scholarly journals THE IMAGE OF CHINA IN THE CORRESPONDENCE OF CATHERINE II

Author(s):  
Natalia G. Suraeva

In 1762, Catherine II (1729-1796), Catherine le Grand, as Voltaire called her, an extraordinary woman who was destined to undergo many reforms and establish Russia’s place in the world, ascended to the Russian throne. Her reign coincided with the reign of Emperor Qianlong (1711-1799), one of the most enlightened monarchs in Chinese history; during his time, the empire achieved many military victories and brilliant achievements in the arts. By the time of Catherine’s accession to the throne, relations between the two countries were very strained. Meanwhile, the age of Enlightenment, the century of the ardour for the philosophy and art of China, began in Europe. On the one hand, Catherine was influenced by the ideas of the West; on the other hand, she constantly had to regulate conflicts on the Russian-Chinese border, the reason for which was most often the question of extraditing Mongols and Dzungars to the Chinese who were fleeing within Russia. The purpose of this article is to determine what image of China the Russian empress formed and how she spoke about this country in her correspondence with European correspondents since it is known that Catherine II wrote a lot. To do this, first, it is necessary to characterise the personality of the empress, to understand her interests and habits. To understand what issues she had to resolve, one also needs to know the state of Russian-Chinese relations in the second half of the 18th century. Finally, the article gives a general description of Catherine II’s correspondence with various high-ranking persons, among whom Jean d’Alembert, Diderot, Voltaire, Friedrich Melchior Grimm (Franco-German publicist, artist and literary critic), Swiss scientist and philosopher Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann, Madame Geoffrin and Madame Bielke can be named. The letters she received very often contained diplomatic news, dynastic problems, court gossip; her answers were, for the most part, semi-official journal notes. It is noteworthy that despite the extensive correspondence conducted by Catherine the Great, she practically did not touch upon the issues of China, except for letters to Voltaire, who, as you know, admired China and tried to learn more about it from the words of the empress.

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 111-126
Author(s):  
Romuald Rydz

1 listopada 1790 r. w Londynie został opublikowany jeden z najważniejszych tek­stów osiemnastowiecznej brytyjskiej myśli politycznej. Autorem dzieła znanego pod skróconym ty­tułem jako Rozważania o rewolucji we Francji był Edmund Burke — jeden z najbardziej znanych wigowskich posłów zasiadających w Izbie Gmin. Choć Burke w Rozważaniach występował przede wszystkim jako obrońca brytyjskiego porządku i zwyczaju politycznego, to zarówno w tym dziele, jak i wielu następnych tekstach można zauważyć, że przedmiotem jego troski była także wspólnota europejska. Wydaje się, że autor Rozważań jako je­den z pierwszych przedstawicieli ówczesnego świata polityki dostrzegł w rewolucyjnej gorączce roz­przestrzeniającej się z Paryża groźbę dla całej Europy. Owo niebezpieczeństwo Burke porównywał, z jednej strony, do fali barbarzyństwa, która zalała Rzym i zniszczyła cywilizację antyczną w okresie wędrówki ludów, z drugiej zaś — przypisywał mu cechy rewolucji religijnej, podobnej do tej, któ-ra podzieliła kontynent w XVI i XVII stuleciu. Było to więc w jego opinii podwójne zagrożenie, które mogło zniszczyć zarówno podstawy materialne Europy, jak i jej kościec kulturowy.A counter-revolutionary idea of Europe. Edmund Burke’s reflections on European identityOn 1st November 1790, one of the most important texts of the 18th century British political thought was published in London. The author of the work, known under the shortened title as Reflections on the Revolution in France, was Edmund Burke, one of the best-known Whigs sitting in the House of Commons. Although in Reflections Burke was above all a defender of the British order and political custom, it can be noticed, both in this work and many subsequent texts, that he was also concerned for Euro­pean community. It seems that the author of Reflections was among the first representatives of the world of politics at that time who viewed the revolutionary fever that was spreading from Paris as a threat to the whole Europe. Burke compared this danger, on the one hand, to the Barbarian wave that had flooded Rome and destroyed the antique civilisation in the Migrations Period, while on the other hand he ascribed it characteristics of a religious revolution, similar to the one that divided the continent in the 16th and 17th centuries. Thus, it was, in his opinion, a double threat. It could destroy both the material foundations of Europe and its cultural core.


2010 ◽  

Realtà e memoria di una disfatta does not address either the causes of the Six Day War or the consequences that the military conflict had for Israelis and Palestinians, about which much has been written. It focuses instead on the impact of the war on Arab countries, and the weighty legacy left by the defeat of 1967, which has been much less studied. There are several references to this in the short essay by Samir Kassir, L'infelicità araba, published posthumously in Italy in 2006. In his analysis, Kassir warns against falling into the dual trap that has ensnared the Arab world for the last forty years: on the one hand the Orientalist reading that lays the blame on Islam for the delayed modernisation of this part of the world, and on the other the temptation to heap responsibility for all evils on the West. To avoid this risk, as Kassir sees it, the Arabs have to take their destiny into their own hands, shrugging off victimism and coming to terms with modernity.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 1-6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lejf Moos ◽  
Elisabet Nihlfors ◽  
Jan Merok Paulsen

This special issue discusses governance, leadership and education in the light of Nordic ideas about general education and citizenship of the world. Particular focus is placed on the battle between two very different discourses in contemporary educational policy and practice: an outcomes/standard-based discourse, and a general education-based discourse of citizenship of the world.Our point of departure is that we need to analyse the close relations between the core and purpose of schooling (the democratic Bildung of students) and the leadership of schools and relations to the outer world. On the one hand, society produces a discourse based on outcomes, with a focus on the marketplace, governance, bureaucracies, account-ability and technocratic homogenisation. On the other hand, society focuses on culture in the arts, language, history, relations and communication, producing a discourse based on democratic Bildung and citizenship of the world.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 33-45
Author(s):  
Malesela Edward Montle

Though Africans are striving to re-define and re-construct themselves through re-asserting their eroded African cultural identity, this appears to be a mammoth, almost insurmountable task. It remains a nuanced terrain because, on the one hand, there is material benefit from being bedfellows with the neocolonial forces while on the other hand, there is hardship which is meted out against the proponents of African decolonisation, particularly the quintessential ones. Sanctions are one of the austerity measures which the neo-colonial powers use to suppress those Africans who genuinely want to advance African renaissance. This is the cause of identity crisis among many Africans, and unsavoury marriages of convenience between the West and African nations today. This paper, therefore, seeks to examine the dilemma faced by the essentialist adherents of African culture today and their supposed role in the advancement of Africa as a continent. It uses Chirundu's character in Es'kia Mphahlele's novel of the same name, as a case in point. The argument, in this paper, is grounded on Afrocentricity as a strand of Post-Colonial Theory (with or without a hyphen) with an implied suggestion that the solution to Africa's postcolonial challenges lies in forging cultural hybridity with the nations of the world.


Author(s):  
Elizabeth Valdez del Álamo

The term “cloister” has two definitions, both based on the Latin word claustrum (pl. claustra), meaning an enclosure, a lock, or a place that is shut. A cloister may be the monastery or convent that encloses a religious community away from the world, monks as well as canons, priests living together under a rule. Architecturally, a cloister is the open courtyard that connects the various buildings of the monastery by means of a covered walkway. Cloister galleries are usually formed by an arcade of columns springing from a plinth, often with piers at the corners. These may be ornamented with carvings, as on the column capitals and sometimes on the columns themselves. The cloister courtyard normally includes a well and garden. By the 9th century, the layout for an ideal monastery had been recorded in the Plan of St. Gall. There, the cloister is rendered in what was to become its traditional form, a quadrangle. The main features of the St. Gall plan are found, for example, at Monte Cassino, the head of the Benedictine order, and at the monastery of Cluny. This arrangement was generally followed by Benedictine and Cistercian monasteries. To the north of the cloister lies the church nave; to the east are the church transept and dormitory. Along the east gallery is the chapter house, the meeting place for the monastic community, then there is a parlor near a spring that must have served for washing, baths, and latrines. To the south is the refectory, and to the west, the gateway and guesthouse. The north gallery of the cloister often has a funerary function, with burials of abbots located there. The west gallery often flanks the cellar and guesthouse. Because the cloister provides the passageway between the church, dormitory, refectory, and chapter house, it is the heart of a monastery, and the decoration reflects its spiritual ideals. On the one hand, it was the site for processions on Sundays and holidays, for teaching novices and children, and for reading and meditation. On the other hand, the cloister may be used for a variety of activities, some concerning the practical side of life, such as laundry, barbering, and the reception of guests. Larger communities sometimes had a second cloister connecting the infirmary to the rest of the compound. Because monasteries and colleges of secular canons sometimes evolved into universities, campuses often have cloister garths as well. This article focuses on medieval cloisters.


IJOHMN ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Boubaker Mohrem

After the World War II, the world remarks many changes in every aspect including culture, society, literature and so on. Writers around the world wrote about the effect of colonizer/colonized relationship. Edward Said is one of the pillars who deals with such discourse. Said believes that the legacy of the colonizer still exists in terms of civil wars, corruption and labor exploitation. In other word, Said means that the West creates a wrong image about the Orient and considers it as the “Other” in contrast to the ideal West. Said was the one who deconstructs the western’s thinking about the East. So his books : Orientalism (1978), The Question of Palestine (1979) and Covering Islam (1981) are appropriate to examine the idea of the ‘Other’ and to show how Said decipher the western wrong image about the East. Thus, this paper will emphasis on the concept of the Other according to Said.


1932 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 137-142
Author(s):  
T. B. L. Webster

The Persian wars is a vague term. I use it to cover the A period between the battle of Marathon (490 B.c.) and the peace of Callias (448 B.c.): I use it merely as a label, and do not wish to imply that the Persian wars were the cause of the change which takes place in Greek art during that period. This change can be seen in all the arts: in sculpture the landmarks are the west pediment of the temple of Aphaia at Aegina, the east pediment of the same temple, the west pediment of the temple of Zeus at Olympia, and the east pediment of the same temple: in literature the change is perhaps more easily traced in the works of Pindar than elsewhere. In the early odes, e.g. Pythian X (498 B.c.), the connexion of the myth with the rest is purely external, for it is linked on by the one word ΥΠερβορέων, in the later odes the whole is often subordinated to the moral which Pindar wishes to point: in Pythian IV (462 B.c.) the moral is ‘Do not banish good men’, and the myth of Pelias and Jason gives a disastrous instance. The earlier ode is composed of beautiful parts loosely joined together, the later is an organic unity with a moral purpose running through the whole. This same change can be traced in Greek vases. Here we have a large number of works of art which can be dated with considerable accuracy and assigned to particular painters. The criteria for dating need not be considered here: the attribution to painters is largely the work of J. D. Beazley and rests ultimately on stylistic grounds. In some cases we have signatures and can call the painter by his name, e.g. Euphronios, Euthymides, but more often none of the vases are signed and the names are conventional, e.g. Berlin painter, Niobid painter. I shall consider in turn subjects, composition of the whole picture, and composition of the single figure,2 during two periods, the ‘ripe archaic’ and the ‘early classical’, which are bounded on the one side by the ‘early ripe archaic’, on the other by the ‘classical’: the late works of Euphronios and Euthymides (early ripe archaic) with the early works of the Berlin painter and his fellows (ripe archaic) are to be dated in the decade 500–490 B.c., the ripe works of the Berlin painter and his fellows from 490 to 480 B.c., the late works of these painters 480 to 470: then come the ‘early classical’ painters, the Penthesilea painter, the Niobid painter, &c., till 450; with the Achilles painter the other boundary is crossed into the ‘classical’ period.1


1997 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 356-365 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fouad A-L.H. Abou-Hatab

This paper presents the case of psychology from a perspective not widely recognized by the West, namely, the Egyptian, Arab, and Islamic perspective. It discusses the introduction and development of psychology in this part of the world. Whenever such efforts are evaluated, six problems become apparent: (1) the one-way interaction with Western psychology; (2) the intellectual dependency; (3) the remote relationship with national heritage; (4) its irrelevance to cultural and social realities; (5) the inhibition of creativity; and (6) the loss of professional identity. Nevertheless, some major achievements are emphasized, and a four-facet look into the 21st century is proposed.


TEKNOSASTIK ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Dina Amelia

There are two most inevitable issues on national literature, in this case Indonesian literature. First is the translation and the second is the standard of world literature. Can one speak for the other as a representative? Why is this representation matter? Does translation embody the voice of the represented? Without translation Indonesian literature cannot gain its recognition in world literature, yet, translation conveys the voice of other. In the case of production, publication, or distribution of Indonesian Literature to the world, translation works can be very beneficial. The position of Indonesian literature is as a part of world literature. The concept that the Western world should be the one who represent the subaltern can be overcome as long as the subaltern performs as the active speaker. If the subaltern remains silent then it means it allows the “representation” by the Western.


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 280-309
Author(s):  
Peter Auer ◽  
Anja Stukenbrock

Abstract In this paper, we first present a close analysis of conversational data, capturing the variety of non-addressee deictic usages of du in contemporary German. From its beginnings, it has been possible to use non-addressee deictic du not only for generic statements, but also for subjective utterances by a speaker who mainly refers to his or her own experiences. We will present some thoughts on the specific inferences leading to this interpretation, making reference to Buhler’s deixis at the phantasm. In the second part of the paper, we show that non-addressee deictic du (‘thou’) as found in present-day German is not an innovation but goes back at least to the 18th century. However, there is some evidence that this usage has been spreading over the last 50 years or so. We will link non-addressee deictic du back historically to the two types of “person-shift” for du discussed by Jakob Grimm in his 1856 article “Uber den Personenwechsel in der Rede” [On person shift in discourse]. Grimm distinguishes between person shift in formulations of “rules and law” on the one hand, and person shift in what he calls “thou-monologue” on the other. The subjective interpretation of non-addressee-deictic du in present-day German may have originated from these “thou-monologues”


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document