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The Dismal Trade: Death, the Market, and Silver Age Superheroes

Alaniz José

in Death, Disability, and the Superhero: The Silver Age and Beyond

This chapter addresses the superheroes' experience of the “death”/resurrection cycle in serial narratives. This cycle shows that the Silver Age superhero is not only a disability disavower and ... More

This chapter addresses the superheroes' experience of the “death”/resurrection cycle in serial narratives. This cycle shows that the Silver Age superhero is not only a disability disavower and overcompensator, but is also a death denier. Through their deaths, superheroes ritualize, render meaningful, and exorcise cultural trauma. Their resurrections likewise help generate a sense of hope and new beginnings into storylines, at the same time implicitly reassuring readers of the durability and continuity of the values they embody. Superheroes also seem to communicate an underlying fear and motivation amounting to the genre's structuring disavowal. For writer Ernest Becker, fictional death may remind people of the mortality that their culture represses, but it deprives the reader/viewer of a real, direct appreciation of death—the only thing that would make life “meaningful.”Less

The Exotic Self

David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye

in Russian Orientalism: Asia in the Russian Mind from Peter the Great to the Emigration

After the reign of Peter the Great, the East entered Russian music by way of the West. Due to the explosion of interest in folklore during the Romantic era, Europeans were encouraged to study Asian ... More

After the reign of Peter the Great, the East entered Russian music by way of the West. Due to the explosion of interest in folklore during the Romantic era, Europeans were encouraged to study Asian music more closely. One of the pioneers was Félicien David, a young Frenchman who traveled to the Near East in 1833 after a government crackdown on the utopian socialist Saint-Simonian movement. His closest counterpart in Russia was Aleksandr Aliab'ev, whose approximate contemporary, Mikhail Glinka, was the first composer to establish a distinct national idiom. Another important figure was Aleksandr Porfir'evich Borodin, composer of the opera Prince Igor. At the turn of the twentieth century, Russian culture returned to the exotic and retreated from the realism that had dominated it since the 1840s. As in the Pushkinian Golden Age, Russia's Silver Age was dominated by themes about the Orient.Less

The Golden Age Rescored?: Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Thomas Heywood’s The Ages

Liz Oakley-Brown

in Ovid and Adaptation in Early Modern English Theatre

In 1908, Felix Emmanuel Schelling stated that Thomas Heywood ‘sat’ with a ‘copy of the Metamorphoses on his left hand and translated it into five plays, omitting little and extenuating nothing’. ... More

In 1908, Felix Emmanuel Schelling stated that Thomas Heywood ‘sat’ with a ‘copy of the Metamorphoses on his left hand and translated it into five plays, omitting little and extenuating nothing’. However, Heywood’s so-called Ages (1610-1612) – The Golden Age, The Silver Age, The Brazen Age, The Iron Age (parts 1 and 2) – make no obvious non-verbal or verbal reference to Ovid’s poem. This essay considers how the Ages’ fundamental engagement with the Metamorphoses is related to structure rather than mythic content itself and argues that the plays are Ovidian adaptations before-the-letter. If Ben Jonson conceived of The Golden Age Restor’d (1615),these five plays are Heywood’s golden age rescored.Less

Global Silver, Local Novels

Ning Ma

in The Age of Silver: The Rise of the Novel East and West

This chapter bridges the early modern history of the global silver trade, East-West comparative sociology, theorizations of modernity, concepts of planetarity and networkedness, and theories of the ... More

This chapter bridges the early modern history of the global silver trade, East-West comparative sociology, theorizations of modernity, concepts of planetarity and networkedness, and theories of the novel and world literature. The purpose is to advance an “Anthropocenic” materialist vision and a horizontal comparative method, demanding attention to roughly contemporaneous transcultural parallels and their shared environments and conditions. In this light, this chapter formulates a horizontal mode of early realism and novelistic modernity that appeared in both the East and the West during the Age of Silver (c. 1500–1800), and argues that this transcultural phenomenon crystallizes the emergences of substate and “heteroglossic” civil spheres, triggered by analogous and interrelated processes of cultural destablizations during an era of global commercial expansion. These findings overcome the unilateral equation of globalization and modernity with westernization, and counterbalance the discourse of incommensurability between different national literatures, especially Western and non-Western cultures.Less

Conclusion: Vital Lies, Vital Truths

Alaniz José

in Death, Disability, and the Superhero: The Silver Age and Beyond

This book has sought to demonstrate the centrality of death and disability in mainstream superhero comics of the so-called Silver Age and beyond, spanning the late 1950s to the early 1990s. The ... More

This book has sought to demonstrate the centrality of death and disability in mainstream superhero comics of the so-called Silver Age and beyond, spanning the late 1950s to the early 1990s. The Silver Age's new approach on the superhero genre—which fanned postwar anxieties over sociocultural changes pertaining to gender, race, and physical infirmity—constituted a direct assault on the white phallocratic order in the US of this era. This concluding chapter suggests that popular-culture depictions of disability, such as in the Silver Age superhero genre, marks the emergence of an epoch when there will be no “rejected” or “negative” bodies. The inclusion of such imagery and characters into the genre reflected and helped shape a vast social movement—a civil and human rights struggle to acknowledge the fundamental dignity of all people.Less

Promising the Silver Age: 1832 to 1861

Michael H. Kater

in Weimar: From Enlightenment to the Present

This chapter focuses on Weimar's Silver Age between 1832 and 1861, which followed the death of Johann Wolfgang Goethe. It first looks at smaller figures who filled the space left by Goethe, ... More

This chapter focuses on Weimar's Silver Age between 1832 and 1861, which followed the death of Johann Wolfgang Goethe. It first looks at smaller figures who filled the space left by Goethe, particularly his long-time secretary Johann Peter Eckermann, who was surrounded by Goethe's younger contemporaries such as Friedrich Wilhelm Riemer, Friedrich Preller, and Ludwig Schorn. It then considers Weimar's culture, focusing on operas, concerts, science, and scholarship. It also examines the initiatives of Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna and her son, Carl Alexander, to revive Weimar's intellectual life and to make the city great again. In addition, the chapter describes Weimar's physical appearance and socio-demographics before concluding by discussing Franz Liszt's contributions to the culture of Weimar, mainly in his capacity as music director.Less

Conclusion: The Provinces in the Twentieth Century

Anne Lounsbery

in Life Is Elsewhere: Symbolic Geography in the Russian Provinces, 1800-1917

This concluding chapter looks ahead at the trope's afterlives in the twentieth century, considering briefly how Silver Age and Soviet writers made use of the geographic imaginary that they inherited. ... More

This concluding chapter looks ahead at the trope's afterlives in the twentieth century, considering briefly how Silver Age and Soviet writers made use of the geographic imaginary that they inherited. In post-Soviet times, the provinces continue to accrue meanings both positive and negative. This is seen in books, films, and television series that veer back and forth between versions of the Silver Age myth (provintsiia as repository of purity and cultural authenticity) and much darker views that once again depict provintsiia as locus of degradation and moral decay. Finally, the chapter concludes by reflecting on the relationship between Russian provinciality and the problematic (Western) idea of “World Literature.” This in and of itself is a category from which Russian texts, no matter how “worldly” or how widely circulated, have been almost wholly excluded.Less

La Mancha to the Indies: The Romance and Materiality of the Empire in Don Quixote

Ning Ma

in The Age of Silver: The Rise of the Novel East and West

This chapter discusses Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote in light of imperial Spain’s position in the Age of Silver. It first relates the picaresque novel Lazarillo de Tormes’s pioneering realism to ... More

This chapter discusses Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote in light of imperial Spain’s position in the Age of Silver. It first relates the picaresque novel Lazarillo de Tormes’s pioneering realism to rapid commercial developments in Spain after the colonization of the New World. Don Quixote is a far more complex literary engagement of the same context. Drawing on transnational approaches to Cervantes, the chapter interprets Don Quixote’s romantic idealism as connoting aspects of Habsburg imperialism, and addresses his relations to Sancho and Dulcinea as symbolizing historical ironies within imperial Spain’s ideologies and material foundation. The chapter also contextualizes the novel within Spain’s Muslim connections, “purity of blood” doctrine, transatlantic colonialism, and Spanish-East Asia relations, thus situating Don Quixote’s modernity within early modern global history, and reading from the novel a nationally symbolic political critique similar to the other cases.Less

The Sun-Sounding Scythian: Prokofiev’s Musical Interpretations of Russian Silver Age Poetry

Polina Dimova

in Rethinking Prokofiev

The chapter examines the relationships between Prokofiev’s early music and the poets that inspired him. Guided by Konstantin Balmont’s poetic characterization of him in the early 1920s as a ... More

The chapter examines the relationships between Prokofiev’s early music and the poets that inspired him. Guided by Konstantin Balmont’s poetic characterization of him in the early 1920s as a “sun-sounding Scythian,” it looks at two specific facets of Russian Symbolism and post-Symbolism that informed Prokofiev’s works: the sun cult and Scythianism. Prokofiev’s luminous Scythianism encompasses the paradox of the lyricism of his early songs and the perceived barbarism of his rejected ballet Ala and Lolli, from which the composer derived his Scythian Suite. By analyzing Prokofiev’s collaboration with Gorodetskii on Ala and Lolli and the composer’s settings of Balmont’s and Akhmatova’s poems, we can understand how the incarnations of the sun god in the Russian Silver Age informed both the sunrise music and the aesthetics of horror in the ballet and the suite. The chapter also reflects on Ala and Lolli as an unrealized ballet in the shadow of Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.Less

Failing the Silver Age: 1861 to 1901

Michael H. Kater

in Weimar: From Enlightenment to the Present

This chapter focuses on the failure of Weimar's denizens to lift the town into a Silver Age in the second half of the nineteenth century. It first looks at some of the achievements of the period ... More

This chapter focuses on the failure of Weimar's denizens to lift the town into a Silver Age in the second half of the nineteenth century. It first looks at some of the achievements of the period between 1861 and 1901, including the creation of the first master classes for piano ever by Franz Liszt, the ascent of Richard Strauss, and the anticipation of German Impressionism by members of the painters' academy. It then considers several developments in Germany that rendered the Weimar style of painting more mature; the decline in Weimar's music, theater, and literature after Strauss's departure; and the emergence of a Goethe cult that revered the late Johann Wolfgang Goethe. Finally, it examines Weimar's transition to political conservatism.Less

Cicero and the Silver Age

Michael Winterbottom

Antonio Stramaglia, Francesca Romana Nocchi, and Giuseppe Russo (eds)

in Papers on Quintilian and Ancient Declamation

This paper was first published in 1982. It was originally given as a contribution to one of the Entretiens Hardt held at Geneva, on the subject Éloquence et rhétorique chez Cicéron; and it is ... More

This paper was first published in 1982. It was originally given as a contribution to one of the Entretiens Hardt held at Geneva, on the subject Éloquence et rhétorique chez Cicéron; and it is followed by an (edited) transcript of the multilingual discussion that ensued on that occasion. The paper examines the varying attitudes to Cicero’s career, character, and oratorical style expressed by writers of the Silver Age, including Asconius and the two Senecas; but particular attention is given to the judgements of Quintilian. It is argued that Cicero’s oratory in some ways foreshadows the literary developments of the Silver Age, especially in the wealth of emotional appeal, in the penchant for word play, and generally in giving pleasure: ‘Cicero gave audiences what they wanted; and they went on wanting it in the century that followed.’Less

“What can We Ever have to Fear from a Blind Man?!!”: Disability, Daredevil, and Passing

Alaniz José

in Death, Disability, and the Superhero: The Silver Age and Beyond

This chapter examines Daredevil, the first Marvel Silver Age series created by writer Stan Lee, and artists Jack Kirby and Bill Everett in 1964. Daredevil tells the story of Matt Murdock who was ... More

This chapter examines Daredevil, the first Marvel Silver Age series created by writer Stan Lee, and artists Jack Kirby and Bill Everett in 1964. Daredevil tells the story of Matt Murdock who was struck by a radioactive canister which both blinds him and enhances his remaining senses to superhuman levels, compensating for his lost vision with a fantastic “radar sense.” The Daredevil series proved a landmark for the depiction of disability in an ableist genre that celebrates idealized, hypermasculine bodies as a matter of course. Among the coping mechanisms employed by stigmatized and marginalized disabled people, passing—the act of successfully presenting oneself as something one is not—seems the most relevant to the case of Daredevil/Matt Murdock and the logic of the superhero genre itself. With their secret identity subplots, superhero stories have also long been described as “passing narratives.”Less

Institutions

Andrew Kahn, Mark Lipovetsky, Irina Reyfman, and Stephanie Sandler

in A History of Russian Literature

This chapter explores the development of Russian modernism and avant-garde trends into the 1920s in relation to the new institutions of the Silver Age (1890s–1917), pausing on why the period has ... More

This chapter explores the development of Russian modernism and avant-garde trends into the 1920s in relation to the new institutions of the Silver Age (1890s–1917), pausing on why the period has proven hard to define. It discusses key modernist journals and the social contexts, including groups and societies, that were formative for writers. How these cultural processes changed in Soviet Russia under a regime of political and aesthetic state control, and in Russia Abroad, is charted. While Socialist Realism became the dominant aesthetic from the 1930s, the chapter shows how innovations in language and theory (including Formalism and structuralism) as well as independent literary institutions bypassed official doctrines and led to important experimentation. The chapter tracks a number of phenomena bridged unofficial literary culture and the post-Soviet literary field.Less

Out of Nagasaki: To the End of the Floating World

Ning Ma

in The Age of Silver: The Rise of the Novel East and West

This chapter charts seventeenth-century Japan’s global relations and internal socioeconomic shifts, and analyzes in this context Ihara Saikaku’s “floating world” fiction as an expression of the ... More

This chapter charts seventeenth-century Japan’s global relations and internal socioeconomic shifts, and analyzes in this context Ihara Saikaku’s “floating world” fiction as an expression of the Tokugawa merchant townsman class’s political subordination despite their economic advancement. This historical situation informs Saikaku’s ambiguous treatment of the force of materiality as a trigger of social chaos and an instrument of individual empowerment. Based on these themes, the chapter reads from Saikaku’s works, in particular his 1682 novel The Life of an Amorous Man (Kōshoku ichidai otoko), an ironic vision of national realities from the townsman perspective as well as fantasies about the outside world pitted against Tokugawa Japan’s domestic constraints. Saikaku is thus aligned with the literary horizontal continuities of the Age of Silver, and should be viewed as an Eastern pioneer of narrative modernity.Less

Caribbean to China: Crusoe’s Two Adventures

Ning Ma

in The Age of Silver: The Rise of the Novel East and West

This chapter argues that the novels of Daniel Defoe represent not so much an “origin” as a belated response to global early modernities, and examines in this context the neglected second half of ... More

This chapter argues that the novels of Daniel Defoe represent not so much an “origin” as a belated response to global early modernities, and examines in this context the neglected second half of Robinson Crusoe, in which the protagonist travels to the East as a trader. The sequel’s pronounced anxiety toward Asian economic and technological advancements implicitly structures the trope of island survival and self-sufficiency in the book’s famous first part. Whereas Crusoe’s individuality combines capitalism and colonial elements in a fashion atypical of global narrative realisms during the Age of Silver, Defoe’s later works Moll Flanders and Roxana return to the social setting and present more complex treatments of the socioeconomic transitions of the period through the transgressive figure of the “fallen woman.” Overall, Defoe’s novels constitute one local variation of global literary shifts, rather than the unique embodiment of novelistic modernity.Less