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Conclusions

Michael Ostling

in Between the Devil and the Host: Imagining Witchcraft in Early Modern Poland

This conclusion reviews the themes of the book, in particular its notion of ‘imagining witchcraft’. Drawing on the work of Jonathan Z. Smith, it claims that witchcraft, like religion, is a ... More

This conclusion reviews the themes of the book, in particular its notion of ‘imagining witchcraft’. Drawing on the work of Jonathan Z. Smith, it claims that witchcraft, like religion, is a second-order category created by scholars for their own comparative purposes: accordingly scholars have the responsibility to use the category well. Drawing on the work of Clifford Geertz, the conclusion argues that we study not ‘The Other’ but others—real people and their own projects of self-imagination. Accused witches were caught in multiple layers of imaginative labeling—as criminals, Satanists, pagans, demoniacs. They also imagined themselves as Christians, wives, mothers. The task of this book has been to explore these multiple imaginations in an attempt to understand all the actors caught up in witch-trials: the accused, their accusers, magistrates, and alleged victims.Less

Conclusion

Derek Hirst and Steven N. Zwicker

in Andrew Marvell, Orphan of the Hurricane

This brief conclusion examines the meaning of words and texts both withheld from and issued to the world — the puzzling condition of Marvell's texts.

Experiencing Falsity

Srinivasa Rao

in Advaita: A Contemporary Critique

Traditional Advaita holds that we experience false entities as is evident from rope-snake illusion. This chapter argues this thesis to be wrong on the ground that since the false snake is merely an ... More

Traditional Advaita holds that we experience false entities as is evident from rope-snake illusion. This chapter argues this thesis to be wrong on the ground that since the false snake is merely an imagined entity and a construction of our thought, it can never be an object of experience; it can only be regarded as an object of thought. Likewise, if the world is actually experienced by us, it has to be real and not false. Conversely, if it is false, it cannot be experienced by us. The very idea that something which is false is also experienced by us is absurd. Therefore the claim that the world is false and it is sublated upon our intuiting the Ultimate Reality should be rejected as wrong, illogical and completely groundless.Less

Smith's Enduring Contribution

D. D. Raphael

in The Impartial Spectator: Adam Smith's Moral Philosophy

Smith's concept of the impartial spectator as a theory of conscience is an enduring contribution to philosophical thought, despite its undue complexity, due to a faulty theory of approval. Its ... More

Smith's concept of the impartial spectator as a theory of conscience is an enduring contribution to philosophical thought, despite its undue complexity, due to a faulty theory of approval. Its originality lies in connecting moral judgement with social relationship by reference to the reaction of spectators.Less

Wax and Plaster Memories: Children in Elite and non-Elite Strategies *

Véronique Dasen

in Children, Memory, and Family Identity in Roman Culture

Scattered and debated iconographical documents relate to the imagines maiorum, those wax portraits of office-holding ancestors which were kept in the homes of the elite. A number of plaster masks of ... More

Scattered and debated iconographical documents relate to the imagines maiorum, those wax portraits of office-holding ancestors which were kept in the homes of the elite. A number of plaster masks of children, often very young, have been found in tombs of the imperial period in Rome and in the provinces. These artefacts come from non-elite families and raise a number of questions relating to commemorative practices as well as to the status of children in lower social orders. Why and in what circumstances were these plaster moulds realized? On a living or a dead child? Was a wax or plaster portrait produced from these moulds? These unusual and little known funerary portraits allow us to revisit the need of memorials and the importance of mimesis in Roman society, and throw an unexpected light on the reworking of aristocratic imagery in freedmen's families.Less

Just Imagine

Richard Barrios

in A Song in the Dark: The Birth of the Musical Film

Led by the smash hit of Fox's Sunny Side Up, starring Janet Gaynor, original musicals fared well in the early sound era. Such originals as Marianne tended to be more cinematic than the stage ... More

Led by the smash hit of Fox's Sunny Side Up, starring Janet Gaynor, original musicals fared well in the early sound era. Such originals as Marianne tended to be more cinematic than the stage adaptations, although routine could also be the order of the day in such uninspired pieces as Honey and Tanned Legs. The most distinctive entries came near the end of the era: Fox's Just Imagine, a science-fiction musical comedy set in the future of 1930, and MGM's Madam Satan, a combination sex farce, operetta, and disaster epic directed by Cecil B. DeMille.Less

Editors' Introduction

Simon Szreter, Hania Sholkamy, and A. Dharmalingam

in Categories and Contexts: Anthropological and Historical Studies in Critical Demography

The chapters in this section provide a set of well‐documented examples that the socio‐demographic options and strategies that families and individuals pursue are powerfully influenced by the dynamic ... More

The chapters in this section provide a set of well‐documented examples that the socio‐demographic options and strategies that families and individuals pursue are powerfully influenced by the dynamic and gendered social and natural worlds or ‘imagined communities’ to which they owe allegiance. These studies show how demographic analysis can benefit from paying much greater attention to contexts and that this will require much more investigative, historical, and anthropological work and a much less rapid move to quantification and comparisons that deploy ‘scientific’ categories, taken off the peg. Time and space need to be problematised not merely controlled.Less

National Identity and the Appeal of Nationalism

Patrick Mitchel

in Evangelicalism and National Identity in Ulster, 1921-1998

The functions and structure of a modern nationalist ideology are revealed through analysis of its national identity. Six components of national identity are explored; the ‘search for belonging’; ... More

The functions and structure of a modern nationalist ideology are revealed through analysis of its national identity. Six components of national identity are explored; the ‘search for belonging’; public legitimization in the world of nations; myth; culture; emotion and territory; and symbols and rituals. A further section analyses the behaviour of national identities in a context of political conflict. The issue of what is an appropriate relationship for Christians to have with their own national identity is then discussed using the theologian Miroslav Volf’s concept of ‘distance and belonging’.Less

A. E. Housman’s Rejected Addresses: Chatterton Lecture on Poetry

Robert Douglas-Fairhurst

in Proceedings of the British Academy, Volume 151, 2006 Lectures

This lecture discusses some of the different ways in which a tussle between reticence and release is played out in A. E. Housman's verse. It can be found in allusions that turn individual lines into ... More

This lecture discusses some of the different ways in which a tussle between reticence and release is played out in A. E. Housman's verse. It can be found in allusions that turn individual lines into miniature models of human relations and in its sceptical attention to commonplaces and bits of received wisdom, to name a few. The lecture also shows how the personal and cultural circumstances of Housman's poetry provoked him into the creation of an imagined alternative, which is a world where his unlucky love would be able to find an answer.Less

Introduction

Catriona Pennell

in A Kingdom United: Popular Responses to the Outbreak of the First World War in Britain and Ireland

The introduction outlines the methodology and evidence used in exploring the question of public opinion in a time before opinion polls. It also establishes the thematic, geographic, and chronological ... More

The introduction outlines the methodology and evidence used in exploring the question of public opinion in a time before opinion polls. It also establishes the thematic, geographic, and chronological framework in which the book is based. The introduction engages briefly with the question of ‘war enthusiasm’ and discusses the origins of this myth in a comparative context. Before moving into the substantive content of the book, the introduction also examines the issue of ‘future wars’ and examines what war, conflict, friends, and foes looked like to the British and Irish populations in the immediate pre‐1914 period.Less

Schooling the Step-Daughters of Germania: Education and the Press, 1871–1914

Elizabeth Vlossak

in Marianne or Germania?: Nationalizing Women in Alsace, 1870-1946

German nation-building in the Reichsland was initiated through the establishment of a compulsory primary school system for all boys and girls. This chapter explores the gendering of lessons and ... More

German nation-building in the Reichsland was initiated through the establishment of a compulsory primary school system for all boys and girls. This chapter explores the gendering of lessons and textbooks, and questions the extent to which primary education successfully Germanized its female pupils. It also looks at reforms made by the state and women activists to girls' secondary schools, and the role played by women teachers who were seen as either agents of nation-building or potential enemies of the Reich. The second part of the chapter analyses several regional women's newspapers and journals, which served as educational supplements for housewives and mothers. The press was also a potential means of nationalizing the women of Alsace, by linking the regional with the national, the private with the public, and thus incorporating them into the ‘imagined community’ of German women.Less

How We Think of Others' Emotions

Peter Goldie

in The Emotions: A Philosophical Exploration

This chapter, in the context of the debate between simulation theory and theory theory, distinguishes various ways in which we can grasp someone else's emotion: contagion, empathy, putting yourself ... More

This chapter, in the context of the debate between simulation theory and theory theory, distinguishes various ways in which we can grasp someone else's emotion: contagion, empathy, putting yourself in someone else's shoes, sympathy, and understanding. It is argued that understanding cannot be explained by appeal to any of the other four notions. Contagion is a sort of emotional engagement; others, easily confused with empathy, are emotional sharing and emotional identification. Empathy involves centrally imagining the other person. Often neglected is the possibility of acentral imagining. Sympathy, unlike empathy, is a moral emotion.Less

Introduction: Towards an Interpretable Whole

Derek Hirst and Steven N. Zwicker

in Andrew Marvell, Orphan of the Hurricane

This brief chapter maps the genesis of the book and outlines and explains the interpretive category of the ‘imagined life’.