Macbeth and Horror Cinema

Macbeth ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 79-88
Author(s):  
Rebekah Owens
Keyword(s):  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Social Commentary ◽  
Horror Genre ◽  
History Of

This chapter establishes that Roman Polanski's Macbeth used the conventions of the horror genre to represent William Shakespeare's play on screen. It considers how Macbeth is placed in the wider historical context of the horror genre itself. It also examines how Macbeth fits with the Folk Horror The Wicker Man (1973) or slasher classic Halloween (1978) and shows how the film is situated within the history of the horror genre. The chapter illustrates how Polanski managed to combine an eleventh-century setting and William Shakespeare's poetic idiom to illustrate some very modern concerns in Macbeth. It analyses how Polanski used William Shakespeare's play to form a critique of contemporary society, exploiting and anticipating an emerging trend in horror of the film as social commentary.

Esotericism and the “Coded Word” in Mormonism

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-54
Author(s):  
Clyde Forsberg Jr.
Keyword(s):  
Popular Religion ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Social Commentary ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
Playing Field ◽  
Book Of Mormon ◽  
Divine Inspiration ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
New Religion

In the history of American popular religion, the Latter-day Saints, or Mormons, have undergone a series of paradigmatic shifts in order to join the Christian mainstream, abandoning such controversial core doctrines and institutions as polygamy and the political kingdom of God. Mormon historians have played an important role in this metamorphosis, employing a version (if not perversion) of the Church-Sect Dichotomy to change the past in order to control the future, arguing, in effect, that founder Joseph Smith Jr’s erstwhile magical beliefs and practices gave way to a more “mature” and bible-based self-understanding which is then said to best describe the religion that he founded in 1830. However, an “esoteric approach” as Faivre and Hanegraaff understand the term has much to offer the study of Mormonism as an old, new religion and the basis for a more even methodological playing field and new interpretation of Mormonism as equally magical (Masonic) and biblical (Evangelical) despite appearances. This article will focus on early Mormonism’s fascination with and employment of ciphers, or “the coded word,” essential to such foundation texts as the Book of Mormon and “Book of Abraham,” as well as the somewhat contradictory, albeit colonial understanding of African character and destiny in these two hermetic works of divine inspiration and social commentary in the Latter-day Saint canonical tradition.

Philosophic Pride

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Brooke
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Marcus Aurelius ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
History Of ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era

This is the first full-scale look at the essential place of Stoicism in the foundations of modern political thought. Spanning the period from Justus Lipsius's Politics in 1589 to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Emile in 1762, and concentrating on arguments originating from England, France, and the Netherlands, the book considers how political writers of the period engaged with the ideas of the Roman and Greek Stoics that they found in works by Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. The book examines key texts in their historical context, paying special attention to the history of classical scholarship and the historiography of philosophy. The book delves into the persisting tension between Stoicism and the tradition of Augustinian anti-Stoic criticism, which held Stoicism to be a philosophy for the proud who denied their fallen condition. Concentrating on arguments in moral psychology surrounding the foundations of human sociability and self-love, the book details how the engagement with Roman Stoicism shaped early modern political philosophy and offers significant new interpretations of Lipsius and Rousseau together with fresh perspectives on the political thought of Hugo Grotius and Thomas Hobbes. The book shows how the legacy of the Stoics played a vital role in European intellectual life in the early modern era.

Who Is the Founder of Psychophysics and Experimental Psychology?

1999 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Omar Khaleefa
Keyword(s):  
Visual Perception ◽  
Experimental Method ◽  
Experimental Psychology ◽  
Visual Illusion ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Psychological Explanation ◽  
Moon Illusion ◽  
New Concepts ◽  
History Of

The study is an investigation of the origins of psychophysics and experimentalpsychology. According to historians of psychology. FrancisBacon had the most crucial influence in the history of the experimentalmethod, because he emphasized the importance of induction, skepticism,quantification, and observation. The present study, however,attempts to show that Ibn al-Haytham laid the foundations of the aboveaspects of the experimental method. Furthermore, a number of historiansof psychology believe that Fechner was the founder of psychophysicswith his application “Filements of Psychophysics” in 1860.This study shows that in the eleventh century, Ibn al-Haytham made anoriginal contribution to the study of vision, wherein his psychophysicsborrowed its structure from physics and its spirit from psychology.Several aspects of visual perception were investigated by him, includingsensation (which occupies a central place in psychophysics), variationsin sensitivity, perception of colors. sensation of touch, perceptionof darkness, the psychological explanation of moon illusion, and binocularvision. This study presents five experiments by Ibn al-Haythamregarding the errors of vision, which is called in contemporary psychology“visual illusion.” These experiments have been applied andverified in Bahrain from both the physical and psychological perspectives.Finally, the study concludes that Ibn al-Haytham deserves the title“founder” of psychophysics as wellp the “founder” of experimentalpsychology. In this respect. Kitab ul-Manazir by Ibn al-Haytham.which appeared in the fmt half of the eleventh century, and not the“Elements of Psychophysics” by Fechner. which was published in thenineteenth century, marks the official “founding” of psychology,because it provides not only new concepts and theories but new methodsof measurement in psychology.

Monastery, Monument, Museum

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maurizio Peleggi
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Art History ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Devotional Art ◽  
Cultural Legacy ◽  
Political Ideologies ◽  
Cultural Sites ◽  
History Of ◽  
Intellectual Knowledge

Monastery, Monument, Museum examines cultural sites, artifacts, and institutions of Thailand as both products and vehicles of cultural memory. From rock caves to reliquaries, from cultic images to temple murals, from museums and modern monuments to contemporary artworks, cultural sites and artifacts are considered in relation to the transmission of religious beliefs and political ideologies, as well as manual and intellectual knowledge, throughout thelongue durée of Thailand’s cultural history. Sequenced by and large chronologically along a period of time spanning the eleventh century through to the start of the twenty-first, the eight chapters in this book are grouped into three sections that surface distinct themes and analytical concerns: devotional art in Part I, museology and art history in Part II, and political art in Part III. The chapters can even be read as self-contained essays, each supplied with extensive bibliographic references.By examining the interplay between cultural sites and artifacts, their popular and scholarly appreciation, and the institutional configuration of a cultural legacy, Monastery, Monument, Museum makes a contribution to the literature on memory studies. A second area of scholarship this book engages is the art history of Thailand by shifting focus from the chronological and stylistic analysis of artifacts to their social life—and afterlife. Monastery, Monument, Museum brings together in one volume a millennium of art and cultural history of Thailand. Its novel analysis and thought-provoking re-interpretation of a variety of artifacts and source materials will be of interest to both the specialist and the general reader.

Truth to Power

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Policy Issue ◽  
International Terrorism ◽  
Intelligence Community ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
Intelligence Support ◽  
The Cold War

This first-ever history of the US National Intelligence Council (NIC) is told through the reflections of its eight chairs in the period from the end of the Cold War until 2017. Coeditors Robert Hutchings and Gregory Treverton add a substantial introduction placing the NIC in its historical context going all the way back to the Board of National Estimates in the 1940s, as well as a concluding chapter that highlights key themes and judgments. The historic mission of this remarkable but little-understood organization is strategic intelligence assessment in service of senior American foreign policymakers. It has been at the center of every critical foreign policy issue during the period covered by this volume: helping shape America’s post–Cold War strategies, confronting sectarian conflicts around the world, meeting the new challenge of international terrorism, and now assessing the radical restructuring of the global order. Each chapter places its particular period of the NIC’s history in context (the global situation, the administration, the intelligence community) and assesses the most important issues with which the NIC grappled during the period, acknowledging failures as well as claiming successes. With the creation of the director of national intelligence in 2005, the NIC’s mission mushroomed to include direct intelligence support to the main policymaking committees in the government. The mission shift took the NIC directly into the thick of the action but may have come at the expense of weakening its historic role of providing over-the horizon strategic analysis.

Work and Technological Change

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen R. Barley
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Energy Transformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Work And Organizations ◽  
Role Based ◽  
Control Technologies ◽  
And Control ◽  
Work And Employment

The four chapters of this book summarize the results of thirty-five years dedicated to studying how technologies change work and organizations. The first chapter places current developments in artificial intelligence into the historical context of previous technological revolutions by drawing on William Faunce’s argument that the history of technology is one of progressive automation of the four components of any production system: energy, transformation, and transfer and control technologies. The second chapter lays out a role-based theory of how technologies occasion changes in organizations. The third chapter tackles the issue of how to conceptualize a more thorough approach to assessing how intelligent technologies, such as artificial intelligence, can shape work and employment. The fourth chapter discusses what has been learned over the years about the fears that arise when one sets out to study technical work and technical workers and methods for controlling those fears.

Renaissance Mass Murder

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen D. Bowd
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Social History ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Mass Murder ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
Italian Wars ◽  
Human Tragedy

Renaissance Mass Murder explores the devastating impact of war on the men and women of the Renaissance. In contrast to the picture of balance and harmony usually associated with the Renaissance, it uncovers in forensic detail a world in which sacks of Italian cities and massacres of civilians at the hands of French, German, Spanish, Swiss, and Italian troops were regular occurrences. The arguments presented are based on a wealth of evidence—histories and chronicles, poetry and paintings, sculpture and other objects—which together provide a new and startling history of sixteenth-century Italy and a social history of the Italian Wars. It outlines how massacres happened, how princes, soldiers, lawyers, and writers, justified and explained such events, and how they were represented in contemporary culture. On this basis the book reconstructs the terrifying individual experiences of civilians in the face of war and in doing so offers a story of human tragedy which redresses the balance of the history of the Italian Wars, and of Renaissance warfare, in favour of the civilian and away from the din of the battlefield. This book also places mass murder in a broader historical context and challenges claims that such violence was unusual or in decline in early modern Europe. Finally, it shows that women often suffered disproportionately from this violence and that immunity for them, as for their children, was often partially developed or poorly respected.

The Growth of Historical Method in Tang China

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Hartman ◽  
Anthony DeBlasi
Keyword(s):  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Daily Production ◽  
Successor State ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
Official History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Over Time

This chapter discusses how the full emergence of the centralized, aristocratic state in the seventh century brought about an official historiography that was part of the bureaucracy of that state. Beginning in the Tang, each dynastic court maintained an office of historiography. Over time, a regularized process evolved that, in theory and often in reality, turned the daily production of court bureaucratic documents into an official history of the dynasty. Although this process was ongoing throughout the dynasty, the final, standard ‘dynastic history’ was usually completed after the dynasty's demise by its successor state. Indeed, the very concept of a series of dynastic histories that, taken together, would present an official history of successive, legitimate Chinese states, dates from the eleventh century.

Maternalist and Community Politics

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Reese ◽  
Ian Breckenridge-Jackson ◽  
Julisa McCoy
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Community Organizing ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The United States ◽  
Community Politics ◽  
Intersectionality Theory ◽  
Political Ideologies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Self Help Groups

This chapter explores the history of maternalist mobilization and women’s community politics in the United States. It argues that both “maternalism” and “community” have proved to be highly flexible mobilizing frames for women. Building on the insights of intersectionality theory, the authors suggest that women’s maternal and community politics is shaped by their social locations within multiple, intersecting relations of domination and subordination, as well as their political ideologies and historical context. The chapter begins by discussing the politically contradictory history of maternalist mobilization within the United States from the Progressive era to the present. It then explores other forms of women’s community politics, focusing on women’s community volunteerism, self-help groups, and community organizing. It discusses how these frames have been used both to build alliances among women and to divide or exclude women based on perceived differences and social inequalities based on race, nativity, class, or sexual orientation.

Ezekiel in the Jewish Tradition

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yedida Eisenstat
Keyword(s):  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
History Of

After a brief survey of early rabbinic ambivalence toward this controversial prophetic book and its use in synagogue liturgy, this chapter traces the history of rabbinic interpretation of the repetition of “I said to you, ‘Through your blood, live’” in Ezek 16:6. The midrashic tradition ascribes redemptive power to these “two bloods”—of circumcision and of the paschal lamb. This chapter argues that the “bloods” of the verse become metonyms for all of the commandments through which Jews realize their covenant with God. Both blood and circumcision (or lack thereof) were weighty symbols for Christians, too; so as Jews migrated into Christendom in larger numbers in the eleventh century, they had to address Christianity’s competing claims to the same covenant. The addition of this verse to the Jews’ circumcision liturgy upon their arrival in northern Europe can be explained in light of these shared symbols.

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