Varia: The Enduring Power of the Classical World View

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
David Jenkins ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
World View ◽  
Russian Literature ◽  
Religious Philosophy ◽  
Classical World ◽  
Human Image ◽  
Ethical Stance ◽  
Enduring Power

For the poet, prophet, and politician, as for the lover, the king, and the anthropologist, the human is the measure of all things. Philosophers and psychologists define us as a perceiving consciousness, an object determined by the environment, a subject not only capable of heroic individualism but also of esoteric understanding. For some, our measure is beyond things and our true worth lies not only in the here and now but rather in our freedom to transcend the bounds of self and prevail beyond the limits of temporality. For the artist, whose creative consciousness aims to redeem the human image from the constraints of brute anonymity, the questions about our status must be asked if not finally answered. The article considers the role that the classical world view plays in the process of artistic redemption. It looks at the Judeo-Christian and Classical legacies and their interpretations. Nineteenth-century Russian literature and religious philosophy are then analysed. The article winds up with a reading of select poems by Osip Mandelstam as special attention is paid to the ethical stance of the poet when confronted with the dictates of totalitarian power.

Life Is Elsewhere

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Lounsbery
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Russian Literature ◽  
European Standard ◽  
European Model ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Symbolic Geography ◽  
Literary Regionalism ◽  
Western European ◽  
Enduring Power

This book shows how nineteenth-century Russian literature created an imaginary place called “the provinces”—a place at once homogeneous, static, anonymous, and symbolically opposed to Petersburg and Moscow. The book looks at a wide range of texts, both canonical and lesser-known, in order to explain why the trope has exercised such enduring power, and what role it plays in the larger symbolic geography that structures Russian literature's representation of the nation's space. The book brings to light fundamental questions that have long gone unasked: how to understand, for instance, the weakness of literary regionalism in a country as large as Russia? Why the insistence, from Herzen through Chekhov and beyond, that all Russian towns look the same? In a literary tradition that constantly compared itself to a western European standard, the book argues, the problem of provinciality always implied difficult questions about the symbolic geography of the nation as a whole. This constant awareness of a far-off European model helps explain why the provinces, in all their supposed drabness and predictability, are a topic of such fascination for Russian writers—why these anonymous places are in effect so important and meaningful, notwithstanding the culture's nearly unremitting emphasis on their nullity and meaninglessness.

Perpindahan dan Perubahan : Transportasi dalam Struktur Naratif Riwayat Perjalanan ke Amerika di Era Viktorian

Metahumaniora ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Ari J. Adipurwawijdana
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Henry James ◽  
World View ◽  
Democratic Society ◽  
Transportation Infrastructure ◽  
Material Base ◽  
Travel Narrative ◽  
Infrastructure System ◽  
The Subject

ABSTRAKRiwayat yang disajikan penulis Britania era Viktorian tentang perjalannnya ke Amerikamengasumsikan adanya sebuah jaringan prasarana transportasi. Sistem transportasiterkait dengan riwayat perjalanan (travel narrative) dalam tiga hal, yaitu (1) sebagaibasis material bagi perjalanan, (2) sebagai substruktur riwayat, dan (3) sebagai pokokpembicaraan dalam riwayat itu sendiri. Buku Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832)merupakan model bagi cara infrastruktur transportasi menentukan aspek naratologis,yaitu urutan dan perspektif dalam struktur naratif riwayat perjalanan. Karya tersebut jugamenyajikan transportasi sebagai pokok pembicaraan dalam teksnya itu sendiri walaupun tidaksejauh sebagaimana yang tampak pada The Amateur Emigrant (1895) karya Robert LouisStevenson. Dalam hal ini, The American Scene (1907) karya Henry James juga relevankarena, walaupun tidak secara gamblang membicarakan transportasi sebagai topik dantidak pula menampakkan ciri-ciri riwayat perjalanan, karya tersebut merepresentasicara wawasan Britania-Amerika trans-Atlantik dianggap sebagai sesuatu yang lumrah.Wawasan ini juga memandang menganggap perjalanan trans-Atlantik sebagai semacamperjalanan menembus waktu, yang menunjukkan ketidaknyaman para penulis Britaniaabad kesembilanbelas terhadap transformasi sosial ke masyrakat demokratis yangdirepresentasi secara metaforis oleh pemahaman mereka tentang Amerika.Kata kunci: catatan perjalanan Viktorian, transportasi, wisataABSTRACTNarratives presented by Victorian British writers about their travels to America assume theavailability of a transprtation infrastructure system. Such a system is related to the travelnarrative in three things, namely, (1) as a material base for travel, (2) as a narrative substructurehistory, and (3) as the subject-matter of the narratives. Fanny Trollope’s Domestic Mannerof the Americans (1832) is a model for the way transportation infrastructure determinesnarratological aspects, namely order and perspective in the structure of the travel narrative.The piece also presents transportation as a subject-matter in its text although it does notgo so far as do Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Amateur Emigrant (1895). In discussingtransportation Henry James’ The American Scene is also relevant because, despite it’s notexplicitly speaking of transportation as a topic nor does it show the convential characteristicsof the travel narrative, the work represents a British-American trans-Atlantic world viewas a given. This world view also considers trans-Atlantic travels as a kind of voyage acrosstime, implying the discomfort of nineteenth-century British writers concerning the socialtransition into a democratic society represented by America as a metaphor.Keywords: Victorian travel narrative, transportation, tourism

Post-Non-Classical World View in the On-Screen Reality of the Digital Epoch

2015 ◽  
pp. 4-12
Author(s):  
Elena V. Nikolaeva
Keyword(s):  
World View ◽  
Dynamic Chaos ◽  
Digital Culture ◽  
Fractal Nature ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
First Order ◽  
Classical World ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Strange Loops ◽  
Cultural World

The article analyzes the correlation between the screen reality and the first-order reality in the digital culture. Specific concepts of the scientific paradigm of the late 20th century are considered as constituent principles of the on-screen reality of the digital epoch. The study proves that the post-non-classical cultural world view, emerging from the dynamic “chaos” of informational and semantic rows of TV programs and cinematographic narrations, is of a fractal nature. The article investigates different types of fractality of the TV content and film plots, their inner and outer “strange loops” and artistic interpretations of the “butterfly effect”.

Bells and Cupolas: The Formative Role of the Female Body in Marina Tsvetaeva's Poetry

Slavic Review ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 232-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sibelan Forrester
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Female Body ◽  
World View ◽  
Russian Literature ◽  
Women Readers ◽  
Marina Tsvetaeva ◽  
Female Roles ◽  
Poetic Creation ◽  
Landmark Study

Like many other Russian women writers, Marina Tsvetaeva did not merely include women's language and physical experience in her poetry; they were central to her concern with poetry and poetic creation. These elements of her work have in recent years evoked an interest from women readers and feminist scholars of Russian literature which is reflected in the number of studies devoted to aspects of her work. Antonina Gove discusses the presence and chronological development of female roles in Tsvetaeva's poetry; Anya Kroth illustrates the importance of gender and specifically androgyny in Tsvetaeva's construction of a dichotomous world-view. Barbara Heldt's landmark study of women in Russian literature, Terrible Perfection, devotes several pages to Tsvetaeva as an autobiographer and a woman poet liberated from the “split selves” of her predecessors.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document