scholarly journals Genres and Multilingual Contexts: The Translational Culture of Nineteenth-Century Calcutta

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chandrani Chatterjee

Nineteenth-century Calcutta has been widely researched to understand its role in the making of a ‘modern’ India. However, the ‘translational’ culture of this period has not received enough attention. The present article traces what it terms Calcutta’s ‘translational culture’ by examining a palimpsest of languages and genres through the mediating role of translation. Nineteenth-century was a time when several languages were competing for space in the making of modern Bengali prose. Most of the writers of the time were negotiating a plural and multilingual domain and experimenting withnew styles of prose and poetry writing. Two such examples can be seen in the works of Michael Madhusudan Dutt (1824 –1873), and Kaliprassana Singha (1841 -1870). These writers were instrumental in the making of new genres and were negotiating multiple languages and linguistic registers that included –Sanskrit, Bengali with its different elite and colloquial registers, English,and several European languages and literatures. In juxtaposing Dutt and Singha, the present article attempts to point towards a parallel history of the nineteenth-century Calcutta traced through moments of transactions, translations,and negotiations among languages, ideas,and world views. Languages and literary genres in this case become a testimony to the rich texture of social and cultural negotiations that went into the making of the modernist Bengali prose and indicative of its palimpsestic and translational nature.

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Adrien Quéret-Podesta

In the rich history of Icelandic literature, the most famous literary genres are undoubtedly the medieval sagas and the contemporary criminal novels. However, those genres are as not as far from each other as one may think, since masterpieces of Icelandic medieval literature are sometimes summoned by contemporary authors, as is shown in The Flatey Enigma (Icelandic: Flateyjargáta), a criminal novel by Viktor Arnar Ingólfsson which is built around the story and the contents of the Book of Flatey, a famous fourteenth Icelandic manuscript. The present article provides an analysis of the place and function of the manuscripts and the medieval texts it contains: the results obtained show that their main function is to help the development of the plot, although some intertextual references also have a didactic dimension, whereas others provide information about the relations between the characters and the Book of Flatey.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mir Kamruzzman Chowdhary

This study was an attempt to understand how the available alternative source materials, such as oral testimonies can serve as valuable assets to unveiling certain aspects of maritime history in India. A number of themes in maritime history in India failed to get the attention of the generation of historians, because of the paucity of written documents. Unlike in Europe, the penning down of shipping activities was not a concern for the authorities at the port in India. The pamphlets and newsletters declared the scheduled departure of the ship in Europe but, in India, this was done verbally. Therefore, maritime history in India remained marginalised. Hence, in this article, I make an endeavour to perceive how the oral testimonies can help shed some new light on certain aspects of maritime history in India, such as life on the ship, maritime practices, and perceptions among the littoral people in coastal societies. This article also outlines an approach on how the broader question on the transformation of scattered maritime practices among coastal societies can be adapted and transferred into an organised institution of law by the nineteenth century, and how these can be pursued in future. I also suggest in this article that the role of Europeans, especially the British, in the process of transformation, can be investigated further through oral testimonies in corroboration with the colonial archival records.


This book addresses the sounds of the Crimean War, along with the many ways nineteenth-century wartime is aurally constructed. It examines wide-ranging experiences of listeners in Britain, France, Turkey, Russia, Italy, Poland, Latvia, Daghestan, Chechnya, and Crimea, illustrating the close interplay between nineteenth-century geographies of empire and the modes by which wartime sound was archived and heard. This book covers topics including music in and around war zones, the mediation of wartime sound, the relationship between sound and violence, and the historiography of listening. Individual chapters concern sound in Leo Tolstoy’s wartime writings, and his place within cosmopolitan sensibilities; the role of the telegraph in constructing sonic imaginations in London and the Black Sea region; the absence of archives for the sounds of particular ethnic groups, and how songs preserve memories for both Crimean Tatars and Polish nationalists; the ways in which perceptions of voice rearranged the mental geographies of Baltic Russia, and undermined aspirations to national unity in Italy; Italian opera as a means of conditioning elite perceptions of Crimean battlefields; and historical frames through which to understand the diffusion of violent sounds amid everyday life. The volume engages the academic fields of musicology, ethnomusicology, history, literary studies, sound studies, and the history of the senses.


Author(s):  
Stefan Collini

This chapter argues that accounts of ‘the reading public’ are always fundamentally historical, usually involving stories of ‘growth’ or ‘decline’. It examines Q. D. Leavis’s Fiction and the Reading Public, which builds a relentlessly pessimistic critique of the debased standards of the present out of a highly selective account of literature and its publics since the Elizabethan period. It goes on to exhibit the complicated analysis of the role of previous publics in F. R. Leavis’s revisionist literary history, including his ambivalent admiration for the great Victorian periodicals. And it shows how Richard Hoggart’s The Uses of Literacy carries an almost buried interpretation of social change from the nineteenth century onwards, constantly contrasting the vibrant and healthy forms of entertainment built up in old working-class communities with the slick, commercialized reading matter introduced by post-1945 prosperity.


Author(s):  
Sarah Collins

This chapter examines the continuities between the categories of the “national” and the “universal” in the nineteenth century. It construes these categories as interrelated efforts to create a “world” on various scales. The chapter explores the perceived role of music as a world-making medium within these discourses. It argues that the increased exposure to cultural difference and the interpretation of that cultural difference as distant in time and space shaped a conception of “humanity” in terms of a universal history of world cultures. The chapter reexamines those early nineteenth-century thinkers whose work became inextricably linked with the rise of exclusivist notions of nationalism in the late nineteenth century, such as Johann Gottfried Herder and John Stuart Mill. It draws from their respective treatment of music to recover their early commitment to universalizable principles and their view that the “world” is something that must be actively created rather than empirically observed.


Author(s):  
Susanne Wagini ◽  
Katrin Holzherr

Abstract The restorer Johann Michael von Hermann (1793–1855), famous in the early nineteenth century, has long fallen into oblivion. A recent discovery of his work associated with old master prints at the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München has allowed a close study of his methods and skills as well as those of his pupil Ludwig Albert von Montmorillon (1794–1854), providing a fresh perspective on the early history of paper conservation. Von Hermann’s method of facsimile inserts was praised by his contemporaries, before Max Schweidler (1885–1953) described these methods in 1938. The present article provides biographical notes on both nineteenth century restorers, gives examples of prints treated by them and adds a chapter of conservation history crediting them with a place in the history of the discipline. In summary, this offers a surprising insight on how works of art used to be almost untraceably restored by this team of Munich-based restorers more than 150 years before Schweidler.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
А.Б. Бритаева

В представленной статье на материале произведений Музафера Дзасохова известного современного осетинского писателя, поэта, публициста, переводчика, рассматриваются художественные особенности лирической прозы, а именно, автобиографической повести в осетинской детской литературе. Повесть Весенние звезды (1973) и ее продолжение На берегу Уршдона Барагун (1981) стали началом эпопеи о жизни отдельно взятой семьи, а на их примере всей страны в тяжелые послевоенные годы. В качестве одной из важнейших констант художественного мира писателя рассматривается образ детства. В ходе анализа особое внимание уделяется преобладанию нравственного аспекта, актуализации проблемы регулятивно-воспитательной функции национального этикета, ценностно-нормативных ориентиров осетинской ментальности. С опорой на биографический и историко-генетический методы, основное внимание в исследовании акцентируется на темах послевоенного детства, роли семьи и общества в формировании нравственных ориентиров, в становлении личности, образе матери, теме памяти, а также на художественном осмыслении этих проблем и тем в автобиографических повестях писателя. Типологически воплощение детской темы в творчестве М. Дзасохова во многом опирается на традицию изображения детства в русской автобиографической прозе XX в. В заключительной части сформулированы выводы, отражающие особенности лирической прозы в творчестве М. Дзасохова, обозначено место автобиографических повестей автора в контексте осетинской детской литературы второй половины XX века.Актуальность и научная новизна работы обусловлены недостаточной исследованностью истории и проблем осетинской детской литературы. Результаты исследования могут быть использованы при написании истории осетинской детской литературы. The present article examines the artistic features of lyrical prose, namely, autobiographical story in the Ossetian childrens literature in the works of Muzafer Dzasokhov, a well-known modern Ossetian writer, poet, publicist, translator. The story Spring Stars (1973) and its continuation - On the Bank of Ursdon Baragun ... (1981) marked the beginning of an epic about the life of a family, and via their fates the author shows life of the whole country in the difficult post-war years. The theme of childhood is considered as one of the most important constants of the writers artistic world. In the course of the analysis, special attention is paid to the predominance of the moral aspect, the actualization of the problem of the regulatory and educational function of national etiquette, the value and normative guidelines of the Ossetian mentality. The focus of the study is based on biographical and historical-genetic methods and highlights the themes of post-war childhood, the role of the family and society in the formation of moral guidelines, in the formation of personality, the image of the mother, the theme of memory, as well as on the artistic understanding of these problems and topics in autobiographical novels of the writer. Typologically, the embodiment of the childrens theme in the works of M. Dzasokhov is largely based on the tradition of depicting childhood in Russian autobiographical prose of the XXth century. The formulated conclusions in the final part reflect the peculiarities of lyrical prose in the works of M. Dzasokhov, the place of the authors autobiographical stories is indicated in the context of Ossetian childrens literature of the second half of the XXth century. The relevance and scientific novelty of the work are due to insufficient research on the history and problems of Ossetian childrens literature. The results of the study can be used in writing the history of Ossetian childrens literature.


2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 158-201
Author(s):  
VOLKAN SARIGÜL

ABSTRACT Modern paleontology in Turkey appeared in the early nineteenth century, together with the first modern geological studies. The fossils collected in these studies were initially used to establish biostratigraphy and to make the first geological maps of the country. Paleontologists were involved in these studies from the beginning; the earliest identifications of new animal and plant taxa from Turkey occurred in the same century along with the detailed descriptions of the rich and diverse Turkish fossil record. Aside from the academic studies, some paleontologists also took part in the economic side by contributing to stratigraphic analysis of coal beds or participating in petroleum exploration. All these pioneering works on the geology and paleontology of Turkey were done by foreigners; however, the outcomes of this newly introduced science were quickly appreciated by Ottoman Turkey. During the middle of the nineteenth century, the first text mentioning geological processes was written by the head scholar of the Imperial School of Military Engineering, while the first geology classes began to be taught under the Imperial Medical School in Istanbul, in which the first natural history collection was also established. Unfortunately, not a single original study in paleontology was produced by Ottoman citizens, with the notable exception of an Austrian immigrant of Hungarian descent, possibly because of a lack of a real interest in earth sciences.


Der Islam ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 95 (2) ◽  
pp. 549-595
Author(s):  
Lorenz Korn

Abstract The “German Fountain” on the Hippodrome in Istanbul, commissioned by the German Emperor Wilhelm II, has been perceived (and sometimes ridiculed) as a marginal by-product of imperialism and historicism. However, the history of its origins, construction and inauguration highlights significant aspects of German-Ottoman relations in the Hamidian period. The fountain is an example of the role that art and architecture played in these relations. The history of its planning indicates in which way the urban history of Istanbul was perceived and how a new monument was inserted, under the particular conditions of patronage by a foreign monarch. For the present article, German archival sources have been utilized to reconstruct the events and to interpret underlying attitudes. These sources elucidate the process of veritable trans-cultural negotiations, in which numerous partners with differing agendas participated. Besides, an art historical glance at the design of the fountain permits conclusions on choices that were made by the patron and the architect, significant for the understanding of the monument by its contemporaries. The particular conditions of the Ottoman Empire struggling for survival vis à vis European powers, and German foreign politics, become visible in the location and style of the fountain as well as in the protocol of its inauguration.


2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 689-715 ◽  
Author(s):  
HERMAN PAUL

Historical epistemology is a form of intellectual history focused on “the history of categories that structure our thought, pattern our arguments and proofs, and certify our standards for explanation” (Lorraine Daston). Under this umbrella, historians have been studying the changing meanings of “objectivity,” “impartiality,” “curiosity,” and other virtues believed to be conducive to good scholarship. While endorsing this historicization of virtues and their corresponding vices, the present article argues that the meaning and relative importance of these virtues and vices can only be determined if their mutual dependencies are taken into account. Drawing on a detailed case study—a controversy that erupted among nineteenth-century orientalists over the publication of R. P. A. Dozy'sDe Israëlieten te Mekka(The Israelites in Mecca) (1864)—the paper shows that nineteenth-century orientalists were careful to examine (1) the degree to which Dozy practiced the virtues they considered most important, (2) the extent to which these virtues were kept in balance by other ones, (3) the extent to which these virtues were balanced by other scholars’ virtues, and (4) the extent to which they were expected to be balanced by future scholars’ work. Consequently, this article argues that historical epistemology might want to abandon its single-virtue focus in order to allow balances, hierarchies, and other dependency relations between virtues and vices to move to the center of attention.


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