thersites. Journal for Transcultural Presences and Diachronic Identities from Antiquity to Date
Not a member yet
230 research outputs found
Sort by
'And they did it as citizens': President Clinton on Thermopylae and United Airlines Flight 93
Get PDFReviewing President Clinton’s speech in commemoration of the victims of UAF 93, held in Shanksville on September 10th, 2011, this paper examines the use of descriptions of the Battle of Thermopylae as a propaganda tool in times of national crisis and war. Reading the speech in the context of the 9/11 memorial tradition and its reception of president Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and Thucydides’ account of Pericles’ Funeral Oration, as well as popular representations of the Spartans’ last stance, it discusses how these manipulations of history are used to propagate certain ideas of citizenship and democratic freedom and silences others. A comparison with Hermann Göring’s use of the myth of Thermopylae in a speech directed at soldiers in Stalingrad (1943) bears this out.Key words: Bill Clinton, UAF 93, Thermopylae, Hermann Göring, 9/11 memorial tradition. Anhand einer Untersuchung der Rede von Präsident Clinton zum Gedenken an die Opfer von Flug UAF 93, gehalten in Shanksville am 10. September 2011, wird in diesem Artikel die Verwendung von Beschreibungen der Schlacht bei den Thermopylen als Propagandawerkzeug in Zeiten nationaler Krisen und Krieg untersucht. Wird die Rede gelesen im Zusammenhang mit der Tradition des Gedenken von 9/11 und seiner Rezeption der Gettysburg-Rede Präsident Lincolns und der Gefallenenrede des Perikles bei Thukydides, wie auch populärer Beschreibungen des letzten Kampfes an den Thermopylen, wird beschrieben wie diese Manipulationen der Geschichtsschreibung verwendet werden, um bestimmte Ideen über Bürgergesellschaft und demokratische Freiheit hervorzuheben, während andere verschwiegen werden. Ein Vergleich mit Hermann Görings Verwendung des Mythos von der Schlacht an den Thermopylen in seiner Stalingrad Rede (1943) hebt dies hervor. Schlüsselwörter: Bill Clinton, UAF 93, Thermopylen, Hermann Göring, 9/11 Tradition des Gedenkens
Memories of (Ancient Roman) War in Tolkien’s Dead Marshes
Get PDFThe dark, malodorous wetland called the Dead Marshes ranks among the most memorable and enigmatic landscapes in fantasy literature. While one influential line of scholarship connects the passage to Tolkien’s experiences in the Great War, this article argues that the Marshes should also be read as a reception of Tacitus’s depiction of the Teutoburg Forest. The link between the two texts is both simple and complex. Tolkien read Tacitus, and the latter’s influence has been detected elsewhere in The Lord of the Rings; yet Tolkien identified William Morris as an even more important source for the Marshes than the Great War, and the relevant passage in Morris is also a reception of Tacitus. It will be shown that Tolkien comes closer to Tacitus than Morris in his vision of the way landscapes manifest—to sight, hearing, and touch—the memory and meaning of military losses. Recognizing this reception both explains Tolkien’s ascription of such importance to Morris and offers an important example of a modern author reaching outside his own era and genre to participate in a distinctly Roman tradition of representing war-dead, landscape, and memory. Le marécage malodorant et sombre appelé les Marais Morts se classe parmi les paysages les plus mémorables et énigmatiques de la littérature fantastique. Bien qu’une tendance influente de la recherche rattache ce passage à l’expérience de Tolkien pendant la Grande Guerre, cet article soutient que les Marais devraient également être interprétés comme une réception de la représentation de la forêt de Teutoburg chez Tacite. La connexion entre les deux textes est à la fois simple et complexe. Tolkien a lu Tacite, et l’influence de ce dernier a été détectée ailleurs dans Le Seigneur des anneaux; mais Tolkien a identifié William Morris comme une source encore plus importante pour les Marais que la Grande Guerre, et le passage en question chez Morris est également une réception de Tacite. On verra que Tolkien se rapproche de Tacite plus que de Morris dans sa vision de la façon dont les paysages rendent sensible à la vue, à l’ouïe et au toucher, le souvenir et la signification des morts militaires. La mise en évidence de cette réception explique l’importance que donne Tolkien à Morris tout en offrant un exemple important d’incursion d’un auteur moderne hors de son époque et de son genre, pour participer à une tradition nettement romaine dans la représentation des victimes militaires, des paysages et de la mémoire
Rezension: Margaret Malamud, African Americans and the Classics - Antiquity, Abolition and Activism
Get PDFDie Deutung der tetrarchischen kaiserlichen Villen in Kroatien und in Ostserbien (Split, Gamzigrad, Šarkamen)
Get PDFDer Aufsatz analysiert die Rolle der drei spätantiken kaiserlichen Paläste von Split, Gamzigrad und Šarkamen in der Konstruktion der kroatischen und der serbischen nationalen Identität in der zweiten Hälfte des 20. und am Anfang des 21. Jahrhunderts. Durch eine Untersuchung der Formen, die diese archäologischen Stätte ider der Geschichtskultur der zwei Länder eingenommen haben, wird gezeigt, dass die römische Antike eine zentrale Rolle in der nationalen Identitätsstiftung auch auf dem Balkan gespielt hat und noch spielt
Review: Federica Ciccolella / Luigi Silvano (eds.), Teachers, Students, and Schools of Greek in the Renaissance (Leiden / Boston 2017) (=Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History 264), XV, 471 pp., ISBN: 9789004338036, €149,00
Get PDF
The Great Homer in Small Sculpture: An Interview with South African Artist Charlayn von Solms
Get PDFAn interview with Charlayn von Solms, the author of "A Catalogue of Shapes"
Sublime and Tragic Fall: When Tiresias Met Athena
Get PDFThe Western cultural tradition has always been fascinated by the myth of Tiresias ever since the prophet’s first appearance in the Odyssey, an event that marks the beginning of his career in both literature and the arts. Among the many versions handed over by Antiquity to modernity, the one recorded by Callimachus in the Fifth Hymn. For the Bath of Pallas touches upon one of the most enigmatic questions in human life, the relationship between man and the gods. The encounter between Tiresias and Athena, as a matter of fact, hides that obscure sense which is at the root of the genesis of secrecy in literature and results in the most tragic and, at the same time, the most sublime of events. Lord Tennyson’s rewriting is one of the many shadows that the myth of Tiresias casts on the western cultural tradition. In his Tiresias the English poet conflates Callimachus’ version with the myth of Moeneceus in the Phoenician Women and establishes significant links with Scripture. Tennyson’s Tiresias, however, is not a victim of a tragic error, he is willing to see and to know, whereas Callimachus’ hero acts unwittingly. This marks the distance of this prophet, who in the end acquires a useless knowledge, from the Greek one, and changes completely our point of view with regard to man’s relationship with the godhead. Such is the difference between the ancient and the modern prophet that instead of asking ourselves “What did Tiresias really see?” – which is the very question at the heart of Callimachus’ version – we might ask a more fundamental question: “Why prophets in a desolate time?”.
Rome for Russian Consumption: Translatio Imperii on Screen
Get PDFA film entitled The Fall of an Empire: The Lesson of Byzantium, came out in Russia in 2008. It has all the features of a documentary. This film, however, does not principally engage with Byzantium, nor is it a documentary. At times directly, but mainly by implication, the narration emphasises Moscow’s own metropolitan status and its entitlement to be the centre of Empire. The film aims to reignite interest in the age-old Russian identity narrative of Moscow as the `Third Rome’. This essay will have a close look at how it attempts to transmit and consolidate assigned content for the national consciousness.
Animating Antiquity: An Interview with Classical Scholar Sonya Nevin and Animator Steve K. Simons
Get PDFAn interview with Sonya Nevin and Steve K Simons, the creator of the Panoply Vase Animation Project