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woman-loving · 4 years ago

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Lesbian Literature and International Networks in 1950s-70s Australia

Selection from Unnamed Desires: A Sydney Lesbian History, Rebecca Jennings, 2015.

I included two passages here, one about lesbian literature and the other about engagement with overseas lesbian magazines, namely the US The Ladder and British Arena Three. Both touch on how customs/censorship laws restricted lesbian connections. (Compare with the importance of media freedom for lesbian subcultures in Weimar Berlin; for more on how lesbians can be affected by anti-gay laws absent direct criminalization, see how lesbians were policed in 1950s-70s Sydney.) I also appreciated the description of how engagement with literature can be a form of lesbian expression.

For those women who lived discreet lives or who were unable to locate other lesbians in this period, literature and other cultural representations of same-sex desire played an important role in alleviating their sense of isolation. Novels with lesbian characters or themes enabled women both to find a language for their own desires and to realise that they were not alone. Their significance to women in this period is testified to by the frequency with which lists of lesbian literature appeared in early issues of lesbian and feminist journals. Although identifying and obtaining lesbian-themed literature could be problematic without the assistance of such lists, reading these works offered women the opportunity to engage with a discourse of same-sex desire without the risks of exposure inherent in reaching out physically to other lesbians. In an article entitled ‘On the Virtues of Remaining in Your Closet!’, contributed by ‘a gaygirl’ to lesbian and gay paper Campaign in the 1970s, one discreet lesbian drew on a rich array of cultural sources to reinforce her impassioned plea for the right to conceal her sexuality.[17] The author attached no personal details to the article and observed that she planned to ‘post this anonymously from a suburb I don’t live in’. Her family, she claimed, was hostile to homosexuality and unaware of her own same-sex desires, as were her friends and work colleagues. Nevertheless, she noted that ‘about the time I discovered I was gay, I read everything I could on the subject of homosexuality.’ The article demonstrated that, while maintaining a ‘closet’ identity in everyday life, she had been able to actively participate in a discursive lesbian and gay community through the medium of the press, the theatre and Campaign itself. In assembling her arguments, she referred to a letter to the editor of an Australian newspaper by a gay man; an article in Time Magazine entitled ‘Gays on the March’; and a performance of Peter Kenna’s play Mates at the Nimrod Theatre in Sydney. Her consumption of cultural representations of homosexuality had helped to shape her own sense of gay identity and community, and ultimately enabled her to enter into dialogue with that community without conflicting with the need for concealment.

In earlier decades, however, women’s need for such literature, and the difficulties of locating it, were correspondingly increased. The cultural imperative to silence desire between women and to conceal it from families and society at large was reinforced for much of the mid-twentieth century by the paucity of literary and media portrayals of the subject. Margaret commented that books were neither accessible nor relevant in her attempt to make sense of her same-sex desires in the late 1950s[...]. As Margaret noted, literary representations of desire between women were extremely limited prior to the 1970s and were rendered largely inaccessible by the difficulties of locating them. For working-class women such as Margaret, who had not been raised in a culture of reading, literature did not in any case represent an obvious source of information. Strict censorship laws further restricted access to such works in Australia.

The importing of books and written materials deemed indecent or obscene was banned under the Trade and Customs Act 1901, and thereafter many of the decisions regarding which titles should be banned were taken arbitrarily by individual Customs officials who seized books at the point of entry into Australia. In 1933, the Book Censorship Board (renamed the Literature Censorship Board in 1937 and ultimately disbanded in 1967) was established to consider those books which were deemed marginal or literary.[19] The presence of homosexuality as a theme was accepted as grounds for censorship and Nicole Moore argues that:

“Censors actively targeted the expression of same-sex desire, descriptions of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, and cross-dressed sexual practice, the elaboration of gay and lesbian identities as identities, agitation against restrictions on the expression of same-sex themes, as well as many other forms of meaning moving beyond a straight, reproductive model for intimacy and sexual life. Until late in the twentieth century, homosexuality was seen as a pornographic and perverted form of obscenity where present in literary or popular novels, avant-garde poetry or films of all kinds, magazines or postcards. From the earliest moments of government censorship in Australia, and increasingly as an explicit priority, the erasure of homosexual meaning from as many public fora and discourses as possible was achieved to a significant degree.”[20]

A number of notable lesbian novels were banned, several limiting the availability of literary representations of female same-sex desire. Radclyffe Hall’s controversial British lesbian novel, The Well of Loneliness, was banned in 1929, following its obscenity trials in the UK and US. Moore claims that Australian censors attempted to obtain a copy of the novel following its prohibition in England in 1928. However, they were unable to locate one as such copies as had been circulating in Australia had apparently been sent to England in the wake of the trail to be sold on the lucrative black market there. In the absence of a review copy, Customs officials banned it sight unseen on the basis of English law. The ban was lifted in Australia some time between 1939 and 1946, unusually prior to the UK release date of 1949. However, the absence of a high-profile obscenity trail like that which occurred in the UK, Moore argues, meant that lesbian identity was not publicly debated in Australia in the same way. [...] The secrecy surrounding The Well’s subsequent Australian release further limited its availability in Australia, where many booksellers remained unaware that it was now legally possible to order copies and offer the novel for sale. It was not until the mid-1960s that US lesbian pulp fiction, such as Tereska Torres’ Women’s Barracks, was allowed through Australian Customs and it was a further decade before the first Australian lesbian novel, Kerryn Higgs’ All That False Instruction, was published.[22]

Despite the difficulties of locating literary representations of female same-sex desire in mid-twentieth century Australia, however, some women clearly managed to do so. By the 1960s a number of international lesbian novels were officially available in Australia, but even a generation earlier, despite strict censorship, women were able to obtain a limited range of lesbian-themed literature. Beverley recalled buying a copy of The Well of Loneliness in ��one of the big bookshops in Sydney’ immediately after the war while ‘C.P.’ told British lesbian magazine Arena Three about her experience borrowing the novel from a Sydney library in 1950[...]. In the 1950s, Georgie came across The Straggler by Danish novelist Agnete Holk.[24] The Straggler was passed by the Literature Censorship Board in 1954, and board member Kenneth Binns noted: ‘this is the first time, to my knowledge, that a novel dealing seriously with the subject of lesbianism has been submitted to the board.’[25] Even when women were able to locate lesbian-themed books in bookshops or newsstands, purchasing such a book often proved a challenge for women accustomed to a life of concealment. Kerryn Higgs recalled the difficulties a friend of hers had experienced in attempted to buy The Well of Loneliness:

“I remember a friend telling me the story that she was unable to buy The Well of Loneliness even though it had no subtitle [identifying it as lesbian] for she was afraid of what the cashier would think, so she pinched it instead.”[26]

Higgs was concerned that her publisher’s decision to append the subtitle ‘A novel of Lesbian Love’ to her own novel, All That False Instruction, would create similar obstacles for women who wished to obtain the book discreetly.

The impact of lesbian literature on women who had encountered few, if any, depictions of desire between women varied considerably. Deborah described her discovery of Violette Le Duc’s novel La Batarde in 1965 as a revelation, it being her first encounter with representations of lesbianism. [...] For Deborah, the experience had a profound effect on her understanding of her own sexuality. She recalled: ‘So I read the book, and then I thought “Wow! This is me, this explains how I feel.”‘[28] Other women, however, felt that literary portrayals of lesbianism simply reinforced broader cultural messages about silence and isolation. Laurie complained that the cheap paperback novels she read in the 1960s and early 1970s were ‘so depressing, there was never a happy ending. They [the lesbian characters] either got killed, or went straight and saw the errors of their ways and all that sort of shit.’[29] When Robyn told her mother that she was a lesbian in the early 1970s, her mother was concerned about the risk of loneliness and Robyn connected the fear with Radclyffe Hall’s novel, The Well of Loneliness[...].

When Kerryn Higgs’ semi-autobiographical novel All That False Instruction was published in 1975, its reception was an indicator of how much, and how little, had changed. Despite the author having been awarded a publisher’s prize to develop the book, when the lesbian content of the novel became known, familial disapproval and threats of legal action forced the publisher (Angus & Robertson) to delay publication and the author to publish under the pseudonym Elizabeth Riley.[31] Reviewers in the Melbourne Age and The Australian objected to the novel’s lesbian theme and its depiction of men. [...] However, the existence in 1975 of a flourishing feminist and gay press meant that the novel was also received into an appreciative political environment and it was widely reviewed in lesbian and feminist circles. Sue Bellamy, reviewing the novel for feminist journal Refractory Girl, described it as an ‘exceptional piece of work’. Her engagement with the novel derived to a considerable extend from her identification with the experiences of the lesbian central character and, by extension, the author. [...]

For lesbian readers, and particularly those outside of the feminist community addressed by Sue Bellamy, this familiarity could be a source of both comfort and discomfort. While for Bellamy and others, reading from the relative safety of 1975, the sense of shared experience was validating, the setting of the book in the different cultural context of 1960s New South Wales could be unsettling. Escaping a rural working-class upbringing, the novel’s heroine, Maureen Craig, wins a scholarship to attend university in Sydney, where she embarks on a succession of relationships with other women. however, social disapproval from home and at college constrains these relationships, prompting the women to conceal their feelings for each other. [...] Despite Maureen’s fantasies of escape, fear of exposure is ultimately too much for all three of Maureen’s lovers, who in turn abandon Maureen in search of social conformity. Her story reflected the experience of many women who desired other women in this period but whose relationships were constrained by the pressures of secrecy.

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Early encounters with lesbian-themed literature and film afforded some women a point of introduction into a language and cultural framework for thinking about same-sex desire, but the passive and solitary nature of reading could also leave women feeling more isolated, with no one to discuss their impressions with. However, by the late 1950s the beginnings of an international homosexual movement offered new opportunities for Australian women to reach out to others and especially seek discursive lesbian networks overseas without revealing their same-sex desires to family and friends in Australia. Rachel recalled that in the early 1960s: ‘I think people were sending off subscriptions to American magazines even in those days’ and this is confirmed by letters which appeared in a number of overseas magazines from Australian readers.[45] The Ladder, produced by US lesbian organisation Daughters of Bilitis from 1956 onwards, clearly had an Australian readership. The magazine’s round-up of international news frequently referred to stories in Australian and British newspapers, which were derived from clippings sent in by an Australian reader, and from 1970 onwards letters and magazines were received from Marion Norman of the Melbourne Daughters of Bilitis chapter.

British lesbian magazine Arena Three also had at least two contributors from New South Wales and potentially many more subscribers and readers. First published in 1964 by Londoner Esme Langley with the support of three or four other women, Arena Three provided a combination of articles, sketches, news items and a letters page for ‘homosexual women’ readers.[46] In 1964, Kate Hinton contributed two articles, including ‘The Homophile Down Under’, which offered a sketch of lesbian life in NSW and reported on broader social attitudes to lesbianism in Australia.[47] The following year G Mackenzie of Sydney wrote a number of times, enclosing donations to assist the magazine in continuing its work. She congratulated the editor: ‘You are doing a wonderful service to homosexual women. I hope you can keep it going. I look forward each month to receiving A3 and only wish we had something like it out here.’ This, she felt, was an idle hope, and she complained: ‘I guess we are never likely to see an ad in or paper like those you put in “New Statesmen” etc. I guess our mob would have pups on the spot.’[48] Her wish was apparently echoed by other Australian subscribers as in July 1968 the editor advised readers that ‘two Australian girls have recently written from New South Wales to say that, inspired by the example of A3, they would like to start a publication in the Antipodes, and would like our expert advice.’[49] Perhaps discouraged by the rather disheartening advice offered by the Arena Three editor, they did not, however, start an Australian magazine.

For Australian subscribers in the 1950s and 1960s, American and British lesbian magazines offered opportunities to feel part of a lesbian community which were not available to them elsewhere. For some, they were invaluable in demonstrating the existence of other lesbians and the range of communities and identities which existed. [...] Letters often expressed the profound loneliness which women who were not pat of lesbian social network experienced in mid-twentieth century NSW. In 1958 Miss S. from Sidney [sic], Australia wrote to One magazine, based in Los Angeles:

“I know your magazine is not a lonely hearts magazine, but it seems my only hope. I am very unhappy. I’m desperate to write to a lady who will write to me. I am 26 and I don’t like men.”[51]

Seven years later, an Australian reader placed a classified advertisement in Arena Three stating, ‘Lonely Dutch migrant wants correspondence with lady 25/35 interested in migrating to Australia.’[52] while simply reading such magazines helped to alleviate the isolation engendered by the cultural silence around same-sex desire, some women saw these networks as a potential introduction to more personal and intimate relationships. They also provide occasional insights into existing social networks and their role in transmitting information. In 1970, an Australian reader enquired of The Ladder:

“I am twenty and my girlfriend (I’ll call her Sadie) is twenty-two. We have been sharing an apartment for a year, going to bars, and all that stuff. Yesterday a friend of Sadie’s asked her what I was like in bed. When she said I wore striped pajamas and slept like a log, the friend laughed. Now we think maybe we are missing out on something. Could you fill us in?”[53]

In the context of scarce cultural representations of lesbianism, it is possible to read this letter as evidence that overseas magazines provided an invaluable source of information, even to women who were part of a wider lesbian network in Australia. However, it is perhaps more likely that this reader, who was part of a more knowing lesbian subculture centred on public bars, was poking fun at the discreet representations of lesbianism typical of US and British lesbian magazines in this period, which avoided direct references to sexual activity between women out of a concern not to offend either the censors or a sensitive middle-class readership.

While overseas lesbian magazines offered a lifeline to women in mid-twentieth century NSW, as with other literary representations of same-sex desire, access was limited by strict censorship laws. Several Australian readers of One magazine, which catered to both homosexual men and lesbians in the 1950s and 1960s, complained that their copies had been seized by Customs, while readers of Arena Three experienced similar difficulties. Such seizures were apparently sporadic and often dependent on Customs building up a gradual awareness of the content of overseas journals. In September 1966, G Mackenzie of Sydney told Arena Three:

“I got Bryan Magee’s book, ‘One in Twenty’, but in a way I think it is a pity that he gives publicity to MRG and Arena Three, because I suppose that will be the next thing to be stopped by Customs out here.

I noticed after the ‘Grapevine’ came out for sale in Australia giving publicity to DOB and ‘The Ladder’, it was after that time that Customs started to confiscate my copies of ‘The Ladder’ --they didn’t seem to know of its existence before that. ‘The Grapevine’ was reviewed by Customs in late 1965, before it was allowed to be sold to the public, and in 1966 they confiscated my January and February ‘Ladder’ and have got 4 more since then. So the publicity for A3 was no good, as far as I am concerned.”[54]

G Mackenzie’s comment reflect the ambivalence felt by some lesbian readers in this period toward open discussion of lesbianism and lesbian communities. Although a degree of publicity was necessary to enable women to locate resources such as Arena Three, increased discussion carried its own risks. Letters to Arena Three and The Ladder in the 1950s and 1960s indicate that readers used these magazines in different ways. While some women undoubtedly read them in the privacy of their own home, as a means of seeking input from other lesbians without compromising their discreet way of life, others wished to be a more active member of a discursive community, contributing articles and letters in order to enter a dialogue with other readers. For others still, these magazines offered a potential route to a material community of other lesbians, which might be reached either by placing lonely hearts advertisements or by requesting information about lesbian social networks based in bars or private homes.

In 1968, the editors of Arena Three put two readers from NSW in contact with another from Melbourne, enabling the women to meet directly with each other.[55] A small number of Australian women also travelled to the US and Britain to participate in the social networks attached to lesbian magazines: In 1969 Arena Three thanked Rene Vi, an Australian woman who had been organising the magazine’s London social group, for all her work for the magazine, on the occasion of her return to Australia. The editorial team at that time also included another Australian, Carol Potter.[56] While these women lived for some time in the UK and became embedded in British lesbian social networks, other made contact with overseas lesbian groups while travelling. Margaret described a visit she made to the offices of the Daughters of Bilitis while on a trip to San Francisco in the early 1960s. Margaret was staying with friends on a naval camp, and these circumstances shaped her encounter with the Daughters of Bilitis women:

“[T]hey were in an office building, it was just their office where they published that magazine called The Ladder. And it was the third floor or something in an office building on Market Street, so I just thought I’d just go up there and see what was happening. But I was dressing in the manner befitting a visitor from abroad staying with a Lieutenant-Commander and his wife and I got there, introduced myself, I was from Australia and one little dyke said ‘Are you really a lesbian?’ I can see why she asked that question because I looked like some respectable housewife ... And then they said there were all sorts of events and dances and things and could I, would I go with them, but of course I could not, well unless I’d have to make some silly excuse and where would I say that I was going to my hosts?”[57]

Encounters with overseas lesbians could be positive and welcoming, offering openings into the vibrant lesbian subculture which existed in some cities in the US and elsewhere. On this occasion, Margaret felt unable to incorporate this social scene into the respectable parameters of her visit to a naval camp, but, on her return to Australia she did begin to explore the possibilities of lesbian bar culture in Sydney.

#lgbtq history #lesbian history #australia #rebecca jennings #the ladder #arena three #lesbian literature

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wisdomrays · 3 years ago

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TAFAKKUR: Part 376

THE QUR'AN AND ESTABLISHED SCIENTIFIC FACTS: Part 1

It is another argument for the Divine authorship of the Qur’an that it refers to certain facts of creation recently established by modern scientific methods. How, except on account of its Divine authorship, is it possible for the Qur’an to be literally true on matters of which people had not the least inkling at the time when it was revealed? For example, if the Qu’ran were not a Divine Revelation, would it have been possible for it to contain such a verse as this: Do not the unbelievers realize that the heavens and the earth were one unit of creation before we split them asunder? (21.20).

Whether the Qur’an really does refer, explicitly or implicitly, to the kinds of facts the sciences deal with, and the relationship between the Qur’an and modern sciences, are matters of considerable controversy among Muslim intellectuals. We should therefore treat the subject at length.

SCIENCE AND RELIGION

THE CIVILIZATION ISLAM CREATED

The conflict of science and religion in the West dates back as far as the thirteenth century. Due to the essential character of the corrupted Christianity represented by the Catholic Church, which condemns nature as a veil separating man from God and curses the knowledge of nature, any scientific advances were not seen in the West during the middle ages, which are called dark ages in European history. However, during the same period a magnificent civilization was flourishing in the Muslim East. Muslims, obeying the injunctions of the holy Qur’an, studied both the Book of Divine Revelation, that is, the Qur’an, and the Book of Creation, that is, the universe, and founded the most magnificent civilization of human history. Scholars from all over the old world benefited from the centers of higher learning at Damascus, Bukhara, Baghdad, Cairo, Fez, Qairwan, Zeitona, Cordoba, Sicily, Isathan, Delhi, and other great centres throughout the Muslim world. Historians liken the Muslim world of the Middle Ages, dark for the West but bright for Muslims, to a beehive. Roads were full of students, scientists and scholas travelling from one center of learning to another. Many world-renowned figures such as al-Kindi, al-Khwarizrni, alFarabi, Ibn Sina, al-Mas’udi, lbn al-Haytham, al-Biruni, al-Ghazzali, Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, al-Razi and many others shone like stars in the firmament of the sciences. In his multivolume History of Science, George Sarton divided his work into fifty- year periods, naming each chapter after the most eminent scientist of the period in question. For the years from the middle of eighth century (second century after Hijra) to the twelfth century, each of seven fifty- year periods carries the name of a Muslim scientist. Thus we have ‘the Time of al-Khwarizmi, the Time of al-Biruni’, etc. Within these chapters Sarton lists one hundred important Muslim scientists and their principal works.

John Davenport, a leading scientist, observed:

It must be owned that all the knowledge whether of Physics, Astronomy, Philosophy or Mathematics, which flourished in Europe from the 10th century was originally derived from the Arabian schools, and the Spanish Saracen may be looked upon as the father of European philosophy (Quoted by A. Karim in Islamic Contribution to Science and Civilization).

Bertrand Russell, the famous British philosopher, wrote (Pakistan Quarterly, Vol.A, No.3):

The supremacy of the East was not only military. Science, philosophy, poetry, and the arts, all flourished in the Muhammadan world at a time when Europe was sunk in barbarism. Europeans, with unpardonable insularity, call this period ‘the Dark Ages’: but it was only in Europe that it was dark---indeed only in Christian Europe, for Spain, which was Mohammedan, had a brilliant culture.

Robert Briffault, the renowned historian, acknowledges in his book The Making of Humanity:

It is highly probable that but for the Arabs, modem European civilization would have never assumed that character which has enabled it to transcend all previous phases of evolution. For although there is not a single aspect of human growth in which the decisive influence of Islamic culture is not traceable, nowhere is it so clear and momentous as in the genesis of that power which constitutes the paramount distinctive force of the modern world and the supreme course of its victory- natural sciences and the scientific spirit... What we call sciences arose in Europe as a result of a new spirit of inquiry; of new methods of investigation, of the method of experiment, observation, measurement, of the development of Mathematics in a form unknown to the Greeks. That spirit and those methods were introduced into the European world by the Arabs.

For the first five centuries of its existence, the realm of Islam was the most civilized and progressive portion of the world. Studded with splendid cities, gracious mosques and quiet universities, the Muslim East offered a striking contrast to the Christian West, which was sunk in the night of the Dark Ages (L. Stoddard, The New World of Islam).

This bright civilization progressed until it suffered the terrible disasters which came like huge overlapping waves, from the West and Far East one after the other in the form of the Crusades and Mongol invasion. The disasters lasted centuries until the Muslim government in Baghdad collapsed and the history of Islam entered, from the beginning of the fourteenth century, a new phase with the Ottoman Turks. Islamic civilization was still vigorous and remained far ahead of the Christian West in economic and military fields until the eighteenth century, despite (from the sixteenth century onwards) losing ground to it in the sciences.

Cordoba in the tenth century under Muslim rule was the most civilized city in Europe, the wonder and admiration of the world. Travellers from the north heard with something like fear of the city which contained 70 libraries with hundreds of thousands of volumes, and 900 public baths, yet whenever the rulers of Leon Navarre of Barcelona needed a surgeon, an architect, a dressmaker or a musician, it was to Cordoba that they applied (T. Arnold, The Legacy of Islam, p.9). Muslim literary prestige was so great that in Spain, for example, it was found necessary to translate the Bible and liturgy into Arabic for the use of the Christian community. The account given by Alvaro, the Christian zealot and writer, shows vividly how even the non- Muslim Spaniards were attracted to Arab/Muslim literature:

My fellow-Christians delight in the poems and romances of the Arabs.They study the works of Muhammadan theologians and philosophers, not in order to refute them, but to acquire a correct and elegant Arabic style. Where today can a layman be found who reads the Latin commentaries on holy Scriptures? Who is there that studies the Gospels, the Prophets, the Apostles? Alas, the young Christians who are the most conspicuous for their talents have no knowledge of any literature or language save the Arabic; they read and study with avidity Arabian books; they amass whole libraries of them at a vast cost, and they everywhere sing the praises of the Arabian world (Indiculus Luminosus, translated by Dozy).

If the purpose of education and worth of civilization is to raise the sense of pride, dignity, honour in individuals so that they improve their state and consequently the state of society, Islamic civilization is proven to have been a worthy one. There is ample evidence quoted by various writers showing how Islam has succeeded in doing this to various peoples of various regions, e.g. Isaac Taylor, in his speech delivered at the Church Congress of England about the effects and influence of Islam on people, said:

When Muhammadanism is embraced, paganism, fetishism, infanticide and which craft disappear. Filth is replaced by cleanliness and the new convert acquires personal dignity and self-respect. Immodest dances and promiscuous intercourse of the sewes cease; female chastity is rewarded as a virtue; industry replaces idleness; licence gives place to law; order and sobriety prevail; blood feuds, cruelty to animals and slaves are eradicated. Islam swept away corruption and superstitions. Islam was a revolt against empty polemics.. It gave hope to the slave, brotherhood to mankind, and recognition to the fundamental facts of human nature. The virtues which Islam inculcates are temperance, cleanliness, chastity, justice, fortitude, courage, benevolence, hospitality, veracity and resignation.. Islam preaches a practical brotherhood, the social equality of all Muslims. Slavery is not part of the creed of Islam. Polygamy is a more difficult question. Moses did not prohibit it. It was practised by David and it is not directly forbidden in the New Testament. Muhammad limited the unbounded license of polygamy. It is the exception rather than the rule... In resignation to God’s Will, temperance, chastity, veracity and in brotherhood of believers they (the Muslims) set us a pattern which we should well to follow. Islam has abolished drunkenness, gambling and prostitution, the three curses of the Christian lands. Islam has done more for civilization than Christianity. The conquest of one-third of the earth to his (Muhammad’s) creed was a miracle.

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maryanntorreson · 4 years ago

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10 incredible women in history you should know

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A few years ago, I began to notice that the people I taught about in my World History classes were, more often than not, European men.

When women were included in the state curriculum, they felt like token inclusions who were often related to men and discussed in proximity to them; not as independent actors. They were often queens or empresses, and only a few women of “normal” status made our lessons. I began the work of analyzing my World History lessons to make them more inclusive and diverse. I found that by including women with different backgrounds, fields, and from different parts of the world, I could provide students with role models they could identify with, and remind male students that women are capable of greatness too.

Here’s some additional good news: we don’t need to carve out a single month, special lesson, or unit, to incorporate women into our lessons. First, when planning, I ensure that I include women next to their male colleagues in all my materials. Then, when executing the lessons, I tell these women’s stories in as well-rounded a way as possible because it’s not just who we teach about— it’s how we approach their story that can give it power.

For example, when I teach about Cleopatra, I don’t just talk about her in relation to Julius Caesar or Marc Antony— I spend time discussing how she was a linguist, and the first Greek of the Ptolemaic line ruling Egypt who learned to speak Egyptian; she was a scholar and a woman who understood her people. When I teach about women like the Empress Josephine or Marie Antoinette, I discuss their emotions, letters, relationships, and struggles in unhappy marriages.

In all narratives that we share, male and female alike, we have the opportunity to humanize history, to make people on pages relatable by talking about their emotions, their mental health, and their experiences. When we bring them to life for students, we draw students into history.

I polled my students, past and present, to ask them which figures they remember most, and I have included some of their favorites as well my own. Here are 10 amazing women you should know and share, from the 300s CE to the 1900s CE:

1. Hypatia (c. 370 CE – March 415 CE) – Ancient Rome

Hypatia of Alexandria was a philosopher, mathematician, and teacher, born in Alexandria, Egypt around 370 CE, just before Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. She was the daughter of a mathematician who taught her math and astronomy, and trained her in Neo-Platonic philosophy. She joined her father as a teacher at the University of Alexandria, and was a beloved teacher who fostered an open environment, teaching pagans, Jews, and Christians.

Both her presence as a female teacher and her insistence on an accepting classroom in an increasingly hostile religious atmosphere of early Christian Rome made her courses unusual and that much more coveted. She was widely known for her love of learning and expertise, but in 415 CE, due to her high profile and power as a non-Christian woman, she was targeted by a mob of Christian monks who killed her in the streets. They then also burned the University of Alexandria, forcing the artists, philosophers, and intellectuals to flee the city. Hypatia’s life models open-mindedness, generosity, and a love of learning, and her death is often discussed as a watershed turning point in the Classical world.

Topics you can connect her to in history include the connections between Roman and Greek philosophy, and the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire. Students have loved learning about a woman who taught in such an open-minded way, and learning she is one of my role models too.

2. Empress Theodora (c. 497 – c. 548) – The Byzantine Empire

The Byzantine Empress Theodora was born into a circus family in Constantinople, just after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Her father likely worked as a bear trainer in the Hippodrome, and a young Theodora, it was said, took work as an actress and dancer. The Byzantine Emperor Justinian encountered her one day and, taken by her beauty, determined to marry her. However, because she was a commoner and had a bit of a reputation, special laws had to be passed in order for them to marry.

Though she never technically co-ruled the empire with Justinian, she had significant influence and power, and was a trusted advisor who promoted religious and social policies, many of which benefited women. Some of which included altering divorce laws and prohibiting the traffic of young women. Her name was listed in nearly all laws passed, she had regular communication with other foreign rulers, and received foreign envoys. Empress Theodora is credited with helping stabilize Justinian’s power after she urged him to stand his ground during the Nika revolt of 532 CE.

Topics you can connect her to in history include the Byzantine Empire, naturally, and students have told me they love her backstory and how she fought for women’s rights. They also enjoy how she pushed Justinian to make him a better ruler.

3. Sappho of Lesbos (c. 620 – c. 570 BCE) – Ancient Greece

Sappho of Lesbos was a lyric poet of Ancient Greece who was so famous during her life that statues were created in her honor. She was praised by Plato and other Greek writers, and her peers referred to her as the “Tenth Muse” and “The Poetess.” Very few fragments of her work survived because she wrote in a very specific dialect, Aeolic Greek, which was difficult for later Latin writers to translate.

Her poetry was lyric poetry – to be accompanied by the lyre – and was sung frequently at the parties of high-ranking Greeks. She wrote about passion, loss, and deep human emotions. Some of her surviving poems imply she may have had romantic relationships with women, and thus from her name we get the etymology of “lesbians” and “sapphic.”

Topics you can connect her to in history include the ancient Greeks and Greek philosophy and art. Every year, I have female students who have told me that they valued her inclusion because it was the first time they had heard about an LGBTQ+ person in their history class, and the representation meant so much to them.

4. Margery Kempe (c. 1373 – c. 1440 CE) – Middle Ages Europe

Margery Kempe was an English mystic and traveler, and is also the author of the first autobiography in the English language. She was the mother to 14 children. After her first child was born, Margery had a traumatic postpartum experience of a form of psychosis; for months she was catatonic, experiencing visions, and was tied to her bed for her own safety. For the rest of her life she would experience these visions, and later on she would leave her family and travel on pilgrimages to Spain, Jerusalem, Rome, and Germany.

Margery was known to weep loudly at various shrines and this behavior did not endear her to leaders in the church. She also insisted on wearing white like a nun, seeking specific permission to do so. She narrated her life and travels upon her return to two clerks who wrote it down on her behalf, so it is a unique book in that it shares her very specific life experiences in her own voice. Margery is a conflicting person to teach about because of her mysticism: do we discuss her experiences and travels through the lens of religion, or mental health? Historians often opt for both, as we seek to understand her contributions and life.

Topics you can connect her to in history include Christianity, the Middle Ages in Europe, and travel narratives like those of Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta. My students remember Margery fondly, and she makes their list of favorites consistently. They like how we talk about her through the lens of mental health and that she pursued what she believed despite naysayers.

5. Njinga of Ndongo and Matamba (c. 1581 – c. 1663 CE) – Post-Classical Africa

Njinga Mbandi was a warrior queen of modern Angola. She was born to a concubine of the king of Ndongo and as a daughter, it was unlikely she would take the throne, so her father allowed her to attend many of his important meetings and negotiations, and also allowed her to be trained as a warrior and educated fully. When her half-brother took the throne after their father’s death, he had her infant son killed and Njinga fled to nearby Matamba, but returned when her brother begged her to negotiate on behalf of her people with the rapidly encroaching Portuguese. Njinga did so successfully, due to her notably diplomatic skills and her insistence on respect from the Portuguese, going so far as to refuse to sit lower than them during the negotiations. She won significant concessions from the Portuguese.

When her brother died, Njinga took the throne; at various points during her reign, Njinga was deposed, regained power, lost territory, and gained it. She struggled against the Portuguese to maintain her peoples’ independence. Ultimately, when Njinga died at the age of 81, she left behind a stable kingdom that would be led by women for the majority of the next 100 years. While Ndongo was eventually taken by the Portuguese, Matamba maintained its independence through the 1900s.

Topics you can connect her to in history include Africa and the age of European exploration, as well as African resistance to Europeans. I think it’s important that we show examples of successful resistance and a powerful legacy.

6. Artemisia Gentileschi (c. 1593 – c. 1654) – Renaissance Europe

Artemisia Gentileschi was born in Rome to a gifted painter. Her father trained her to paint and even hired a tutor for her; ultimately this ended in tragedy, as the tutor raped Artemisia. There was a horrific trial and Artemisia was tortured with thumbscrews for “the truth.” Artemisia left for Florence, had a family, and was the first woman to gain membership to the Academy of the Arts of Drawing. She went back to paint in Rome for a time, as well as London where she painted in the court of Charles I, and then settled in Naples.

While in Florence, she painted for Michelangelo the Younger in the Casa Buonoratti, and was paid more than her male peers for her time and efforts. Artemisia’s work is profound, passionate, unabashed, and reclaims the space of women in the stories told about them. She makes women her focal points, her heroines, and paints them in positions of strength, and often revenge.

A topic you can connect her to in history is of course the Renaissance. Artemisia has stuck for many of my female students who have experienced sexual assault or harassment. They have expressed to me that they are inspired by her strength and find solace in her paintings. One of my students even went on to do her senior capstone all about Artemisia, two years after taking my class.

7. Malintzin/Malinche/Doña Marina (c. 1500 – c. 1550) – Colonial Americas

Born to a local chieftain in Central America and a mother whose family ruled a nearby village, Malintzin (or Malinali, or Malinche) was of high rank on both sides of her family. When her father died and her mother remarried, she was secretly sold into slavery so her brother would inherit the land that was her birthright. Malintzin was sold to several tribes, and over the course of her life would learn to speak Maya, Nahuatl, and later Spanish.

She was eventually given to Hernán Cortés and his men in 1519, and upon realizing her skill as a translator, Cortes came to rely on her. Malinztin was baptised as Doña Marina, and traveled with the Spanish for the next few years as they battled or negotiated with various Indigenous groups in the Aztec Empire. She provided cultural context and insight as well as communication skills. Without her, Spanish success in the region would have been difficult to achieve. By 1521, Cortes had conquered the Aztecs and needed her to help him govern. She was given several pieces of land around Mexico City as a reward.

Topics you can connect her to in history include Spanish conquest of the Americas and Indigenous peoples of the Americas. We talk about her complicated legacy as she is viewed by some as a traitor to her people, and to others as a woman who was enslaved and did the best she could to survive in difficult circumstances. My students typically find her a fascinating and sympathetic figure, a woman who did all she could to survive and thrive in adversity.

8. Olympe de Gouges (May 7, 1748 – November 3, 1793) – Enlightenment Europe

Olympe de Gouges, born Marie Gouze, was a political activist and writer during the French Revolution. Married off against her will at the young age of 16, she renamed herself Olympe de Gouges after her husband’s death and moved to Paris. She pursued her education there and rose to a high status in Parisian society. She would host salons for thinkers of the time and would write poetry, plays, and political pamphlets. De Gouges was a pacifist, an abolitionist, and wanted an end to the death penalty. She wanted a tax plan that allowed wealth to be spread more evenly, with welfare for the less fortunate and protections for women and children.

De Gouges was in favor of the French Revolution, but when the Revolution failed to provide the equality it claimed it would, she grew critical. The Revolution was in many ways built on the backs of women: women were some of the first to march against the king and take up arms and they served on the front lines of France’s battles against other European powers. Yet women were not being provided the true “egalite” promised in terms of rights as citizens.

De Gouges wrote her most famous work in response to this, “The Declaration of the Rights of Women” (1791). It was a direct play on The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen that was part of the first French Constitution. She became increasingly vocal, and in 1793 she was arrested by the revolutionary government and guillotined.

Topics you can connect with Olympe de Gouges, as well as Mary Wollstonecraft, include Enlightenment writers and the Age of Revolutions; it is unfair for Voltaire and Montesquieu to get all the limelight! Her ideas resonate for my students as being very modern, and they appreciate that she never backed down from her convictions and is a model of courage.

9. Manuela Sáenz (December 27, 1797–November 23, 1856) – Revolutionary Americas

Manuela Sáenz is the illegitimate daughter of a Spanish military officer and an Ecuadorian noblewoman. Her childhood included a traditional education in a convent, as well as learning how to ride and shoot. When she was 17, her father arranged her marriage to an English doctor who was nearly twice her age, James Thorne. She moved with him to Lima, Peru, where she was connected with revolutionaries who were interested in overthrowing the Spanish in Latin America.

She returned to Quito, Ecuador in 1822, and met the revolutionary leader Simón Bolívar. They fell in love and would occasionally live together and go on campaign together. Manuela would go into battle with Bolívar in the cavalry, and was promoted from captain to colonel; she even saved Bolívar from assassination at least twice. She was also given the Order of the Sun, the highest military honor in the revolutionary government. Upon Bolívar’s exile and death in 1830, Manuela had no resources and lived the rest of her life in a small coastal village in Peru, making money by writing letters for sailors, including Herman Melville. She died in a diphtheria outbreak and was buried in a mass grave. Her role in Latin America’s independence has only recently been recognized, and she was granted an Honorary General title in Ecuador in 2007.

Topics you can connect her to in history include Latin American revolutions and the Enlightenment. My students find her time as a soldier and spy endlessly interesting! I enjoy including women, particularly in this period, who went into battle, such as the women of France who fought in the revolutionary wars. I have female JROTC students who like knowing they are part of a long tradition.

10. Lyudmila Pavlichenko (July 12, 1916 – October 27, 1974) – World War II

Lyudmila Pavlichenko was born in Ukraine and was one of the best snipers in history. She pursued sharp shooting when in school and fought for the Red Army of the Soviet Union during World War II as a trained sniper. She soon began to rack up an impressive tally of kills, reaching 309 in just a few months on the frontline.

The German soldiers knew her by name, and she would engage in some of the most dangerous fighting, sniper seeking sniper. She was wounded four times in battle, and in 1942 she took shrapnel in her face.

She was sent to the United States to tour and drum up American support for the war effort, as the USSR and USA were allies at the time and the USSR depended on continued American engagement. She was often frustrated when asked by American journalists about issues around makeup, clothing, or hair. Finally, she spoke during a tour and said “Gentlemen. I am 25-years-old and I have killed 309 fascist occupants by now. Don’t you think, gentlemen, that you have been hiding behind my back for too long?” This was greeted by a roar of applause.

She got to know Eleanor Roosevelt during this tour and they became good friends. Upon her return to the USSR, Pavlichenko was promoted to major, awarded the Gold Star of the Hero of the Soviet Union, and received the Order of Lenin twice. She continued training other Soviet snipers, and then when the war ended, finished her education at Kiev University and became a historian and research assistant for the Soviet Navy.

Topics you can connect her to in history include World War II and the Cold War. Students adore her story: they find her sass, grit, and action movie skills endlessly fascinating.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Caitlin Tripp is a teacher and curriculum writer for Atlanta Public Schools. Born and raised in West Africa and Latin America, she loves to travel and learn more about the places she visits. She is passionate about women’s history, and in her free time enjoys snuggling up to a history documentary with her husband and their two cats.

Caitlin Tripp originally shared how to incorporate women into history lessons in her Educator Talk submitted through the TED Masterclass for Education program. To learn more about how TED Masterclass for Education inspires educators to develop their ideas into TED-style Talks, visit https://masterclass.ted.com/educator

10 incredible women in history you should know published first on https://premiumedusite.tumblr.com/rss

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harryp22h · 4 years ago

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[FGO Fan Servant Redux] King Sejong the Great (Genderbent)

안녕하세요!

This is a remake of last year’s attempt at making a fan Servant, intended for Hangeul Day to celebrate his legacy. (2 days late...) Probably the only Korean with an actual chance of making it into FGO, if DW ever allows that.

Introducing, King Sejong the Great! Genderbent, of course. Because this is Fate, what were you expecting? (I know it’s not completely historical, but it makes for a fun story.)

Name: King Sejong the Great

Class: Caster

Origin: Korea – Joseon Dynasty (1400s)

Alignment: Lawful-Good

Type: Man

Bio: Curiosity. Generosity. Spite. The 4th King of Korea’s Joseon Dynasty.

An insatiable thirst for knowledge, both scientific and magical, and knack for inventing that led to the kingdom’s first royal research institute. An all-giving kindness for her downtrodden people that weakened her status and health. A pure spite for the nobility, inheritance from her father and reinforced by tragedy. She sought to bring meritocracy onto an already stagnant society. Welfare for the poor. Knowledge to all. For in her eyes, all were genuinely equal.

She who utterly shattered the status quo and changed the course of a nation with just one invention, personally handmade by the King herself. Hangeul, a written alphabet for her people that even a peasant could learn in a week. An invention that may have saved them centuries in the future.

She truly earned the title of ‘The Great.’

[Skills, Additional Sprites, and Lore]

Class Skills

Territory Creation Rank A-: The Hall of Worthies, her kingdom’s first Royal Research Institute, which contained the King’s personal workshop and gave birth to many creations.

Item Creation Rank B: Was personally involved in the creation of Hangeul and many other projects at the Hall of Worthies in the fields of agriculture, astronomy, warfare etc.

Personal Skills

Patronage B: Served as patron to the Hall of Worthies, when she wasn’t busying herself there already. Heavily believed in meritocracy and held the belief that anyone, regardless of status or lineage, could succeed if given the chance. Personally, she handpicked a peasant for the position of Royal Engineer, a true embodiment of her beliefs.

Charisma C: Wildly popular amongst the populous, and able to persuade the fickle Royal Court, regardless of how many times she pissed them off.

Humanitarianism A: Improved literacy nation-wide. Supported paternity leave for both mothers and fathers. Introduced tax reform to reduce burden on famine-stricken areas. Funded many inventions to help improve citizens’ livelihood. She truly loved her people, no matter the costs.

Rapid Words of Casting EX: Invented an entire alphabet for the express purpose of easier and faster reading and writing. Duh?

Entertainment Revision EX: Gains access to skills she does not normally possess. Stronger the more dramatic and flashier the skill is. Similar to Imperial Privilege. (Blame K-Drama.)

Quotes

Edison: Anyone can learn my alphabet in a week. But moving pictures need no introduction. This would have been so useful for so many reasons! Show me more films, Mr Haechi!

Nobunaga: ...For both our sakes, that ‘monkey’ of yours better not show his face to me.

Shakespeare: This is the epitome of western entertainment? Fascinating. You know, I too dabbled in poetry a bit. Perhaps we can share notes?

Touta: The people are the roots of a nation, and those roots should be well-fed so as to create a peaceful nation. That rice bowl of yours is truly beautiful. May I look inside..?

Archer Gil: How could a king who should rule over all people and all things in the country with impartiality treat those of low birth any differently from the way he treats others? I am willing to bow my head towards my people if needed. What say you?

Babbage: ...I want that! To the Hall!

Bond 1: The third child of the third King Taejong (태종), three generations separated from their dynasty’s founder Taejo (태조). Ido was the apple of her father’s eye, her curiosity and (properly timed) rebellious spirit catching his eye, but was initially ignored regarding inheriting the throne. However, her two older brothers abdicated the throne to separate themselves from their father’s bloody legacy of murdering all his relatives and many more to maintain his power. With that, the path was cleared and Ido took to the throne upon her father’s surprisingly peaceful death, taking the name Sejong for herself. Contrast to the previous king’s blood-soaked reign, Sejong devoted herself to her people and to improving quality of life throughout the nation, even establishing the Hall of Worthies to advance the field of agriculture, astronomy, warfare etc. with her patronage and personal participation. She did inherit her father’s dislike for the nobility, and for good reason.

Bond 2: She did not care for social norms and promoted meritocracy, holding the belief that if anyone, regardless of status or bloodline, could accomplish anything if they were giving a chance to prove themselves. Her embodiment of this belief would be Jang Yeong-sil (장영실), a former peasant-turned-Royal Engineer and close confidant. Having heard rumours of his cleverness, she personally invited the son of an escort to the palace, where he managed to impress the King. Excited, she took him under her wing, despite the protests of the nobility. Nevertheless, he would prove himself a worthy ally, helping to create independent advancements in the fields of astronomy and meteorology using his knack for inventing. Bonding over their love of the pursuit of knowledge, he and the King shared a very close friendship, one plagued with hijinks, ‘SCIENCE!’, and ink-soaked robes. Her trust in him was absolute, even willing to forgive him immediately when one of his inventions proved faulty and injured the test subject… who just so happened to be the King herself. Unfortunately, the nobility, jealous of the inventor and fearful for their own positions, seized upon this opportunity, having him tried and imprisoned in spite of the King’s protests.

A betrayal unlike no other. A reminder of the callousness of the Royal Court and of her fragile power.

Bond 3: Noble Phantasm: [훈민정음 – 한글]

The Proper Words for the Instruction of the People.

Rank: EX

King Sejong’s most influential creation. The one that would forever earn her the title of ‘The Great’. Developed in secret at the Hall of Worthies, its very existence alone had the potential to put even a king’s life in danger. Penned by the King personally, it was a scientifically-designed featural alphabet with 17 constants and 11 vowels, created to replace the ill-fitting Chinese characters that had been in use up to this point, in spite of Korea having had a separate spoken language for centuries. Designed for ease of reading and writing, even a peasant could learn in a busy week, an afternoon for a noble. Upon its completion, it was initially announced to the Royal Court, who opposed its very existence. Even those loyal to the crown protested, fearful that a literate populous would prove unruly and rebellious. In spite of, or perhaps because of the protests of the nobility, it was released on October 9, 1495, immediate adopted by the public.

Bond 4: Literacy reached an all-time high. It would kickstart a literary Renaissance that would last for generations, as even the peasants, now literate, could participate, partaking in others’ adventures while sharing their own experiences. Even the nobility, initially disdainful, would later adopt it, both in private and public affairs. But their warnings were right, in a way. An educated populace with ease of communication and plenty of grievances (for future kings) meant many rebellions to come. But it also united a nation. There were no true boundaries between the rich and poor, city and rural. All could communicate to one another, and thus all were made equal. Whether they wanted to be or not.

It may have even saved Korea completely. During a time of both China and Japan pushing and pulling the nation apart, especially during Japan’s forced occupation and colonization, Hanguel allowed the culture and history of Korea to be safely preserved, when it might otherwise have been lost to history, losing them their future as a nation. They prevailed, all thanks to an alphabet anyone could learn, and were restored their heritage.

Bond 5: She claimed to have lived a sheltered life in the palace, but her love for her people far exceeded that of someone who only saw them from above and beyond stone and wooden walls. Nevertheless, she truly saw all as equal, never dismissing a complaint just because it came from a peasant or allowing people with power to abuse those who were underneath them. Sadly a quality lacking even to this day... She is one of only 2 Kings of Korea to have earned the title ‘The Great’ and for good reason. Wise beyond her years and even her society, she devoted everything for her people.

“The people are the roots of a nation, and the roots should be strong so as to create a peaceful nation.”

#FGO #Fate Grand Order #fan servant #OC #servants I want in Fate #Please excuse my poor drawing skills #Hangeul #King Sejong #genderbend

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missmist93 · 4 years ago

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Top-4 Badass Female Rulers

Strong women in power more than once sparkled like bright stars on the canvas of history. Let's take a look at some of them that have left their mark on the history of Russia. 1. Princess Olga Our first officially known female ruler and the first Orthodox ruler. She’s a princess who ruled Kievan Rus from 945 to 960 as regent under her young son Svyatoslav, after the death of her husband, Prince Igor. She was known as a proud, wise and brave woman. She signed several lucrative contracts with neighboring lands, laid the foundation for stone urban planning, streamlined tax collection and paid attention to the improvement of the lands under her control. There is a legend about how Olga outwitted the Byzantine king. He, marveling at her intelligence and beauty, wanted to marry Olga, but the princess rejected his claims, noting that it was not proper for Christians to marry pagans. It was then that the king and the patriarch baptized her. When the king again began to harass the princess, she pointed out that she was now his goddaughter, so he couldn’t marry her anyway.

But her cruel revenge for the death of her beloved husband is best known. In 945, Prince Igor died at the hands of the Slavic tribe of the Drevlyans after repeatedly collecting tribute from them. After the murder of Igor, the Drevlyans sent 20 "best husbands" to Olga, deciding to woo her to their prince Mal. Olga pretended to agree to the Drevlyans' proposal, and, allegedly in order to honor the ambassadors, ordered her subjects to solemnly carry them on boats to her palace. Meanwhile, a pit had already been dug in the courtyard, into which, by order of Olga, the ambassadors were thrown. In 946, Olga went out with an army on a campaign against the Drevlyans. According to Russian chronicles, after an unsuccessful siege during the summer, Olga burned the city of the Drevlyans, Iskorosten, with the help of birds, to whose feet she ordered to tie lighted tows with sulfur. Some of Iskorosten's defenders were killed, the rest obeyed. After the reprisal against the Drevlyans, Olga began to rule Russia until Svyatoslav came of age, but even after that she remained the de facto ruler, since her son spent most of his time on military campaigns and didn’t pay attention to managing the state.

2. Marfa Boretskaya, also known as Martha the Mayoress Formally, Martha was never a ruler, but she had great influence as the widow of the Novgorod mayor Isaac Boretsky, and she was one of the leaders of the Novgorod opposition to Ivan III. In the Novgorod folk legends, Martha appears in the form of a strong and domineering ruler who firmly held her position no matter what. In the 15th century, autocracy spread across Russia, but the Novgorod principality remained a stronghold of democracy. Martha and her son, the Novgorod dignified mayor Dmitry, in 1471 advocated the withdrawal of Novgorod from dependence on Moscow. Martha was the informal leader of the boyar opposition to Moscow; she was supported by two more noble Novgorod widows. Martha, who possessed significant funds, negotiated with the Grand Duke of Lithuania and King of Poland Casimir IV on the entry of Novgorod into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania on the basis of autonomy while preserving the political rights of Novgorod.

Upon learning of the negotiations on the annexation of Novgorod to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Grand Duke Ivan III declared war on the Novgorod Republic and defeated the army of Novgorod in the Battle of Shelonsk (1471). Martha’s son was executed as a political criminal. However, Novgorod's right to self-government in its internal affairs was retained. Martha, despite the death of her son and the actions of Ivan III, continued negotiations with Casimir, who promised her support. In 1478, during a new military campaign, Ivan III finally deprived the Novgorod lands of the privileges of self-government, extending the power of autocracy to them. The veche bell, which used to call the townspeople to meetings, as a symbol of Novgorod democracy, was taken to Moscow. Martha's lands were confiscated, she and her grandson Vasily were first brought to Moscow, and then sent to Nizhny Novgorod, where she was tonsured a nun under the name of Mary in the Conception (since 1814 - Holy Cross) monastery, where she died in 1503. 3. Princess Sophia Alekseevna Romanova Another strong woman with a tragic fate. Voltaire said about her: “She had a lot of intelligence, she wrote poetry, was a skilled writer and orator, she combined a pleasant appearance with lots of talents; they were overshadowed only by her ambition". She ruled as regent of Russia from 1682 to 1689, during the minority of her brother Ivan V and half-brother Peter I. A daughter of tsar Alexei Mikhailovich Romanov and Maria Miloslavskaya, she lost her father during a period of violent feuds that broke out between relatives of her deceased mother and stepmother. According to the laws of that time, only a man could inherit the throne. Sophia had no rights to it, although she was an older sister. After the Streltsy revolt, in May 1682, the warring factions reached a compromise and chose two tsars, two half-brothers - Ivan V and Peter I. Sophia headed the government under both minor tsars.

Sophia achieved that her name was included in the official royal title "Great Sovereign and Grand Princess and Grand Duchess Sophia Alekseevna". A few years later, her image was minted on coins, and from 1686 she already called herself an autocrat and the next year she issued this title by a special decree. The policy of the reign of Princess Sophia in many ways contributed to the renewal of public life. Industry and trade began to develop noticeably. The country began to produce velvet and satin. The Slavic-Greek-Latin Academy was opened. International contacts are being established. Sophia began to reorganize the army according to the European model. Even the noble supporter of Peter I, Prince Kurakin, admitted: Sophia ruled “with all diligence and justice, so there was never such a wise government in the Russian state. And in the whole state during her reign great wealth flourished, commerce, and crafts, and science also multiplied... and the freedom of the people triumphed". But time passed, Prince Ivan died and Prince Peter grew up. Like Sophia, he actively advocated reforms for the good of the state, but Sophia flatly refused to cede the throne to her half-brother.

Sophia lost power while trying to eliminate Peter, who had already reached adulthood. In 1689, relations between Sophia and the boyar-noble group that supported Peter I escalated to the extreme. As a result, the party of Peter I won the final victory, and the royal biography of Sophia ended. All supporters of the princess lost their real power, her name was excluded from the royal title. Sophia herself was sent without tonsure to the Novodevichy nunnery in Moscow, where she copied church books and wrote a lot. During the Streltsy Uprising of 1698, Sophia repeated her attempt to gain power. In her letters to the streltsy, she asked to support her and oppose Peter I. The uprising was brutally suppressed. Sophia was tonsured as a nun and imprisoned in the nunnery forever.

The tragic story of his half-sister prompted Peter I to issue a decree on succession to the throne in 1722. The decree canceled the ancient custom of transferring the royal throne to direct descendants in the male line and provided for the appointment of an heir to the throne at the behest of the monarch. 4. Catherine II or Catherine The Great The 18th century in the Russian Empire was the heyday of the Russian "kingdom of women" - and the most beautiful flower in this garden was Empress Catherine the Great. The country's longest-ruling female leader (1762 – 1796). She came to power following a coup d'état that overthrew her husband, Peter III. Under her reign, Russia was revitalised; it grew larger and stronger, and was recognised as one of the great powers of Europe.

She wasn’t Russian in blood, but she became one in spirit. Sophia Frederica Augusta of Anhalt-Zerbst converted to Orthodoxy and received the name Catherine, studied Russian language and Russian culture. The Empress formulated the tasks facing the Russian monarch as follows: - to educate the nation to be governed; - to introduce good order in the state, to support society and make it comply with the laws; - to establish a good and accurate police force in the state; - contribute to the flourishing of the state and make it abundant; - to make the state formidable in itself and inspiring respect for its neighbors. Under Catherine, special attention was paid to the development of women's education, in 1764 the Smolny Institute for Noble Maidens and the Educational Society for Noble Maidens were opened. The Academy of Sciences has become one of the leading scientific bases in Europe. In the provinces there were orders of public charity. In Moscow and St. Petersburg there are orphanages for homeless children, where they received education and upbringing. The Widows Treasury was created to help widows. If we talk about the disadvantages of her rule, then they include favoritism, corruption and connivance with the nobility to the detriment of ordinary people and especially serfs.The ideas expressed by Diderot and Voltaire, of which she was an adherent in words, didn’t correspond to her internal politics. They defended the idea that every person is born free, and advocated the equality of all people and the elimination of medieval forms of exploitation and despotic forms of government. Contrary to these ideas, under Catherine there was a further deterioration in the situation of serfs, their exploitation intensified, inequality grew due to the granting of even greater privileges to the nobility. In general, historians characterize her policy as "pro-noble" and believe that despite the empress's frequent statements about her "vigilant concern for the welfare of all subjects", the concept of the common good in the era of Catherine was the same fiction as in general in Russia in the 18th century.

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baeddel · 5 years ago

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long post about the different educations that revolutionaries or leftist theoriests received, a little onanistic but I think quite fun

a lot of big Marxist names held degrees in Law, and in some cases were Lawyers or Barristers: Marx, Lenin (a barrister!), Leviné, Castro (in an admirable way: he worked as a defense lawyer for next to nothing for criminals who couldn’t afford a lawyer normally)... Mao entered and dropped out of at least seven schools, including a police academy and Law school, as well as for a brief period studying Economics where all lessons were in English, a language he did not speak. He eventually settled on not attending any classes of any type but self-studying works of western political philosophy in the university library. Similarly, Engels never went to university but attended lectures at the Berlin University while stationed there when he was in the Prussian military. How many universities now let you use their library or attend their lectures without being a student? You certainly cant do it here. Maybe they figured out everyone who did that went on to try to overthrow the government! Gramsci attempted to study lingustics (on a scholarship, as he came from a very poor peasant family) but had to drop out due to his disability (he also had attended very little secondary school because he had to work to support his family due to his father being imprisoned for embezzlement!). Rosa Luxemburg attended university and studied “philosophy, history, politics, economics, and mathematics” and received a doctorate in Law for her dissertation (despite not studying law!)

Most contemporary anarchists [or people anarchists care about] dont seem to have gone to university. Most of them were not intellectuals but bombers, bank robbers and assassins, after all - Duvail became a criminal after leaving the military, and Bonnot was a criminal from a young age, while Ravachol played the accordion for spare change. My big hero August Vaillant went to prison at a very young age for stealing food and worked odd jobs his whole (short) life, although he self-studied astronomy and philosophy. Renzo Novatore was never educated at all, not even primary school, but self-studied poetry and philosophy. Bakunin moved to Moscow with the intent to study philosophy at university but he uh didnt and he joined instead a philosophical society of university drop-outs who studied german idealism on their own, during which he produced translations of Fichte. Blanqui is an exception here: he studied both Law and Medicine. Stirner studied philology, philosophy and theology(!), of course being taught by Hegel. Perlman studied English literature!

I dont know how much you can really learn from this - the leftists who get recorded by history are such a very small subset of leftists as a whole that you cant say very much about the kind of education leftists tended to get. The vast majority of leftists, especially at that time, and in other parts of the world, and in other times, have been proletarians (or less) with no post-secondary education. Still, the diversity of levels of education from just those mentioned people is really interesting... its much the same for us, where we count PHDs and highschool drop-outs among our friends. Interestingly, no one that I looked up studied the hard sciences or any technical field, which is very different for us today, where, I would say the majority of our friends who do hold degrees have them in computer science or physics, not in letters. And have you ever even met anyone who studies Law?

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tanadrin · 5 years ago

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Reordberend

(part 15 of ?; start; previous; next)

“What do you believe in?”

Leofe had asked the question in a friendly enough way, a few days later when they were sitting together for the midday meal. Now even at noon the sky was no more than twilight, a heartwrenchingly clear gradient of color from dark to light in the direction of the hidden sun, the far side studded with stars. The Antarctic air was impossibly clear, a continent-sized whorl of dry winds cut off from the rest of the world by the circumpolar current. Katherine simply could not get used to it.

What had they been talking about? The sky, the weather, hopes for tomorrow. And Katherine had mentioned her family, how far from home she was. Somehow that had segued into faith. She still wasn’t sure what, exactly, the Dry Valleys People believed in. Then Leofe had asked her the question, and she found herself getting defensive. She remembered her parents, her teachers, the people who pressed her on what she really believed as an adolescent. She remembered the alienation she felt when she realized she wasn’t the same as the people she grew up with. That her desire to grow beyond the confines of the world as they had presented it to them meant that she would have to go. And in the going there would be no returning.

“It’s complicated,” was all she said at the time. But the question nagged at her. She didn’t know if she could have answered it in English, let alone in the tongue of the Valleys. But there was an answer. A hard, bright answer she felt within her, warming her during the cold and starry nights.

What did the people of the Valleys believe in? Well, that was a tough one. When she had first found the gospel-book she thought she knew. A peculiar people, setting out for desolate shores, carrying religious artifacts and ancient tongues with them--traditionalists, of a kind. After all, wasn’t that what her people had been? Secessionists, as politely called them back in civilization. Those who decided that the great ecumenical riot of culture and technology and fashion and whatnot wasn’t for them. There were lots of different kinds of secessionists, not just traditionalists. New religious movements, utopians of all stripes, ultra-individualists and ultra-collectivists, artists with ideas that couldn’t be realized safely or legally in any existing top-level jurisdiction, trillionaires who thought the law shouldn’t apply to them. The pattern was familiar: you found a big pile of money somewhere, either from your followers or from a rich patron, you bought some land, you renounced your basic and you got almost unlimited sovereignty over it in return.

But that still left some questions. Like the age of the Valleys settlements, for one. If the local chronology was correct, they were almost a hundred and fifty years old, older than any other settlement in Antarctica. That meant they weren’t technically secessionists, because there was nothing here to secede from a century and a half ago. A century and a half ago, the Antarctic coast had been even colder and the ice-free portion of the Valleys even smaller. The timeline made sense in other ways--that was after the abrogation of the Antarctic Treaties, when most of the countries that used to fund scientific outposts along the coasts had pulled back in the wake of the Collapse. Before the big multinationals moved into the Peninsula a generation later. You could’ve gotten a couple hundred people to the Dry Valleys unnoticed, maybe.

When she could, Katherine tried to get a better look at their books again. Their script presented difficulties for her. On more than one occasion, she found herself muttering irritably at an imagined picture of Dr. Wright. He could have warned her, of course; he could have said, “the Dry Valleys People speak Anglo-Saxon English; here’s a list of books to take with you.” She still would have lost them in the shipwreck, but maybe she would have remembered enough from them to get started. Heck, maybe some enterprising nerd had created a module for the language. Unlikely--a good module took a shitload of funding and years of work--but not impossible.

She had asked Dr. Gordon about John, after the meeting at the conference. If this guy was so famous, how come she’d never heard of him? Dr. Gordon had sighed, sighed in the way that usually indicated byzantine university politics, but eventually she’d given up the story.

“This was all well before my time, you have to understand,” she said. “I’m getting this secondhand and thirdhand from people who were around then, and some of this is basically School of Humanities mythology at this point. But the way I understand it, Dr. Wright was the last holdout of the old English department.

“Two hundred years ago, the School of English was one of the jewels in the crown of this university. A hundred and fifty years ago, it was still doing pretty well for itself, but, well, as much as we hate to admit it to ourselves, academia is subject to trends and fashions just like the rest of the world. And despite trying to keep up with the times, most of the things they studied were hopelessly outdated. Even back then, nobody took nonsense like postmodernism or critical theory seriously anymore. A lot of the the really interesting work was starting to get usurped by departments with more rigorous methods. The Digital Humanities school was just taking off, and there was lots of interesting work going on on the other side of campus with 20th century novelists and AI, but the English faculty stuck to its old methods. Close reading, wading through dense tomes of theory, writing long analytical essays. Things that, for very good reason, we don’t make students do anymore. The university naturally had an aversion to producing graduates who were unemployable as anything other than English professors; it felt that was unfair to its students. But the more they tried to pressure the English department to update its methods, the more recalcitrant the faculty became.

“By the time Dr. Wright was approaching retirement age, they were back to teaching dead languages. You couldn’t understand the whole history of English literature, they argued, without a grounding in foundational stuff. And that foundational stuff, that ancient British literature, well, you couldn’t understand that without the context of, oh, I don’t know, whatever the Vikings spoke I suppose. Dr. Wright was by all accounts an extremely smart person. He’d done some groundbreaking work in Austronesian and South American languages as a younger man, a real giant in his field. But eventually, for reasons nobody quite understood, he’d pivoted away from the frontiers of his field--not a big field to begin with, mind you--and retreated to ground as well trodden as, well, basic arithmetic. He moved to the English department and was teaching students thousand-year-old poetry. He said it was a natural extension of his earlier work, and the university itself was happy enough to keep someone with his stature on its faculty, but to be honest most people saw him as nothing more than a useless eccentric. Rather like the whole department.

“Well, eventually the decision was made to axe their funding. There were maybe four undergraduates left to the whole department, so this wasn’t exactly a wrench, but Dr. Wright proved a sticking point. He had tenure--it’s a system that doesn’t exist anymore, but it made him basically unfireable. He had no students, and no scheduled classes, and no funding, and no departmental library anymore, but he had a right to an office, and, well. He wouldn’t go. He came in every day just the same. And twice a week, he would find an empty lecture hall, and, he’d just… lecture to anybody who showed up. And a few people did. Some were genuinely curious. Some thought it had novelty value. I guess some were lost freshers. But he kept on that way for two or three years. It annoyed the hell out of the administration. It annoyed them so much they delayed an update to the rules on retirement for six months, just so Dr. Wright hit the mandatory retirement age and got booted out. The next semester, they abolished fixed retirrment ages altogether. Of course, they didn’t offer him his job back. The official story was that he was a beloved senior member of the faculty, and he kept his dining privileges and still got invited to all the university functions where they trot out the honored former members of staff. But after that he basically disappeared. No one has seen him on campus--or anywhere in Dublin, for that matter--since.”

So at first Katherine wondered if this wasn’t Dr. Wright’s cruel joke, a way to get back at the people who pissed him off all those years ago. Let’s send the grad student out into the wastelands without any linguistic advantage. But the longer she thought about it, the more she wondered if she wasn’t being unfair.

Because what would she have said, if Dr. Wright had come up to her at that conference and said, “Oh, I hear you’re going to visit Antarctica. Here’s a book on Old English, and a copy of the Gospels, you’ll need both.” Would she have come here if she thought these were just secessionists with a penchant for historical reenactment? Probably not.

And the fact of the matter was, they weren’t secessionists. Well, not secessionists like Katherine had ever read about. The thing about being a secessionist, whether reactionary or utopian, was that no matter how much you pretended you were doing something Different, no matter how much you tried to Cut Yourself Off from the rest of the world, everything you did, everything you professed, everything you built, existed as a counterargument to that world. The rest of the world was a great shadow hanging over your whole existence, an argument which you were trying to refute. No secessionist movement on record had lasted in its original form more than two generations, because either you eventually got tired of making that argument, an argument your children would never understand for lack of context, and you inevitably rejoined the world (though perhaps with a higher-than-average local incidence of fringe political beliefs), or the whole thing fell apart in dramatic fashion due to infighting, and somebody appealed for the special status of the enclave to be revoked.

Neither had happened here. The culture of the Valleys appeared to be stable. They were more like an ancient uncontacted people, uncurious about the outside world and existing on their own terms, than those who scrupulously attempted to refute it. They spoke a dead language, but on closer examination, there the resemblance to historical reenactors ceased. The climate was wrong--they lived more like a circumpolar people, because, well, they were. But Katherine noticed they weren’t dogmatic about their refusal of technology. They relied on genegineered bryoculture--the mosses thrived in the summertime, provided you supplemented them with a little water, and kept them from freezing. They hoarded small pieces of technology they scavenged from the wastes, laser firestarters and sonic knife sharpeners, and they used these to augment their own cottage industry.

But they were sharply conservative in other ways. They did not trade. They did not explore, beyond their own well-trodden region of Victoria Land. Their society was full of symbolism and ritual and verbal formulas, their conversations looping back and forth in ways that made Katherine suspect every one had occurred a thousand times, and was expected to occur a thousand times again. They were, in short, static. Stasis was, Katherine believed, the ultimate illusion for any society. Nothing lasts forever; eventually, you change or you die. Perhaps the Dry Valleys People knew this. Perhaps, if the world tried to force them to change, they would simply die. The idea made Katherine rather sick, but it would not be the first time in history that that had happened.

* * *

And what did they believe in, when you tried to peel all this back, and expose their heart? Leofe was cagey when Katherine asked her. Leofric was laconic enough to make his sister look positively effusive by contrast. The question died on her lips when she tried to ask some of the older men and women; they responded to the question as a mountain might answer a soft breeze. Which is to say they ignored her completely. They carried with them the tokens of a lost Christianity, but these didn’t seem to be related to their core beliefs. On the very rare occasions when they waxed metaphysical, Katherine heard them speak of the garsecg, the spear-sea, the fearsome cold ocean that girdled their world. Yet on their lips the word had deep resonances “ocean” never did; it was for them the road of death, beyond which all their foremothers and forefathers dwelt; and it was the road of their beginning, over which they had come for their deliverance. And it was the outer darkness, the darkness of the sky and the long Antarctic night, and the blackness behind the stars; and the dreamless sleep.

And even more rarely, in voices so quiet Katherine could not be sure of what they said, they spoke of dragons, the dragons that lived high on the ice, whose voice was thunder and in whose belly lived a terrible fire.

#tanadrin's fiction

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amer-ainu · 7 years ago

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In this, our fifth and final episode, The ID Question looks at questions of language and culture in a rapidly changing world. Padmaparna Ghosh talks to people being directly affected by endangered languages and shrinking numbers of indigenous tribes – groups whose survival depends on a clear sense of identity.

As a child, Kanako Uzawa treasured her school vacations, when she traveled from Tokyo to her family farm in Nibutani, a remote village in northern Japan. “There were rice fields extending into the distance,” she said. “It was all very green with fresh air...It was paradise for kids.”

Uzawa, who was born in Tomakomai, Hokkaido, is a member of the Ainu, an indigenous group from northern Japan. The story of this small community is one of erasure instigated by the state. In the late 19th century, the Meiji government sought a unified, cohesive vision of Japan; the very existence of the Ainu and other indigenous groups threatened Japan’s national myth of homogeneity. In 1899, the government passed an act now known as the Former Natives Protection Law, which stripped the Ainu of their identity: names were changed, language was curbed, and they were forced to give up hunting and gathering and begin farming on poor land.

As long as humans have formed shared identities around ethnicity, religion, race, language, and culture, those identities have been subject to erasure, from colonialism to war to economic globalisation to linguistic homogenisation to environmental change. Just look to the island nations of Tuvalu and Kiribati, preparing to sink beneath the sea, or to Greenland, preparing for its ice to melt away.

In the previous episode, we explored how asylum seekers struggle to define their identities, caught in limbo between their home countries and their adopted ones. Governments define official, legitimised forms of national identities, the structures into which new arrivals should be integrated. But these same structures are applied to groups who have long resided within countries’ borders – or, in the case of many colonised nations, predated the groups that currently hold power. How can a given group retain a sovereign identity within those national constructs?

The map of the world has never remained static. Right now, there are secessionist movements from Scotland to Kurdistan, each with their own particular historical origins and degrees of success. The ways and forms in which groups assert themselves might differ, but what unites them all is a clear sense of communal identity: one that demands to be seen, heard, and acknowledged as legitimate.

Continuing battle

In Nibutani, the vast majority of its approximately 200 inhabitants are of Ainu descent. When Uzawa would return there, she would feel like she was part of a close-knit community. But back at school in Tokyo, she didn’t want to stand out from the crowd. “I never thought of that [Ainu] lifestyle as special or unique as a child,” she said. “But what was strange was when I would come back to Tokyo we would never talk about that life. Because nobody knew what it was and nobody asked. So I closed that part of myself and I just became a city girl.”

Now she feels pride for her heritage, inspired by her grandfather, Tadashi Kaizawa, a prominent Ainu rights campaigner. He first came to national attention in 1989, when he and a friend, Shigeru Kayano, sued the government over a hydroelectric dam that was being built on the sacred Saru River – it was being built, they claimed, on stolen land.

Close to a decade later, Kaizawa and Kayano won their case – though by the time the judge issued a ruling, the dam had been built. The judgment marked the first time that the Japanese government was forced to both acknowledge the existence of the Ainu, and to acknowledge that they had certain rights endowed to them under the country’s constitution. In the middle of the case, when Uzawa was 15, she heard her aunt say that to be Ainu is to be discriminated against. “That was the awakening, from when I started to critically think about my heritage and identity.”

Uzawa feels that many Ainu people are still afraid or reluctant to reveal their identities. When she worked in Tokyo, she kept her Ainu heritage private because she didn’t want to create a situation where she would have to defend or explain herself. “I don’t know if I would call it open discrimination,” she said. “But there is a feeling of discomfort.”

Japan did not actively recognise the Ainu as an indigenous group until 2008, and the battle continues: the Ainu still don’t have political self-determination. “Even though it looks like we have been given recognition, a large part of the struggle remains,” said Uzawa. “We still feel that we do not have the final say in matters related to us.”

“The government only said that yes, OK, you are indigenous people of Japan, but you can only promote and disseminate the historical parts and cultural parts of your group,” said Uzawa. “Under this act, rather than focusing on a comprehensive notion of livelihood or indigenous rights, there is only support for the practice of culture, and still, many problems remain.”

Catalonian struggle

Spain, like many European nations, is built out of a number of smaller medieval kingdoms, each with their own culture, language, and history. In the east of the country, Catalonia is currently caught in a secessionist struggle that’s as tense as is possible to find in a contemporary democracy in peacetime.

Some Catalonians are fighting for more independence within the existing Spanish constitution (which devolves power to the different regions, in recognition of their independent histories); some want an entirely independent state, either due to patriotism, economics, or both. Catalonia is Spain’s wealthiest region, and many Catalonians claim to be tired of subsidising the poorer parts of the nation – something seen in less popular secessionist movements elsewhere in Spain, as well as in other countries, like Italy.

What is it to be Spanish? What is it to be Catalonian? Rosalia Martinez, 38, considers her own national identity to be complex. Her father is from Galicia, and her mother, who is from Catalonia, in turn has ancestors from both Catalonia and Aragon. “My idea of being Spanish has been constructed from a mix of different regions,” she said. “It’s about sharing regional languages and identities. My parents teach Spanish and at home we speak Galician. My grandmother used to sing us songs in Catalan.” She doesn’t feel she should have to choose one of these identities over any of the others.

Like Uzawa, Martinez traces back the origin of identity to childhood memories. She speaks Galician at home, and spent her summer vacations with her grandparents in a small village in Galicia. Today, she can speak several of the Spanish languages and smoothly transitions from one to another. But her language choices at any given moment are inextricable from sense of place: when she wants to convey a feeling of wilderness, she slips into Galician, inspired by childhood memories of the natural world. “There we practically lived in a forest,” she said. “So when we have to refer to something like that, we shift, without even noticing.”

“Identity has a lot to do with language – it has poetry and literature, myths and stories and archetypes,” said Martinez. “It isn’t just day-to-day communication. You share a code when you share a language.”

In a word

When countries work to define national identities, language is key. Language links people to a communal past, and newcomers to a shared future. But it can also exclude and alienate, and forcing a language on a community can be devastating: a tool for asserting state dominance over individual and local forms of identity.

In Japan, where the various Ainu languages were banned in 1872, efforts to revitalise the last surviving dialect have only recently been supported by the state. In Catalonia, speaking Catalan can be a patriotic gesture, a recognition that centuries of suppression in favor of Castilian – what we now think of as simply “Spanish” – was not enough to extinguish the region’s identity.

According to UNESCO, there are currently 2,464 threatened languages spoken around the world. 592 are classified as “vulnerable” – children still learn them, but they are not necessarily used widely in daily life – while the rest, the vast majority of the world’s languages, are seen as “endangered.”

Many countries fund language courses for new arrivals to encourage immigrants or refugees to integrate. Between now and 2020, Germany is spending €5.7 billion on such courses – including “soft” skills like cultural understanding in addition to language instruction. This is an unusually large sum; countries like the UK or the Netherlands spend tens of millions, rather than billions, on similar programs.

The UK has shown how a country can reverse a policy of suppressing a language through reasonably small budget commitments: roughly £150 million per year is spent on tuition in Welsh schools and on subsidising Welsh-language media. A few decades ago, Welsh seemed doomed for extinction, though these programmes have slowed that decline rather than reversing it. Other languages in the UK – including Gaelic, Scots, Manx, and Cornish – have yet to receive the same kind of government support, despite being closer to extinction.

While many are still under serious threat, indigenous and minority languages in other parts of the world are experiencing a period of regrowth. According to the 2016 World Minority Report, “In New Zealand, there has been a steady increase since the 1990s in the number of children being taught in te reo Māori [the indigenous Māori language]. Policies promoting the recognition of Māori culture and the visibility of Māori identity in the national arena have been a positive factor in the revitalisation of the language.” A similar revival of Hawaiian is being used as a model for how other indigenous languages can be revitalised.

The case of Spain

In Spain in the mid-20th century, Castilian Spanish was the only language allowed. Francisco Franco’s authoritarian government revoked the official statute and recognition for Basque, Galician, and Catalan. The minority languages were banned in schools, advertising, religious ceremonies, and road signs. Rosalia Martinez didn’t live through this time of cultural suppression, but she heard about it from her parents. “My father used to tell us how Galician was forbidden at school,” she said. “Treatment of other languages was shoddy and oppressed.”

Since Franco’s death in 1975, the Spanish government has encouraged the use and revitalisation of regional languages, from making them compulsory in schools to granting them official language status, including support for public-funded regional-language TV channels. “I remember my cousins from Catalonia and Galicia complaining because they had an extra subject to learn,” Martinez said with a laugh.

But some Spaniards feel that the urge to protect and conserve regional languages can be counterproductive. Elisabeth Borras, who is half-Catalonian, thinks the government’s language revival efforts may have been taken too far. “So much money has been spent dubbing movies into Catalan. Ultimately you should be spending money on things that might be helpful to society, like more schools,” she said. “I think it was a mistake to take it so seriously.” Her mother, who lived through the dictatorship – when Catalan was banned in schools – is today learning how to properly write in the language.

Others fear that these linguistic revivals might be etching deeper divides. Anti-independence Catalonians – as well as people in other regions of Spain and across Europe – worry this might create risky precedents that could set off a series of secessionary demands.

Martinez understands these concerns: she feels that some part of the current polarisation between Catalans and Spaniards has been institutionalised by education and worsened by the financial crisis. “It serves the purpose of politics, making the identities clash, especially for regional governments,” she said. “I think it is a pity. If you ask people in Spain, we feel quite sad.”

She believes the Spanish government has done a good job reviving regional languages – but that doesn’t extend to the independence question. “The government is important in this but I don’t think you need an independent country for that,” she said. “Historically and culturally we have co-existed for the most part. I don’t understand why we can’t go on. They are a part of Spain, too, because they are a part of me.”

Uzawa, Martinez, and Borras all want to pass their cultural identities onto the next generation, whether through language or traditions or visits to specific regions. For all of them, childhood is the touchstone to which they return when their identities are in question. The next generation is the one that will have to continue the work of preserving and spreading cultural traditions, including language.

Borras attended an English school because her parents could not decide whether to put her in a Spanish or a Catalan one. But she wants to ensure that her child grows up Catalan. Uzawa, who now lives in Norway, makes sure to take her children to the ancestral village at least every other year, so they can feel a part of it. When she took them to the Tokyo Ainu cultural centre, she explained Ainu traditions. “And my daughter asked: if this is Ainu clothes and you’re Ainu, why aren’t you wearing those?” she said. “Sometimes your children ask you questions that you haven’t asked yourself.”

#endangered languages #Ainu #Ainu itak #Catalan #Catalonian

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theraistlinmajere · 6 years ago

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THE “”GOTHIC”” REC LIST

Edited for my own use.

LET’S START WITH THE GATEWAY DRUG BOOK

1. Flowers in the Attic (VC Andrews): Published in 1979 and technically considered contemporary Gothic. The style closely resembles a lot of “original” Gothic fiction I’ve read, but the themes, story arc and style are distinctly contemporary and very psychological. Gets a bad rap because it’s over the top insane and averagely written (which most Gothic is, tbh). Flowers is light reading, and I think it’s a good gateway drug into heavier Gothic. Has several sequels but stands alone as well. I wish I could call this Victorian-inspired Gothic but honestly it’s just knockoff Victorian in a contemporary setting. If you don’t enjoy this book, it probably means you don’t like the over the top insanity and average writing. Skip it if you like!

1.5. But if you do like it, I hear My Sweet Audrina is pretty good. All of VC Andrews and her ghostwriters are like a hellhole people sometimes don’t escape tbh it’s a raging aesthetic disaster down there.

Note: I have a strong suspicion that “contemporary” Gothic published between 1965 and 1989 will eventually have its own movement name; you will see a decent amount of it on this list.

THE VICTORIAN GOTHIC PART OF THE LIST Most of these are available for free online due to copyright law being born late or whatever. 2. Carmilla (Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu): Considered the first English vampire story (Germans invented the European vampire allegedly), and published in 187…9? 1871? Something like that. A novella. Arguably a same-sex romance (VERY arguably), but can also be read as a close friendship. The writing is good, but not the absolute greatest I’ve ever read. The real strong point here is the imagery and the dawn of the English vampire. Great Halloween read; I read it almost every autumn. 3. “The Trifecta,” according to Gothic fans: Dracula (Bram Stoker), Frankenstein (Shelley), and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Swift & Stevenson): First mainstream vampire, original English monster movie fuel, and the dawn of psychological fiction. Shelley’s the best writer out of all of them but she’s a Romantic and I’m sort of biased against Romantics. She’s a precursor to true Victorian Gothic. Dracula is still one of the creepiest books I’ve ever read and it’s the only one in the trifecta I really really love (and finished).

Note: If, by any chance, you find yourself seriously obsessed with vampires at any point in time, please consult me for an extended list of vampire fiction because I have a shit-ton of it in my reading history and left most of it out so vampires wouldn’t clutter this list lmao.

4. Edgar Allan Poe, Completed Works. The Cask of Amontillado, The Masque of the Red Death, The Pit and the Pendulum, and The Tell-Tale Heart are all notable. His poetry is lovely–Annabelle Lee and The Raven are most culturally significant. Just solid and wonderful work that I like a lot but haven’t explored in a lot of detail. Will appeal to your interest in darkness imagery.

5. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories (Washington Irving): QUINTESSENTIAL HALLOWEEN READING. SPOOPY. WONDERFUL. I truly love this anthology. Will also appeal to your interest in darkness as a concept and a physical thing. 6. Nightmare Abbey (Thomas Love Peacock): an 1818 novel that makes fun of the Victorian Gothic movement. Hilarious, contains all the typical Victorian Gothic tropes and has the added benefit of actually falling into the Victorian Gothic movement ironically. Usually comes packaged with another novel called Crotchet Castle which is similar. 7. If, somehow, you haven’t had it with Victorian Gothic yet (and I got to this point, it happens, Victorian Gothic is a slippery slope)… Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (Susanna Clarke): A really bizarre story behind how this was published, at least it is to me. Published in 2004, Over 10 years in the making and is written in the Victorian Gothic style but with a quirky and modern twist. The writer takes a page out of contemporary social commentary and includes pages-long footnotes, heads up (they’re funny and entertaining though). HUGE. You could kill a man with this volume. Excellent writing; I’m halfway through. I hear there’s time travel (?) and there are about ten thousand characters. Neil Gaiman is a fan. 8. The Phantom of the Opera (Gaston Leroux) is not technically Victorian (Technically Edwardian? Also French; I’m not familiar with French literary eras) but of course it has a huge following. I’ve read a little so far; I like the style and I think it’s culturally significant. You might want to read this because it’s heavily inspired by a French opera house, the Palais Garnier in Paris. Amber tells me she read literature in French to help sharpen her skills in the language; you may consider picking up an un-translated version of this? A BRIEF INTERLUDE FOR MORE CONTEMPORARY 9. Interview with the Vampire (Anne Rice): One of my favorite books of all time! Possibly the dawn of the romanticized vampire. Falls into that 70s contemporary Gothic bracket and is pretty amazingly written, but markedly more angst-ridden than anything else on the list (save for maybe Flowers). Lots of “what is evil?” and “what does immortality imply?” type speculation. Also gets a bad rap because Anne Rice made it big and haters are rife tbh it’s a very solidly built book in my opinion (BUT SUPER EMOTIONAL VAMPIRES). If you like this, continue with The Vampire Chronicles (The Vampire Lestat, Queen of the Damned, Prince Lestat, and about 8 others in between that concern minor characters). Lestat is one of my favorite fictional characters of all time. 10. Coraline (Neil Gaiman): Quick, cute, I found myself actually afraid for a little while despite the audience being middle grade readers?? I enjoyed it. The only Neil Gaiman on the list because his other work doesn’t impress me very much. 11. The Spiderwick Chronicles (Holly Black and Tony Diterlizzi): More middle-grade creepy aesthetic stuff. Cute modern fantasy stories, five volumes. I can read these books at twenty years old and still enjoy them (like Coraline)! The only good thing Holly Black has ever produced, in my opinion, though many people like her and her ~aesthetic.

11.5. Should you find yourself in the mood for more quick middle-grade aesthetic-y stuff, Pure Dead Magic (Debi Gliori) is really an adorable book with two sequels. Victorian Gothic tropes such as the creepy mansion, creatures in the dungeon, family drama, and Weird Newcomers are all present, but it’s set in modern times. One of the main characters is a hacker. Addams family-esque.

THE SURREAL-ISH FICTION PART OF THE LIST

Not true surreal fiction; these are contemporary surreal-inspired works. 12. The Bloody Chamber (Angela Carter): An anthology of short stories which retell fairy tales. Falls into the contemporary surrealism movement and is not traditionally considered Gothic, but this is definitely your aesthetic. Very quick read, very vivid imagery, lots of second-wave feminism and some brief eating disorder symbolism. Carter was a phenomenal writer! My favorite story is “The Lady of the House of Love"

12.5 (Just as a reminder since I’ve mentioned these) See also: Nights at the Circus (Carter) and Mechanique: A tale of the Circus Tresaulti (Valentine) for your interest in circus books!

13. The Palace of Curiosities (Rosie Garland), which I also rec’d before. Similar style to Chamber, similar themes. Both beautiful books. 14. Deathless (Catherynne Valente): Oh, Deathless. Technically contemporary lit, but hails to Russian Gothic (one of the earlier Gothic movements which I haven’t read much of). Retelling of about a million Russian folk tales. I could go on about this book for a thousand years. Stylistically similar to The Bloody Chamber as well, but far more poetic. (Very) structurally inferior to every other book on this list, but so heart-wrenchingly romantic you won’t notice or care on the first read. Visually breathtaking, absolutely the closest thing to death and the maiden imagery I’ve found in fiction. I’m fairly confident you’ll appreciate this one! Might as well read it to test my theory!! There’s controversy surrounding the fact that the writer is not Russian–something to be aware of. 15. The Enchanted (Rene Denfeld): TREAD WITH CAUTION. This is contemporary literary fiction (not Gothic) written from the pov of a death row inmate. Nominated for approximately a billion awards in 2014 (and won a few); high caliber of writing. Incredibly visceral, horrific, psychological imagery that was too much for me, though I still liked it. Short but dense–I had to take a two-day break to ward off the anxiety it caused. But you are darker~ than I so you might like it more!

THE SOUTHERN GOTHIC PART OF THE LIST 16. Beloved (Toni Morrison): Contemporary Southern Gothic. Incredibly creepy imagery, explores the connection between women’s issues and racial issues. Uses abortion and slavery as metaphors for each other. Gracefully written, but Southern Gothic (even contemporary) tends to be textually dense so it’s something to really think about as you read. 17. As I Lay Dying (Faulkner): “True” Southern Gothic. DENSE AS HELL but I think Beloved is a good precursor to Faulkner. A lot of almost comedic family drama, similar to Flowers in that sense, but very srs bsns nonetheless.

17.5. Basically all of Faulkner is considered Southern Gothic. He’s the father of Southern Gothic. If you enjoy this, you might also like Absalom! Absalom! and other such works. I loved As I Lay Dying but it’s possibly his easiest read, and while I love a good challenge I haven’t stepped up to this one yet.

Note: I use reading guides for all my classical works and Shakespeare, and I think there are good ones for Faulkner too, so that might be something to look into if you wanna vanish into this hell lol.

AN ADDENDUM: OTHER WRITERS

HP Lovecraft: Father of horror or whatever. Awful writer–anyone will agree. The guy had no command of language, but he’s known for over-the-top horror imagery that people really enjoy. Honestly I hate his writing so I haven’t bothered with much of it.

Oscar Wilde: If, by this point, you still want more Victorian-era writing, Wilde is here for you. Lots of social commentary, wrote basically one piece in the Gothic style (Chapter 16 of The Picture of Dorian Gray, my favorite novel), snarky as hell, incredibly gifted writer.

Neil Gaiman: Modern surreal in my opinion, sometimes called modern Gothic, well-loved and writes creepy things. I think he’s average because I’ve read too much Murakami (who does “modern surreal” way, way better) but many people really love him.

THE BLACKLIST Knockoff Gothic/Gothic themed things to avoid. I apologize if you like any of these okay ._.

The Grisha Trilogy (Leigh Bardugo): Contemporary YA, tries to be Russian Gothic and fails. Stick to Deathless. This book makes a mockery of Russian culture whereas at least Valente exhaustively researched her novel. Also doesn’t do romance very well.

The Night Circus (Morgenstern): What the hell is this book, tbh. 400 pages of obtuse and cliched imagery which you don’t have time for in your life. No plot. Two-dimensional characters, bad writing.

Those Across The River (Christopher Buehlman): Terrible. Just terrible.

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genderassignment · 6 years ago

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Beyond the Roma Caravan (2) / Suzana Milevska’s Testimony: Meet Lynn Hutchinson Lee and Hedina Sijerčić

Canada Without Shadows: I am a Romani Woman - Kanada Bizo Uchalipe: Me Sem Romni is a small 24-page book featuring the testimonies and artwork of five Hungarian Romani women.

The very brilliant Suzana Milevska shares her second installment of Beyond The Roma Caravan with Gender Assignment! She writes at the intersection of feminist and Roma issues, which are so under-represented and yet have so much to bring to a conversation on the inherent nomadicism in geopolitical and climate crisis. “In the wake of the new global political conundrums...this project reveals how the ongoing policy of displacement and deportation of Roma refugees and immigrants is easily “smuggled” under the label of nomadic history and culture of Roma.”

I first met Lynn Hutchinson Lee and Hedina Sijerčić in Skopje, back in May 2010. The context of my first encounter with the artists was the first curatorial meeting with the short-listed artists for the Roma Pavilion 2011 which took place after the first round of the selection of applications (collected through an international call that was issued in February 2010). It’s been more than eight years since then, and in meanwhile we’ve met just a couple of times. However our first meeting was highly inspiring for me: it profoundly informed and affected my theoretical research and curatorial practice. Recently I was reminded to their artistic collaboration and was motivated to include their project in this series of posts because of the pertinent refugee crisis in Europe that also heavily affected the condition of Roma refugees in Canada – their project in my view was in a way anticipatory and still highly resonates with the current political situation of Roma across the world.

During our first meeting Lynn and Hedina presented themselves as two Romani woman artists comprising the artist collective chirikli. At that time they were working on their joint project Canada Without Shadows / Kanada Bizo Uchalipe. The project was not yet completed, but was definitely a proposal that attracted the attention of the international jury and was one of the projects that was selected unanimously during the first round. Canada without Shadows was however not a project that one could easily anticipate and grasp in its entirety and complexity without knowing much about its authors’ cultural and ethnic background.

Whilst Lynn was a descendent of Romanichal Lee travellers from Great Britain and was living and working in Toronto, Canada, Hedina was from Bosnia and Herzegovina, at that time living and working in Germany. Lynn is mainly a visual artist, and Hedina was first better known (at least until then) as a writer, journalist and educator. It was therefore not easy to understand how the two artists met and decided to form the collective and how they managed and would manage to continue the collaboration on joint projects despite the distance - most of the time they were based in different continents. Meeting the artists in person and discussing directly with them their artistic interests and collaborative research methods helped the confirmation of the decision to commission, produce and present their collaborative project at, then, forthcoming Venice Biennale in 2011.

The general meeting in Skopje focused on the ongoing issues of Roma in Europe. Particularly relevant were the debates about the goals and results of the Decade of Roma inclusion (2005-2015) and how the differences and contradictions between different Roma groups across the world – their different languages, cultures, customs, religious beliefs and political aspirations reflect (and should reflect) in arts. We talked about the restrictive laws (both in Europe and Canada) regarding the free movement of Roma, about the difficult conditions of the deported and expulsed Roma as a result of these restrictive laws, and about specificity of Romani internal courts and laws. We talked about the difference between the cultural background and political situation of Romani Travellers and Balkan Roma.

We also talked about Ronald Lee, one of the most renowned and influential Romani Canadian writer, linguist and activist based in Toronto, who was granted an honorary degree in 2014 by Queens University. We talked about his significant contribution towards the development of a critical political discourse regarding Roma (e.g. his participation in the 1971 First Romani World Congress in Orpington and the historical and political decision to use “Roma” as an umbrella term used to encompass different Romani communities), about his participation in the Kris Romani (Romani internal judicial assembly), or about his theoretical contribution to the reader Gypsy Law, the book that inspired Call the Witness project.

What became clear is the need for solidarity of Roma and with Roma vs. the clash within Roma communities regarding the differences in understanding ongoing political, identitarian and gender issues. The tensions between the traditional and conservative values to which most of the Romani communities currently still subscribe and the effect of such politics on women was already then one of the most relevant issues discussed during the internal three-day meeting with the present artists and activists.

Aside from the socio-political context of Roma the project proposals that used different media, genres and artistic strategies while reflecting on such urgent topics was addressed as one of the major departures for the panel discussions. Lynn and Hedina were some of the most active participants in the general discussion who contributed a lot to the gradual shaping of the overall project’s concept with the carefully articulated questions and arguments (although the project was already titled and had a general theoretical concept it still depended on different artistic practices for its completion).

Hungary, in Practice, Lynn Hutchinson Lee, paper, konnyaku paste, rice paste, block print

We were also discussing (particularly during the slots with the individual artists and teams) how to present the content of their own complex research and oral history project in a form of art installation, and how to contextualize their collective’s project in the general frame of the curatorial concept of Call the Witness. After the long discussion about how to combine the content and form, the artistic research with the poetic and the political aspects of the work, Canada Without Shadows was gradually developed into a 4-channel sound-art installation Canada Without Shadows).

Most importantly their project had nothing to do with the usual stereotypes of Roma as nomadic people moving around in caravans and settling only temporarily in various cities’ outskirts. Their professional collaboration and friendship took place on the backdrop of the war in ex-Yugoslavia and was motivated and informed by the displacements, deportations, and exile of Roma (both in Europe and Canada) in the 1990s and 2000s. More precisely both Lynn and Hedina were invested in researching the contradictions stemming from the continuous pursuit of collective identity of Roma groups that are paralleled with the quest of new subjectivity and individual positions of Romani women within their conservative communities and families. Thus the form of urban and natural soundscapes used in Canada Without Shadows consisting of overlaying poetry verses, written and spoken by the artists, and spoken testimonies of five displaced Hungarian Roma women who fled Europe to seek refuge in Canada, turned to be the most appropriate for the artists’ aims. A result of this was 'The Witness Project', a small book of testimonies of five Hungarian Romani women in Canada.

According to the artists the title of the project was linked with the assumption of the Roma refugees that Canada had no “shadows,” and thus it had attracted many Roma families to settle there (as did Lynn’s father long ago). However it soon became clear that the new legal hurdles prevented and still prevent many Roma from receiving the desired refugee status. In the wake of the new global political conundrums I feel that the Roma issues today resonate with the anticipatory results of this artistic research project and felt compelled to revisit it in this context exactly because this project reveals how the ongoing policy of displacement and deportation of Roma refugees and immigrants is easily “smuggled” under the label of nomadic history and culture of Roma. Canada Without Shadows went far beyond the stereotype of caravan.

NOTES

Lynn Hutchinson Lee (artist, Canada) (born 1946) and Hedina Tahirović Sijerčić (born 1960) together formed the chirikli collective (http://chiriklicollective.com/about-the-artists/). Hutchinson Lee is a painter, muralist, and multimedia artist based in Toronto. As a member of the artist collective Red Tree she has worked on various interdisciplinary, socially engaged, and cross-cultural projects: Scouring City, Brushing Sky (2009 – 2010), Shukar Lulugi (Beautiful Flower, 2007), and Loki Gili (Song of Sorrow, Song of Hope, 2006). She is also a member of Roma Community Centre. Hedina Tahirović Sijerčić is a writer, journalist, and educator. She previously worked as a journalist and producer for radio and TV in Sarajevo. Recent publications include: English-Romani/Romani-English dictionary, 2011 (forward Roland Lee); Romani-Bosnian/Bosnian-Romani dictionary (published by the Federal Ministry of Education and Science, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2010); and Listen, feel pain/Ašun, haćar dukh (2007), a collection of poems.

Sigal Samuel, “There Is a Perception That Canada Is Being Invaded”, The Atlantic, 26.05. 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/05/theres-a-perception-that-canada-is-being-invaded/561032/

Lynn Hutchinson Lee (artist, Canada) & Hedina Tahirović Sijerčić (artist, Bosnia and Herzegovina / Germany), Canada Without Shadows / Kanada Bizo Uchalipe, 2010–2011, 4-part sound installation, total running time 25:07 min., presented at Call the Witness-Roma Pavilion, Venice Biennale, 2011.

According to Lynn’s account of the beginning of their collaboration they first met in 1999 in Toronto, Canada. “Hedina had arrived here some months before we met, and had contacted Roma Community Centre. I was already on the board of directors of RCC. Hedina began to work on two projects right away: she was editor of our newsletter Romano Lil, the first Romani newsletter in Canada, and also edited Romane Mirikle (Romani Pearls, 1999), an anthology of poetry by Roma in Canada. I did the cover illustration for the book. She later used an image of mine for her subsequent anthology, Saro Paj/Like Water, 2009.” Quoted from a recent correspondence with Lynn Hutchinson Lee, 02 August, 2018.

Roland Lee, “The Rom-Vlach Gypsies and the Kris-Romani”, in Gypsy Law: Romani Legal Traditions and Culture, Berkeley, Walter O. Weyrauch, Ed. CA: University of California Press; 2001, pp. 188-230.

“The project eventually presented the results of the complex research in which the artists archived and juxtaposed various found and created sounds. The “whispering” voices convey the poetic transpositions of the promised imaginary land, Canada, starting from different subjective experiences of memories, cultural and ethnic displacement, precariousness, family joys and laments, and testimonies of shame. The sounds of the turning wheels of Lee’s family vardo (caravan) are intertwined with Sijerčić’s “dreams” of Romani children’s laughter, footsteps corresponding to elements in her poetry, and the sounds of bombs in the Bosnian Roma ghetto.” Suzana Milevska, Call the Witness (brochure), BAK: Utrecht, 2011.

“Hedina held written word workshops in which the women wrote their stories, and read them; I held printmaking workshops in which the women drew images and made block prints. From this work, we produced a small book. Our next project, proposed by Hedina, was the making of women's skirts. With a Toronto Arts Council grant, we held more writing and printmaking workshops with school children and Romani refugee women, and made a series of skirts from both paper (in Canada) and fabric (in Sarajevo.) The project, titled "Musaj te Dzav/ I Must Leave" was exhibited in Toronto in 2015 as part of the Opre Roma Festival.” Quoted from a recent correspondence with Lynn Hutchinson Lee, 02 August, 2018.

#roma #suzanamilevska #gender #genderassignment #feminism #Lynn Hutchinson Lee #Hedina Sijerčić #guest blogger

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maryanntorreson · 4 years ago

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10 incredible women in history you should know

Shutterstock

A few years ago, I began to notice that the people I taught about in my World History classes were, more often than not, European men.

1. Hypatia (c. 370 CE – March 415 CE) – Ancient Rome

2. Empress Theodora (c. 497 – c. 548) – The Byzantine Empire

3. Sappho of Lesbos (c. 620 – c. 570 BCE) – Ancient Greece

4. Margery Kempe (c. 1373 – c. 1440 CE) – Middle Ages Europe

5. Njinga of Ndongo and Matamba (c. 1581 – c. 1663 CE) – Post-Classical Africa

6. Artemisia Gentileschi (c. 1593 – c. 1654) – Renaissance Europe

7. Malintzin/Malinche/Doña Marina (c. 1500 – c. 1550) – Colonial Americas

8. Olympe de Gouges (May 7, 1748 – November 3, 1793) – Enlightenment Europe

9. Manuela Sáenz (December 27, 1797–November 23, 1856) – Revolutionary Americas

10. Lyudmila Pavlichenko (July 12, 1916 – October 27, 1974) – World War II

Topics you can connect her to in history include World War II and the Cold War. Students adore her story: they find her sass, grit, and action movie skills endlessly fascinating.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

10 incredible women in history you should know published first on https://premiumedusite.tumblr.com/rss

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phynxrizng · 7 years ago

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A DEFINITION OF ...YULE

For other uses, see Yule (disambiguation).

Yule or Yuletide ("Yule time") is a festival observed by the historical Germanic peoples. Scholars have connected the celebration to the Wild Hunt, the god Odin, and the pagan Anglo-Saxon Mōdraniht. It later underwent Christianised reformulation resulting in the term Christmastide.

Yule

Hauling a Yule log at Christmas, 1832

Also called Yuletide, Yulefest

Observed by Various Northern Europeans, Neopagans, Unitarian Universalists

Type Cultural, Germanic Pagan then Christian, secular, contemporary Paganism

Significance Winter Festival

Date winter solstice

Frequency annual

Winter solstice (Midwinter), Christmastide, quarter days,

Related to

Wheel of the Year, Winter festivals, Christmas

Terms with an etymological equivalent to Yule are used in the Nordic countries for Christmas with its religious rites, but also for the holidays of this season. Today Yule is also used to a lesser extent in the English-speaking world as a synonym for Christmas. Present day Christmas customs and traditions such as the Yule log, Yule goat, Yule boar, Yule singing, and others stem from pagan Yule. Today the event is celebrated in Heathenry and some other forms of Modern Paganism.

Etymology

Yule is the modern English representation of the Old English words ġéol or ġéohol and ġéola or ġéoli, with the former indicating the 12-day festival of "Yule" (later: "Christmastide") and the latter indicating the month of "Yule", whereby ǽrra ġéola referred to the period before the Yule festival (December) and æftera ġéola referred to the period after Yule (January). Both words are thought to be derived from Common Germanic *jeχʷla-, and are cognate with Gothic (fruma) jiuleis; Old Norse, Icelandic, Faroese and Norwegian Nynorsk jól, jol, ýlir; Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian Bokmål jul. [1][2] The etymological pedigree of the word, however, remains uncertain, though numerous speculative attempts have been made to find Indo-European cognates outside the Germanic group, too. [3] The noun Yuletide is first attested from around 1475. [4]

The word is attested in an explicitly pre-Christian context primarily in Old Norse. Among many others (see List of names of Odin), the long-bearded god Odin bears the names jólfaðr (Old Norse for "Yule father") and jólnir ("the Yule one"). In plural (Old Norse jólnar, "the Yule ones") may refer to the Norse gods in general. In Old Norse poetry, the word is often employed as a synonym for 'feast', such as in the kenning hugins jól (Old Norse "Huginn's Yule" → "a raven's feast"). [5]

Jolly may share the same etymology, [6] but was borrowed from Old French jolif (→ French joli), itself from Old Norse jól + Old French suffix -if (compare Old French aisif "easy", Modern French festif = fest "feast" + -if). The word was first mentioned by the Anglo-Norman chronicler Geoffrey Gaimar in his Estoire des Engleis, or "History of the English People", written between 1136–40. [7]

Germanic paganism

Yule was an indigenous midwinter festival celebrated by the Germanic peoples. The earliest references to it are in the form of month names, where the Yule-tide period lasts somewhere around two months in length, falling along the end of the modern calendar year between what is now mid-November and early January. [8]

Attestations

Yule is attested early in the history of the Germanic peoples; from the 4th-century Gothic language it appears in the month name fruma jiuleis, and, in the 8th century, the English historian Bede wrote that the Anglo-Saxon calendar included the months geola or giuli corresponding with either modern December or December and January. [9]

While the Old Norse month name ýlir is similarly attested, the Old Norse corpus also contains numerous references to an event by the Old Norse form of the name, jól. In chapter 55 of the Prose Edda book Skáldskaparmál, different names for the gods are given. One of the names provided is "Yule-beings". A work by the skald Eyvindr Skáldaspillir that uses the term is then quoted, which reads "again we have produced Yule-being's feast [mead of poetry], our rulers' eulogy, like a bridge of masonry". [10] In addition, one of the numerous names of Odin is Jólnir, referring to the event. [11]

The Saga of Hákon the Good credits King Haakon I of Norway with the Christianisation of Norway as well as rescheduling the date of Yule to coincide with Christian celebrations held at the time. The saga states that when Haakon arrived in Norway he was confirmed a Christian, but since the land was still altogether heathen and the people retained their pagan practices, Haakon hid his Christianity to receive the help of the "great chieftains". In time, Haakon had a law passed establishing that Yule celebrations were to take place at the same time as the Christians celebrated Christmas, "and at that time everyone was to have ale for the celebration with a measure of grain, or else pay fines, and had to keep the holiday while the ale lasted." [12]

Yule had previously been celebrated for three nights from midwinter night, according to the saga. Haakon planned that when he had solidly established himself and held power over the whole country, he would then "have the gospel preached". According to the saga, the result was that his popularity caused many to allow themselves to be baptised, and some people stopped making sacrifices. Haakon spent most of this time in Trondheim. When Haakon believed that he wielded enough power, he requested a bishop and other priests from England, and they came to Norway. On their arrival, "Haakon made it known that he would have the gospel preached in the whole country." The saga continues, describing the different reactions of various regional things. [12]

A description of pagan Yule practices is provided (notes are Hollander's own):

It was ancient custom that when sacrifice was to be made, all farmers were to come to the heathen temple and bring along with them the food they needed while the feast lasted. At this feast all were to take part of the drinking of ale. Also all kinds of livestock were killed in connection with it, horses also; and all the blood from them was called hlaut [ sacrificial blood ], and hlautbolli, the vessel holding the blood; and hlautteinar, the sacrificial twigs [ aspergills ]. These were fashioned like sprinklers, and with them were to be smeared all over with blood the pedestals of the idols and also the walls of the temple within and without; and likewise the men present were to be sprinkled with blood. But the meat of the animals was to be boiled and served as food at the banquet. Fires were to be lighted in the middle of the temple floor, and kettles hung over them. The sacrificial beaker was to be borne around the fire, and he who made the feast and was chieftain, was to bless the beaker as well as all the sacrificial meat. [13]

The narrative continues that toasts were to be drunk. The first toast was to be drunk to Odin "for victory and power to the king", the second to the gods Njörðr and Freyr "for good harvests and for peace", and thirdly a beaker was to be drunk to the king himself. In addition, toasts were drunk to the memory of departed kinsfolk. These were called minni. [13]

Theories and interpretation

Scholars have connected the month event and Yule time period to the Wild Hunt (a ghostly procession in the winter sky), the god Odin (who is attested in Germanic areas as leading the Wild Hunt and, as mentioned above, bears the name Jólnir), and increased supernatural activity, such as the aforementioned Wild Hunt and the increased activities of draugar—undead beings who walk the earth. [14]

Modranicht, an event focused on collective female beings attested by Bede as having occurred among the pagan Anglo-Saxons on what is now Christmas Eve, has been seen as further evidence of a fertility event during the Yule period. [8]

The events of Yule are generally held to have centred on Midwinter (although specific dating is a matter of debate), and feasting, drinking, and sacrifice (blót) were involved. Scholar Rudolf Simek comments that the pagan Yule feast "had a pronounced religious character" and comments that "it is uncertain whether the Germanic Yule feast still had a function in the cult of the dead and in the veneration of the ancestors, a function which the mid-winter sacrifice certainly held for the West European Stone and Bronze Ages." The traditions of the Yule log, Yule goat, Yule boar (Sonargöltr) still reflected in the Christmas ham, Yule singing, and others stem from Yule customs, and customs which Simek says "indicates the significance of the feast in pre-Christian times." [15]

Contemporary traditions

In modern Germanic language-speaking areas and some other Northern European countries, historical cognates to English yule denote the Christmas holiday season. Examples include Jul (Sweden), Jul (Denmark), Jul/Jol (Norway), Jól (Iceland and the Faroe Islands), Joulu (Finland), Joelfest (Friesian), Joelfeest (Dutch) and jõulud (Estonia).

Neopaganism

As forms of Neopaganism can be quite different and have very different origins, these representations can vary considerably despite the shared name. Some celebrate in a way as close as possible to how they believe Ancient Germanic pagans observed the tradition, while others observe the holiday with rituals "assembled from different sources". [16]

In Germanic Neopagan sects, Yule is celebrated with gatherings that often involve a meal and gift giving. Groups such as the Asatru Folk Assembly in the US recognise the celebration as lasting 12 days, beginning on the date of the winter solstice. [17]

In most forms of Wicca, this holiday is celebrated at the winter solstice as the rebirth of the Great horned hunter god, [18] who is viewed as the newborn solstice sun. The method of gathering for this sabbat varies by practitioner. Some have private ceremonies at home, [19] while others do so with their covens. [20]

See also

Holidays portal

Dísablót, an event attested from Old Norse sources as having occurred among the pagan Norse

Mōdraniht, an event attested by Bede as having occurred among the pagan Anglo-Saxons on what is now Christmas Eve

Saturnalia, an ancient Roman festival in honour of the deity Saturn, held on December 17 and expanded with festivities through December 23

Yaldā Night, an Iranian festival celebrated on the "longest and darkest night of the year." Notes

1. ^ Bosworth & Toller (1898:424); Hoad (1996:550); Orel (2003:205)

2. ^ "Bokmålsordboka | Nynorskordboka"

Retrieved 2017-03-11.

3. ^ For a brief overview of the proposed etymologies, see Orel (2003:205).

4. ^ Barnhart (1995:896).

5. ^ Guðbrandur Vigfússon (1874:326).

6. ^ T. F. Hoad, English Etymology, Oxford University Press, 1993 (ISBN 0-19-283098-8).

7. ^ Site CNTRL ; Etymology of joli (in French)

8. ^ a b Orchard (1997:187).

9. ^ Simek (2007:379).

10. ^ Faulkes (1995:133).

11. ^ Simek (2007:180–181).

12. ^ a b Hollander (2007:106).

13. ^ a b Hollander (2007:107).

14. ^ Simek (2007:180—181 & 379—380) and Orchard (1997:187).

15. ^ Simek (2007:379–380).

16. ^ Hutton, Ronald (December 2008). "Modern Pagan Festivals: A Study in the Nature of Tradition". Folklore. Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of Folklore Enterprises, Ltd. 119 (3): 251–273. doi:10.1080/00155870802352178 . JSTOR 40646468

17. ^ McNallen, Stephen The Twelve Days of Yule – 2005 Archived 9 January 2007 at the Wayback Machine.

18. ^ James Buescher (15 December 2007). "Wiccans, pagans ready to celebrate Yule" . Lancaster Online. Retrieved 21 December 2007.

19. ^ Andrea Kannapell (21 December 1997). "Celebrations; It's Solstice, Hanukkah, Kwannza: Let There Be Light!"

Retrieved 21 December 2007.

References

Barnhart, Robert K. (1995). The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology. Harper Collins. ISBN 0062700847

Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898). An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Faulkes, Anthony (Trans.) (1995). Edda. Everyman. ISBN 0-460-87616-3.

Guðbrandur Vigfússon (1874). An Icelandic-English Dictionary: Based on the Ms. Collections of the Late Richard Cleasby. Clarendon Press.

Hoad, T. F. (1996). The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-283098-8.

Hollander, M. Lee (Trans.) (2007). Heimskringla: History of the Kings of Norway. University of Texas Press. ISBN 978-0-292-73061-8

Orchard, Andy (1997). Dictionary of Norse Myth and Legend. Cassell. ISBN 0-304-34520-2.

Orel, Vladimir (2003). A Handbook of Germanic Etymology. Leiden: Brill Publishers. pg. 205. ISBN 90-04-12875-1.

Simek, Rudolf (2007) translated by Angela Hall. Dictionary of Northern Mythology. D.S. Brewer ISBN 0-85991-513-1 External links

Quotations related to Yule at Wikiquote

Media related to Yule at Wikimedia Commons

Last edited on 27 November 2017, at 12:06

Source, Wikipedia

Posted by,PHYNXRIZNG

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pittrarebooks · 7 years ago

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Jacopo Sannazaro’s The Piscatory Eclogues and Aldus Manutius

The Special Collections Department is featuring articles written by our student staff in conjunction with our current exhibit, The Compleat Angler: And Other Meditations on the Art and Philosophy of Fishing, 15th Century to the Present, which is currently located in Hillman Library, Third Floor, Room 363, Special Collections Department, University of Pittsburgh.

Fig. 1. Frontispiece portrait of Jacopo Sannazaro and Title Page. From: Sannazaro, Jacopo. 1570. Iacobi Sannazarii Opera Omnia. Latine Scripta. Venetiis: Ex Bibliotheca Aldina.

One of the earliest published pieces of literature on the topic of fishing is Jacopo Sannazaro’s work The Piscatory Eclogues. This text set the stage for many later books on fishing, such as Izaak Walton’s Compleat Angler, bringing the life of fishermen into the forefront of scholarly discussion. In writing the eclogues, Sannazaro transformed a traditional literary genre, the pastoral eclogue, into a new form that focused on fishermen living near bodies of water instead of the shepherds in the rural settings of the pastoral.

The pastoral eclogue is a type of literature that has been around since Theocritus’ Idylls, which was published before 250 B.C. Around that time, Virgil also wrote his own Eclogues in the same style. While the technique fell out of popularity after that, it resurfaced during the Italian Renaissance (“Aldus Manutius” 2016). The pastoral eclogue is unique from other literary genres in that it incorporates monologue, dialogue, narrative action, and more, all within the same composition. Additionally, it makes extensive use of allusion to convey meaning (Kennedy 1983). These qualities allow writers a freedom that cannot be found in other literary styles.

Fig. 2. Svedomsky, Pavel. 1892. Naples. Oil on canvas. Private Collection. Available from: The Athenaeum

Because of these features, Sannazaro was drawn to the eclogue. It is clear that he was directly influenced by Virgil, as The Piscatory Eclogues are parallel in style and structure to Virgil’s (Hankins 2009). However, Sannazaro felt that fishing would make better subject matter than shepherding, and he changed the traditional aspects of the form to reflect that. Pastoral eclogues are typically set in a land called “Arcadia,” which is an idyllic wilderness setting, distantly influenced by Italian landscape. To make his narratives more relatable to contemporary Italian readers, Sannazaro chose to use real places as the background of his eclogues, setting The Piscatory Eclogues in actual towns along the shoreline of Naples, Italy (Hankins 2009). Another decision Sannazaro made was to publish the verses in Latin. Though he wrote other works in the vernacular Italian, he used Latin for his eclogues to create a bridge between classical literature and contemporary Italy (Kennedy 1983). These literary choices were successful in attracting readers, and when The Piscatory Eclogues were published in Naples in 1526, they were well received throughout all of Italy. They even made their way into other parts of Europe, becoming popular in countries like Germany and Portugal (Mustard 1914).

The University of Pittsburgh’s library system has several editions of this text, including English translations and versions published within the past century. The most important edition, which was published in 1570 by Aldus Manutius in Venice, can be found in Archives & Special Collections at Hillman Library. Our copy was donated by William M. Darlington, and he noted in an inscription in the front of the book that it is “One of the Earliest books on the Art of Angling Printed by Aldus.” While the age of the volume is noteworthy on its own, the fact that Aldus Manutius published it is even more significant.

Fig. 3. Portrait of Aldus Manutius. From: Grendler, Paul F. 1995. Books and Schools in the Italian Renaissance. Aldershot, Hampshire, Great Britain: Variorum.

Aldus Manutius, one of the most famous printers ever, worked in Italy during the Renaissance, printing books for Italian readers. He began his career as a Humanist teacher, focusing on Latin classics, though he was also familiar with ancient Greek texts. When he was forty, he decided that it was more important to live honestly rather than to endlessly search for truth. He formed a partnership with two wealthy Venetians and opened his own printing company, the Aldine Press. In choosing what to publish, he concentrated on appealing to Humanists. Humanists preferred to study ancient volumes in their original language and context without contemporary commentary added by translators. Because he spoke Greek, Manutius was able to publish texts from writers like Aristotle in their original language, a phenomenon that was previously unheard of. Manutius attained great success with this approach, and he continued to revolutionize the publishing industry with his versions of Latin classics. He printed them on smaller paper without additional comments. Additionally, he created the Aldine Italic and Roman type fonts. With these changes, he was able to produce small octavo-sized books that people could easily carry with them (Grendler 1995).

Fig. 4 and 5. New Aldine type fonts. From: Sannazaro, Jacopo. 1570. Iacobi Sannazarii Opera Omnia. Latine Scripta. Venetiis: Ex Bibliotheca Aldina.

All publishers of the time had their own characteristic devices that were printed in their books to establish their authority. Manutius created the Aldine Dolphin and Anchor Device, which features an anchor with a dolphin wrapped around it. The motto he chose for this device was “Festina lente,” which means “make haste slowly” (Englade). The image fits this motto well, as the dolphin is a fast animal, made slower by the anchor it holds onto. All of the works published by the Aldine Press contained this device. It can be seen on both the title page and the tail-piece device of the 1570 edition of Iacobi Sannazarii Opera Omnia. Latine Scripta, which includes The Piscatory Eclogues. Even after the dissolution of the Aldine Press, the device has remained connected to printing. Other famous publishers over time, including William Pickering in London and Doubleday in the United States, have appropriated the device to use in their own books.

Fig. 6. Aldine Dolphin and Anchor Device. From: Sannazaro, Jacopo. 1570. Iacobi Sannazarii Opera Omnia. Latine Scripta. Venetiis: Ex Bibliotheca Aldina.

Throughout Manutius’ career, he chose the books he published carefully, only printing what he thought would be profitable. In addition to Greek and Latin classics, he also published contemporary texts, both in Latin and Italian. The books he chose usually sold well, and he was able to turn the company over to his brother-in-law, son, and grandson before his death in 1515. They continued to operate successfully, but without Aldus’ charm, they eventually lost collaborators and closed the press in 1598 (Grendler 1995). Despite this, the Aldine Press continues to be seen as an important influence in the history of book printing. Manutius’ choices regarding language, book size, and font revolutionized the publishing world, paving the way for books to become more affordable and accessible to the general public.

The 1570 copy of The Piscatory Eclogues held in Archives & Special Collections is representative of a typical Aldine book. Though it was printed after Aldus’ death, it retains the characteristics that made him famous. For example, it is small in size and printed in Italic and Roman fonts. People who bought it would have been able to carry it around with them, enjoying Sannazaro’s fishing poems in the same Italy where they were set.

-Cassie Frank, graduate student employee

Works Cited

“Aldus Manutius.” 2016. Encyclopedia Brittanica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Aldus-Manutius.

Englade, Emilio. Accessed August 31, 2017. “Dolphin-and-Anchor device of Aldine Press, ca. 1500.” Harry Ransom Center: The University of Texas at Austin. http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/permanent/windows/southeast/aldine_press.html.

Grendler, Paul F. 1995. Books and Schools in the Italian Renaissance. Aldershot, Hampshire, Great Britain: Variorum.

Hankins, James, ed. 2009. Sannazaro: Latin Poetry. Translated by Michael C. J. Putnam. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

Kennedy, William J. 1983. Jacopo Sannazaro and the Uses of Pastoral. Hanover and London: University Press of New England.

Mustard, Wilfred P., ed. 1914. The Piscatory Eclogues of Jacopo Sannazaro. Baltimore: The John Hopkins Press.

Sannazaro, Jacopo. 1570. Iacobi Sannazarii Opera Omnia. Latine Scripta. Venetiis: Ex Bibliotheca Aldina.

Svedomsky, Pavel. 1892. Naples. Oil on canvas. Private Collection. Available from: The Athenaeum, http://www.the-athenaeum.org/art/full.php?ID=217351# (accessed September 14, 2017).

#fishing #sport #outdoors #pastoral #Italy #aldinepress #printinghistory

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ojamesy · 7 years ago

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Rolf Loeber & Magda Loeber, with Anne Mullin Burnham, A Guide to Irish Fiction, 1650-1900 (Dublin: Four Courts Press 2006), cxv, 1,489pp., ill.

During much of the nineteenth century the majority of the population was Irish-speaking and illiterate. The production of new works of fiction (in contrast to poetry) in the Irish language was virtually nonexistent, and remained so through much of the nineteenth century. As Denvir states, ‘Most of the prose written [in Irish] in the nineteenth century is a continuation of the scribal activity of copying [our emphasis] earlier texts.’ [36] John Bernard Trotter complained in 1812 that ‘Books in Irish are not to be had.’ [37] Chronicling the history of earlier literature, Leerssen remarked that ‘Until the end of the nineteenth century, literary dissemination [of Irish literature] had been either oral, or else in scribal manuscripts only.’ [38] Thus, despite the majority status of Irish speakers, prose fiction in the Irish literary tradition remained frozen outside of print culture, its manuscripts were in private hands and not represented in publicly-accessible libraries. [39] Only in the public sphere of social gatherings of the peasantry were manuscripts read aloud. Their contents also remained disconnected from English literature because, as Cronin remarked, of the striking ‘paucity of printed translations [from the English or other languages] into Irish. [40]

Several other factors contributed to the decline of the Irish language and its literature and the massive adoption of the English language y formerly Irish-speakers. The decay of Irish literature coincided with the disappearance of the old patronage system that had fostered and preserved Irish poetry and narratives. As Cullen remarked, ‘By the end of the eighteenth century, it was not so much a case of the continuing decline of the old-style patronage as a collapse of it’. The approximately 2,500 surviving eighteenth-century manuscripts in Irish showed that English content increased in these artefacts - as evident from notes by owners of the documents, and by inscriptions of the scribes as well. Cullen also noted major geographic differences in people’s familiarity with written language in Irish, which was highest in Munster and east Ulster, and ‘scarcely existed in Connaught, which had a much weaker scribal and a stronger song tradition than Munster’. [41] In addition, in the eighteenth-century poets were concentrated in Munster. Dickson, in a recent summary of the evidence, suggests that ‘as many as half of all Irish-language poets ... known to have been active [in Ireland] between 1690 and 1760 were principall y resident in Kerry, Cork or west Waterford’ [42] We will return to this point in Section V, when we will review the concentration of English-language writers in Munster a century later.

The gradual decline in the use of the Irish language took place especially after 1780. For instance, Maria Edgeworth, when living at Edgeworthstown, Co. Longford, wrote in 1782 that ‘The Irish language is now almost gone into disuse, the class of people all speak English except in their quarrels with each other ...’ During the nineteenth century, the decline of spoken Irish accelerated over large parts of the country, with Irish-speaking areas preserved in the south and west. [41]

The decline of the Irish language occurred at a time when the number of schools increased, and with them came an increased demand for reading materials. [44] In late-eighteenth- and early- nineteenth-century Ireland the Catholic country schools, usually known as hedge schools, did not have educational books specifically written for children and, instead, used reading materials of all kinds, including novels and chapbooks in the English languige. [45] probably, part of the death-knell of the Irish language spoken in the younger generations was the establishment of government-sponsored national schools in 1831. In these schools English was the only language of instruction and English textbooks and references to British works of fiction became the norm.

Irish education policy reflected British imperial approaches to extend British rule through educational institutions. In the case of India this was expressed in Baron MacAulay’s [sic for Macaulay] notorious Minutes on Indian Education in 1835, which proposed ‘the formation of a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect’. Although we have not found such a bold statement regarding national Irish education, the impact was the same - with British literature introduced as instruction material for pupils in schools. However, Ireland differed much from India. Whereas in India, education in native languages was not abandoned by the English, in the Irish national schools education in Irish was prohibited. This had a major, divergent impact oil the publishing industry in each country. In India the publishing of fiction flourished both in English and in native languages, [46] whereas in Ireland only publishing in English took place and no publishing of fiction in the Irish language emerged until the end of the nineteenth century.

The literary historian Norman Vance has noted that the Irish novel emerged with ‘no established tradition of the novel’ in the Irish language. Thus, for Ireland novel writing was an imported literary form, [47] tied to the English language and which appears to have been inspired by English and continental examples. Yet the infusion of English as spoken in Ireland, Irish matters, and Irish imagination and discourse, all contributed to a unique shape of novels which often differed from those written by British novelists.

A major change that inhibited creative forces in Ireland was the Great Famine of 1845-49 which through death and vastly accelerated emigration led to an unprecedented reduction in the Irish population. As Sir William Wilde stated: ‘The great convulsions which societ y of all grades has lately experienced, the failure of the potato crop, and a most unparalleled extent of emigration, together with bankrupt landlords, pauperizing poor-laws, grinding officials, and decimating workhouses, have broken up the very foundations of social intercourse, have swept away the established theories of political economists, and uprooted many of our long-cher ished opinions.’ He lamented the many changes in society, including ‘the Shannaghie and the Callegh in the chimney corner, tell no more the tales and legends of the other days’ and the rapid decay of the Irish vernacular, in which most of our legends, romantic tales, ballads, and bardic annals, the vestiges of Pagan rites, and the relics of fairy charms were preserved which were ‘the poetry of the people, the bond that knit the peasant to the soil, and cheered and solaced many a cottier’s fireside.’ Emigration, according to Sir William Wilde, had an enormous cultural impact: ‘Everyone who can muster three pounds ten ... are [sic] on the move to America, leaving us the idle and ill-conditioned ..., so that it may well be said, the heart of Ireland now beats in America’. [48] This was a bit of an exaggeration. As this Guide shows, Irish fiction continued to be produced in Ireland and England and accelerated in the second half of the nineteenth century.

It is not sufficiently recognized that emigration was only part of the outflow of people from Ireland. Irishmen, like the Scots and the Welsh, became instrumental in the expansion and government of the British Empire and found employment as government officials, officers, soldiers, and planters in British dominions on both sides of the Atlantic from Africa to the Caribbean and Canada, and around the Indian Ocean in South Africa, India, Hong Kong, Australia, and New Zealand.

In addition, emigration from Ireland to North America which had started in the early-eighteenth century and which was then mostly Presbyterian from the north of Ireland, was followed by a massive influx of Irish Catholics to the United States from the 1820s onward. Eventually, about five million Irish emigrated to the United States between 1820 and 1920, and another one million to Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In addition, at least one-anda-half million Irish moved to England. At the end of the nineteenth century, ‘Two out of every five Irish-born people were living overseas ...’ [49]

The Irish diaspora is in some ways comparable to the emigration of the Italians, Poles, and Portuguese from their home countries to the United States. However, the Irish, partly because of their connection to the expanding British Empire, and partly because of their use of the English language, could take advantage of opportunities more quickly than emigrants from other European countries. As R. M. Martin expressed in 1843, ‘What enabled these distinguished [Irishmen and women] to inscribe their names to the Scroll of Fame, and to add to the honor and to the welfare of their country? The wide and noble field of British enterprise.’ [50] In contrast to emigrants from most other countries in Europe, Irish emigrants were enormously facilitated in their move to Anglophone colonies by their knowledge of a common language. [51]

This facility with the English language created opportunities for the Irish to contribute to the national literatures of the United States and several countries within the British Empire (e.g., Canada and Australia). The shared English language greatly facilitated Irish participation in commerce, trade and the professions, including journalism, which as this Guide shows, gave employment to large numbers of Irish men and women. For those Irish emigrants who became authors abroad, the Anglophone environments provided a wide readership outside of Ireland. Thus, Irish fiction, unlike the fiction of Italy, Poland, or Portugal, was the only European fiction that became truly transnational without the need for translation.

The transnational movement of Irish fiction was strongest in the United States. By 1850, the Catholic Irish population had grown into the single largest Catholic population in the country, fed in good measure by the one-and-a-half million Irish who entered America in the decade between 1845 and 1854. [52] As this Guide shows, some of the immigrants turned to writing fiction, while many non-Irish American authors introduced Irish characters and themes in their novels. Only some of the Irish-American fiction made its way back into Ireland: Mrs J. Sadlier’s works, for example, which were first published in Montreal and Boston, were republished by Duffy in Dublin. Otherwise, most of Irish-American fiction appears to have had no direct impact on Irish readers.

One of the distinct developments of Irish authorship was the link between the collapse of social orders and changes in authorship. [53] An early example of such social collapse occurred in the eighteenth century with the disappearance of patronage for poets in the Irish language. At that time, one could hardly speak of individual authorship as we know it nowadays. Leerssen stressed that the concept of authorship in bardic poetry was ‘largely meaningless’ with the same text being attributed to different poets often living ‘hundreds of years apart’. [54] Sometime between the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth century, the notion of authorship in the English language as an occupation emerged in Ireland and Britain. Jonathan Swift is an example of this emerging class of authors, but few of the Irish authors in the eighteenth century were able to earn a living from their writing alone.

Ireland saw another type of collapse of the social order in the nineteenth century when the role of the Ascendancy in Irish society diminished and shifted towards literary engagement. The rise of Ascendancy writers took place under worsening economic and social conditions for their classes, especially during the second half of the nineteenth century when their minority position in Irish society started to lose its economic hegemony. [55] Seamus Deane has remarked that ‘Irish culture became the new property of those who were losing their grip on Irish land’, which constituted ‘a strategic retreat from political to cultural supremacy’. [56] We will show in Section V that an increase of authorship by the Irish gentry, both Protestant and Catholic, and by ministers of the Church of Ireland and their children took place during the nineteenth century. [57] For instance, George Moore, a scion of the Moores of Moor Hall in Co. Mayo, realized in 1879 that as a result of estate mismanagement and poor harvests and rent failures, he would have to leave Ireland to earn a living as an author. Most of these Irish authors had not been trained for any profession and traditionally saw trade and physical work as beneath their status, and therefore turned to writing instead, this new occupation being acceptable to their station in life. A few of the gentry, notably women authors such as Maria Edgeworth, Edith Somerville, and Dorothea Conyers were able to keep up their country house establishments only by their literary earnings, and incorporated many local aspects and characters of their country house world in their writings. [58] In fact, the gentry who stayed in Ireland, in contrast to those who left, contributed more to literature with an Irish content. [59] However, their numbers appear to have decreased at the beginning of the twentieth century. In their place came a solid foundation of middle-class authors, often from a Catholic background, a movement that began during the second half of the nineteenth century.

Eventually, emigrant Irish writers, because of writing in the English language, became participants and leaders in other national literatures that emerged in countries such as Canada and Australia.

#irish literature #irish language #ireland #gaelic #authorship #print culture #history #context #rolf loeber #magda loeber #imperialism #oral culture #bardic culture #orality #words

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milenapetrofig · 5 years ago

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Sir Walter Scott was born on 15 August 1771, in a small third floor flat in College Wynd in Edinburgh’s Old Town. Scott was the ninth child of Anne Rutherford and Walter Scott, a solicitor and member of the private Scottish society known as the Writers of the Signet, so called for their entitlement to use the Scottish King’s seal – known as the signet – when drawing up legal documents. Whilst the Scott’s home near the University was a popular area for lecturers and professionals like Scott’s father to live, in reality the small, overcrowded alleyway saw little natural light and clean air and suffered from a lack of proper sanitation. Unsurprisingly perhaps then, that six of Anne and Walter’s children died in infancy and the young Walter (or ‘Wattie’ as he was affectionately known) contracted polio as a toddler. Despite early treatment his right leg remained lame for the rest of his life. In 1773, Walter was sent to live with his grandparents on their farm at Sandyknowe, in the border area of Roxburghshire, 30 miles from Edinburgh. It was hoped that some time spent in the countryside would improve Scott’s ailing health and indeed it did. This time spent with his grandparents and attentive Aunt Janet (or ‘Jenny’ as she was more commonly known) meant that he was sufficiently strong enough to return to Edinburgh and start school in January 1775, following the death of his grandfather Robert Scott. During his time at Sandyknowe Jenny encouraged Scott’s literary pursuits, reciting poetry to him when he was too ill to leave his bed and teaching him how to read. His grandmother Barbara would also keep the young boy amused with stories of their ancestors and the border battles between the Scots and the English. It was then that Walter developed his enduring appreciation of ballads and his keen interest in the Scottish heritage. On his return to Edinburgh – to his family’s large new home at 25 George Square in the New Town area of the city – Scott was able to thoroughly explore the city with the aid of a cane. Having been privately educated on his return, Scott then attended the Royal High School of Edinburgh in October 1779. As the high school did not focus on arithmetic or writing, Walter also undertook further tuition from the staunch patriot James Mitchell, who also threw in some teachings of the Scottish Church and the Scottish Presbyterian movement for good measure. In his last year at the high school Scott had grown several inches, and fearful that he would no longer have the strength to carry his larger frame, he was once more sent to stay with his Aunt Jenny in 1783, this time at the small border town of Kelso where she was now living. During his six months at Kelso, Walter also attended Kelso Grammar School and it was here that he made one of the enduring friendships of his life, with future business partner and publisher James Ballantyne, who shared Scott’s love of literature. Already an avid reader of epic romances, poetry, history and travel books, Walter returned to Edinburgh to study classics at the University from November 1783. In March 1786 Walter began an apprenticeship at his father’s office with the intention to become a Writer to the Signet, however it was decided that he would aim for the Bar and so he returned to the university to study law. It was at this time that Scott met the other great Scottish Poet, Robert Burns, at a literary salon in the winter of 1786–87. It was said to be the only meeting between the pair, and the 15-year old Scott ingratiated himself to the older Burns by being the only one present to identify the author of an illustrated poem Burns had happened upon (the poem being “The Justice of the Peace” by the English translator, poet and priest John Langhorne). Scott Monument, Edinburgh Having qualified as a lawyer in 1792, Walter received a modest income as an Advocate whilst he spent the next few years foraying into literature by translating noted German works into English for publication by his friend Ballantyne. In September 1797 on a visit to the Lake District, Scott met Charlotte Carpentier. Following a whirlwind courtship, Scott proposed to Charlotte only three weeks after their initial meeting, much to the disproval of his parents. Charlotte’s French origins led them to believe she might be Catholic and they insisted on learning more about her family. Their concerns were allayed when they discovered she was a British citizen and had been christened in the Church of England. The fact that she was financially comfortable was another plus! The couple were married on Christmas Eve 1797 at St Mary’s Church in Carlisle, returning to live in Edinburgh the same night. It was a happy union, broken only by Charlotte’s death thirty years later on 15th May 1826. In 1809, Scott joined James Ballantyne and his brother as an anonymous silent partner in their publishing house, John Ballantyne & Co. Many of Scotts subsequent poems were published by the company, including the well known The Lady of the Lake, whose German translation was set to music by the composer Franz Schubert. Scott’s 1808 poem Marmion, about the battle between the English and Scottish at Flodden Field in 1513 introduced his most oft’ quoted rhyme, which is still regularly used today: Oh! what a tangled web we weave When first we practise to deceive! Scott’s popularity as a poet was cemented in 1813 when he was given the opportunity to become Poet Laureate. However, he declined and Robert Southey accepted the position instead. The Novels In 1814, when the publishing house suffered the first of two significant financial blows, Scott began writing novels as a means of bettering his fiscal situation. That same year his first novel, Waverley, was published anonymously and its worldwide success prompted further volumes in the Waverley series, each with a Scottish historical setting. Whilst many eventually came to suspect Scott as the author, he continued to produce these and other novels under a pseudonym until officially admitting he was the author in 1827. What had begun as an attempt to uphold his reputation as a serious poet and Clerk of the Court Session should this more whimsical genre have been unsuccessful, also enabled Scott to indulge his passion for the romance and mystery about which he wrote. The ‘discovery’ of the Honours of Scotland by Sir Walter Scott in 1818 The Prince Regent (later George IV) was so impressed by Scott’s work that In 1818 he gave him permission to search Edinburgh Castle for the Royal Scottish regalia. The searchers eventually found them in the little strong room at Edinburgh Castle locked in an oak chest, covered with linen cloths, exactly as they had been left after the Union on 7th March 1707. They were put on display on February 4th, 1818 and have been on view ever since in Edinburgh Castle, where thousands come to see them each year. Having been granted the title of baronet in 1820, Sir Walter Scott was heavily involved in arranging King George IV’s visit to Scotland in 1822 (the first Scottish visit by a ruler of the Hanoverian dynasty), and the ceremonial tartans and kilts Scott had displayed throughout the city during the visit brought the garments back into contemporary fashion and cemented them as important symbols of the Scottish culture. In 1825 the publishing house faced further financial difficulties resulting in its near closure. These difficulties were brought about in part by Scott’s attempts to finance his Abbotsford Estate and other landholdings but also the shift to more cautious trading in the city of London at the time. Sir Walter Scott’s study at Abbotsford Scott chose not to declare himself bankrupt, but instead he entrusted his estate and assets to his creditors and produced a prolific amount of literature over the next seven years as a means of wiping out his debt. Having suffered a stroke in 1831, which resulted in apoplectic paralysis, his health continued to fail and Scott died on 21st September 1832 at Abbotsford. He was buried alongside his wife Charlotte at Dryburgh Abbey in the border town of Melrose. At the time of his death Scott was still in debt, but the continued success of his writings meant that his estate was eventually restored to his family. Scott today Having been one of the first English-language authors to succeed international in his own lifetime, Scott’s works are still widely read today with many such as Ivanhoe, and Rob Roy being adapted for the screen. However, whilst Scott was one of the most popular writers in both Britain and the United States in the nineteenth century he was not without his detractors. The American author Mark Twain was definitely not a fan, ridiculing Scott by naming the sinking boat after the Scottish writer in his famous 1884 novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Following the Modernist movement in literature in the aftermath of the first World War, Scott’s rambling and verbose text (indeed he was alleged to omit punctuation in his writing, preferring to leave this to the printers to insert as required) was no longer in vogue. Nevertheless, Scott’s impact on both Scottish and English literature cannot be denied. He created the modern historical novel which has inspired generations of writers and audiences alike and his input to the Highland revival put Scotland back on the map. Whilst perhaps not as immediately synonymous with Scotland as his predecessor Burns, Scott has been immortalised in monuments as far apart as Glasgow and New York and still appears on the front of Scottish bank notes. His famous creation – the Waverley novels – is also commemorated via Edinburgh’s famous Waverley rail station.

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