Ann Rigney
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199644018
- eISBN:
- 9780191738784
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199644018.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
Using street-names referring to Waverley and Abbotsford as a starting point, this book explains how the work of Walter Scott (1771-1832) became an all-pervasive point of reference for cultural memory ...
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Using street-names referring to Waverley and Abbotsford as a starting point, this book explains how the work of Walter Scott (1771-1832) became an all-pervasive point of reference for cultural memory and collective identity in the nineteenth century, and why he no longer has this role. It breaks new ground in memory studies and the study of literary reception by examining the dynamics of cultural memory and the ‘social life’ of literary texts across several generations and multiple media. Attention is paid to the remediation of the Waverley novels as they travelled into painting, the theatre, and material culture, as well as to the role of ‘Scott’ as a memory site in the public sphere for a century after his death. Using a wide range of examples and supported by many illustrations, this book demonstrates how remembering Scott’s work helped shape national and transnational identities up to World War I, and contributed to the emergence of the idea of an English-speaking world encompassing Scotland, the British Empire, and the United States. It shows how Scott’s work provided an imaginative resource for creating a collective relation to the past that was compatible with widespread mobility and social change; and that he thus forged a potent alliance between memory, literature, and identity that was eminently suited to modernizing. In the process he helped prepare his own obsolescence. But if Scott’s work is now largely forgotten, his legacy continues in the widespread belief that showcasing the past is a condition for transcending it.Less
Using street-names referring to Waverley and Abbotsford as a starting point, this book explains how the work of Walter Scott (1771-1832) became an all-pervasive point of reference for cultural memory and collective identity in the nineteenth century, and why he no longer has this role. It breaks new ground in memory studies and the study of literary reception by examining the dynamics of cultural memory and the ‘social life’ of literary texts across several generations and multiple media. Attention is paid to the remediation of the Waverley novels as they travelled into painting, the theatre, and material culture, as well as to the role of ‘Scott’ as a memory site in the public sphere for a century after his death. Using a wide range of examples and supported by many illustrations, this book demonstrates how remembering Scott’s work helped shape national and transnational identities up to World War I, and contributed to the emergence of the idea of an English-speaking world encompassing Scotland, the British Empire, and the United States. It shows how Scott’s work provided an imaginative resource for creating a collective relation to the past that was compatible with widespread mobility and social change; and that he thus forged a potent alliance between memory, literature, and identity that was eminently suited to modernizing. In the process he helped prepare his own obsolescence. But if Scott’s work is now largely forgotten, his legacy continues in the widespread belief that showcasing the past is a condition for transcending it.
Russell Samolsky
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780823234790
- eISBN:
- 9780823241248
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823234790.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
The coda concludes the book's analysis of the way in which particular texts become apocalyptically legible or manifest. It does so by taking account of Spiegelman's self-reflexive meditation on the ...
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The coda concludes the book's analysis of the way in which particular texts become apocalyptically legible or manifest. It does so by taking account of Spiegelman's self-reflexive meditation on the ethical relation between Maus' literary reception and the dead bodies of the Holocaust that haunt his text. The coda proceeds to compare the fate of two sets of numbers tattooed onto the arms of Anja and Vladek upon their internment in the concentration camp. While Anja later commits suicide by slashing her wrists, thereby fulfilling a fate already inscribed by her number, Vladek is given life by the priest's prognosticatory interpretation of his number. The book concludes by utilizing Benjamin's concept of the “now of legibility” to read the priest's messianic moment of interpretation as a fragile moment of resistance against the law of apocalyptic incorporation.Less
The coda concludes the book's analysis of the way in which particular texts become apocalyptically legible or manifest. It does so by taking account of Spiegelman's self-reflexive meditation on the ethical relation between Maus' literary reception and the dead bodies of the Holocaust that haunt his text. The coda proceeds to compare the fate of two sets of numbers tattooed onto the arms of Anja and Vladek upon their internment in the concentration camp. While Anja later commits suicide by slashing her wrists, thereby fulfilling a fate already inscribed by her number, Vladek is given life by the priest's prognosticatory interpretation of his number. The book concludes by utilizing Benjamin's concept of the “now of legibility” to read the priest's messianic moment of interpretation as a fragile moment of resistance against the law of apocalyptic incorporation.
William M. Wright
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- March 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190625795
- eISBN:
- 9780190625832
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190625795.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
This essay, which proceeds in three parts, focuses on the reception of the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum, in the post-conciliar magisterium and in important scholarly works ...
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This essay, which proceeds in three parts, focuses on the reception of the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum, in the post-conciliar magisterium and in important scholarly works on scriptural interpretation. In the first part, the author examines what DV itself has to say about biblical interpretation, highlighting, in particular, the internal tensions in the document between two sets of interpretative principles: the historical-literary and the theological-ecclesial principles, the latter stressing Scriptures’ larger canonical setting. The second part focuses on the post-conciliar receptions of the text, with an emphasis on the predominance in the immediate post-conciliar period of the historical-literary dimension, over and above the comparatively neglected theological-ecclesial principles. Part three makes the case that, so as to receive the whole of DV going forwards, there is at present a need to reincorporate the historical-literary reception back into its traditional, theological context.Less
This essay, which proceeds in three parts, focuses on the reception of the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum, in the post-conciliar magisterium and in important scholarly works on scriptural interpretation. In the first part, the author examines what DV itself has to say about biblical interpretation, highlighting, in particular, the internal tensions in the document between two sets of interpretative principles: the historical-literary and the theological-ecclesial principles, the latter stressing Scriptures’ larger canonical setting. The second part focuses on the post-conciliar receptions of the text, with an emphasis on the predominance in the immediate post-conciliar period of the historical-literary dimension, over and above the comparatively neglected theological-ecclesial principles. Part three makes the case that, so as to receive the whole of DV going forwards, there is at present a need to reincorporate the historical-literary reception back into its traditional, theological context.
Nora Goldschmidt and Barbara Graziosi
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- October 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198826477
- eISBN:
- 9780191865442
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198826477.003.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
The Introduction sheds light on the reception of classical poetry by focusing on the materiality of the poets’ bodies and their tombs. It outlines four sets of issues, or commonplaces, that govern ...
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The Introduction sheds light on the reception of classical poetry by focusing on the materiality of the poets’ bodies and their tombs. It outlines four sets of issues, or commonplaces, that govern the organization of the entire volume. The first concerns the opposition between literature and material culture, the life of the mind vs the apprehensions of the body—which fails to acknowledge that poetry emerges from and is attended to by the mortal body. The second concerns the religious significance of the tomb and its location in a mythical landscape which is shaped, in part, by poetry. The third investigates the literary graveyard as a place where poets’ bodies and poetic corpora are collected. Finally, the alleged ‘tomb of Virgil’ provides a specific site where the major claims made in this volume can be most easily be tested.Less
The Introduction sheds light on the reception of classical poetry by focusing on the materiality of the poets’ bodies and their tombs. It outlines four sets of issues, or commonplaces, that govern the organization of the entire volume. The first concerns the opposition between literature and material culture, the life of the mind vs the apprehensions of the body—which fails to acknowledge that poetry emerges from and is attended to by the mortal body. The second concerns the religious significance of the tomb and its location in a mythical landscape which is shaped, in part, by poetry. The third investigates the literary graveyard as a place where poets’ bodies and poetic corpora are collected. Finally, the alleged ‘tomb of Virgil’ provides a specific site where the major claims made in this volume can be most easily be tested.
Wiebke Denecke
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- April 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199971848
- eISBN:
- 9780199346134
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199971848.003.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
The introduction first showcases the effects of the “relative age of cultures” on the self-perception, self-representation, and cultural production of younger cultures by analyzing the relationship ...
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The introduction first showcases the effects of the “relative age of cultures” on the self-perception, self-representation, and cultural production of younger cultures by analyzing the relationship between “old Egypt” and “young Greece” as portrayed in Plato’s Timaeus. Noting the poverty of our conceptual vocabulary for cultural reception processes, it coins the term “reference culture” to capture the role of the older culture in the multi-faceted and intimate cross-cultural reception processes that were at work in the Sino-Japanese and Greco-Roman constellations (which differed from the more limited and distanced Greco-Egyptian relation). The introduction then makes a case for the urgency of comparative studies in the Humanities and the world at large. In contrast to the casual flaneurism that comparative literature has sometimes been blamed for, this book claims that the challenge of our times is to respond to the “comparative imperative” that urges us to develop fine-grained comparative methods for large-scale comparisons of literary cultures around the globe as a means to understand the diversity of our pasts, define our identities today and shape a shared future.Less
The introduction first showcases the effects of the “relative age of cultures” on the self-perception, self-representation, and cultural production of younger cultures by analyzing the relationship between “old Egypt” and “young Greece” as portrayed in Plato’s Timaeus. Noting the poverty of our conceptual vocabulary for cultural reception processes, it coins the term “reference culture” to capture the role of the older culture in the multi-faceted and intimate cross-cultural reception processes that were at work in the Sino-Japanese and Greco-Roman constellations (which differed from the more limited and distanced Greco-Egyptian relation). The introduction then makes a case for the urgency of comparative studies in the Humanities and the world at large. In contrast to the casual flaneurism that comparative literature has sometimes been blamed for, this book claims that the challenge of our times is to respond to the “comparative imperative” that urges us to develop fine-grained comparative methods for large-scale comparisons of literary cultures around the globe as a means to understand the diversity of our pasts, define our identities today and shape a shared future.
Su Fang Ng
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- April 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780198777687
- eISBN:
- 9780191864803
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198777687.003.0007
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval, World History: BCE to 500CE
This chapter examines the synchronic renewals and the repurposing of Alexander the Great’s image in canonical English and Malay literatures. More specifically, it considers the transmission of the ...
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This chapter examines the synchronic renewals and the repurposing of Alexander the Great’s image in canonical English and Malay literatures. More specifically, it considers the transmission of the Alexander Romance and its common motifs into English and Malay as well as the shared strand of literary reception that link these traditions together as cousins rather than wholly separate. It also explores how both English and Malay literatures, invoking Alexander to mediate intercultural encounters, use him to fashion a vocabulary for a cultural politics of hybridity. More importantly, English and Malay literary traditions meet in connected themes mediated by Alexander and intersect in their shared deployment of him to figure intercultural relations arising from trade.Less
This chapter examines the synchronic renewals and the repurposing of Alexander the Great’s image in canonical English and Malay literatures. More specifically, it considers the transmission of the Alexander Romance and its common motifs into English and Malay as well as the shared strand of literary reception that link these traditions together as cousins rather than wholly separate. It also explores how both English and Malay literatures, invoking Alexander to mediate intercultural encounters, use him to fashion a vocabulary for a cultural politics of hybridity. More importantly, English and Malay literary traditions meet in connected themes mediated by Alexander and intersect in their shared deployment of him to figure intercultural relations arising from trade.
Wiebke Denecke
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- April 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199971848
- eISBN:
- 9780199346134
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199971848.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This book compares the cultural dynamics of Sino-Japanese and Greco-Roman literatures, exploring the ways in which “younger” cultures related to their venerable predecessors. How were writers of the ...
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This book compares the cultural dynamics of Sino-Japanese and Greco-Roman literatures, exploring the ways in which “younger” cultures related to their venerable predecessors. How were writers of the younger cultures of Rome and Japan affected by the presence of an older “reference culture,” whose sophistication they admired, even as they anxiously strove to assert their own distinctive identity? How did they tackle the challenge of adopting the reference culture’s literary genres, rhetorical refinement, and conceptual vocabulary for writing texts in different languages and within distinct political and cultural contexts? Exploring writers from Sugawara no Michizane to Sei Shônagon and from Cicero to Ovid and Martianus Capella and engaging issues ranging from narratives of literary history, foundation figures, literature of the capital and poetry of exile, to strategies of cultural comparison through parody and satire, This book captures the striking similarities between the ways Early Japanese writers wrote their own literature through and against the literary precedents of China and the ways Latin writers engaged and contested Greek precedents. But it also brings to light suggestive divergences that are rooted in geopolitical, linguistic, sociohistorical, and aesthetic differences between Early Japanese and Roman literary cultures.Less
This book compares the cultural dynamics of Sino-Japanese and Greco-Roman literatures, exploring the ways in which “younger” cultures related to their venerable predecessors. How were writers of the younger cultures of Rome and Japan affected by the presence of an older “reference culture,” whose sophistication they admired, even as they anxiously strove to assert their own distinctive identity? How did they tackle the challenge of adopting the reference culture’s literary genres, rhetorical refinement, and conceptual vocabulary for writing texts in different languages and within distinct political and cultural contexts? Exploring writers from Sugawara no Michizane to Sei Shônagon and from Cicero to Ovid and Martianus Capella and engaging issues ranging from narratives of literary history, foundation figures, literature of the capital and poetry of exile, to strategies of cultural comparison through parody and satire, This book captures the striking similarities between the ways Early Japanese writers wrote their own literature through and against the literary precedents of China and the ways Latin writers engaged and contested Greek precedents. But it also brings to light suggestive divergences that are rooted in geopolitical, linguistic, sociohistorical, and aesthetic differences between Early Japanese and Roman literary cultures.
Duncan Kennedy
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780198723417
- eISBN:
- 9780191790058
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198723417.003.0006
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Prose and Writers: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Pater’s Marius the Epicurean offers a dense engagement with a number of classical texts, most of which date from the second century AD. To explore the ways in which the narrator of Marius uses such ...
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Pater’s Marius the Epicurean offers a dense engagement with a number of classical texts, most of which date from the second century AD. To explore the ways in which the narrator of Marius uses such texts to fashion its protagonist’s ‘sensations and ideas’, this chapter concentrates on the author whose presence is most surprising, the elegist Tibullus who wrote in the late first century BC and whose work was largely ignored in Britain in Pater’s own time. Although explicit reference to Tibullus is confined to the opening chapter of Marius, a much broader range of Tibullan themes, formal strategies of exposition, and issues within the scholarship than has been hitherto recognized permeate the novel; the portrait offered by his contemporary Horace also contributes significantly.Less
Pater’s Marius the Epicurean offers a dense engagement with a number of classical texts, most of which date from the second century AD. To explore the ways in which the narrator of Marius uses such texts to fashion its protagonist’s ‘sensations and ideas’, this chapter concentrates on the author whose presence is most surprising, the elegist Tibullus who wrote in the late first century BC and whose work was largely ignored in Britain in Pater’s own time. Although explicit reference to Tibullus is confined to the opening chapter of Marius, a much broader range of Tibullan themes, formal strategies of exposition, and issues within the scholarship than has been hitherto recognized permeate the novel; the portrait offered by his contemporary Horace also contributes significantly.
