Portraits of two merovingian bishops in the poetry of Venantius Fortunatus

The poetry of Venantius Fortunatus is frequently used as source material for prosopographical data, for the roles and images of certain categories of individuals, and for details of buildings and topography. His poetry, however, can be used further to provide detailed personal portraits in some cases. There are several groups of poems to individuals which use a range ofgenres and arise from a variety of occasions, illuminating several aspects of the patron and his way of life. Two such clusters are to the bishops Leontius of Bordeaux and Gregory of Tours. The poet works from traditional genres but varies the structure and wording of these poems to respond sensitively to each bishop in his particular circumstances. Comparison of the two groups of poems, and especially of the formal panegyrics, builds up internally consistent and vivid pictures of the attitudes, ambitions and characters of two very different men. Fortunatus' poetry thus enables us to supplement bald prosopogrophical details and generalities about social roles, in a way unique in this period.     

The image of the Frankish kings in the poetry of Venantius Fortunatus

The poetry of Venantius Fortunatus is a sadly neglected historical source for sixth-century Gaul. Amongst the literary material that has survived from that age, the works of Gregory of Tours loom large. Since Gregory provides us with the sole narrative history of Gaul for much of this century, we are forced to see Merovingian society through his eyes. Venantius wrote panegyric, and an age such as ours, which values sincerity of expression, finds little that is attractive in that genre. Despite this, Venantius' poetry affords us a vantage point from which to view the Frankish kings. It also provides important evidence for the nature of the cultural fusion of Germanic, Roman and Christian elements that was taking place in the Gaul of Gregory of Tours and King Chilperic. The poems written for the Merovingian monarchs suggest that Venantius sensed a Frankish hankering after the trappings of Roman imperial authority. He wrote, perhaps with didactic intent, to give full exposition to the traditional Roman conception of the just ruler, coupled with the more recent ideal of the orthodox Christian monarch that was still current in the Byzantine Empire. When Venantius Fortunatus journeyed to the courts of the barbarian kings, he brought with him his cultural baggage from Byzantine Ravenna.     

Romans,barbarians, and Franks in the writings of Venantius Fortunatus

This paper aims to contribute to the broader discussion of strategies of identification and of Romanness by exploring the changing meaning of Roman, barbarian, and Frankish identity in the writings of Venantius Fortunatus. A close examination of the cultural, ethnic and political nuances of these terms in Fortunatus's works highlights the ways he used the resources available to him within his social context to promote Roman identity as still prestigious and as compatible with a barbarian‐ruled society.     

The Translation of the Unseen Self: Fortunatus,Mercury and The Wishing-Hat

This article examines the popular early German prose text Fortunatus both as folktale and as mercantile myth, concentrating on the hitherto critically neglected Wishing-Hat, which is regarded in this essay as a descendant of the Petasus of Mercury. In the original Fortunatus text dating from 1509, there are many points of contact centred in the Hat, such as its appearance, the themes of speed, secrecy, invisibility, theft, and commerce, between Fortunatus and Mercury. The manner in which these themes were developed in subsequent German revisions of Fortunatus and in seventeenth-century English translations and adaptations of the text is discussed. From embodiment of knowledge to a signifier of multipresence, from being a representation of travel to an accessory to raptorial attack, the uses and meanings of the Wishing-Hat are seen to be many and varied.     

Portraits of the Poor in Early Nineteenth-Century Radical Journalism

This paper compares the social-exploration literature of radical, mostly Owenite and Chartist, and liberal journalism in the first half of the nineteenth century, though the focus is on the less known ‘portraits of the poor’ in radical papers. In the paper I argue that against the developing liberal practice of intricately mapping poverty and categorizing the poor, radical papers under-represented particular cases of poverty, using an obfuscating syntax to document the poor. In doing so, radicals differentiated themselves from their middle-class counterparts, primarily as a way to challenge the assumption that poverty was a function of individual error and to turn the public’s gaze onto the social causes of poverty. Highlighting the political dimensions of poverty and minimizing the language of ‘personal responsibility’, radicals demonstrated that the activist agenda concerned itself with the economic and social as much as with the political, even while offering political solutions to economic and social problems.     

Emperors,bishops, art and jurisprudence: the transformation of law in Eusebius of Caesarea

This article analyses the collection and repurposing of legal documents in the early fourth‐century historical writings of Eusebius of Caesarea. Some of these individual documents have been the object of repeated study; others are still largely neglected. But they are even more interesting, I suggest, when considered as a collective, as Eusebius’ careful editing reveals they were intended to be. This mobilization of collated and embedded law was, I argue, the meeting of two separate wider trends that took off in this early fourth‐century watershed moment – the so‐called late antique artistic aesthetic, and the gradually changing legal dynamic between government and governed. Eusebius used both as strategies to resist imperial dominance in the uncertain times in which he wrote, constructing an image of the bishop capable of going toe to toe with emperors. In doing so, he anticipated not just the growing conflict between church and state in the centuries to come, but the rhetorical strategies that would come to be employed.     

中国古代钱币诗话

古钱币系列是中国历史经济现象的载体,亦是承载时代进程的脉络与脚印。其见证了不同时期因政权更替的兴盛与衰败。在华夏古代文学宝库里,有关货币的诗话占有独特的重要地位。     

敦煌写本相书理论与敦煌石窟供养人画像——关于敦煌莫高窟供养人画像研究之二

汉唐敦煌地区是一个多民族居住区,除了汉族之外,还生活有粟特人、吐谷浑人、南山人、吐蕃人、龙家人、达怛人、回鹘人以及少量的西域其他居民,很多民族都有明显的面貌特征,其中粟特、吐谷浑、吐蕃、回鹘等都在敦煌石窟绘制有供养人像,这些供养人像共性特征突出,个性特征减弱乃至于消失,具有明显的千人一面的倾向,经过我们研究,主要受敦煌地区审美观即敦煌写本相书好相理论的影响。     

Fronto, the bishops, and the crowd: Episcopal justice and communal violence in fifth-century Tarraconensis

Augustine's Epistula 11* was addressed to the bishop of Hippo by an aristocratic laymen called Consentius. The letter recounts, ostensibly verbatim, the tribulations of the Spanish monk Fronto in his efforts to prosecute what he regards as a heretical conspiracy amongst the clergy of Hispania Tarraconensis. Fronto's narrative is a rare first-person account of the late antique judicial process, in all its complexity of overlapping imperial and ecclesiastical jurisdictions. The present article examines the letter's evidence for judicial strategies and rhetoric, as well as the role of status, power and violence in influencing legal outcomes.     

Observations on Some of the Principal Portraits of Devonshire Worthies

Area excavation of five Middle Bronze Age Round Houses at Black Patch, Alcisten, E. Sussex, has conclusively proved that the house terrace itself was a major structural element in the house construction. The position of storage pits and artifacts confirms that the house floor consisted of the whole house terrace. The precise recording of the position of every artifact was used to define activity areas which indicate the possible function of individual houses. From this evidence it is possible to suggest the likely social organisation of the excavated compound.     

The presence of Sikelianos in the poetry of George Seferis

Abstract

Echoes of Sike1ianos' poetry can be detected in many poets, but his presence in Seferis is particularly interesting in the light of the close personal relationship which developed between the two poets from the 1940s. The poetic dialogue starts with Seferis' Στρo?η (1931) and develops continuously until his last book of poems, Tρια Kρυ?? Φoιημα&tauα (1966). Seferis, attracted by Sikelianos' linguistic richness, recreates the older poet's words ingeniously in his search for a new poetics. I examine this dialogue chronologically to show that exploring the presence of Sikelianos in Seferis' poetry enhances the understanding of the younger poet and reveals that, however great the differences in matters of technique between the two poets, their attitudes to poetry and poetics are in the end closely related.     

《乐府诗集》“相和歌辞”题解释读

“相和歌辞”是郭茂倩编撰的《乐府诗集》中的重要部分。郭氏往往在各曲调名下撰写解释、说明的文字,其中常引录南朝陈释智匠的《古今乐录》一书,而《古今乐录》又常引述晋朝荀勖、南朝宋张永、齐王僧虔的著作。由于这样辗转引述,且《古今乐录》及其所引的著作久已不传,故今人阅读时颇感困难。本文即对郭氏所撰写的“相和歌辞”的若干题解加以分析,并得出了某些比较重要的结论。