Romantic Ideas Research Articles

What is Roman Reconciliation?

Abstract This paper examines in how far modern conceptualisations of peace and reconciliation map onto ancient Roman ideas of pax Romana and Roman reconciliation. Some modern definitions of reconciliation insist on mercy and forgiveness as part of reconciliation; comparing modern with ancient ideas of reconciliation as showcased in this special issue the author suggests to consider Roman reconciliation as coexistence rather than reconciliation in the modern sense.

Elio Aristide e la retorica della città di Roma: echi di modelli greci e paradigmi giuridici

Abstract In a significant passage in his Εἰς Ρώμην, Aelius Aristides uses the terms ἄστυ κοινόν to describe Rome. This expression is commonly considered a Greek translation of the Latin words communis patria. A new contextual and terminological analysis of Aristides’ use of the terms, however, demonstrates that he was actually drawing on the older Hellenic models that also influenced Cicero’s writings on the Roman idea of communis patria.

NATIONAL COLOURING IN ROMANTICISM ON THE EXAMPLE OF LITERARY-CRITICAL STUDIES BY K. ZHUSSIP

Nowadays, the study of Romanticism as a significant phenomenon in literary studies is mainly focused on the investigation of its development under the influence of national characteristics. This research aims to identify the distinctive interpretations of romantic motifs in the works of Kazakh Romanticism poets. Specifically, the article provides an analysis of the development of romantic ideas using Kazakh romantic poetry of the 19th and 20th centuries as a case study, addressing the manifestation of Kazakh national characteristics rooted in Kazakh culture. By analysing the romantic works of Kazakh poets, the conceptual imagery of Romanticism is elucidated. Various research methods, including content analysis and semantic analysis of poetic texts, were used to demonstrate that Romanticism, as an emotional perception of the world and reality, transcends national boundaries. The study concludes that literary creativity is multifaceted, and linguistic analysis helps authors to effectively advocate Romanticism as a means of expressing national characteristics in literature, thereby contributing to the globalisation of cultural understanding. In addition, the study of the emergence of a new hero in romantic works, particularly in religious discourse, as exemplified by the literary-critical contributions of K. Zhussip, is identified as a promising avenue for future research. Keywords: Romanticism, national colouring, romantic hero, literary critical studies, images.

Poetry’s “shimmering robes”

Despite the many essays that provide instructive tracing of Carl Jung’s archetypes in Romantic literature (and elsewhere), critics have declined to examine the important implications and consequences of parallels between Jung’s theory of artistic awareness and Romantic aesthetic ideology. This ideology finds expression in the language of Blake, Percy Shelley, Emerson, Coleridge, Wordsworth and others regarding artistic creativity, specifically its origins and aims, but especially the creative process itself. In this essay, I examine the way Jung samples Romantic ideas and imagery in his characterization of art and in his conception of the religious experience of the artist in the act of creation. In doing so, I suggest that attachment to popular (not always accurate) Jungian ideas about art has reinforced the continued acceptance of compelling Romantic myths about unconscious creativity. I argue that, in his essay “On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry” and other essays, as part of an effort to liberate modern conceptions of art from reliance on mechanistic views of the human mind, Jung impeaches the merits of the Freudian model tied to medical forensics and installs in its place a Romantic theory of art rooted in the idea of intuitive creativity.

Flag Independence without Flags? Mozambican Decolonization on the Periphery of the New Nation

Abstract This article examines the history of Mozambican decolonization on the periphery of the new nation, in the province of Niassa. The article offers new insights into our understanding of Mozambique’s decolonization process “on the ground,” complicating Frelimo’s still dominant liberation narrative. As a central argument, the article challenges the romantic idea of the pioneering role of Niassa’s so-called “liberated zones” in Mozambique’s nation building process. It shows that it was not local (wartime) practices that informed national plans, but rather national directives that were imposed on local experiences. Drawing mainly on sources from the Arquivo Permanente do Gabinete do Governador in Lichinga, the article also hopes to highlight the potential of post-colonial archives in Africa, which continue to be neglected.

Food as an Imagery in Laura Beatriz Esquivel Valdes’ Like Water for Chocolate

The captivating novel Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel was translated into English by Carol and Thomas Christensen. This book has been a worldwide bestseller since it was published in 1993. Magical realism, love, and tradition are among the book’s key themes. Tita, a young Mexican woman whose emotions and cooking are closely related, is the protagonist of the story. Her emotions are evident in every meal she prepares, and the effects it has on those who consume it are often unexpected. The constraints of patriarchy, familial expectations, and the power of passion are all explored in this book. The book tells the remarkable tale of the unique connection between the allure of food and the power of love and is available in monthly installments with recipes, romantic ideas, and DIY remedies. A genuine cookbook is stuffed with recipes that act as the chapter’s epigraphs. The heightened style of magic realism portrays her unique combination of tasty sustenance and sexual excitation. Like Water for Chocolate is a masterpiece because of its vivid fusion of fantasy and reality, and Esquivel’s exquisitely sensual language is extremely detailed. It brews and boils like an incredible spicy bouillabaisse, taking the reader on an imaginative, engaging, and engrossing journey. The story, which combines magical realism, passion, and love, takes place in the kitchen of a Mexican family. Tita, the protagonist, creates mouthwatering food that is flavored with her feelings and has an impact on every dinner. The book deftly blends history, affection, and the transformative power of food to provide readers.

Humans and Farm Animals in Documentary Film Narratives: A Romantic Perspective on the Problem of Capitalist Meat Production

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to examine the role of Romantic notions in understanding contemporary human–animal relations. I examined how three documentaries dealing with the problem of farm-animal exploitation construct the relationship between farmers and meat producers on the one hand and farm animals on the other. Using the method of multimodal critical discourse analysis, I examined audiovisual and linguistic levels of documentaries. I argue that documentary narratives have a dual function in exploring these relationships. First, they produce anthropocentric narratives that focus on the farmer’s perspective and their experience of the relationship with farm animals. The anthropocentric narrative legitimizes the notions of traditional forms of sustainable agriculture in which animals graze freely, and a relationship of trust exists between farm animals and farmers. In this narrative, farm animals are portrayed as anthropomorphized and thus equal to humans. Ideologically, it follows the premodern idea of pastoralism. The second narrative is biocentric in that it focuses primarily on animals. This narrative consists of a critique of the exploitation of farm animals in large, industrialized fattening farms and slaughterhouses. I argue that the origins of both narratives lie in Romantic notions about the relationship between humans and animals. Ultimately, both narratives propagate a Romantic return to preindustrial pastoralism, advocating a harmonious coexistence of land, animals, and people, and rejecting industrial, mechanical, and technological forms of farm animal husbandry. I conclude by asking how Romantic ideas contest late capitalist forms of commodification of animals and what the limits of these ideas are in eliminating the exploitation of farm animals.

Harmonic Parenthesis in Early Chopin

In a well-known journal entry—from April 1849, the year of Chopin’s death—Delacroix describes a day spent with the composer saying, ‘he talked to me about music, and it revived him.’ The journal makes the two men appear intensely sympathetic. Delacroix relates an artistic credo that he attributes to Chopin, but could equally apply to himself: ‘[Art] is reason itself, adorned by genius, but following a necessary path and contained by higher laws.’ In contrast to contemporary critics, who tended to emphasize Delacroix’s use of colour and loose brushwork to label him ‘romantic’, the painter thought of himself as a classicist continuing a tradition represented by the Renaissance masters and Peter Paul Rubens. Similarly, Chopin idolised Bach and Mozart. Later in the same entry, Delacroix shares the composer’s critique of Beethoven; unlike Mozart, ‘he turns his back on eternal principles.’ The boundary between Enlightenment and Romantic ideas is more porous than easy periodisation implies; Chopin and Delacroix are not the only nineteenth-century artists whose work is sometimes more productively understood as an evolution rather than a repudiation of eighteenth-century practices. In the present article I will examine a quintessentially Chopin-esque harmonic device as a development of a technique found in Beethoven.

The Idea of Obligation in Polish Law

In Western legal tradition jurisdictions, the transition from the Roman idea of obligatio to the doctrine of the legally binding relationship was not a universal process. Anglo-Saxon lawyers discuss contract and tort theories separately. Different doctrines have emerged from the development of the theory of the legally binding relationship in the Civil Law Tradition. This article shows how this process has played out in the Polish legal discussion. The specific premises of the Polish legal experience were that applied Roman law had little influence in Poland until the end of the 18th century, Austrian law served as the foundation for the development of the Polish doctrine of the legally binding relationship, the Polish Code of Obligations of 1933 replaced French, Austrian, German and Russian law on Polish territories, and the development of the Polish theory of private law after WWII was influenced by the dominance of Marxist theory. Consequently, the Polish legal experience provides a particular perspective on the premises supporting or blocking the relationship between the doctrine of legally binding relationships and social reality.

Erskine Nicol and the representation of national and religious identities in nineteenth-century Ireland

Abstract This article investigates the visual representation of Irish Catholicism in mid-nineteenth century genre painting through a close analysis of St Patrick’s Day (1856), a picturesque genre painting by the Scottish artist Erskine Nicol. In doing so, it will explore why artists like Nicol, Frederic William Burton and others chose to equate Irish rural Catholicism with romantic ideas of nature and outdoor ‘primitive’ worship. This tradition of representation will be examined in the context of contemporary Catholic institutional expansion across Ireland following the removal of the legal disabilities known as the ‘penal laws’ in 1829, and the parallel emphasis on the church building as the location of worship, the sacraments, and Catholic devotional life. To date, scholars of Nicol’s oeuvre have tended to focus on Nicol’s representation of an Irish national ‘type’ or ‘character’. My reading of Nicol’s St Patrick’s Day, however, aims to extend the art historical investigation of the signification of the Irish stereotype in Victorian painting, and to examine Nicol’s painting within the interwoven frameworks of national identity and religious identity. This analysis of St Patrick’s Day is rooted in a consideration of both genre and historical context, facilitating new insights into ideas of ‘peasant’ or ‘primitive’ Catholicism as central to mid-Victorian representations of the Irish ‘national character’.

Illness, Pain, and Health Care in Early Christianity

Illness, Pain, and Health Care in Early Christianity

On Brown Blood

This article uses the conceptual space of “brown blood” to analyze United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind at the intersection of race and caste. The racial politics of blood has been somewhat submerged in the ongoing discussions of racism and racialization, which have been dominated by the representational politics of skin color. However, the Thind case, as I argue, hinges on an understanding of racial blood politics that intersected with casteist discourses that were also emerging globally. On the one hand, brown blood represents the romantic ideas associating brownness with assimilation. This dimension of brown blood allowed for the ascendance and mobility of savarna Indians in the late twentieth century. At the same time, the Thind case hinged upon the racialization of caste in India’s late-nineteenth-century colonial-caste society. I show how caste-as-blood set in motion new migratory patterns and mobility regimes for perceived dominant caste peoples, which, ultimately, initiated further accumulationist possibilities. My analysis serves to illustrate the complex interactions of race and caste in current global geopolitics, an understanding that is especially important as more and more dominant caste Hindus have intimate relations with and power within the United States.

INVENTION OF “ROMAN”, IMAGINATION OF “BARBARIAN”: THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE IMPERIAL IDENTITY OF ROME IN THE LATER TEXTS OF OVID

Purpose. The author in the presented article considers the late texts of Ovid, presented by Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto. The purpose of the article is to analyze how the texts reflect the processes of formation of the imperial political culture and identity.
 Research novelty. The novelty of the study lies in the analysis of the late texts of Ovid not as literary, but as political narratives that inspired the transformation of Roman identity, contributing to the actualization of the concepts of Self and Otherness.
 Materials and methods. Methodologically, the article is based on the principles of interdisciplinarity proposed in the framework of studies of nationalism, intellectual and cultural history, transplanted into the contexts of the literary history of Rome in the 1st century AD.
 Results. The article analyzes 1) Ovid’s attempts to form an ideal and positive image of power, 2) Ovid’s contribution to the development of Roman ideas about barbarians, 3) peculiarities of Ovid’s geographical perception of the formation of Roman territory as an imperial heterogeneous space. The contribution of the later texts of Ovid, represented by Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto and written in exile, to the formation of political imperial culture and identity is shown. The results of the study suggest that 1) Ovid was one of the first Roman authors who textualized the transformations of political power, contributing to the genesis of the cult of imperial power as an element of political culture; 2) in the formation and imagination of the images of the barbarians, Ovid continued the earlier tendencies of hierarchization and idealization of the inhabitants of the peripheral provinces: 3) the later texts of Ovid, written in exile, became a contribution to the development of the cultural geography of the emerging Roman Empire, based on the glorification and positive idealization of Italy through the prism of its opposition to the provinces.

An Overview of Ku Hungming's Translation Thought -- A Case Study of the Ideas Embodied in the Translation of Analects of Confucius

Analects of Confucius, a classic work of Confucius, is the most direct manifestation of Chinese civilization and is highly sought after and widely circulated even today. In the process, the interpretation of Confucius's ideas in it, the translation has also become an important study. A good translation can better interpret Analects of Confucius. In the midst of the cultural storm in Europe at that time, Ku Hungming took on the cultural mission of spreading Chinese culture and translated the Confucian classic Analects of Confucius into English for the first time, alone and completely. Ku Hungming's conservative ideas were mainly influenced by Western Romantic thinkers such as Carlyle, Ruskin, and Arnold[1]. And thus the translation of Analects of Confucius is heavily influenced by Western Romantic ideas. There are many similarities between Western Romantic thought and Confucianism, and Ku Hungming completes the entire translation with such an ideological background. Therefore, this paper will focus on the ideological background of translation, including social and cultural backgrounds, that Ku Hungming wants to reflect in the translation of Analects of Confucius.

Violence, Conflict and Order in Medieval Norway

ABSTRACT Juxtaposing violence and order sounds like a contradiction in terms. Our modern concept of violence is intrinsically linked to illegitimacy and the disruption of order. This concept is succinctly expressed in the definition of a state by Max Weber, as the instance that has a monopoly on the exercise of legitimate violence, thus making all forms of private violence illegitimate. However, the antithesis between violence and order goes much further back in time. According to the historian David Armitage, the Western notion of civil war builds closely upon Roman ideas of a breakdown of order – a theory which was promulgated in the early empire and served as an ideological justification of the Empire and a correspondingly harsh attack on the republic as a political system.

Why should mathematicians ask politicians to avoid the ancient dilemma of pure and applied mathematics?

Due to the commercialization of science and technology, there is evidence of politicians paying attention mainly to research with immediate applications and benefits. Furthermore, unrealistic requests are made regarding the direct applicability of results in mathematics, a circumstance that may negatively affect all basic and theoretical studies. This paper not only shows that the distinction between pure and applied mathematics is historically and practically unnecessary and unhelpful, but also emphasizes the romantic idea that pure and applied mathematicians should constitute a community and work together to change politicians’ minds.

The Anglo-Boer War as Perceived by Children and Adolescents in the Russian Empire

Peculiarities and factors of shaping of the emotional attitudes of Russian children and adolescents to the Anglo-Boer War of 1899–1902 have not yet attracted the attention of researchers. However, the armed conflict in distant South Africa left a deep impression on children and teenagers in the Russian Empire, which was not been erased decades later. Prerequisites for the interest of young Russians in the Anglo-Boer War were that for many of them the remote South Africa was familiar. Thanks to adventure novels, they had an idea about this region, albeit a romanticized one. For Russian schoolchildren, the increased attention of their adult compatriots to the events in southern Africa testified to the importance of this military conflict. Inspired by the example of adults, they closely followed the course of hostilities and made donations to the Boer cause. Knowing that some of the Boer commandos included teenagers, young inhabitants of the Russian Empire dreamed of going to South Africa to help the defenders of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. The realities of a large-scale and cruel war did not displace the former romantic ideas in the minds of schoolchildren. The war only led to the emergence of other adventure stories based on South African material, which spread through popular culture, including literature and periodicals for children and adolescents.

Facetus and the birth of “European” politeness

Abstract This paper aims to contribute to the study of the first stages of the development of European politeness, through the analysis of the metalanguage of politeness used in two Latin poems with the title Facetus (Facetus: cum nihil utilius and Facetus: moribus et vita), both dating from the twelfth century. These two texts established a fertile genre of behaviour manuals, developed during the Middle Ages both in Latin and in vernacular languages, and illustrate an intermediary moment of transition from ancient conceptualisations of politeness (given that they heavily draw on Roman ideas and literature) to early modern ones. The semantic analysis of the Latin politeness meta-terms used in those poems, such as facetus, decorus, mos or decus, allows us to get a glimpse, through the emic perspective offered by these meta-terms, of the moral order underlying the code of courtly behaviour.

Signing Dynamics of the Signature Rocks

Abstract: This article establishes more clearly the character of a significant but not yet fully explained phenomenon of one of the most iconic episodes in American history. From 1839 to 1869, approximately 400,000 Euro-Americans made the overland passage from the Missouri River to the Pacific Coast, leaving behind hundreds of thousands of signatures inscribed onto the immense rock formations that were often used as landmarks along the way—the signature rocks—one rock alone being said in 1860 to have 40,000 to 50,000 signatures. This study identifies the various cultural dynamics of self-assertion motivating this mass signing, including a sense of trespassing, participation in a great historical movement, "vainglory," and, for the vast majority, the dynamic of tourism (traditional "curiosity" but also Romantic ideas of landscape and the sublime). Native American petroglyphs appear to have been respected within the context of emigrant signing practices, an attitude in keeping with "trespassers" claiming passage but not land. It was largely only with the first generation of settlers, those who did claim the land, that intentional dominance appears to have become a distinct factor in overwriting petroglyphs.

Johann Friedrich Herbart: Grandfather of Analytic Philosophy by Frederick C. Beiser

Reviewed by: Johann Friedrich Herbart: Grandfather of Analytic Philosophy by Frederick C. Beiser Nabeel Hamid BEISER, Frederick C. Johann Friedrich Herbart: Grandfather of Analytic Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2022. xii + 321 pp. Cloth, $85.00 This volume is the newest installment in Frederick Beiser's emerging series of intellectual biographies of nineteenth-century German figures who are relatively little known in the Anglophone world. Following monographs on Hermann Cohen (2018) and David Friedrich Strauß (2020), Beiser's latest subject is Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776–1841), a contemporary of Schelling and Hegel best known in his century as a founder of scientific psychology and an educational theorist. Beiser's motive for presenting Herbart to today's Anglophone readers, however, has to do with neither of those dimensions of his legacy. His claim on Herbart's behalf is bold: that he was the one who "first outlined . . . our modern conception of the purpose and method of philosophy." According to Beiser, Herbart was the first to advance the idea that "philosophy is primarily an analysis of concepts, that it is a second-order logical enterprise that examines concepts rather than a first-order empirical discipline (physics, biology) that uses them." Thus, he bestows upon Herbart the moniker indicated in the book's subtitle: "If Russell and Frege are the fathers of analytical philosophy, Herbart is its grandfather." Beiser supports his central genealogical thesis with several specific claims that would draw Herbart into the orbit of contemporary philosophical naturalism: that Herbart conceived philosophy as an examination of the logic of the sciences; that Frege borrowed Herbart's slogan, "reworking of concepts" (Bearbeitung der Begriffe) to describe the business of philosophy; that Herbart upheld a sharp fact/value [End Page 543] distinction; and that he formulated a "method of relations" for the analysis of concepts derived strictly from the given. Most importantly, perhaps, given the received story of the origins of analytic philosophy as a reaction to (British) German Idealism, Beiser frames Herbart as an early opponent of the speculative systems of Fichte and Schelling, and as the source of an alternative development of transcendental idealism that anticipated the later neo-Kantian movement. Whether Herbart's claim to ancestry is convincing remains for his putative descendants to judge. To specialists in the history of nineteenth-century philosophy, Beiser's pitch to analytic philosophers risks appearing reductive. Indeed, a striking feature of Herbart's reception is its ambivalence. During the time when he was widely read, authors as varied in their intellectual orientations as Wilhelm Dilthey, Ernst Mach, and Matthias Jakob Schleiden contended with Herbart as, in turn, a progenitor of psychologism, a pioneer of the application of mathematics to mental phenomena, and a dogmatic scholastic, all before Frege leaned on Herbart to propose conceptual analysis as the distinctive task of philosophy that would save it from irrelevance in the face of the forward march of the positive sciences. Meanwhile, Herbart's most compelling claim to distinction, that he initiated (along with Jakob Friedrich Fries) a naturalistic alternative to the Fichte-Schelling-Hegel school of post-Kantian philosophy, has been defended previously, including in Anglophone scholarship (notably by Gary Hatfield in The Natural and the Normative). Beiser's attempt to give Herbart a place in the genealogy of analytic philosophy comes at the inevitable cost of evading some of the tensions in Herbart's work that account for his complex influence. Beiser's story—told in the lucid, engaging style we have come to expect from him—spans the length of Herbart's life and career. It also provides a clear overview of all major aspects of his teaching—from metaphysics and psychology, to pedagogy, ethics, and aesthetics. The narrative is divided into thirteen chapters. The first four cover Herbart's childhood in Oldenburg, student years in Jena, and his time in Interlaken as private tutor to an aristocratic Swiss family, which proved crucial for his lifelong interest in pedagogical theory. The next three turn to Herbart's first academic post in Göttingen and his decisive break with his teacher, Fichte, which led to his early efforts to formulate an alternative metaphysics and ethics, the latter notably infused with a Romantic idea of...