scholarly journals A Creditable Performance under the Circumstances? Suematsu Kenchô and the Pre-Waley Tale of Genji

2010 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valerie Henitiuk

Before Suematsu’s 1882 translation of the Tale of Genji, the information available in the West about Murasaki Shikibu’s masterpiece was sketchy and erroneous. The main objectives of this translator were to improve Japan’s political status by demonstrating that it has a rich literary tradition, and to make known to Westerners what is in effect that nation’s “cultural scripture” (Rowley). Reaction to his version was conflicted: readers and reviewers are curious about the previously unsuspected literary wealth presented to them, but struggle to comprehend and find points of reference. My article focuses on the circumstances that made possible this early representation of Japanese literature, while paradoxically keeping the Genji from being widely read and admired until Waley’s famous translation appeared some 40 years later. I argue that Suematsu, in using this book to critique Anglo-American imperialism, nonetheless reveals his own ambivalent relationship with the text and its author. Further, Western audiences were ill-equipped to judge what they were reading, as well as reluctant to accept a non-European interpreter, and thus the reception of this world masterpiece was long stalled for reasons that had little to do with literary or translation quality.

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebeca Gualberto

The aim of this paper is to reassess John Steinbeck’s presence and significance within American modernism by advancing a myth-critical reading of his early novel “To a God Unknown” (1933). Considering the interplay between this novel and the precedent literary tradition and other contextual aspects that might have influenced Steinbeck’s text, this study explores Steinbeck’s often disregarded novel as an eloquent demonstration of the malleability of myths characteristic of Anglo-American modernism. Taking myth-ritualism—the most prominent approach to myth at the time—as a critical prism to reappraise Steinbeck’s own reshaping of modernist aesthetics, this article examines recurrent frustrated and misguided ritual patterns along with the rewriting of flouted mythical motifs as a series of aesthetic choices that give shape and meaning to a state of stagnation common to the post-war American literary landscapes, but now exacerbated as it has finally spread, as a plague of perverse remythologization, to the Eden of the West.


2010 ◽  
Vol 43 (03) ◽  
pp. 463-466 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth F. Cohen

In the English constitutional tradition, subjecthood has been primarily derived from two circumstances: place of birth and time of birth. People not born in the right place and at the right time are not considered subjects. What political status they hold varies and depends largely on the political history of the territory in which they reside at the exact time of their birth. A genealogy of early modern British subjecthood reveals that law based on dates and temporal durations—what I will call collectivelyjus tempus—creates sovereign boundaries as powerful as territorial borders or bloodlines. This concept has myriad implications for how citizenship comes to be institutionalized in modern politics. In this article, I briefly outline one route through whichjus tempusbecame a constitutive principle within the Anglo-American tradition of citizenship and how this concept works with other principles of membership to create subtle gradations of semi-citizenship beyond the binary of subject and alien. I illustrate two main points aboutjus tempus: first, how specific dates create sovereign boundaries among people and second, how durational time takes on an abstract value in politics that allows certain kinds of attributes, actions, and relationships to be translated into rights-bearing political statuses. I conclude with some remarks about how, once established, the principle ofjus tempusis applied in a diverse array of political contexts.


1962 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 436
Author(s):  
C. J. C. ◽  
Lionel Gelber ◽  
Edgar Ansel Mowrer
Keyword(s):  
The West ◽  

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Braun

Abstract In the Middle Ages, the recipe was of central importance for the safeguarding and transmission of knowledge. This holds true for the scientific traditions of both the East and the West. Recipes have been transmitted in a multitude of manuscripts, either alone or in combination with other recipes and works. This article presents a collection of recipes for the production of inks that have been handed down in an alchemical collective manuscript. The collection also contains a recipe to ward off the pestilence. This combination of alchemy, healing rituals and ink production is more common than one might think. The question arises whether this is due to pure coincidence or whether such collections reflect a literary tradition?


Balcanica ◽  
2015 ◽  
pp. 273-314
Author(s):  
Slobodan Markovich

The paper deals with Western (Anglo-American) views on the Sarajevo assassination/attentat and Gavrilo Princip. Articles on the assassination and Princip in two leading quality dailies (The Times and The New York Times) have particularly been analysed as well as the views of leading historians and journalists who covered the subject including: R. G. D. Laffan, R. W. Seton-Watson, Winston Churchill, Sidney Fay, Bernadotte Schmitt, Rebecca West, A. J. P. Taylor, Vladimir Dedijer, Christopher Clark and Tim Butcher. In the West, the original general condemnation of the assassination and its main culprits was challenged when Rebecca West published her famous travelogue on Yugoslavia in 1941. Another Brit, the remarkable historian A. J. P. Taylor, had a much more positive view on the Sarajevo conspirators and blamed Germany and Austria-Hungary for the outbreak of the Great War. A turning point in Anglo-American perceptions was the publication of Vladimir Dedijer?s monumental book The Road to Sarajevo (1966), which humanised the main conspirators, a process initiated by R. West. Dedijer?s book was translated from English into all major Western languages and had an immediate impact on the understanding of the Sarajevo assassination. The rise of national antagonisms in Bosnia gradually alienated Princip from Bosnian Muslims and Croats, a process that began in the 1980s and was completed during the wars of the Yugoslav succession. Although all available sources clearly show that Princip, an ethnic Serb, gradually developed a broader Serbo-Croat and Yugoslav identity, he was ethnified and seen exclusively as a Serb by Bosnian Croats and Bosniaks and Western journalists in the 1990s. In the past century imagining Princip in Serbia and the West involved a whole spectrum of views. In interwar Anglo-American perceptions he was a fanatic and lunatic. He became humanised by Rebecca West (1941), A. J. P. Taylor showed understanding for his act (1956), he was fully explained by Dedijer (1966), challenged and then exonerated by Cristopher Clark (2012-13), and cordially embraced by Tim Butcher (2014).


2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 23
Author(s):  
Abu Bakar Ramadhan Muhamad

Imaging of a discourse in the paradigm of postcolonialism is closely related to the issue of domination and subordination in terms of reference to imperialism or capitalization. The imagery is a project that develops special perceptions about "foreign" (East) regions. This project presupposes that the "foreign" (East) region is exotic "uncivilized" regions, standardized in a special "understanding", whose main purpose is to separate or dissolve it ("tame" the "foreign" region), so that different from or being "civilized". One area that is strongly embedded in this project is literature, with the novel as an aesthetic object. In connection with this issue, this article reveals how the East is presented in its exotic image, so how the image represents an ambivalent relationship between the East (colonized) and the West (invaders), especially in the Ronggeng Dukuh Paruk (RDP) novel by Ahamad Tohari.The results of the study show that the RDP novel is an urgent medium related to the conditions of postcoloniality. The postcoloniality is meant not only that the narrative that is displayed is the essence of what is obtained from the author about the exotic world region (the nature of Paruk dukuh) with all the signs attached to it, narration is also used as an affirmation of identity and historical existence, in the context of civilized culture. The culture in question is the source of identity that is championed as a filter and lifter, for the community that has been known and thought about, as an invitation for emancipation. Power and ability to tell stories, in this case, are used as weapons of the author in hopes of inspiring readers. The expected result is the hegemonic reader of the discourse displayed in the work of the author.In the post-colonial context, this method is inseparable from a combination where political and ideological power is interrelated, where the image represented is always still signifying the "emancipation" power relationship between the West and the East. However, like ideology, imaging must be realized other than as originating from and relating to material conditions and material effects, it is also a misrepresentation of reality and in its rearrangement process. Therefore, the potential, possibilities, and certain visions that follow, are full of content, values, or strategies for "mastering" (power). Especially in the Ronggeng Dukuh Paruk novel by Ahamad Tohari, exotic images give rise to ambivalent meanings for emancipation efforts (West to East).


Author(s):  
Denis L. Karpov ◽  

Contemporary literature is being formed in a difficult situation of polyphony of the modern consumer culture. Mainstream discourses are mixed with subcultural ones, the authors are influenced not only by the literary tradition itself, but also, for example, by rock culture. Thus, the countercultural, subcultural experience, which until recently was considered as peripheral, is actively being introduced into the socio-cultural discourse of modern Russia through the assimilation by authors claiming a place in the center of the country’s literary life. The novel by I. Malyshev “Nomakh” may be considered as an example of such influence. It became a finalist of the literary prize contest “Big Book” in 2017. The novel is clearly influenced by countercultural ideology, in particular by E. Letov, one of the most popular and reputable representatives of the West Siberian counterculture. At the same time, there are no direct references or quotations from the poetry of the Omsk musician in the novel. Rather, one can see some stylistic likenesses, similar figurative complexes. The reception of a historical character from the civil war era is based on the learned principles of poetics and Letov’s worldview. In addition, adopting the intellectual experience of the counterculture, I. Malyshev’s novel not only relays a certain ideology, but also, with the help of artistic means, recreates or completes the images of its hero, historical character, and cultural heroes, which he focuses on.


Author(s):  
Joel Gordon

This chapter examines the Free Officers' relations with Britain and the United States, particularly in light of the Anglo-Egyptian negotiations regarding the withdrawal of British troops from the Suez Canal Zone. In the aftermath of the March crisis, the Command Council of the Revolution (CCR) trained its sights on an evacuation agreement with the British. Both Washington and London felt that the officers shared common strategic and objective aims with the West. The chapter first considers the extent and nature of U.S. and British roles in the consolidation of military rule in Egypt before discussing the Anglo-Egyptian relations in the context of Anglo-American alliance politics. It also explores the question of the presence of British troops in the Suez Canal Zone, along with the U.S. and British response to the Free Officers' coup d'etat of 1952. Finally, it looks at the signing of the Suez accord between Egypt and Britain in October 1954.


1959 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-203
Author(s):  
Clark C. Spence

The mineral riches of the West were exploited in distinct stages. Before a settled industry could emerge, highly speculative development companies bought out the discoverers, skimmed the cream, and braved the hazards of nature and management. Some, like the Montana Company, flourished for a time, but litigation, depletion, absentee ownership, and high costs made long-term existence almost impossible.


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