs from the linear temporality of the Apocalypse as an expectation of the end of history.

A New Interpretation of Hume's ‘Of Miracles’

1995 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 517-536 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Slupik
Keyword(s):  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
New Interpretation

It has often been suggested (1) that according to Hume it is impossible in principle for testimony to prove a miracle, and (2) that an indispensable element in Hume's argument is the claim that a miracle is by definition a violation of the laws of nature. I argue that both (1) and (2) are mistaken, and that, once Hume's ‘Of Miracles’ is viewed in a proper historical context, it emerges that Hume's argument against miracles is considerably different from what is usually supposed.

Species and Salvation: Theology of History in the Anthropocene?

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Henning Trüper
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Karl Rahner ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Human Species ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Related Notion ◽  
History Of ◽  
Salvation Theology ◽  
Theology Of History ◽  
Historical Thought

In this article I will discuss various thoughts of a few recent representatives of the tradition of the philosophy of history—Heinz Dieter Kittsteiner, Ulrich Beck, and finally Karl Rahner—and bring them into a conversation with Dipesh Chakrabarty's work on the problems of human species history and the Anthropocene. The aim of this undertaking is to gain greater clarity on the question of the work that theology continues to do for historical thought. I argue that Rahner's notions about “inclusivism”—according to which the possibility of salvation is vested in the species history of humanity rather than in the history of Christian revelation—and his related notion of an irresolvable tension between “anonymous” and what one might then call “onomastic” histories signal the continuing significance of a theology of the baptismal sacrament for historical thought. Rereading Rahner's thought sheds light on certain quandaries of the Anthropocene discussion, regarding the way in which species history can be related to other kinds of history writing, and the novel opening for theodicy generated by the breakdown of the culture–nature divide.

scholarly journals History as a discourse in Jeanette Winterson's "The passion" : the politics of alterity

2000 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 7
Author(s):  
María del Mar Asensio Aróstegui
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Napoleonic Wars ◽  
Historical Novels ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Political Choice ◽  
Historiographic Metafiction ◽  
Historical Material ◽  
The Fantastic ◽  
The French Revolution

Set in the historical context of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, Jeanette Winterson's The Passion is an outstanding example of the kind of fiction that Elizabeth Wesseling (1991: vii) calls postmodernist historical novels, that is, "novelistic adaptations of historical material". Besides, being profoundly self-reflexive, the novel also falls under Linda Hutcheon's (1988) category of historiographic metafiction. The present paper focuses on Winterson's political choice of two representatives of historically silenced groups, a soldier and a woman, who use two apparently opposed narrative modes, the historical and the fantastic, to tell a story that both exposes history as a discursive construct and provides an alternative fantastic discourse for the representation of feminine desire.

Rewriting Flaubert in the 1960s

2011 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 329-336
Author(s):  
Steen Bille Jørgensen
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Main Theme ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Georges Perec ◽  
Louis Aragon ◽  
New Novel ◽  
Tel Quel ◽  
The 1960S

In French 1960s’ literature, the strategy of re-writing is associated with the New Novel and the ideological Tel Quel movement. However, a more ironical poetics of the novel can be found in Blanche ou l'oubli (1967) by Louis Aragon1 and Les Choses (1967) by Georges Perec.2 Both novels are rewritings of Gustave Flaubert's L'Education sentimentale, with particular attention to that novel's main theme of ‘illusion’. The interesting question then is how literary tradition becomes a part of the meta-fictional interrogation of human experience in a particular historical context. Perec uses the rhythm of Flaubert's sentences to draw attention to the story as a construction and to his characters’ lack of significance. Aragon foregrounds the novel's capacity of holding on to experience as such, with autobiography (Flaubert's as well as his own) linked to materialistic-historical conditions. Ultimately, in following the writer's reading of the historical work, the reader must seek what literature offers him or her the opportunity to apprehend his/her own conditions for experience.

The contours and issues of contemporary apologetics

2014 ◽  
Vol 111 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-237
Author(s):  
Michael Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
Religious Knowledge ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Faith And Reason ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Contemporary Christian ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
The Trinity

In this article, I examine five important components of the apologetic enterprise. Specifically, based on two biblical examples, I note that apologetics occurs within particular and broad cultural contexts, addresses perennial religious and philosophical concerns, involves defending diverse Christian traditions, and sometimes necessitates clarification or even development of theological insights. I also discuss several key issues facing contemporary apologists, issues arising from our own modern and now postmodern historical context. Among those issues are concerns over how religious knowledge may be accrued, how faith and reason relate, whether God’s existence or nature can be established by reason, whether it is reasonable to believe miracles have happened or are even possible, whether the Bible is trustworthy, how science and Christianity relate, whether core doctrines of Christianity—like the Incarnation or the Trinity—are coherent, why God allows evil, and how Christianity and other religions interrelate. By describing these various features of apologetics, I hope to aid the reader in seeing the complex and intricate nature of the contemporary Christian apologetic task.

scholarly journals Mauritania

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.S. Blalack
Keyword(s):  
Arab World ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Future ◽  
Arabic Speaking

This chapter traces the origins of the novel genre in Mauritania. It first considers the cultural and historical context of the emergence of the Mauritanian novel, focusing on its link to the rise of Nouakchott as the country’s capital. It then discusses the rise of the Arabic novel and the influence of the Nahḍa movement on many Arabic-speaking Mauritanians, including Aḥmad wuld ʻAbd al-Qādir, Al-Sunnī ʻAbdāwa, and Tarba bint ʻAmmār. It also examines the Francophone novel. The chapter concludes by reflecting on the future of the Mauritanian novel, noting that Mauritanian literature suffers from marginalization in the Arab world and neglect on the part of academics and critics.

Historicities

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Kalaidjian
Keyword(s):  
Historical Development ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Cultural Critique ◽  
The Past ◽  
Progressive Improvement ◽  
Future Potential ◽  
Historically Situated ◽  
Political Investments

In the works of Kant, Hegel, and Marx, a philosophy of history developed to consider how thought and culture are historically situated and to present human civilization as an organizing force that subdues nature toward a form of progressive improvement. This new sense of being situated in history subsequently shaped philosophies of “historicity” in the writings of Dilthey, Heidegger, Gadamer, and others. It also led to less desirable political investments in collective fate and destiny. Against these teleological and culturally reductive forms of historicity, poststructuralist articulations of multiple historicities conceive of historical engagement as a cyclic or stratigraphic configuration of unlimited potential. Theorists such as Derrida, Deleuze, and Baudrillard provide more open, associative, and playful approaches to historical frameworks. An understanding of historicity requires the articulation of related terms such as historiography (the writing of history) and historicism (the analysis of culture through historical context). Historicity as a sense of historical development as well as of future potential is an important theme for discussions of diverse topics, including identity, community, empire, globalization, and the Anthropocene. Literary engagements with historicity range from the rejection of history to the interrogation of historicism as a series of competing and contradictory narratives. Historicity is a vital concept used by literary theorists to critique authoritative accounts of history, as well as a self-reflexive mode for considering institutional and disciplinary biases. The following article surveys different forms of historicity in philosophical and theoretical traditions, analyzes institutions that influence official accounts of history, and posits literary and imaginative engagements with the past as an important mode of social and cultural critique.

Gadamer’s Logic of Question and Answer and the Difference Between the History of Philosophy and the History of Ideas

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 360-379
Author(s):  
David Vessey
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Philosophical Practice ◽  
Current Discussion ◽  
History Of ◽  
Principle Of Charity ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Hans Georg Gadamer

The key difference between the history of ideas and the history of philosophy is that philosophers always consider their historical studies as potentially contributing to contemporary philosophical practice. Such presentism risks anachronistic readings of texts, but a too narrow focus on the historical context of the text risks limiting its ability to contribute to contemporary philosophizing. The current discussion of the history of philosophy focus entirely on how to understand, and what we can learn from, a philosopher’s claims and arguments. Hans-Georg Gadamer offers a different focus, arguing instead that it is the questions that the text answers that generate insights for contemporary philosophical practice. His focus on questions cuts across the standard ways of thinking about the relation between the history of philosophy and the history of ideas and provides novel answers to some central issues in the philosophy of history, for example how to best articulate a principle of charity.

Hegel and the End of History

1991 ◽  
Vol 12 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 15-23
Author(s):  
Rüdiger Bubner
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Historical Thinking ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
List Type ◽  
Historical Time ◽  
End Of History ◽  
The End Of History

In what follows Hegel's philosophy of history as the zenith in historical thinking will be considered from three perspectives.II will begin by discussing the two major reactions among Hegel's nineteenth century successors to the problem of historical finality.IIThen I will go back to Hegel himself in order the analyze the speculative claims of his system with regard to historical time.IIIAnd finally, I will clarify the role played by those formal structures in historical reflexion which continue to fuel the controversy over what Hegel meant by the end of history.

The Anatomy of Eroticism: Reimagining Sex and Sexuality in the Late Ming Novel Xiuta Yeshi

NAN Nü ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 284-329
Author(s):  
Ka Wong
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Human Body ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Sexual Content ◽  
Material World ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Female Relationships ◽  
Late Ming ◽  
Sex And Sexuality ◽  
New Interpretation

AbstractDue to its explicit and outrageous sexual content, Xiuta yeshi is often deemed an "obscene book" that lacks literary sophistication. Precisely because of its obscenity, however, the novel provides a unique perspective from which to study the discourse of sex and sexuality in the late Ming period. By examining Xiuta yeshi on its own terms as pornography, one can explore more fully the dynamics of gender, desire, and male-female relationships in this supposedly decadent era. In its construct of eroticism, the novel hinges as much on the detailed recounting of the material world and, in particular, a new interpretation of the human body, as on sex itself. Using foul language to exploit most of the modern pornographic tropes—from rape to orgy to both male and female homosexual acts—this late sixteenth-century work not only redefines a popular genre but also reveals the exhilarating, extravagant, and even grotesque aspects of a libertine culture captivated by and capitalizing on sex.

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