Singing of Death—and Life

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Hayes
Keyword(s):  
New South ◽  
Folk Songs ◽  
Religious Culture ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Dominant Culture ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Life After Death ◽  
Dance Of Death ◽  
Broad Community ◽  
Special Meaning

This chapter explores New South folk songs of personified Death, with special focus on the Lloyd Chandler composition “Conversation with Death”—its geographic scope, probable spread over time, and broad community of appropriators. The roots of “Conversation with Death” are traced to the late medieval Dance of Death, and the song is interpreted as articulating a medieval/modernist vision. Folk songs of Death are shown to be strikingly different from the songs of death in the dominant religious culture, where death is a release and the focus is on life after death as one’s true home. In contrast, folk songs of death evoke the terror of death to affirm the value of this life in this world—an affirmation that had special meaning for the poor, who faced denigration and devaluation from the dominant culture.

Emperor Charles IV (1346–1378) as the Architect of Local Religion in Prague

2010 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
pp. 15-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
David C. Mengel
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Religious Culture ◽  
Roman Emperor ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Local Religion ◽  
Guiding Principle

The idea of reform still supplies the guiding principle for most accounts of late medieval religion in Bohemia. Like a brightly colored thread, reform marks a trail leading forward from Jan Hus (d. 1415) to the leaders of the sixteenth-century Reformation, as well as backward to a series of precursors in the fourteenth century. This essay takes a different path through the religious culture of fourteenth-century Bohemia and of Prague, in particular. Rather than following the traditional historiography in identifying a handful of fourteenth-century Prague preachers as revolutionary forerunners of Jan Hus, this essay situates these and other figures within a more complicated and multivalent local religious culture, a culture that was carefully molded by Central Europe's most powerful authority. No one shaped Prague's local religion more dramatically than the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles IV (r. 1346–1378), as three examples offered here will illustrate. Like an architect, Charles IV designed much of Prague's vibrant local religion. Nevertheless, neither he nor anyone else completely controlled it.

scholarly journals Hanse Cultural Geography and Communal Identity in Late-Medieval City Views of Lübeck

2020 ◽  
pp. 009614422091793
Author(s):  
Laura Tillery
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Geography ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Communal Identity ◽  
The Baltic Sea ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Urban Group ◽  
Dance Of Death ◽  
Corporate Body ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Baltic

This article examines painted and printed city views of Lübeck, Germany, from ca. 1465 to 1540 as a lens to examine the corporate body of Hanse merchants and towns in the Baltic late-medieval urban environment. Previous studies on painted views of Lübeck in the background of Bernt Notke’s Lübeck Dance of Death and Hermen Rode’s Altarpiece of Sts. Nicholas and Viktor interpret the cityscape as a marker for the dominance of Lübeck in the Baltic Sea. In identifying the manipulated monuments and spatial distortions in representations of Lübeck, this article draws upon the social context of patronage and recent studies on the Hanse network to argue that city views of Lübeck attest to the shared urban group and cultural practices between Hanse merchants and towns. The Lübeck city view, displayed locally and extraterritorially, and further proliferated in early printed geography books, catered to the Hanse collective of intertwined consumers and markets.

Motivation Scores Related to Progress in Listening and Reading

1977 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 38-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
R.M. Boyd
Keyword(s):  
Minority Groups ◽  
New South ◽  
Reading Scores ◽  
Rural Children ◽  
Dominant Culture ◽  
White Children ◽  
North West ◽  
Reading Success ◽  
South Wales ◽  
School Schedule

Abstract:A one and a half year study of listening and reading among rural children in north-west New South Wales, indicated marked differences among Aborigines and whites in listening and reading. A Motivation for School Schedule, included in the initial test battery predicted over fifty per cent of variance in listening comprehension, administered at the end of years 2 and 3, for Aboriginal girls, and was significant in a multiple regression with Aboriginal girls’ end of year three reading scores as the criterion. The schedule contributed little, if anything, towards predicting reading success for white children or Aboriginal boys.The research underlines the importance of teachers understanding the conflict some girls from minority groups face when attending schools organized by the dominant culture, particularly when the vocabulary of the dominant language is assumed to be understood by all children in the same way.

scholarly journals The Image of the River in Kazuo Ishiguro’s A Pale View of Hills

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 74-93
Author(s):  
Ria Taketomi
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Japanese Buddhism ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Special Meaning

Abstract This essay focuses on the theme of the river in Kazuo Ishiguro’s A Pale View of Hills which will be analyzed in relation to the nuclear devastation of WWII. Rivers have a special meaning to the inhabitants of Nagasaki since the rivers were filled with the corpses of people who were exposed to radiation after the atomic bombing. It is also known in Nagasaki that unidentifiable fireballs called onibi float over marsh ground at night in summer. Especially in his first novel, A Pale View of Hills, the river evokes the image of Sanzu No Kawa, a river which, in Japanese Buddhism, the souls of the dead are believed to be crossing on the seventh day of afterlife. The river imagery signifies the boundary between life and death, and it has been used as a metaphor for the transience of time. As such, the river displays an ephemeral texture. In A Pale View of Hills, the protagonist Etsuko reminisces about her days in Nagasaki. In her memories, she becomes friends with Sachiko and her daughter Mariko. One night, Mariko confesses to Etsuko that she sees a ghostly woman coming from the other side of the river. Ishiguro also writes about the rivers in other novels. For example, in Never Let Me Go, he uses the river as a metaphor for Kathy and Tommy’s fate. In The Buried Giant, at the end of the novel, Axl sets Beatrice free and lets the boatman carry her alone to the island, which can be read as Beatrice’s departure from life. My analysis explores Ishiguro’s intentions when using the river and various apparitions in his novels, with a special focus on A Pale View of Hills.

Sacramental Expressions

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Hayes
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Practices ◽  
New South ◽  
Religious Culture ◽  
Cultural Work ◽  
The World ◽  
Related Group

This chapter looks closely at a related group of practices and beliefs: grave decoration, Christmas lore, folk sermons, baptism, and praying spots. It traces the New South practice of decorating graves with household objects to African cultural practices, and New South Christmas lore (and related lore) to legends circulating in modernizing England. Connecting these with other practices and oral forms common among folk Christians, it shows that they all display a strong sacramental impulse—the longing to manifest the sacred in tangible, material ways. While the dominant religious culture wrought a “disenchantment” of the world, the cultural work of folk Christians envisioned an enchanted world where seemingly ordinary, mundane things were transformed and infused with sacred meaning.

Tales of Conversion and Call

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Hayes
Keyword(s):  
New South ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Religious Culture ◽  
Sharp Contrast ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
Geographic Scope ◽  
Cultural Productions ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
The World ◽  
Characteristic Features

This chapter explores two interrelated oral forms: conversion and call narratives. It establishes that they were cultural productions of the New South era, and that they wove elements of African and European religious tradition together to craft a distinct understanding of Christianity’s place in the world—either as an initiate enters into it, or as a religious authority proclaims it. The speakers, dates, and geographic scope of these narratives are traced, and then a close analysis of the oral forms highlights their characteristic features. The vision articulated in the narratives is shown to be very different from the dominant religious culture, where religious authority was professionalized and Christianity was associated with the safe stability of the home. In sharp contrast, the narratives imagine the wildness and liminality of Christianity.

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