scholarly journals “Prompt, at any time of the day…”: the Emerging Translatorial Habitus in the Late Habsburg Monarchy

2014 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 504-521 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michaela Wolf

As one of the key notions in French sociology,habitushas also lately conquered the field of translation studies, at least from the perspective of a sociologically-oriented view of translation. In this paper I will critically highlight the main factors responsible for the term’s potential for translation purposes. Within the discussion of its adoption in translation studies, I will test the enduring claim of the translator’s submissiveness allegedly related to the translatorialhabitus. On the basis of a case study on the private (commercial) translation sector in the late Habsburg Monarchy, I will focus on three aspects to substantiate my assumption that towards the end of the nineteenth century, the commercial translators’ activity was already characterized by explicit emancipating processes, mostly driven by the struggle for recognition in the field: the initially weak structure of the field; thehabitusas a product of the relation between its collective and individual history; the conditions triggering the dynamism of the translator’shabitus. I will attempt to develop a differentiated view on thehabitusconcept, challenging traditional discussions of its informative value.

2015 ◽  
Vol 36-37 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-183
Author(s):  
Paul Taylor

John Rae, a Scottish antiquarian collector and spirit merchant, played a highly prominent role in the local natural history societies and exhibitions of nineteenth-century Aberdeen. While he modestly described his collection of archaeological lithics and other artefacts, principally drawn from Aberdeenshire but including some items from as far afield as the United States, as a mere ‘routh o’ auld nick-nackets' (abundance of old knick-knacks), a contemporary singled it out as ‘the best known in private hands' (Daily Free Press 4/5/91). After Rae's death, Glasgow Museums, National Museums Scotland, the University of Aberdeen Museum and the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, as well as numerous individual private collectors, purchased items from the collection. Making use of historical and archive materials to explore the individual biography of Rae and his collection, this article examines how Rae's collecting and other antiquarian activities represent and mirror wider developments in both the ‘amateur’ antiquarianism carried out by Rae and his fellow collectors for reasons of self-improvement and moral education, and the ‘professional’ antiquarianism of the museums which purchased his artefacts. Considered in its wider nineteenth-century context, this is a representative case study of the early development of archaeology in the wider intellectual, scientific and social context of the era.


1969 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-226
Author(s):  
Hao-Li Lin

The diverse nature of Fiji’s chiefship and how its supremacy was strengthened by colonialism have already been closely examined. However, few studies have focused on village chiefs, who have limited authority and are at the lower end of regional chiefly hierarchies. Using both historical and ethnographic materials from a Fijian village, I argue here that its “petty chief,” as the role was called by nineteenth-century Westerners, is a powerful linkage to a past of stability represented by the chiefly title. This is particularly important for communities that have experienced historical turbulence. In this case study, it was mainly the measles crisis that caused population decline. The linkage is materialised by a standardised entrance ceremony in which the chiefly title is routinely acknowledged by foreign visitors through offerings (i-sevusevu) and thus elevated to a symbol that holds the community together. I also argue that the entrance ceremony that we observe today may have been prompted by Western contact. Through the analysis of the ceremony and local history, this study shows that the power of “petty chiefs” should be understood not solely by the structure of hierarchy, but also by their significance to historically turbulent communities.


Public Voices ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 177
Author(s):  
Kenneth Nichols

“When I Was a Lad” is from H.M.S. Pinafore, a nineteenth century British operetta by William S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan. It’s sung by a man who has become “the ruler of the Queen’s Navy.” Through the song, he tells about his climb to success. “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General” is from Pirates of Penzance. Sung by the major-general, it extols his many qualifications and hints at his ambition.Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic operas often involved political satire, and this is the case with both of these songs. Both songs describe the talents, experience, qualifications of a government official. Both songs poke fun of officials and their self-importance. Both songs point to the benefit of having a broad, generalist education for higher-level positions. And both songs make the point that public officials need appropriate qualifications and experience. But the characters singing these songs display many differences as well, and very different outlooks on how to succeed. As you follow the lyrics, what do you make of the two gentlemen? Who would you want to work for? Who would you want working for you?


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Scott Travanion Connors

Abstract This article explores the emergence of reformist sentiment and political culture in Madras in the mid-nineteenth century. Moreover, it contributes to, and expands upon, the growing body of literature on colonial petitioning through a case-study of a mass petition demanding education reform. Signed in 1839 by 70,000 subjects from across the Madras presidency, the petition demanded the creation of a university that would qualify western-educated Indians to gain employment in the high public offices of the East India Company. Through an analysis of the lifecycle of this education petition, from its creation to its reception and the subsequent adoption of its demands by the Company government at Fort St George, this article charts the process by which an emergent, politicized public engaged with, and critiqued, the colonial state. Finally, it examines the transformative effect that the practice of mass petitioning had on established modes of political activism and communication between an authoritarian colonial state and the society it governed.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 427-452
Author(s):  
Mathura Umachandran

Abstract We live in an age of globalized and globalizing phenomena: the contemporary agenda of academic inquiry takes in ‘networks’, ‘connectivity’, and other modes of articulating complex structures of human activity. In Comparative Literature and beyond, the idea of world literature has borne the weight of idealist intercultural understanding, the hopes of translation studies, and the anxieties around the failure of communication. Erich Auerbach offers a touchstone in the conceptual genealogy of world literature (Weltliteratur). This article illuminates how Auerbach’s Weltliteratur is predicated on a polemic with German philhellenism, tracked through Auerbach’s declaration that his idea is ‘ungoethisch’. Auerbach’s revisions to Weltliteratur constituted a strategy to render it a historicist concept. Since Auerbach’s notion of historicism was itself derived from nineteenth-century German humanism, this essay argues that Auerbach was attempting to go with Goethe beyond Goethe. Finally, this essay assesses how successful Auerbach’s decoupling of Weltliteratur from universalism, under the sign of Goethe and the Greeks. I suggest that Weltliteratur is still a pertinent concept today because of Auerbach’s intervention to install historicist and dialectical resources therein.


1975 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 113-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Péter Hanák

By abolishing feudalism, the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 helped to create the economic preconditions and the legal-political framework necessary for capitalistic development. This made it possible for Hungary to adapt her economy to the market possibilities offered by the Industrial Revolution in western and central Europe and to share in the agrarian boom of the period between 1850 and 1873. The previously existing division of labor between western and eastern Europe and between the western and eastern parts of the Habsburg monarchy continued on a scale larger than before, with the significant difference, however, that this practice now speeded up rather than retarded the development of preconditions for capitalism. During the first half of the nineteenth century the preconditions for capitalism had come into existence in the Cisleithanian provinces at considerable expense to the Hungarian economy.


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