scholarly journals Keats, Myth, and the Science of Sympathy

Romanticism ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory Tate

This essay considers the connections between myth and sympathy in Keats's poetic theory and practice. It argues that the ‘Ode to Psyche’ exemplifies the way in which Keats uses mythological narrative, and the related trope of apostrophe, to promote a restrained form of sympathy, which preserves an objectifying distance between the poet and the feelings that his poetry examines. This model of sympathy is informed by Keats's medical training: the influential surgeon Astley Cooper and The Hospital Pupil's Guide (1816) both identify a sensitive but restrained sympathy for patients' suffering as an essential part of the scientific and professional methods of nineteenth-century medicine. However, while The Hospital Pupil's Guide claims that mythological superstition has been superseded in medicine by positivist science, Keats's ode suggests that myth retains a central role in poetry, as the foundation of a poetic method that mediates between imaginative sympathy and objective impartiality.

Author(s):  
James J. Coleman

At a time when the Union between Scotland and England is once again under the spotlight, Remembering the Past in Nineteenth-Century Scotland examines the way in which Scotland’s national heroes were once remembered as champions of both Scottish and British patriotism. Whereas 19th-century Scotland is popularly depicted as a mire of sentimental Jacobitism and kow-towing unionism, this book shows how Scotland’s national heroes were once the embodiment of a consistent, expressive and robust view of Scottish nationality. Whether celebrating the legacy of William Wallace and Robert Bruce, the reformer John Knox, the Covenanters, 19th-century Scots rooted their national heroes in a Presbyterian and unionist view of Scotland’s past. Examined through the prism of commemoration, this book uncovers collective memories of Scotland’s past entirely opposed to 21st-century assumptions of medieval proto-nationalism and Calvinist misery. Detailed studies of 19th-century commemoration of Scotland’s national heroes Uncovers an all but forgotten interpretation of these ‘great Scots’ Shines a new light on the mindset of nineteenth-century Scottish national identity as being comfortably Scottish and British Overturns the prevailing view of Victorian Scottishness as parochial, sentimental tartanry


2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 188-224
Author(s):  
Erik Gunderson

This is a survey of some of the problems surrounding imperial panegyric. It includes discussions of both the theory and practice of imperial praise. The evidence is derived from readings of Cicero, Quintilian, Pliny, the Panegyrici Latini, Menander Rhetor, and Julian the Apostate. Of particular interest is insincere speech that would be appreciated as insincere. What sort of hermeneutic process is best suited to texts that are politically consequential and yet relatively disconnected from any obligation to offer a faithful representation of concrete reality? We first look at epideictic as a genre. The next topic is imperial praise and its situation “beyond belief” as well as the self-positioning of a political subject who delivers such praise. This leads to a meditation on the exculpatory fictions that these speakers might tell themselves about their act. A cynical philosophy of Caesarism, its arbitrariness, and its constructedness abets these fictions. Julian the Apostate receives the most attention: he wrote about Caesars, he delivered extant panegyrics, and he is also the man addressed by still another panegyric. And in the end we find ourselves to be in a position to appreciate the way that power feeds off of insincerity and grows stronger in its presence.


1993 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shirley Sharon-Zisser

Abstract: The concem with progress and utility is shared by nineteenth-century scientists, philosophers, and rhetoricians, leading to significant correspondences among their discourses. This concern is manifest, for example, in the way in which several rhetorical treatises of the nineteenth century regard the distinction between a figure and a trope, which had been a common part of rhetorical theory since the time of Quintilian, as useless and anachronistic. By examining three nineteenth-century articulations of the justifications for erasing the trope/figure distinction from the cultural repertoire, this essay reveals structural and semantic parallels between these rhetorical treatises and the discourses of evolution and utilitarianism. Thus, the essay locates the source of the synonymity which the terms “trope” and “figure” have acquired in contemporary critical metalanguage in Victorian ideologies of progress and of the unprofitability and consequent discardability of the ancient.


2018 ◽  
pp. 145
Author(s):  
Juan Pablo Beca

ResumenEl trabajo analiza el curso Ética Profesional en la carrera de Derecho en la Universidad Católica de Temuco. Examina la forma como se abordaba la ética profesional antes de la creación del curso, y lo que ha ocurrido con él a través de sucesivos cambios curriculares y la introducción del modelo por competencias. El curso aporta al sello identitario, mediante un enfoque multidisciplinario. El curso ha vinculado teoría y práctica, desde que comenzó a implementarse, hasta llegar actualmente a comprenderlo en la lógica de competencias. Esta mirada implica formar a los estudiantes para resolver dilemas éticos, lo que se hace mediante la metodología del ver–juzgar–actuar. Esta metodología de discernimiento es propia de la tradicióncatólica, pero se usa en este contexto sin un cariz religioso. El método en cuestión permite ir educando la autonomía a fn de tomar decisiones. Se analiza la importancia de contextualizar la enseñanza ética y la forma como esto se ha hecho en el curso. Finalmente se aborda la relevancia de formar la conciencia ética de los estudiantes.Palabras clave: Experiencia de enseñanza – Ética profesional –Método de discernimient.ResumoO artigo analisa o curso de Ética Profssional na Escola de Direito na Universidade Católica de Temuco. Examina a forma de como abordar a ética profssional antes da criação do curso, e o que tem acontecido com ele através de sucessivas mudanças curriculares e a introdução do modelo de competências. O curso aporta ao selo de identidade, através de uma abordagem multidisciplinar. O curso tem ligado teoria e prática, desde que começou a se programar até chegar atualmente a compreendê-lo na lógica de competência. Este olhar implica formar aos estudantes para resolver dilemas éticos, o que é feito pela metodologia do ver-julgar-agir. Este método de discernimento é próprio da tradição Católica, mas é usado neste contexto, sem um aspecto religioso. O método em questão permite ir educando na autonomia com a fnalidade de tomar decisões. Analisa-se a importância de contextualizar o ensino da ética e a forma como isso tem sido feito no curso. Finalmente se aborda a relevância de formar consciência ética dos estudantes.Palavras-chave: Experiência de ensino - Ética Profssional - Método de discernimento.AbstractThis paper analyses the Professional Ethics course at the School of Law of Universidad Católica de Temuco. It reviews the way in which ethics was addressed before the course was created, and what has happened with it through the subsequent curricular changes and the implementation of a competency based model. The course contributes to the seal of identity through a multidisciplinary approach. Theory and practice have been progressively bound together since the course was introduced, to reach a point, nowadays, in which the course is understood within the logic of competencies. This point of view implies educating students for solving ethical dilemmas, which is done through the see–judge–act methodology. This discernment methodology belongs to the Roman Catholic tradition, but is used in this context without its religious complexion. This method allows educating autonomy in order to make decisions. It also analyses the importance of contextualizing ethics education and the way in which this has been done in the course. Finally, it addresses the relevance ofcreating an ethical consciousness of the students.Keywords: Teaching experience – Professional Ethics – Discernment method


Author(s):  
James Deaville

The chapter explores the way English-language etiquette books from the nineteenth century prescribe accepted behavior for upwardly mobile members of the bourgeoisie. This advice extended to social events known today as “salons” that were conducted in the domestic drawing room or parlor, where guests would perform musical selections for the enjoyment of other guests. The audience for such informal music making was expected to listen attentively, in keeping with the (self-) disciplining of the bourgeois body that such regulations represented in the nineteenth century. Yet even as the modern world became noisier and aurally more confusing, so, too, did contemporary social events, which led authors to become stricter in their disciplining of the audience at these drawing room performances. Nevertheless, hosts and guests could not avoid the growing “crisis of attention” pervading this mode of entertainment, which would lead to the modern habit of inattentive listening.


Africa ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 91 (3) ◽  
pp. 493-515
Author(s):  
Gillian Mathys

AbstractThroughout Africa, contemporary boundaries are deemed ‘artificial’ because they were external impositions breaking apart supposedly homogeneous ethnic units. This article argues that the problem with the colonial borders was not only that they arbitrarily dissected African societies with European interests in mind, but also that they profoundly changed the way in which territoriality and authority functioned in this region, and therefore they affected identity. The presumption that territories could be constructed in which ‘culture’ and ‘political power’ neatly coincided was influenced by European ideas about space and identity, and privileged the perceptions and territorial claims of those ruling the most powerful centres in the nineteenth century. Thus, this article questions assumptions that continue to influence contemporary views of the Lake Kivu region. It shows that local understandings of the relationship between space and identity differed fundamentally from state-centred perspectives, whether in precolonial centralized states or colonial states.


1979 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 379-390
Author(s):  
Frederick Sontag

For some time it seemed as if Christianity itself required us to say that ‘God is in history’. Of course, even to speak of ‘history’ is to reveal a bias for eighteenth- and nineteenth-century forms of thought. But the justification for talking about the Christian God in this way is the doctrine of the incarnation. The centre of the Christian claim is that Jesus is God's representation in history, although we need not go all the way to a full trinitarian interpretation of the relationship between God and Jesus. Thus, the issue is not so much whether God can appear or has appeared within, or entered into, human life as it is a question of what categories we use to represent this. To what degree is God related to the sphere of human events? Whatever our answer, we need periodically to re-examine the way we speak about God to be sure the forms we use have not become misleading.


PMLA ◽  
1964 ◽  
Vol 79 (3) ◽  
pp. 266-282
Author(s):  
David H. Stewart

One of the most impressive features of Anna Karenina is the way in which Tolstoy draws the reader's imagination beyond the literal level of the narrative into generalizations that seem mythical in a manner difficult to articulate. With Dostoevsky or Melville, one sees immediately a propensity for exploiting the symbolic value of things. With Tolstoy, things try, as it were, to resist conversion: they strive to maintain their “thingness” as empirical entities. A character in Dostoevsky is usually only half man; the other half is Christ or Satan. Moby Dick is obviously only half whale; the other half is Evil or some principle of Nature. But Anna Karenina is emphatically Anna Karenina. Like almost all of Tolstoy's characters, she has a proficiency in the husbandry of identity; she jealously hoards her own unique reality, so that it becomes difficult to say of her that she is a “type” of nineteenth-century Russian lady or a “symbol” of modern woman or an “archetypical” Eve or Lilith.


2021 ◽  
pp. 389-405
Author(s):  
Lars Magnusson

In recent years there has been a renewed interest in Cameralism, both as a discourse and as an administrative political economy, in both theory and practice. Attention has been drawn to how Cameralism—defined as thought and practice—should be understood. The aim of this article is to take a step back and focus on the historiography of Cameralism from the nineteenth century onwards. Even though many in recent times have challenged old and seemingly dated conceptualizations and interpretations, they are still very much alive. Most profoundly this has implied that Cameralism most often in the past has been acknowledged as an expression of—German. as it were—exceptionalism to the general history of economic doctrine and thinking.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document