De la canonul optzecist la canonul transnațional

Transilvania ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 128-132
Author(s):  
Emilia David
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
Major Elements ◽  
Theory And Criticism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Critical Interpretation ◽  
Romanian Literature ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The One ◽  
Literary System

The present article will try to highlight a series of innovations brought about by Mihai Iovănel’s History of Contemporary Romanian Literature 1990-2020 in the current evaluation and critical interpretation of Romanian literature. Singular in terms of the length of the period under scrutiny and the general objectives pursued by its author, the History views literature as an overarching institution governed by its own mechanisms. The latter are both extraliterary – drawing on historical, sociological, and critical markers – and artistic – explorable by invoking the aesthetic standpoint alone. By discussing the insistence on the first type of mechanisms, I will present one of the major elements of novelty brought by the volume in the contemporary cultural landscape of Romania. Placing myself, therefore, on the position of the “local” reader, i.e., as a connoisseur of the evolution of the contemporary Romanian literary system, I will examine, on the one hand, the ways in which Mihai Iovănel discusses and redefines prevalent concepts in literary theory and criticism, while on the other, I will perform the critical – but also pedagogic – role of the expert who wants to present to a “foreign” public – belonging to another country and culture, that is – the national literature as “literature of the world.” Iovănel employs a set of adequate and representative instruments of study and analysis in showing that Romanian literature is a cultural phenomenon engaging in a constant dialogue with European and universal paradigms and models.

NURTURING OF CHILDREN THROUGH DRAMA AND THEATRE: THE CASE OF INTWASA KOBULAWAYO PERFORMANCES

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 86-99
Author(s):  
Vimbai Moreblessing Matiza
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
Children And Youth ◽  
Main Task ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
Theatrical Performances ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

Dramatic and theatrical performances have a long history of being used as tools to enhance development in children and youth. In pre-colonial times there were some forms of drama and theatre used by different communities in the socialisation of children. It is in the same vein that this article, through the Intwasa koBulawayo performances, seeks to evaluate how drama and theatre are used to nurture children and youth into different developmental facets of their lives. The only difference which this article will take into cognisance is that the performances are done in a different environment, which is not the one used in the pre-colonial times. Although these performances were like this, the most important factor is the idea that children and youth are socialised through these performances. It is also against this backdrop that children and youth are growing up in a globalised environment, hence the performances should accommodate people from all walks of life and teach them relevant issues pertaining to life as they live it now. Thus the main task of the article is to spell out the role of drama and theatre in the nurturing of children and youth through socio economic and political development in Intwasa koBulawayo festivals.

Idleness and Freedom in Michel de Montaigne’s “Essays”

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 189-202
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Spiritual Quest ◽  
Guiding Principle ◽  
Sextus Empiricus ◽  
History Of ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Relationship

The article advances a hypothesis about the composition of Michel de Montaigne’s Essays. Specialists in the intellectual history of the Renaissance have long considered the relationship among Montaigne’s thematically heterogeneous thoughts, which unfold unpredictably and often seen to contradict each other. The waywardness of those reflections over the years was a way for Montaigne to construct a self-portrait. Spontaneity of thought is the essence of the person depicted and an experimental literary technique that was unprecedented in its time and has still not been surpassed. Montaigne often writes about freedom of reflection and regards it as an extremely important topic. There have been many attempts to interpret the haphazardness of the Essays as the guiding principle in their composition. According to one such interpretation, the spontaneous digressions and readiness to take up very different philosophical notions is a form of of varietas and distinguo, which Montaigne understood in the context of Renaissance philosophy. Another interpretation argues that the Essays employ the rhetorical techniques of Renaissance legal commentary. A third opinion regards the Essays as an example of sprezzatura, a calculated negligence that calls attention to the aesthetic character of Montaigne’s writing. The author of the article argues for a different interpretation that is based on the concept of idleness to which Montaigne assigned great significance. He had a keen appreciation of the role of otium in the culture of ancient Rome and regarded leisure as an inner spiritual quest for self-knowledge. According to Montaigne, idleness permits self-directedness, and it is an ideal form in which to practice the freedom of thought that brings about consistency in writing, living and reality, in all of which Montaigne finds one general property - complete inconstancy. Socratic self-knowledge, a skepticism derived from Pyrrho of Elis and Sextus Empiricus, and a rejection of the conventions of traditional rhetoric that was similar to Seneca’s critique of it were all brought to bear on the concept of idleness and made Montaigne’s intellectual and literary experimentation in the Essays possible.

Fracturismul în câmpul literar românesc

Transilvania ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Mihnea Bâlici
Keyword(s):  
Social Reality ◽  
Literary Field ◽  
Cultural Expression ◽  
Literary Expression ◽  
History Of ◽  
A Priority ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Revolutionary History ◽  
Contemporary Author

Fracturism proved to be the “spearhead” of the 2000 generation. The first and by far the most radical literary group formed after 1989, this promotion became the cultural expression of a difficult context in the post-revolutionary history of Romania. The aim of this study is to analyze the origin, the function and the effects of the Fracturist ideas proposed by Marius Ianuș and Dumitru Crudu in 1998. Most literary interpretations failed to capture the specificity of this promotion. This is due to the fact that the aesthetic program was never a priority for the Fracturists. It can be emphasized that Fracturism appeared in a specific set of historical, political, social, institutional and cultural circumstances. The present analysis aims to clarify the complex links between the difficult post-communist transition, the crisis of the Romanian literary field and the ostentatious literary expression of the new authors. In this regard, a certain performative dimension of fracturism can be theorized: the poets and prose writers of the new millennium will militate against a distressing social reality by changing the very role of the contemporary author.

scholarly journals Authorial Self and Modernity as Reflected in Diaries and Memoirs. Three 19th-Century Hungarian Case Studies

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-97
Author(s):  
Béla Mester
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Social Role ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Self Reflection ◽  
Individual Character ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Type ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The One

Abstract The role of the diaries and memoirs in the process of the conscious self-reflection and their contribution to the emergence of modern individual personalities are well-known facts of the intellectual history. The present paper intends to analyze a special form of the creation of modern individual character; it is the self-creation of the writer as a conscious personality, often with a clearly formulated opinion about her/his own social role. There will be offered several examples from the 19th-century history of the Hungarian intelligentsia. This period is more or less identical with the modernization of the “cultural industry” in Hungary, dominated by the periodicals with their deadlines, fixed lengths of the articles, and professional editing houses on the one hand and the cultural nation building on the other. Concerning the possible social and cultural role of the intelligentsia, it is the moment of the birth of a new type, so-called public intellectual. I will focus on three written sources, a diary of a Calvinist student of theology, Péter (Litkei) Tóth, the memoirs of an influential public intellectual, Gusztáv Szontagh, and a belletristic printed diary of a young intellectual, János Asbóth.

More Lessons to Learn: Thomas Piketty’s Capital and Ideology and Alternative Archives of Social Experience

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-146
Author(s):  
Andreas Langenohl
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
International Political Economy ◽  
Democratic Governance ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Historical Trajectory ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Alternative Archives

Abstract Thomas Piketty’s Capital and Ideology has been written with the intention to offer lessons from the historical trajectory of economic redistribution in societies the world over. Thereby, the book suggests learning from the political-economic history of ‘social-democratic’ policies and societal arrangements. While the data presented speak to the plausibility of looking at social democracy, as understood by Piketty, as an archive for learning about the effects of redistribution mechanisms, I argue that the book, or future interventions might profit from integrating alternative archives. On the one hand, its current line of argumentation tends to underestimate the significance of power relations in the international political economy that continued after formal decolonization, and thus form the flip side of social democracy’s success in Europe and North America. On the other hand, the role of the polity might be imagined in a different and more empowering way, not just-as in Piketty-as an elite-liberal democratic governance institution; for instance, it would be interesting to explore the archive of the French solidaristes movement more deeply than Piketty does, as well as much more recent interventions in economic anthropology that deal with ‘economic citizenship’ in the Global South.

Liat Steir-Livny, Remaking Holocaust Memory: Documentary Cinema by Third-Generation Survivors in Israel. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2019. 376 pp.

2021 ◽  
pp. 273-275
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Documentary Films ◽  
Third Generation ◽  
Holocaust Memory ◽  
Historical Film ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
The One ◽  
Changing Attitudes

This chapter assesses Liat Steir-Livny's Remaking Holocaust Memory (2019). This book is the first comprehensive English-language study of the Israeli Third-Generation engagement with the history of the Shoah in documentary films. In analyzing “how Third-Generation documentaries provide new ideas and concepts to commemorate and preserve the memory for future generations,” Steir-Livny contrasts Third-Generation documentary films with the works of second-generation directors and explores an extensive number of films in five key areas. These key areas include the role of gender; the changing attitudes toward Germany; the use and exploration of historical film footage in Third-Generation documentary films; the function of testimonies that feature in Third-Generation documentaries “in more complex ways”; and the representation of perpetrators and bystanders in Third-Generation films. Throughout her study, Steir-Livny discusses the documentaries against the background of documentary film theories, on the one hand, and Israeli/Zionist Holocaust memory, on the other.

scholarly journals Oral Histories of a Layered Landscape: The Rushworth Oral History Project

2007 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keir Reeves ◽  
E. Rebecca Sanders ◽  
Gordon Chisholm
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
Regional Identity ◽  
Landscape Analysis ◽  
Methodological Issues ◽  
Cultural Complexity ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Town

This article reflects the authors’ experience of undertaking an oral history project in the regional Victorian town of Rushworth. The authors of the article contend that to conduct an investigation of the natural and cultural heritage of the town and surrounding forests is also to engage in an archaeology of historical landscapes. The authors, after articulating the theoretical and methodological issues of oral history, name and trace the various historical layers of the landscape of Rushworth and the forest that surrounds the town. They argue that the use of oral history in conjunction with cultural landscape analysis enables a deeper understanding of the cultural complexity of the history of Rushworth and the surrounding region. Broader issues concerning regional identity and the role of historians in providing a greater understanding of the community in the present day are also evaluated.

Τὸ καλόν as a Criterion for Judging Innovation (τὸ καινόν) in Greek Musical Pedagogy

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-32
Author(s):  
Antonietta Gostoli
Keyword(s):  
Lyric Poetry ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Epic Poetry ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
And Training

Abstract The Pseudo-Plutarchan De musica provides us with the oldest history of Greek lyric poetry from pre-Homeric epic poetry to the lyric poetry of the fourth century BC. Importantly, the work also contains an evaluation of the role of music in the process of educating and training citizens. Pseudo-Plutarch (Aristoxenus) considers the καλόν in the aesthetic and ethical sense, which makes it incompatible with the καινόν dictated by the new poetic and musical season.

Women in Buddhism

Buddhism ◽  
2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kim Gutschow
Keyword(s):  
Ample Evidence ◽  
Buddhist Studies ◽  
Methodological Choices ◽  
History Of ◽  
Role Of Women ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Women And Buddhism ◽  
The One ◽  
Women In Buddhism

The very existence of a “Women and Buddhism” entry but no “Men in Buddhism” entry implies a set of methodological lacunae in Buddhist studies. On the one hand, Buddhist studies have often proceeded as if the history of men in Buddhism stands in for Buddhist history, with little effort made to mention or recover the significance of women. On the other hand, systematic methodological choices, such as the discounting of feminist analysis and the privileging of text over other sources of knowledge, have exacerbated the tendency to elide the role of women in Buddhism. This elision of women, or their marginalization, in Buddhist analyses where “man” or “male” is assumed to represent “human” has prompted a countersurge of analyses. These latter analyses have found ample evidence for the centrality of gender and women in shaping Buddhist society and soteriology. Although works are now available that cover the role of women and gender in most Buddhist eras or societies, these have only scratched the surface of an extraordinarily rich set of material and questions. It remains to be seen how well Buddhist scholarship can give gender and women their proper place in developing its central concerns.

Vietnamese Canadian Refugee Aesthetics

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vinh Nguyen
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
Innocent Bystander ◽  
The Gift ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
The One

Vietnamese Canadian refugee aesthetics are the diverse expressions of how hundreds of thousands of refugees and their descendants experienced the Vietnam War and its aftermath. They are shaped on the one hand by a history of war in, and forced migration from, Vietnam and on the other by resettlement in multicultural Canada. Significantly, Vietnamese Canadian refugee aesthetics are produced within a distinct context of Canadian “forgetting of complicity” in the Vietnam War. A major shaping force of this aesthetics is the idea that Canada was an innocent bystander or facilitator of peace during the war years, instead of a complicit participant providing arms and supporting a Western bloc victory. This allows, then, for a discourse of Canadian humanitarianism to emerge as Canada resettled refugees in the war’s wake. Vietnamese Canadian refugee aesthetics are produced and received in relation to the enduring narrative of Canadian benevolence. In this way, they celebrate the nation-state and its peoples through gratitude for the gift of refuge. More importantly, however, they illuminate life during and in the wake of war; the personal, political, and historical reasons for migration; the struggles and triumphs of resettlement; and the complexities of diasporic existence. Refugee aesthetics are driven by memory and the desire to commemorate, communicate, and make sense of difficult pasts and the embodied present. They often take the form of literary works such as memoirs, novels, and poetry, but they are also found in community politics and activism, such as commemoration events and protests, and other popular media like public service videos. Produced by refugees as well as the state, these aesthetic “texts” index themes and problematics such as the formation of voice; the interplay between memory, history, and identity; the role of autobiography; and the modes of representing war, violence, and refuge-seeking.

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