Historiographical Texts Research Articles

“As liuing now, equald theyr vertues then”: Early Modern Allusions, Boudicca, and the Failure of Monologic Historiographies

Introduction While I rarely encouraged explicit comparisons between herself and martial women of the literary or historical past, (1) brief allusions to and more extended treatments of leaders such as Boudicca are relatively common in popular early modern historiographical texts with encomiastic and nationalist passions. Indeed, as Julia M. Walker notes, To represent as a woman warrior while she was alive was a delicate proposition (Elizabeth 40). Certainly, Elizabeth's own self-presentation did not regularly suggest martial impulsivity or ferocity so much as divine protection and favour in times of turmoil. As early as her letters to Queen Mary I in the 1550s, Princess presented herself as accountable to God first and foremost (Princess Elizabeth 41). A sense of closeness to and favour from God was strengthened in a speech given the day before her coronation, as she compared herself to Daniel, spared by God because of loyalty and faith (Richard Mulcaster's Account 55). also was obviously comfortable presenting herself as both virginal and as a mother to her nation. Court advancement was often predicated on young men maintaining courtly love relationships that followed the patterns of Petrarchan romances--hopeless suitors promising service to Elizabeth, the beautiful, but untouchable and prevaricating mistress. Official visual representations of the queen include George Gower's series of Siena portraits (circa 1579), which portray as Tuccia, the Vestal virgin who, as a testament to her virginity, carried water in a sieve without spilling a drop. In her first speech to Parliament, as she addressed petitions that she marry, the queen stressed that, while she would find it acceptable to live and die a virgin, she was also already married to the nation (Parliament 58-59), and she returned to this familial relationship in a 1563 speech, claiming that her subjects would never enjoy a more devoted mother than her (Queen Elizabeth's Answer 72). Thomas Bentley similarly praises in the opening Epistle for Monument of Matrones (1582), describing her as the naturall mother and noble nurse who watches over the Church of England, and James Aske continues this presentation of the queen as mother to England in his 1588 poem Elizabetha Triumphans, as he describes the queen's laws as both breast milk and a crib (12). When was connected to martial women during her lifetime, other associative values were usually stressed: Diana, goddess of the hunt, was often used in court literature, but authors would link to her chastity and beauty rather than any explicitly violent tendencies--The Faerie Queene's virginal huntress Belphoebe, for example (Spenser 1590 and 1596). (2) Instead, Elizabeth's self-presentations and sanctioned courtly representations stressed Petrarchan beauty, chastity, personal faith, divine favour, princely virtues, and, occasionally, maternal devotion to the nation (see also Berry; Walker, Elizabeth). Despite the queen's apparent distaste for monarchical representations that might suggest violence in her kingdom or unnatural female qualities in her person, early modern authors did regularly connect to martial figures from mythology, history, and the Bible, particularly after her death as the queen's leadership during the Spanish Armada became mythologized in and of itself. Martial valour was, of course, only one of several monarchical traits that were taken up by writers producing nationalist texts that placed Elizabeth's reign within larger Brittonic histories. Indeed, when given the chance to praise the queen, early modern authors frequently relied on a well-established set of allusions aimed at lauding various combinations of the queen's chastity, beauty, intelligence, militancy, fortitude, peaceful disposition, and generosity. The allusions are perhaps only intended to serve as brief references, as signals for whichever of Elizabeth's qualities the author will praise in more detail in the larger work. …

Stubborn Histories

The golden era of national independence was the focus of national-romantic historiography in the 19th century. Still, the Golden Age narrative is not always fully idealized; this also depends on the existence of the so-called pagan brutality and civilizing (i.e. becoming Christian) narratives and how these are being dealt with. This study observes the reciprocal influence of these narratives in classical historiographical texts and textbooks, relying primarily on the example of non-dominant Nordic and Baltic nations. The problem-setting proceeds from Estonia, where the mutual impact of these narratives was most problematic. Comparison with other nations allows for a better understanding of the limitations in narrating a national history, as well as the tensions between national, religious and scientific thought in the national-romantic historiography of the 19th century.

History, a Literary Artifact? The Traveling Concept of Narrative in/on Historiographic Discourse

History, a Literary Artifact? The Traveling Concept of Narrative in/on Historiographic Discourse

Una ipotesi di datazione dell’Alcesta centonaria

On the basis of an exhaustive study about the reuse of a Vergilian hemistic in the Cento Alcesta and in some poetic and historiographic texts of the Late Antiquity, the paper shows the hypothesis that the same Cento was written at the end of the Vth. Century.

The Attack of the Present on the Remainder of Time: Some Remarks on Historiography from Nineteenth-Century India

Using the example of a local chronicle from early nineteenth-century Orissa, this article discusses the structure, content and strategy of selected historiographical texts of the period. Contemporary events and the immediate past can be identified in the texts and indeed govern their plots, reflecting a new representation of reality in historiography of this kind. Thus, the changing hegemonic order of such texts—where content begins to override form—mirrored the changing political world. Colonial discourse started to soak into Indian historiography.

A constituição de uma rede de assistência à saúde na Bahia, Brasil, voltada para o combate das epidemias

This article aims to analyze the roles of the State and local elite groups in the development of a healthcare network in Bahia, Brazil during the Empire until the First Republic. We show that the fight against epidemics in Bahia was the main motivation of health actions taken by the public authorities from the beginning of the 19th century until the 1920s. Our observations are supported by a range of primary sources, including messages from provincial presidents and governors, legislation, reports from engineers and doctors (health inspectors, consultants, etc.), among others. We also sought to establish a dialogue with sociology, examining historiographic texts on Bahia and Brazil as well as studies in the specific area of the History of Health.

Territories of History: Humanism, Rhetoric, and the Historical Imagination in the Early Chronicles of Spanish America (review)

Reviewed by: Territories of History: Humanism, Rhetoric, and the Historical Imagination in the Early Chronicles of Spanish America Galen Brokaw Keywords Galen Brokaw, Sarah H. Beckjord, Territories of History: Humanism, Rhetoric, and the Historical Imagination in the Early Chronicles of Spanish America, Colonialism, Colonial Literature, Spanish America, Latin America Sarah H. Beckjord. Territories of History: Humanism, Rhetoric, and the Historical Imagination in the Early Chronicles of Spanish America. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 2007. The analysis of colonial texts that describe the New World and narrate the events of the conquest has an interesting history. Nineteenth-century philologists originally read these texts for both their content and their style. With the consolidation of independent literary studies in the twentieth-century, English-language literary scholarship in large part tended to neglect or ignore colonial historiography. The notable exceptions, such as the work of Irving Leonard, are more closely associated with history and the old philology than with the literary studies of their day. Most literary scholars who began analyzing colonial historical texts, particularly in the sixties and seventies, departed from this earlier tradition and engaged in a more modern literary reading. Indeed, for many scholars, colonial chronicles constituted the very origins of Latin American narrative literature. By the 1980s colonial literary studies had begun to shift direction to pursue research that in many ways returned to the methods of the old philology but with a new set of interests and questions. This new direction is now some thirty years old, but the slow growth of colonial studies as an independent sub-field with dedicated faculty lines within literature departments has meant that developments in research have been relatively slow as well. A colonial canon of sorts including the writings of Christopher Columbus, Hernán Cortés, Bartolomé de las Casas, and Bernal Díaz del Castillo, has received the most attention, but even so the critical possibilities are still relatively wide open from the perspective of what I would call the new interdisciplinary philology. Sarah Beckjord's book Territories of History contributes to the further development and consolidation of this field by reinvigorating the traditional philological approach in an analysis of some of the most well-known historiographical texts from the colonial period. But her study does not merely offer insightful new analyses of the colonial chronicles; it also sheds light on the intellectual history of sixteenth-century Spain. Beckjord's study focuses on several major chroniclers (Fernández de Oviedo, Bartolomé de las Casas, and Bernal Díaz del Castillo) and one peninsular intellectual who wrote about historiographical discourse (Juan Luis Vives). Both Bartolomé de las Casas and Bernal Díaz del Castillo are clearly part of what has become the colonial canon in Hispanic literary studies, read even by non-specialists. Fernández de Oviedo has arguably joined the colonial canon as well, although his work is less likely to appear in anthologies of colonial literature. Beckjord's project involves the rhetorical analysis of these texts in order to examine the particular dynamics of their relationship to the tradition of historiographical [End Page 103] discourse in the sixteenth century. To this end, she begins the study with an analysis of the sixteenth-century preceptive tradition of historiographical discourse exemplified by Juan Luis Vives. She then goes on to discuss the way in which the writings of Fernández de Oviedo, Las Casas, and Díaz del Castillo relate to this tradition. This sort of rhetorical analysis would seem to be one of the most traditional interests of philological research, but in several respects Beckjord delves deeper than previous work producing a more nuanced understanding of sixteenth-century historiography. One of the traditional themes that runs throughout the book is the well-known tension between fact and fiction in the early modern period. Previous work has tended to attribute this tension to the disparity between the demands of the authoritative textual tradition and the exigencies of personal experience in the Indies. Beckjord shows how this tension actually pre-exists the New World enterprise. The analysis of Vives demonstrates that the preceptive tradition was not as consistent and monolithic as one might have thought. In general terms sixteenth-century humanists like...

Review

Reviewed by: An Inca Account of the Conquest of Peru Jonathan D. Steigman (bio) Titu Cusi Yupanqui. An Inca Account of the Conquest of Peru. Trans. Ralph Bauer. Boulder: UP of Colorado, 2005. ISBN 087081821X. 166 pp. With the first English translation of the account of Titu Cusi Yupanqui, English professor Ralph Bauer gives us a view of the Spanish conquest of Peru from a Native perspective. Bauer provides an excellent introduction that situates the work within its historical and cultural context. Through the introduction and copious explanatory endnotes, the reader gains a real understanding of the hybrid nature of the text, a result of the process of its composition. Titu Cusi Yupanqui was the next-to-last Native ruler of the Inca Empire. Considered by the Spanish authorities to be in a state of rebellion against the colonial government after inheriting the throne from his father, the rebellious native leader Manco Inca, Titu Cusi composes his work, a letter to the Spanish sovereign Philip II enumerating Spanish atrocities in Peru, from the jungle refuge of Vilcabamba in 1570. He tells his story in his native Quechua to the Augustinian missionary, fray Marcos García, who translated it into Spanish. It was then transcribed by Martín de Pando, Titu Cusi’s mestizo secretary, thus contributing to the hybrid nature of the work. As Bauer points out, both Andean and Spanish influences are present in the text. He notes that García exerted some influence over the composition process because “the Spanish missionary ‘ordered’ and translated it into Spanish” (12). [End Page 86] Bauer notes that the document is more than just an appeal to Philip II to take control of the situation in Peru and to put an end to Spanish abuses; it is also a subtle form of Native resistance against Spanish rule: Aware that their clubs, pikes, and slingshots were largely ineffective against the armored and mounted Spanish conquistadors, Native leaders soon learned to appropriate not only the foreigners’ use of swords, firearms, and horses but also the most powerful weapon that the invaders had brought: the written word. The text presented here tells an early chapter in the long history of Native appropriations of this European medium. (18) Titu Cusi not only appropriates the written word generally but also chooses a specific format for his appeal to the crown: the “relación” (account). Bauer tells us that this is a form of legal discourse with origins in notarial rhetoric. It is intended to present an eyewitness account within the context of a legal dispute, and it relies upon firsthand experience for its authority. The rhetorical style of the “relación” also becomes a historiographic text, in addition to a legal deposition designed to influence official policy and legislation. Titu Cusi’s approach demonstrates a profound understanding on his part of the modes of European discourse that he appropriates to pursue his goals of more a humane colonial system, providing a means by which he might return from internal exile. Bauer shows that Cusi’s work is typical of sixteenth century scholastic political philosophy, similar in style to the rhetorical contributions of Indigenous rights advocates Francisco de Vitoria y Bartolomé de las Casas. Titu Cusi’s account lends specificity to the work of las Casas, pointing out that burdens imposed by the neofeudal rulers of Peru were responsible for the decline of the Native population. Having converted to Catholicism, Titu Cusi portrays himself in a way that is similar to the rhetorical style of las Casas, as a Christian prince, the “natural” ruler of the land who is voluntarily placing himself under the authority of Philip II, according to Bauer. We also learn from Bauer’s introduction that the account is a [End Page 87] political document as well as a literary work. It is a petition from Titu Cusi to Philip II intended to initiate a negotiation process designed to end the Inca rebellion against Spanish authority. Titu Cusi’s goal is to end hostilities and gain an estate and pension for himself. His mission was ultimately unsuccessful, but his attempt at reaching accommodation with the Spanish government has left us with a document that provides...

"To Democratize the Elements of the Historical Record": An Interview with John Edgar Wideman About History in His Work

"To Democratize the Elements of the Historical Record"An Interview with John Edgar Wideman About History in His Work Ulrich Eschborn John Edgar Wideman's literary work, already spanning more than four decades, comprises ten novels, three collections of stories, one collection of microstories, four nonfiction books including his bestselling autobiographical work Brothers and Keepers (1984), and many essays, articles, and reviews. In the course of his career, Wideman, professor at Brown University where he teaches creative writing, has been awarded the Pen/Faulkner Award (1984, 1991), the American Book Award, a MacArthur Award, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, the James Fenimore Cooper Prize of the Society of American Historians for the novel The Cattle Killing (1996), and, for his short stories, the O. Henry and the Rea Awards. He self-published his latest book, a collection of microstories entitled Briefs: Stories for the Palm of the Mind (2010). Professor Wideman kindly gave me the opportunity to interview him in Brittany on August 12, 2008. This conversation differs from other interviews with Wideman because it focuses on one specific, crucial aspect of his work: history. After Wideman's first two novels, history became a central issue in the third novel The Lynchers (1973), the Homewood trilogy (1981–83), Philadelphia Fire (1990), and the historical novel The Cattle Killing (1996) as well as in the nonfiction books Fatheralong: A Meditation on Fathers and Sons, Race and Society (1994), Hoop Roots: Basketball, Race, and Love (2001), and The Island: Martinique (2003). His complex approach to history engages concepts like mind and imagination, Great Time (a notion derived from African thought), survival, storytelling and oral history, family, and community. The interview addresses these aspects and reveals that Wideman's concept of history runs counter to the Western idea of linear time and the idea of history as the sum of historiographic texts describing "great leaders" and "great events." In accordance with the notion of Great Time, Wideman represents time and history as nonlinear. He believes that stories about African American families and communities such as Homewood, the African American Pittsburgh neighborhood in which he lived until the age of twelve, are as important as the so-called great events such as the Second World War. As Wideman puts it in the interview, he tries to "democratize [the elements of the historical record] in the sense of reshuffling the hierarchies or getting rid of hierarchy." At the end of the conversation before the 2008 United States presidential election, Wideman answers a question about history-in-the-making, namely his hopes with regard to a possible presidency of Barack Obama. His closing words are: "We'll meet again after the election and have another talk [Laughter]—if we're allowed." In fact, I was fortunate [End Page 982] enough to have another meeting with John Edgar Wideman in New York City three days after Obama's election victory on November 4, 2008. The author was glad about the election result, which he had predicted early on. Eschborn: I would like to start with three definitions of history that you give in your writing. The first one is from your memoir Fatheralong in which you define history as a "collective enterprise of the mind" (102). Could you read this passage? Wideman: (Reads) History is not something given, a fixed, chronological, linear outline with blank spots waiting to be filled with newly unearthed facts. It's the activity over time of all the minds comprising it, the sum of these parts that produces a greater ecological whole. History, the past, is what you're thinking, what you've thought. You, the individual, you the enabler and product of the collective enterprise of the mind. History is mind, is driven by mind.… (101–2) Eschborn: Thank you. In an interview with John O'Brien in 1972, you give a definition of history which goes in the same direction: "To go back into one's past is in fact dreaming. What is history except people's imaginary recreation?" (10). These statements about history underline that each person is involved in a mental process of creating history. One could call this a democratic concept of history. However, you also claim: "History...

The Iranian Heritage of Georgia

Traditionally, scholars have considered extant medieval Georgian historiography as having been produced exclusively during the millennium of Bagratid rule. This essay identifies a separate historiographical phase just preceding the rise of Bagratid rule in the Georgian domains in the early ninth century. Pre-Bagratid historiographical texts are distinguished first and foremost by their Iranian flavor, which is a reflection of the longstanding membership of the whole of southern Caucasia in the Iranian cultural world.

Klio und ihr e anmutigen Schwestern: Zum Verhältnis von Literaturwissenschaft, Literatur und Geschichtswissenschaft

Since several well known critics have recently declared that the golden age of literary theory has come to an end, this might be the moment to rethink a theoretical problem that attracted some interest in the academic world from the late 1970s to the early 1990s: the relationship between historiography and literary criticism. Although the histoire des mentalites has given the literary text an unprecedented status in the reconstruction of the collective imaginary and although the discussion of similarities between forms of narrative in historical and fictional texts has undoubtedly intensifi ed the dialogue between historiography and literary criticism, some aspects have been overlooked in the debate of the last twenty to thirty years. First, for both types of texts, fictional as well as historiographic, the wide range of narrative and representational strategies has not been taken into account; second, more recent narratological methods of analysis have not been applied to historiographic texts; third, the interest for the narrative character of historiographic texts can be found almost exclusively among literary critics and philosophers and much less among historians; and fourth, the analysis of narrative structures inside and outside the limits of fictional writing has eclipsed the main characteristic of literary texts, their inherent potential to produce pleasure.

Blood-brothers: a ritual of friendship and the construction of the imagined barbarian in the middle ages

This article analyses the history of blood-covenants in the middle ages. Appearing in various historiographical and literary texts from antiquity onwards, these covenants have hitherto mostly been interpreted by modern authors as a typical feature of pre-modern or even ‘primitive’ societies. A closer inquiry into the context of the existing source-material reveals, however, that this motif can be characterised as a part of discriminatory narrative strategies which aim at the exclusion of foreign and non-Christian cultures. The analysis of the medieval texts, which were mainly produced from the twelfth century onwards, clearly shows a tendency to attribute this ritual of blood-brotherhood either to representatives of the so-called ‘Saracens’ or allegedly heterodox cultures, like the Byzantines or the Irish, which populated the margins of the Latin west. Not only does this topical use of the motif invalidate part of the texts' factual source value, but it also proved misleading for the interpretation of pre-modern societies by modern historians. While an older tradition of classical political history mainly tended to note the ritual as a cultural curiosity, more recent studies of ritual structures are in danger of misrepresenting the cultures they focus on.

Axioms of cognition affecting human–environmental interactions as traced in historiographical texts

The subject of this paper is the subconscious and half-conscious basis of cognition, that is, “axioms of cognition” which influence rational thinking and human information processing. The verbal expression of these axioms and the way they actually work within human mind can be more easily traced in the polemic texts. The material for the study is historiographical texts on interethnic relations. The suggested textual analysis can provide a researcher with (1) information about the author's sociomental group (people who similarly interpret systematically organized information: T.M. Dridze's term) and (2) information about the type of audience which can uncontroversially perceive a given text.

Early Germanic Literature and Culture by Brian Murdoch, Malcolm ReadGerman Literature of the Early Middle Ages by Brian Murdoch

MLR, IOI.2, 2oo6 565 note, serving to remind us how the Abadia has never shrunk from commenting on the issues of the day: 'ElTeatro de laAbadia aspira a relacionarse con lo que sucede en la sociedad [. . .] laHistoria, a veces tan comodamente olvidada' (p. I5). Gomez himself admits that the book is intended as a tribute to ten years of hard work, but the varied set of essays indicate theAbadia's defining urge to create 'elplacer inteligente' (P. I5). Of course, as an anniversary publication the book is blissfully free of any negative write-ups, and likewise is prone to a certain self-aggrandisement. When the intro duction boldly talks about a theatre's struggle to portray the human condition, one is tempted towonder how successful they have been or on what evidence this assertion isbased. It is certainly useful to get a clear idea of theAbadia's mission statement, but a critical reflection on the highs and lows would have provided thematerial necessary to substantiate their claims. Available only from the theatre itself and specialist book shops, this is awork more useful for those familiar with the theatre, either as regular visitors or as students of itswork. It is evident, however, that there is an audience for the 'placer inteligente' G6mez seeks to disseminate, and an audience who believe in 'elespiritu de La Abadia' (p. I5). In a theatrical scene dominated by corporate theatre and government-run companies, it is good to know that a little corner ofMadrid has an independent creative spirit worth nurturing. QUEEN MARY, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON SIMON BREDEN Early Germanic Literature and Culture. Ed. by BRIAN MURDOCH and MALCOLM READ. (Camden House History of German Literature, i) Rochester, NY: Cam den House. 2004. x+334 pp. $85;E6o. ISBN I-57II3-I99-X. German Literature of the Early Middle Ages. Ed. by BRIANMURDOCH. (Camden House History of German Literature, 2) Rochester, NY Camden House. 2004. xiv+283 pp. $85;?E6o. ISBN I-57I I3-240-6. The first two volumes in the Camden House History of German Literature together provide the reader with an admirably innovativeguide to tacklingthe earliest literature in German and in related Germanic languages. The decision to make Old High German the focal point of the second, rather than of the first, volume of a literary history of German may initially seem surprising (as Brian Murdoch suggests in his preface to the second volume), but proves to be entirely justified by the lively and unusual intellectual programme of the first volume. The series opens with an interdisciplinary approach to 'Germanic' culture in all itsmanifestations, starting with problems of definition. The term 'Germanic' is in evitably a loaded one, with associations going well beyond the merely philological, and it therefore seems appropriate that the first block of essays should engage with the relatively recent intellectual and political history which colour our conception of the 'Germanic'. Thus Brian Murdoch and Malcolm Read outline the various basic approaches (philological, geographical, ethnological, historiographical) to the term; Heinrich Beck analyses the particular circumstances under which 'Germanische Al tertumskunde' (Germanic antiquity) was developed and promoted as an academic discipline in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and Herwig Wolfram examines historiographical texts which give aGermanic twist to the literary topos of the origo gentis (the origins of a given people). In conceptual terms these three contributions, which engage most directly with the recent cultural implications of the construction of the 'Germanic' (not least in relation to German national identity), are among the most ambitious in the volume. However, this dimension is also touched on in a num ber of other essays: for example, Adrian Murdoch's discussion of Germania Romana 566 Reviews quotes Heine in order to illustrate the significance ascribed to the 'Varusschlacht' in the nineteenth century. The subsequent essays in the volume are largely focused on providing an informed overview, either of particular literary or cultural practices, or of the body of literature associated with a particular Germanic language. So, for example, Rudolf Simek co vers Germanic religion and the conversion to Christianity, while the cultural status of thewritten word is addressed in fairly theoretical terms by Graeme Dunphy (look ing at theMuindlichkeit/Schriftlichkeit dichotomy), and in...

Klios Medien: Die Geschichtskultur des 19. Jahrhunderts in der historistischen Historie und bei Theodor Fontane by Uwe Hebekus (review)

558 Reviews The last letterin the present volume dates fromNew Year's Eve 1870. It can only be hoped that more volumes are to follow. They will have to cover four decades, including the period when Raabe produced all his mature, innovative, intriguing masterpieces. Everybody interested in Raabe and nineteenth-century German literature in general will eagerly await the continuation of Webster's new edition of Raabe's letters. National University of Ireland, Maynooth Florian Krobb Klios Medien: Die Geschichtskultur des ig. Jahrhunderts in der historistischenHis? torie und bei Theodor Fontane. By Uwe Hebekus. (Hermaea, 99) Tiibingen: Niemeyer. 2003. X+ 313PP. ?52. ISBN 3-484-15099-8. This doctoral dissertation, completed in 1999 and published in 2003, explores the relationship between professional historiography (the author uses the pleonasm 'Historiographiegeschichtsschreibung ') and literaryrealism, as exemplified in the writings of Theodor Fontane. The study fails into three parts of almost equal length. The first part, demonstrating the plurality of forms of representation in classic historiographic texts (Ranke and Droysen), provides a basis for the second, an examination of the aesthetics of realism in Fontane's writings on the war of 1870-71, while the third, de? voted to Die Poggenpuhls and Der Stechlin, proposes a reading of these late narratives as critical reflections on the selective practices of nineteenth-century historiography, including Fontane's own in his writings on the war. The author sees the primary function of these works of Fontane's middle period in their shaping of the collective memory of the Franco-Prussian War, and so as a contribution to its exploitation in the process of nation-building. It is here that he finds the literary quality which Fontane claimed for them: 'Ich sehe klar ein, daB ich eigentlich erst bei dem 7oer Kriegsbuche und dann bei dem Schreiben meines Romans ein Schriftsteller geworden bin' (quoted, p. 117). The novel in question, Vor dem Sturm, is the subject of a short excursus at the end of Chapter 2 which exemplifies the approach adopted by Hebekus, in contrast to pre? vious commentators, who are criticized fortheir neglect of the interdisciplinary work ofthe 'war and society' school of historians. Here Fontane's novel is examined almost exclusively in terms of its function, specifically its construction of a parallel between the Wars of Liberation and the Franco-Prussian War; thus Marie Kniehase, tradi? tionally seen as a Maria figure(as against the Venus of Kathinka), is associated equally with Queen Luise of Prussia, and so with the typology 'VerheiBung'?'Erfiillung'. The details uncovered are certainly intriguing, but as a whole the argument suffers from a certain strenuousness, justified by the over-insistence, evident elsewhere in recent criticism, that Fontane typically proceeds by 'Spurenlegen durch "Kryptogramme "' (p. 203). Nor is the conclusion especially enlightening: while Hebekus shows quite convincingly that this particular typology was in widespread use, his laborious analysis makes it equally clear that Fontane was far from being its most recognizable exponent; this may explain (as Hebekus does not) why Vor dem Sturm was so coolly received at a time of national excitement. This dominance of authorial hypothesis over textual analysis is at the root of a more serious flaw in the discussion ofthe war books. In the introduction to Chapter 2 (pp. 117-18) Hebekus takes most of his predecessors to task forthe vagueness of their response to Fontane's assertion of the importance of his '7oer Kriegsbuch' in his emergence as a writer; in conclusion (p. 177) he claims to have offeredthe precise ex? planation hitherto lacking. In the intervening sixty pages, however, there is very little reference to Der Krieggegen Frankreich; like others before him?but perversely, given the focus of his book?Hebekus merges or confuses Fontane's historiographic writ- MLR, 100.2, 2005 559 ings on the war with his autobiographical travel writings, Kriegsgefangen and Aus den Tagen der Okkupation, works which are quite differentin scope, substance, and style. Following Lothar Kohn, Hebekus places Fontane's rejection of French modernism at the heart of the war texts. Symptomatic of this rejection is the critique of the de? velopment of modern warfare, exemplified?to take two examples?in the activity of partisans and the deployment by the French...

Early Modern Historiography

AbstractThis essay surveys recent work by literary critics on early modern English history writing and attempts to provide a perspective on the relatively marginal status of historiography within early modern literary studies. In associating the emergence of humanism closely with the beginning of early modernity, historians and literary critics have created a division within early modern historiography that elevates the “humanist” history at the expense of the chronicle, often dismissively characterized as a “medieval” literary form and neglected as a focus of study. This division has in turn produced a narrowly specific understanding of the forms of writing that qualify as humanist histories, omitting drama, philosophical dialogues, and much of the period's Latin‐language historiography. Many contemporary critics, however, have undertaken projects that attempt both to broaden current understandings of humanist historical thought and to integrate chronicle texts more fully into the study of early modern literature. These projects include formal analytical studies that survey more and more genres of writing as well as new editions of early modern historiographical texts, produced across a wide range of media.

Europe and the People without Historiography; or, Reflections on a Self-Inflicted Wound

36Historically Speaking · March 2004 commonplaces about early China tell us, the "Confucians" ofthe pre-imperial era (thatis, before the beginning ofthe Han dynasty in 206 B.CE.) exerted negligible influence over theprinces oftheir day, whose pleasures ranto grandhunts, harems, spectacularbronze arrays of bells, enormous palaces and gardens, and military campaigns involving hundreds of thousands ofmen. Such power as the scholars and lovers oftradition enjoyed seemingly derived from their roles as ritual advisors for certain limited occasions, preservers oftraditions of knowledge about old practices and myths, and perhaps as transmitters and interpreters ofold texts. Their advice on statecraft did not necessarily carry much weight. Yet it would seem that in these impotent centuries theywere also developingthe accounts ofthe Spring and Autumn history thatwould, with the earlyimperial elevation ofConfucius and the body oftexts and thought associatedwith him, turn the pastinto a series oftestcases for the effectiveness ofritual diligence. It is difficult to predict where a serious engagementwith literaryand rhetorical analysisinthe studyofearlyChinese textswilllead. Atpresent, the attentionofscholarsinmyfield is focused on die numerous early texts that archaeological digs have recently brought to light, and the first response ofmanyhas been to attempt to fit these new finds into existing models of early Chinese intellectual history. To be sure, efforts to date these texts and to identifytheirlikelyauthors are indispensable. But one worries that with archaeologically recovered texts, as with the texts handed down tousinlongmanuscripttransmissions, a devotion to old models will obscure the classification -breakingcommonalities and truth-makingprocedures thatliteraryanalysis can bring to lightin the case ofhistoriography. Abetter procedure, in my view, would start from the recognition thatthe earlyChinese, as speakers and writers, knew full well that such matters as verbal beauty and generic excellence were notsuperfluousornaments, butthereal stuffof powerful representation, the artfulness that could carry the day. Ifit is a shame to lose die mirage ofhistorical accuracy that early Chinese historiographyhas seemed to project, the compensation is ample: in place ofslavish documentarians , we getstrategists, savvyrhetoricians , and bold thinkers—not the Chinese Other, any longer, but the Chinese sembhble. DavidSchaberg isassociateprofessor in the Department ofEastAsian Languagesand Cultures at UCLA. His A Patterned Past: Form and Thought in Early Chinese Historiography (Harvard University Press, 2002) won theAssociationforAsian Studiesi 2003 Levenson Prize. 1 These are only the two most influential historiographical texts to survive from the 1st millennium B.C.E. Others that deserve mention here include the Book ofDocuments (Shangsbu), which includes certain speeches thatmaydate to the 11th century, and the Bamboo Annals (Zhushujinian), which in manyrespects resembles the SpringsandAutumns. 2 Thestandard Chinese textoftheZuozhuanis Yang Bojun, Chunqiu Zuozhuan zbu (An Annotation ofthe Springs andAutumns and Zuo Tradition), 4 vols. (Rev. ed., Zhonghua shuju, 1990); see 677-78. The translation is myown. The onlycomplete English translation ofthe Zuozhuanis thatofJames Legge, The Ch'un Ts'ew with the Tso Chuen, first published in 1872 as part ofLegge's multi-volume The Chinese Classics. A monumental achievement in its own time, it is now dated. A new version, by Stephen Durrant, LiWaiyee, and myself, is nearingcompletion and will appear within two or three years. 3 Yang, Chunqiu Zuozhuan zhu, 857-58. 4 The poem cited here and below is "Tu ju" or "Rabbit Snares," the seventh ofthe 305 included in the present text ofthe Odes. Europe and the People without Historiography; or, Reflections on a Self-Inflicted Wound Sanjay Subrahmanyam In this essay I want to call into question four widely held assumptions in that illdefined field of postcolonial studies. I certainly share some preoccupations and even assumptions with those with whom I wish to debate. Like them, I am concerned with the tenacious hold that a linear vision ofWestern history from ancient Greece to the United States ofClinton and Bush (with obligatory pit stops at Rome, the Carolingians , the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution) has on school and college curricula. I abhor the insidious assumption that to know Europe is effectively to know the world. Also, I am concerned that a recentwave ofimperial nostalgia , together with a market-friendly millenarianism, has given new life to the myth that the European colonial empires of the 19di and 20th centuries were really quite benign structures. We are now told insistentlythatthe British Empire noblybrought modernity to the heathens, and that we should all...

FÉCAMP AND VERNACULAR HISTORIOGRAPHY

Peter Damian-Grint's study of Anglo-Norman historiography, with its subtitle 'Inventing vernacular authority',1 sets out to depict authorial consciousness and self-presentation in a series of pioneering chronicle texts.2 At the end of his consideration of 'dynastic histories' he makes a passing reference to the Geste de Burch and the Histoirie de l'abbaye de Fecamp,3 but they receive no further consideration. The truth is that the Histoirie de l'abbaye de Fecamp (first half of the thirteenth century) has been totally neglected since it was first published in 1928,4 although it offers an instructive and substantial contribution to the subject of Damian-Grint's investigation, as well as raising a number of more general issues connected with translation. There is an undeniable need, therefore, for an appreciation of the work to appear in print.Students of medieval adaptations and compilations of source texts arc familiar with the problem of the ambiguous nrst person: does it represent the voice of the source or of the adaptation?5 Embarrassing mistakes have been made through failure to recognize that a nrst-person anecdote in a medical compilation may not involve the compiler at all but simply be a feature of the source, unacknowledged. This raises the question of how, without the source to hand, a medieval or modern reader could be expected to interpret correctly the nature and status of the authority being utilized. Such problems can only be clarified by detailed study of the individual text as a micro-system, important in such study will be the evidence of authorial awareness, that is, the manner in which the author demonstrates his conception of his task, expresses his approach to his source, and, more particularly, seeks to distinguish his own voice from that of his predecessor(s). Are there any medieval terminological conventions which help to clarify the distinction? What is the function of source references? How is the first-person pronoun to be contextualized? Does the translator want any relationship to the source-author to be clearly defined or is there a planned ambiguity in the relationship as part of a rhetorical strategy? Inevitably, these issues acquire particular prominence in historiographical texts and the question of sources plays a prominent part in characterizing the nature and value of such texts.In the present study of what is a previously unexplored text by an anonymous Norman historiographer-translator my intention is to examine the self-consciousness of the writer, who utilizes at least three different Latin sources, to see how clearly he defines, or wishes to be defined, his relationship to, and dependence on, his sources. How does he envisage his relationship with his audience, and what help does he give them to chart their way through the chronology of his narrative?In his monograph on the Norman abbey of Fecamp, which he published in 1840, Leroux de Lincy edited an Old French poem of 750 octosyllabic lines from a fifteenth-century manuscript (Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale de France, MS f. fr. 1555) on the legend of the Precious Blood which was associated with the foundation of the abbey.6 Almost forty years later, Paul Meyer identified a much longer poem (6,068 lines, incomplete), also in Old French octosyllables, in MS 9446 (olim Ee 150) of the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid, a much earlier manuscript, dated to the middle of the thirteenth century.7 Half a century after Meyer's discovery a Finnish scholar, Oskari Kajava, studied the longer poem in Madrid and published detailed notes on the work with a full summary of its contents in modern French together with a new edition of the shorter poem already published by Leroux de Lincy.8 This paved the way for the edition of the long poem which was published by Kajava's mentor, Arthur Langfors, himself a distinguished pupil of Meyer, who established the Old French text and identified the poem's major sources.9Langfors saw that the vernacular work fell into three parts, or books, corresponding to three distinct sources. …

Le gentes d’Oriente fra identità e integrazione

Mazzarino’s considerations on the 3rd century Syriac political thought make a good standpoint for a research on Oriental gentes and their relationship with the Roman Empire after the Constitutio Antoniniana. This complex question requests a multiple approach, at the same time juridical, social and ethnological. Some cases of integration, such as the Palmyrene Septimius Vor¯od, the Arab Imru’al- Qays, and especially the Armenian Gilakios (a chieftain serving under Justinian during the Gothic war) are hereby analyzed. A cross-comparison of historiographical and juridical texts allows us to put the bases for a non-formalistic study of the evidence.

Psychological differences of reception between literary (fictive) and historiographical (nonfictive) texts

Article Psychological differences of reception between literary (fictive) and historiographical (nonfictive) texts was published on October 5, 2001 in the journal Journal of Literary Semantics (volume 30, issue 3).