1840 research outputs found
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Siting translation: history, post-structuralism, and the colonial context
No full textThe act of translation, Tejaswini Niranjana maintains, is a political action. Niranjana draws on Benjamin, Derrida, and de Man to show that translation has long been a site for perpetuating the unequal power relations among peoples, races, and languages. The traditional view of translation underwritten by Western philosophy helped colonialism to construct the exotic "other" as unchanging and outside history, and thus easier both to appropriate and control.Scholars, administrators, and missionaries in colonial India translated the colonized people's literature in order to extend the bounds of empire. Examining translations of Indian texts from the eighteenth century to the present, Niranjana urges post-colonial peoples to reconceive translation as a site for resistance and transformation
University of California Press eScholarship editions in process
No full textKnights at Court is a grand tour and survey of manners, manhood, and court life in the Middle Ages, like no other in print. Composed on an epic canvas, this authoritative work traces the development of court culture and its various manifestations from the latter years of the Holy Roman Empire (ca. A.D. 1000) to the Italian Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.Leading medievalist and Renaissance scholar Aldo Scaglione offers a sweeping sociological view of three geographic areas that reveals a surprising continuity of courtly forms and motifs: German romances; the lyrical and narrative literature of northern and southern France; Italy's chivalric poetry. Scaglione discusses a broad number of texts, from early Norman and Flemish baronial chronicles to the romances of Chrétien de Troyes, the troubadours and Minnesingers. He delves into the Niebelungenlied, Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and an array of treatises on conduct down to Castiglione and his successors.All these works and Scaglione's superior scholarship attest to the enduring power over minds and hearts of a mentality that issued from a small minority of people - the courtiers and knights - in central positions of leadership and power. Knights at Court is for all scholars and students interested in "the civilizing process.
Winners in peace: MacArthur, Yoshida, and postwar Japan
No full textSingular for its breadth and balance, Winners in Peace chronicles the American Occupation of Japan, an episode that profoundly shaped the postwar world. Richard B. Finn, who participated in the Occupation as a young naval officer and diplomat, tells the full story of the activities from 1945 to 1952. He focuses on the two main actors, General Douglas MacArthur and Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida, and details the era's major events, programs, and personalities, both American and Japanese.Finn draws on an impressive range of sources - American, Japanese, British, and Australian - including interviews with nearly one hundred participants in the Occupation. He describes the war crimes trials, constitutional reforms, and American efforts to rebuild Japan. The work of George Kennan in making political stability and economic recovery the top goals of the United States became critical in the face of the developing Cold War. Winners in Peace will aid our understanding of Japan today - its economic growth, its style of government, and the strong pacifist spirit of its people
Columbus and the ends of the earth: Europe's prophetic rhetoric as conquering ideology
No full textColumbus is the first blazing star in a constellation of European adventurers whose right to claim and conquer each land mass they encountered was absolutely unquestioned by their countrymen. How a system of religious beliefs made the taking of the New World possible and laudable is the focus of Kadir's timely review of the founding doctrines of empire.The language of prophecy and divine predestination fills the pronouncements of those who ventured across the Atlantic. The effects of such language and their implications for current theoretical debates about colonialism and decolonization are legion. Kadir suggests that in this supposedly postcolonial era, richer nations and the privileged still manipulate the rhetoric of conquest to justify and serve their own worldly ends. For colonized peoples who live today at the "ends of the earth," the age of exploitation may be no different from the age of exploration
Althusser and the renewal of Marxist social theory
No full textThe writings of the French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser and his associates have figured prominently in the development of contemporary social theory. The Althusserian school of Structural Marxism is a startlingly original synthesis of Marxism and Modernism, which has produced a large body of work that extends across the human sciences and the humanities to engage a wide variety of cultures, theoretical problems, and political issues. Despite the fact that Althusser himself is widely recognized as a major figure, the breadth, coherence, and achievements of Structural Marxism as a whole have gone largely unrecognized.In this, the most systematic and wide-ranging assessment of Structural Marxism in any language, Resch provides a comprehensive and thematic introduction to the work of Althusser, Nicos Poulantzas, Pierre Macherey, Etienne Balibar, Emmanuel Terray, Terry Eagleton, Göran Therborn, Renée Balibar, Perry Anderson, Pierre-Philippe Rey, Michel Pêchaux, Guy Bois, and others. Resch's sympathetic and critical study demonstrates the enormous significance of Althusser's modernist renewal of Marxist social theory and its ongoing challenge to post-Marxist movements such as postmodernism and neo-liberalism
The Codex Mendoza
No full textThis book is available in two editions: a four-volume deluxe hardcover edition and a single-volume paperback abridgment. The four-volume hardcover facsimile edition of Codex Mendoza places the most comprehensive, most extensively illustrated document of Aztec civilization within reach of a broad audience. Compiled in Mexico City around 1541 under the supervision of Spanish clerics, the Codex was intended to inform King Charles V about his newly conquered subjects. The manuscript contains pictorial accounts of Aztec emperors' conquests and tribute paid by the conquered, as well as a remarkable ethnographic record of Aztec daily life from cradle to grave. This four-volume publication is an unsurpassed source of information about Aztec history, geography, economy, social and political organization, glyphic writing, costumes, textiles, military attire, and indigenous art styles.Volume 1 contains interpretive essays by the authors and other leading specialists on every aspect of Codex Mendoza . Volume 2 offers a thorough description and discussion of each pictorial page, and Volume 3 is a complete color facsimile of the manuscript itself. Volume 4, a parallel image volume, is the most innovative and in some ways the most useful of the four. It provides an exact duplicate in black and white of the facsimile Volume 3, with the sixteenth-century Spanish text transcribed and then translated into English. In addition, all the glosses are translated and positioned exactly as on the original pictorial pages. The extensive and useful appendices add such things as pictorial charts of costumes and textiles, translations and discussions of all the glyphs in the codex, and a table of comparative chronologies.In making this extraordinary sixteenth-century work accessible (the original manuscript resides in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, England), the authors have performed an invaluable service to Mesoamerican scholars and all those interested in pre-Columbian peoples. The abridged paperback edition comprises volumes two and four of the hardcover, augmented by sixteen color images from volume 3
Faultlines: cultural materialism and the politics of dissident reading
No full textIf we come to consciousness within a language that is complicit with the social order, how can we conceive, let alone organize, resistance to that social order? This key question in the politics of reading and subcultural practice informs Alan Sinfield's book on writing in early-modern England.New historicism has often shown people trapped in a web of language and culture. In lively discussions of writings by Shakespeare, Marlowe, Sidney, and Donne, Sinfield reassesses the scope of dissidence and control. The early-modern state, Christianity, and the cultural apparatus, despite an ideology of unity and explicit violence, could not but allow space to challenging voices. Sinfield shows that disruptions in concepts of hierarchy, nationality, gender, and sexuality force their way into literary texts.Sinfield is often provocative. He "rewrites" Julius Caesar to produce a different politics, compares Sidney's idea of poetry to Leonid Brezhnev's, and reinstates the concept of character in the face of post-structuralist theory. He keeps the current politics of literary study in view, especially in a substantial chapter on Shakespeare in the U.S. Sinfield subjects interactions between class, ethnicity, sexuality, and the professional structures of the humanities to a detailed and hard-hitting critique, and argues for new commitments to collectivities and subcultures
Italian music incunabula: printers and type
No full textMusical notation presented unusual challenges to the new craft of printing in the fifteenth century. Its demands were so difficult that the first impression of music from metal type was not made until a full twenty years after the first printed alphabetic texts. By the end of the century dozens of such fonts had appeared throughout Europe. The books that resulted were often impressive volumes of folio or large-folio size, printed in two colors, with woodcut illustrations.Mary Kay Duggan focuses on the technological processes developed in Italy to print music books. She begins by tracing the history and analyzing the techniques of casting and setting type and staves. She then identifies, classifies, and examines thirty-eight specific types. Finally, the author has compiled a descriptive bibliography of Italian music incunabula, including books containing either printed music or blank spaces for the insertion of manuscript music. Italian Music Incunabula marks a major advance in the study of the paleotypography of music. It greatly enhances our understanding of the impact of the printing press on music and the importance of music books in the work of early printers. Its meticulous bibliography of over 150 incunabula, concordances, and indices will make it the standard reference work for many years to come
American urban architecture: catalysts in the design of cities
No full textConceiving of urban design in terms of architectural actions and reactions, Attoe and Logan propose a theory of "catalytic architecture" better suited to specifically American circumstances than the largely European models developed in the last thirty years for the remaking of cities.After exploring instances of failed attempts to impose European visions on American cities, the authors examine urban design successes that illustrate the principles and goals of catalytic architecture. With a series of case studies they characterize urban design as a controlled evolution, one that must also be strategic, responding to existing elements and guiding those that follow. The authors argue that the failure of American cities to control and guide the energies released in urban development can be prevented by "design guidance". From their own combined experience as urban architects and scholars, they provide a taxonomy of methods to guide urban design toward higher standards and better results
