Academic literature on the topic 'Illustrious vernacular'

The two taboo concepts of incest and inbreeding are not so easy to detect inclassical Arabic literature. True, a persistent reader of classical Arabic literature,whether belletristic or historical, is bound to meet unexpectedly ruderemarks on the incestuous habits of one historical figure or the other (mostoften a non-Muslim) while reading a scholarly discussion on historicalevents. Nevertheless, the sources do not address incest and inbreeding in astraightforward manner. Centuries of pious and even sanctimonious discoursemay have covered these topics with a thick layer of dust, a layer thatGeert Jan van Gelder toils to remove in his comprehensive monographClose Relationships.As an illustrious specialist in classical Arabic belles-lettres, van Gelderrecruits his command in the vast scope of sixth- to nineteenth-century Arabicliterature to reveal a surprisingly large amount of stories, anecdotes, and sayingsabout incest and inbreeding hidden in the well-known canonical literature.By doing so, he proposes a resolution to the presupposed contradictionbetween strict taboos against incest in pre-Islamic and Islamic societies andthe role that incest played in reality. By drawing selectively from the writtensources, he produces an uneven but still convincing conceptual blend showingthe reciprocal relationship between literature and life. What may perplexthe reader is the author's perspective of literature overlapping reality, or viceversa.One of van Gelder’s motivations for writing the book is to analyzeancient customs in pre-Islamic and Islamic societies by adopting psychological,anthropological, and literal perspectives. He locates himself in relationto modern interpreters of incest, like Sigmund Freud, Émile Durkheim, B.H. Stricker, Edward Westermarck, and Edward William West, just to mentiona few. Whereas on the one hand he seeks ideas behind the texts ofbelles-lettres, historical fragments, myths, religious and legal texts, on theother he revels in a strong language of jests, anecdotes, songs of semivernacularand vernacular origin, thus brilliantly building up a sort of realityof his own. Van Gelder is cautious enough to discourage the reader fromtaking this seriously: “Literature is never a true mirror of society and reality”(p. 185) ...

"„Sok szíves üdvözlettel régi barátos...” (“With kind regards, your old friend...”). Coriolan Petranu’s Friendly Connections to the Hungarian Historians. Coriolan Petranu is the founder of modern art history education and scientific research in Transylvania. He had received special education in this field of study that is relatively new in the region. He started his studies in 1911 at the University of Budapest, attending courses in law and art history. During the 1912-1913 academic year he joined the class of Professor Adolph Goldschmiedt (1863-1944) at the Friedrich-Wilhelm University in Berlin. The professor was an illustrious personality from the same generation as art historians Emil Mâle, Wilhelm Vögte, Bernard Berenson, Roger Fry, Aby Warburg, and Heinrich Wölfflin, specialists who had provided a decisive impetus to art historical research during the twentieth century. In the end of 1913, Coriolan Petranu favored Vienna, with its prestigious art historical school attached to the university from the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. There he completed and perfected his education under the supervision of Professor Josef Strzygowski (1862-1941). The latter scholar was highly appreciated for his contributions to the field of universal art history by including the cultures of Asia Minor (Syria, Mesopotamia, Armenia, and Persia), revealing the influence that this area had on proto-Christian art, as well as by researching ancient art in Northern Europe. In March 1920 the young art historian successfully defended his doctoral dissertation entitled Inhaltsproblem und Kunstgeschichte (”Content and art history”). He thus earned his doctor in philosophy title that opened him access to higher education teaching and art history research. His debut was positively marked by his activity as museographer at the Fine Art Museum in Budapest (Szepműveszeti Muzeum) in 1917-1918. Coriolan Petranu has researched Romanian vernacular architecture (creating a topography of wooden churches in Transylvania) and his publications were appreciated, published in the era’s specialized periodicals and volumes or presented during international congresses (such as those held in Stockholm in 1933, Warsaw in 1933, Sofia in 1934, Basel in 1936 and Paris in 1937). The Transylvanian art historian under analysis has exchanged numerous letters with specialists in the field. The valuable lot of correspondence, comprising several thousands of letters that he has received from the United States of America, Great Britain, Spain, France, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Poland, the USSR, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Egypt represents a true history of the stage and development of art history as a field of study during the Interwar Period. The archive of the Art History Seminary of the University in Cluj preserves one section dedicated to Hungarian letters that he has send to Hungarian specialists, art historians, ethnographers, ethnologists or colleagues passionate about fine art (Prof. Gerevich Tibor, Prof. Takács Zoltán, Dr. Viski Károly, Count Dr. Teleki Domokos). His correspondence with Fritz Valjavec, editor of the “Südostdeutsche Forschungen” periodical printed in München, is also significant and revealing. The letters in question reveal C. Petranu’s significant contribution through his reviews of books published by Hungarian art historians and ethnographers. Beyond the theoretical debates during which Prof. Petranu has criticized the theories formulated by Prof. Gerevich’s school that envisaged the globalization of Hungarian art between the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period and that also included in this general category the works of German masters and artists with other ethnic backgrounds, he has also displayed a friendly attitude and appreciation for the activity/works of his Hungarian colleagues (Viski Károly and Takács Zoltán). The previously unpublished Romanian-Hungarian and Hungarian-Romanian set of letters discussed here attest to this. Keywords: Transylvania, correspondence, vernacular architecture, reviews, photographs, Gerevich Tibor, Dr. Viski Károly "

The writing of Buranji in the geographical area that we now call Northeast India began with the establishment of Ahom kingdom in 1228 CE. The first Ahom king, Sukapha, who came along with soldiers and kinsmen from upper Burma ordered the writing of buranji as a part of documenting the battles they fought, incidents that took place, followers they gained etc. Initially, the buranjis, which were either written under the orders of the king or by noblemen who wanted to record and authenticate their illustrious lineage, were written in Tai Ahom language, but later these chronicles began to be written in Assamese. The Ahom buranjis not only dealt with the royal family and polity but also with the neighbouring kingdoms with whom battles were fought or had diplomatic relations. Thus, Tripura Buranji, Jaintia Buranji, Kachari Buranji etc were written. Unlike modern historiography based on rationalist-positivist model, the buranjis, though they chronicle and narrate facts and events based on state documents and other archival material kept in Gandhiya Bharal, are imbricated with myths, legends and non-linear time. Therefore, buranjis are often coupled with literature, unlike the western disciplinary project of historiography which, nevertheless, has been critiqued by scholars like Hayden White, K. M. Pannikar among others. The article, taking into consideration Suryya Kumar Bhuyan’s model of vernacular history writing, examines how the buranjis constitute a unique form that is indigenous and considerably different from the western paradigm of historiography disseminated by the colonial project.

Lo studio analizza criticamente l’ambiziosa opera "Pisa. Ein Versuch", composta da Borchardt negli anni dell’esilio italiano e pubblicata nel 1938. La ricerca ha indagato la peculiare ricezione del Medioevo e della sua cultura nell’opera borchardtiana, restituendo importanza al vasto panorama di studi filologici e storici sottesi al testo e, attraverso una solida contestualizzazione, ha evidenziato al contempo l’isolamento intellettuale dell’autore. Colloqui con esperti e docenti delle università di Firenze, Bonn, Parigi e Pisa hanno permesso di definire lo spessore delle competenze linguistiche, filologiche, storiche, letterarie e di storia dell’arte che Borchardt dispiega nel testo e che non erano state debitamente considerate. Grazie alle indagini archivistiche è stato possibile enucleare il peso della lettura filologica delle liriche dei trovatori provenzali che l’autore affianca a una notevole riflessione sull'opera di Giovanni Pisano. La ricerca ha colto così il respiro europeo nel quale si inserisce l’opera borchardtiana. La dissertazione, suddivisa in sei capitoli, esordisce con l’analisi di un testo sulle città italiane in cui l’autore prende posizione a favore di un’immagine dell’Italia la cui intrinseca natura può essere colta soltanto ai margini del processo di modernizzazione. La ricerca ha inoltre sottolineato quanto rilevante sia stata l’ascendenza humboldtiana nella definizione del rapporto fra ambiente naturale e civiltà umana, così cruciale in Borchardt. Lo studio esamina quindi la connessione fra stile architettonico, stile di vita, arte figurativa e poesia mettendo in luce come l’autore comprenda questi aspetti quali diretta emanazione della civiltà imperiale romana. A questo assunto la ricerca collega l’imponente impresa traduttiva affrontata da Borchardt nel trasporre la Commedia dantesca in un tedesco arcaico che dovrebbe restituire l’alterità di Dante rispetto alla cultura moderna. Quindi la dissertazione ricostruisce la genesi di "Pisa, Ein Versuch" a partire dai saggi e dagli interventi pubblicistici della seconda metà degli anni Venti, che convergono nel progetto di fondazione di una nuova “Mittelalterliche Altertumswissenschaft”. Nel circoscrivere i lineamenti di questa nuova disciplina viene opportunamente esaminato il decisivo influsso esercitato da Stefan George sul pensiero e sulla sensibilità poetica di Borchardt. Nella sezione centrale della tesi prende forma la visione borchardtiana di Pisa città imperiale che l’autore oppone al campanilismo comunale inserendola così in una prospettiva sovranazionale tutta proiettata verso il futuro e l'Europa. Al centro di questa analisi troviamo le figure di Arnaut Daniel, Giovanni Pisano e Federico II imperatore del Sacro Romano Impero. Un suggestivo spunto di lettura ha permesso di contrapporre la visione della romanità imperiale, quale ereditata da Pisa, alla coeva visione fascista della romanità, alla quale mai si piegherà il filologo e lo studioso. Nell’ultima sezione viene ricostruita l’immagine del Medioevo proposta da Borchardt che se risente fortemente della lezione di Stefan George e delle sollecitazioni del George- Kreis, si riallaccia tuttavia alla lettura novalisiana dell’Europa medievale. Al contempo lo studio evidenzia in che modo l’analisi che Borchardt propone della Pisa medievale sospinta ai margini del percorso storico, assume tratti fortemente personali: Pisa e la sua “Causa victa” costituiscono di fatto una proiezione autobiografica dell’autore che mette in risalto la vicenda dell’uomo e dell’intellettuale Borchardt nella sua sempre più dolorosa solitudine, fino alla morte che lo coglierà durante la deportazione. This study investigates the ambitious work "Pisa. Ein Versuch" that Rudolf Borchardt composed during the years of the Italian exile and published in 1938. The research aims at returning the significance this writing deserves providing a critical analysis of the peculiar reception of the Middle age and its contemporary culture in Borchardt’s work, focusing on the large philological and historical background underlying the text. The study presents an unavoidable and solid contextualization highlighting the intellectual isolation of the author. Conversations with experts and Professors of the Universities of Florence, Paris Sorbonne, and Bonn enabled establishing the depth of the linguistic, philological, historical and literary knowledge the author deploys in this text, which had not been brought into focus so far. Thanks to a precise archival survey the study has shown the importance of the extraordinary reflection on the Provencal Troubadours that Borchardt carries out by linking their poems to the masterpiece by Giovanni Pisano, hosted in the Duomo of Pisa. The study has thus demonstrated the European profile of Borchardt’s work. The research is divided in six chapters, the first chapter provides both a textual and contextual analysis of a writing Borchardt dedicates to Italian towns, where he strongly identifies the possibility of discovering the true nature of the Italian landscape only at the edge of the incessant modernisation process. The inquiry has highlighted how crucial was for Borchardt the influence of Humboldt’s vision with relation to the definition of natural habitat and human civilization. Furthermore, the research examines all the references Borchardt develops in a network where he associates the Italian architectural style with the Italian life-style, figurative art with poetry and shows to what degree all these aspects of the Italian culture and life are derived from the Imperial Roman society. The connection with the Latin culture conducts the research to examine the impressive work of translating the “Divina Commedia” into a medieval archaic German, language that Borchardt himself created, in order to highlight the alterity of Dante in relation to modern culture. The study reconstructs the genesis of the text “Pisa. Ein Versuch” starting from the essays and the public speeches Borchardt held during the second half of the Twenties, all of which converge on the project of the constitution of a new “Mittelalterliche Altertumswissenschaft”. In specifying the features of this new discipline, the study provides an extensive examination of the influence exercised by Stefan George on the thought and on the poetic sensitivity of Borchardt. The central section of the research outlines and discusses Borchardt vision of Pisa as imperial town, opposing the communal parochialism to a multinational or extranational vision that projects Pisa into the future and towards Europe. At the centre of this idea are the characters of Arnaut Daniel, Giovanni Pisano and the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. A suggestive reading made possible a confrontation aimed at opposing the conceptual framework of the imperial Romanitas as inherited by Pisa, to the contemporary fascist vision of the Romanitas whose historical ideal the philologist and cultivated author would never accept. The last section of the study discusses the image of the Middle age that Borchardt proposes in his book, showing that if the influence of George and the George-Kreis is clearly evident, Borchardt’s ideal is much more connected to the notion of medieval Europe as evoked by Novalis. At the same time, however, he marks a break with the external influences, proposing a personal interpretation of the story of Pisa, a town that political events has driven to the margins of history and now takes on personal aspects of the author: Pisa and its “Causa victa” embody the biographical condition of the author, evidencing the human drama of Borchardt both as an intellectual and as a man in his more and more sorrowful loneliness, until death took him during the deportation towards Germany.

Cette thèse entend proposer une analyse originale du phénomène connu mais polémique que constitue l’introduction de la notion d’auteur dans la littérature de langue française au Moyen Âge. Il s’agira d’essayer de contribuer à repenser la signification poétique, culturelle et historique de ce moment particulier où l’auteur – c’est-à-dire l’attribution d’un texte ou d’une série de textes à un nom propre donné – s’est imposé pour la première fois comme un critère structurant et primordial dans la production et surtout la transmission des textes de langue française dans les manuscrits médiévaux. Usant du concept foucaldien de fonction-auteur, des théories de la réception et du paratexte, ainsi que de la « Nouvelle Codicologie », l’approche déployée ici aborde l’auteur en tant que construction textuelle et éditoriale signifiante au sein d’un corpus de recueils littéraires de langue d’oïl où la volonté de construire des figures d’auteurs par les éditeurs de ces ouvrages est à la fois claire et indiscutable. Partie à l’origine d’un examen systématique de la tradition manuscrite d’environ 320 noms de poètes de langue d’oïl actifs entre 1100 et 1340, l’analyse se concentre principalement sur 25 manuscrits contenant des collections auctoriales dédiées à 17 poètes, dont le nom est associé avec insistance à une série de textes copiés les uns à la suite des autres. Parmi ces auteurs, on trouve les célèbres Chrétien de Troyes, Rutebeuf et Adam de la Halle, mais aussi Philippe de Thaon, frère Angier, Guillaume le clerc de Normandie, Pierre de Beauvais, Philippe de Remi, Gautier le Leu, Jacques de Baisieux, Geoffroi de Paris, Jean de l’Escurel, Baudouin de Condé, Jean de Condé, Watriquet de Couvin et Nicole Bozon. La présente analyse tente de nuancer et de dépasser la lecture répandue selon laquelle ces manuscrits à collections auctoriales individuelles constitueraient, de concert avec les fameuses biographies de troubadours et les chansonniers de trouvères, souvent présentés comme leurs « ancêtres », les débuts balbutiants d’une vaste épopée de l’avènement de l’« auteur moderne », annonciateur tout à la fois d’une « subjectivité littéraire », d’une « esthétique autobiographique » et d’un contrôle accru des auteurs historiques, réels, sur la transmission manuscrite de leurs propres œuvres. Tout en offrant une mise à jour contextuelle et matérielle – données originales à l’appui – concernant la dimension collaborative de la genèse de ces recueils et le caractère modulaire de leur transmission, on montrera qu’ils sont le fruit d’un dialogue nourri avec le modèle livresque latin et pluriséculaire de l’auctor – qui est à la fois un auteur, un garant de la vérité (auctoritas) et un ambassadeur prestigieux de la grammaire –, ainsi qu’avec l’antique exemple d’œuvres dites « biobibliographiques », qui décrivent la vie et l’œuvre d’auteurs illustres et exemplaires, comme le fait le De viris illustribus de saint Jérôme. Les manuscrits étudiés usent à répétition de ce modèle ancestral de la biobibliographie (« la vie et l’œuvre ») pour mettre en scène un face-à-face entre auteurs de langue d’oïl et auctores. Or cette mise en regard s’avère d’autant plus intéressante que, contrairement à ce qu’on observe pour les troubadours, considérés très tôt comme de nouveaux auctores illustres en langue vulgaire, dignes de cautionner l’excellence de la poésie et de la grammaire d’oc, elle ne prend pas uniquement, en français, la forme d’une imitation ou d’une adaptation de modèles anciens. En fait, l’analogie avec les auctores donne lieu à des exercices savants, autoréflexifs et parfois ironiques sur la fabrique éditoriale, poétique et épistémologique du type d’auteur et d’auctoritas qui peuvent (ou non) être bâtis dans des recueils en langue d’oïl, idiome qui était encore dépourvu à l’époque (1100-1340) de véritable grammaire, et où fleurissaient en revanche les genres littéraires de divertissement comme le roman, où l’on explorait la porosité des frontières entre le vrai et le faux, entre le bien et le mal. Plus qu’un pas pris dans la direction d’un sacre inéluctable, l’« invention de l’auteur français » à laquelle procèdent les recueils étudiés est un geste pétri des incertitudes et des interrogations de ceux qui le posaient, et qui en mesuraient la profonde vanité au regard de Dieu et de la mort.
This thesis aims to provide an original analysis on an often studied yet controversial issue: the introduction of the notion of authorship in French language medieval literature. The objective here is to reconsider the poetic, cultural, and historical signification of the particular moment when the author – understood here as the attribution of a text or of a series of texts to a proper noun – first became an essential structuring criteria in the production, and more importantly, in the transmission of French-language texts through medieval manuscripts. Using Michel Foucault’s concept of fonction-auteur, theories of reception and of the paratext, as well as New Codicology, this thesis will consider the author as a signifying textual and editorial construction within several literary collections written in langue d’oïl, in which the editors clearly and undeniably sought to construct figures of the author. Based on the systematic examination of the manuscript tradition of approximately 320 names of langue d’oïl poets, who were active between 1100 and 1340, this analysis will focus primarily on 25 manuscripts containing authorial collections dedicated to 17 poets, whose names are strongly associated with a series of texts that are copied one after the other. Among these authors are the famous Chrétien de Troyes, Rutebeuf and Adam de la Halle, as well as Philippe de Thaon, frère Angier, Guillaume le clerc de Normandie, Pierre de Beauvais, Philippe de Remi, Gautier le Leu, Jacques de Baisieux, Geoffroi de Paris, Jean de l’Escurel, Baudouin de Condé, Jean de Condé, Watriquet de Couvin and Nicole Bozon. This thesis attempts to question and ultimately discard the common conception according to which the manuscripts containing individual authorial collections constituted – along with the famous biographies of the troubadours and the chansonniers of the trouvères, often considered as their « ancestors » – the timid beginnings of the rise of the « modern author », himself a prequel to « literary subjectivity », « autobiographical aesthetics » and an ever stronger control exerted by actual empirical authors over the manuscript transmission of their own works. While offering contextual and material updates – supported by original data – regarding the collaborative process that went into the creation of these collections, as well as the modular aspect of their reception, this thesis will show that these collections were formed through a rich dialogue with the centuries-old latin model of the auctor – who is at once an author, a guardian of truth (auctoritas) and a prestigious ambassador of grammar –, as well as with the antique tradition of « biobibliographical » texts, dealing with the life and works of famous and exemplary authors, such as De viris illustribus, by saint Jerome. The manuscripts studied here repeatedly used this ancient model of biobibliography (« the life and works ») in order to stage a competition between authors writing in langue d’oïl and auctores. This confrontation is particularly interesting when one considers that – contrary to what may be observed in the case of the troubadours, who were quickly seen as the new illustrious vernacular auctores, worthy of vouching for the excellency of langue d’oc poetry and grammar – , we are not simply dealing here with a form of imitation or adaptation in French of ancient models. In fact, the analogy with auctores allows for autoreflexive and sometimes ironic learned exercises, dealing with the editorial, poetic and epistemological creation of the type of author and auctoritas in manuscript collections in langue d’oïl, an idiom which at the time (1100-1340) lacked a true grammar, yet was used in various literary genres meant for entertainment, such as romance, which explored the evanescent barriers between truth and lies, good and evil. Rather than a small step in the long path towards an inevitable coronation, the « invention of the French author » undertaken by these collections constitutes an action that reflects all the uncertainty and interrogations of those who undertook it, while being fully convinced of its utter vanity in the eyes of God and death.

Charles Keil enjoyed a long and illustrious self-styled career as an activist, musician, educator, and “applied sociomusicologist.” His many investigations included urban blues music, the Tiv people of Africa, polka musicians in Buffalo, and Balkan musicians in Greece. His work has focused on groove and participation, as a response to what he sees as a corrupt and overrationalized Western culture. In this unconventional “open letter” format, the author explores the richness of Keil’s life and work, encouraged by his call for vibrant, vernacular, participatory, nonmediated musics that nurture spontaneity, and by his call for music learning inspired by paideia and groove. The chapter finds excitement in the implications Keil’s practice might hold for music learning and teaching, participatory music making, and for conceptualizing all education as “leisure education.”

Laxedo, located at the foot of the Sierra del Cando, is not simply a geographical space with morphological and functional characteristic -typical of this area at the Galician rural mid-mountain range- but we are also facing a settlement made up of small nuclei that form a single and large polynuclear “village”. To speak of Laxedo is to talk about the figure of Mr. Manuel Barreiro Cabanelas, an illustrious neighbor who emigrated to Brazil. His privileged social status and his large real estate businesses will allow him to be in direct contact with the urban reality of Rio de Janeiro for decades, nourishing himself from the most modern intellectual and technical thinking of the time. Cabanelas, by means of his knowledge, applied between 1900 and 1936, a series of urban planning principles of European and American influence used in the city planning of the Rio de Janeiro -Beaurepaire, Comissão de Melhoramentos, Pereira Passos and Agache. This will change forever his native Laxedo. The study carried out combines an understanding of the urban metabolism of the nucleus through its history and its social dynamics as the effect of emigration. What really gives meaning to the place itself is the balance between traditional rural dynamics, emigration, vernacular architecture, urban influence, and the Masonic symbolism of sculpture linked to the urban layout.