Finding Thoreau in French Canada: The Ideological Legacy of the American Revolution

Henry David Thoreau’s Yankee in Canada is easily overlooked. Because it is so selective in its depiction of life in the St. Lawrence River valley, historians of mid-nineteenth-century Canada have shown little interest in Thoreau’s first-hand account. To American readers, it offers little of the characteristic Thoreau found in Walden and Resistance to Civil Government. Yet, it is highly significant as an expression of national self-definition. Thoreau borrowed themes at least as old as the American Revolution when noting the pernicious rule of Catholic and British power in Canada. He set out to expose the promise of republican values by emphasizing the contrast between these and the poor and morally stunted life under Old World institutions. His work must therefore be interpreted as a call to his audience to commit more deeply than ever to the ideals that animated the Great Republic’s founding moment. It must also stand as a civic interpretation of American nationality at a time when this perspective was waning. Before long, Old World peoples would be racialized and the ideological embrace of the republican values advanced by Thoreau would no longer suffice in making American citizens.     

“SEEING” THE PAST: TEXT AND QUESTIONS OF HISTORY IN THE RĀJATARAṄGIṆĪ

Traditional scholarly opinion has regarded Kalha?a's Rājatara?gi?ī, the twelfth‐century Sanskrit chronicle of Kashmiri kings, as a work of history. This essay proposes a reinvestigation of the nature of the iconic text from outside the shadow of that label. It first closely critiques the positivist “history hypothesis,” exposing its internal contradictions over questions of chronology, causality, and objectivity as attributed to the text. It then argues that more than an empiricist historical account that modern historians like to believe it is—in the process bracketing out integral rhetorical, mythic, and didactic parts of the text—the Rājatara?gi?ī should be viewed in totality for the kāvya (epic poem) that it is, which is to say, as representing a specific language practice that sought to produce meaning and articulated the poet's vision of the land and its lineages. The essay thus urges momentarily reclaiming the text from the hegemonic but troubled understanding of it as history—only to restore it ultimately to a more cohesive notion of historicality that is consistent with its contents. Toward this end, it highlights the concrete claim to epistemic authority that is asserted both by the genre of Sanskrit kāvya generally and by the Rājatara?gi?ī in particular, and their conception of the poetic “production” of the past that bears a striking resonance with constructivist historiography. It then traces the intensely intertextual and value‐laden nature of the epistemology that frames the Rājatara?gi?ī into a narrative discourse on power and ethical governance. It is in its narrativity and discursivity—its meaningful representation of what constitutes “true” knowledge of time and human action—that the salience of the Rājatara?gi?ī may lie.     

Behçet Kemal Çağlar's Kur’ân‐ı Kerîm'den İlhamlar (Inspirations from the Holy Qur’ān): A Kemalist's Personal,Poetic Response to the Qur’ān

Behçet Kemal Ça?lar, 1908–1969, is the author of a commentary of the Qur’ān, Kur’ân‐? Kerîm'den ?lhamlar (‘Inspirations from the Holy Qur’ān’), published in 1966. This work can be described as a poetic reflection on the Qur’ān. It does not adhere to rendering every line or verse, but instead insists on maintaining a rhythmic cadence and end‐rhyme. Although it resembles a translation in some ways, Ça?lar refuses to call his work a translation. This paper begins by introducing Ça?lar and his text, a brief history of Turkish translations of the Qur’ān, then Ça?lar's approach is contrasted with the aims of translators of the Qur’ān. Ça?lar's text is studied in more detail, providing a sample of the Turkish text and a translation of it into English, focusing on Ça?lar's reflection on Sūrat ?aha. Through this study, it becomes clear that as a result of his prioritizing the literary aspects of the Qur’ān in his reflection, Ça?lar's book has an advantage over literal translations of the Qur'an and it can be useful for Qur’ān translation. At the same time, Ça?lar's book is a reflection of a desire to develop a Turkish Islam—a manifestation of Islam that came from Turkey, that reflected its language and culture and that was intelligible to its people.     

Śāntideva's Bodhicaryāvatāra in Translation: A Century of Interpretation of a Sanskrit Mahāyāna Text

Many translations of ?āntideva's Bodhicaryāvatāra, a Sanskrit Mahāyāna Buddhist text of seventh/eighth‐century India, have been published since 1892. ?āntideva's Bodhicaryāvatāra is one of the few Indian Mahāyāna Buddhist texts available in Sanskrit and it was influential in Tibetan Buddhist schools. This article explores how translation of the Bodhicaryāvatāra is no longer the preserve of scholars but has moved to being carried out by Buddhist practitioners influenced by Tibetan schools of Buddhism. It shows how translators’ motives for translating the text have reflected changing attitudes to Buddhism and its texts. ?āntideva's Bodhicaryāvatāra has been translated as a source of information, a literary work, an inspirational work and, with the rise of Western interest in Tibetan Buddhism in the late twentieth century, as a vehicle for the transmission of Buddhist teachings. Nevertheless, further scholarly investigation of the Sanskrit text of the Bodhicaryāvatāra remains to be done.     

How Many Chapters Does the “Yasna of the Seven Chapters” Have?

This article argues that the Avestan text Yasna Hapta?hāiti (“Yasna of the seven chapters”) was not originally divided into seven chapters. It was divided into three parts that were not considered hāitis (chapters) in the same way as the gathic hāitis. The division of the Yasna Hapta?hāiti into seven parts and its corresponding title is based on the arrangement of the Old Avestan texts. These texts try to reproduce the structure of the prayer Ahuna Vairiia; three verses with two hemistichs each correspond to three pairs of compositions with 7, 4 four and 1 hāiti each of the Old Avestan texts.     

On Not Reading The Soldier’s Pocket-book for Field Service

This essay focuses on Garnet Wolseley’s controversial war instruction manual, The Soldier’s Pocket-book for Field Service (1869). While the Pocket-book’s contribution to discussions of reading and soldiers’ education has carved out a significant place for it in Victorian military history, in its day it was constantly contested and undermined by contradictory representations, as a book much talked about but little read. This essay is an exercise in tracing these eccentric reception histories, as an acute reminder that books may well have vibrant intellectual lives without actually being read. To examine the literary and material circulation of the Pocket-book in the late nineteenth century, it draws on archival research in the Macmillan Archive and Wolseley’s private papers to discuss the genesis of the text not just as a compendium of information but also as an object that is handled, carried, and exchanged. I juxtapose these considerations with episodes in the representation of the Pocket-book: in an anti-war pamphlet; an anonymous satirical drawing found in Wolseley’s personal scrapbooks; and in Kipling’s short stories about British soldiers in colonial South Asia. In all of these, the Pocket-book is characterized as a dubious, even dangerous text – one that was neither read, nor should be. The examples demonstrate three of the different trajectories through which the Pocket-book emerged as an unread book in the Victorian imagination: through encouragements not to read, rejection, and misappropriation.     

Texts,topoi and the self: a reading of Alfredian spirituality*

Challenging the allegation that Alfred's spirituality as Asser presents it is no more than a string of textual fictions, this article outlines a context for understanding Alfred's spirituality as a functional process of living texts, or of ‘textualizing’ the self. The discussion first draws support for this view from the history of early medieval spirituality and then demonstrates the theme's relevance both to Asser's representation of Alfred and to the king's own writings. Attention is given especially to the congruence between Alfred's depiction in the Life and Gregory the Great's teachings on the ideal rector as propounded in the Pastoral Care, a text carefully read and famously translated by Alfred himself. The comparison suggests that the main spiritual models for Alfred's kingly piety may be understood to reside in, and to involve assimilation of, this work of Gregory, making it possible to conceptualize the king's self‐presentation in terms of a conscious project to ‘live’ Gregory's text by bringing the ideals of the Gregorian rector to life in his own person. Such an argument helps to explain Alfred's interest in Gregory, to account for his concern to translate the Pastoral Care, and to legitimize the predominant images associated with the king's spirituality as indicative of a kind of functional piety grounded in the reading of texts, rather than simply reflected, perhaps falsely, in Asser’s Life.     

“Machiavellian” Instruction: Why Hesiod’s Ainos Has No Moral

Hesiod’s fable (ainos) of the hawk and the nightingale, addressed to kings, notoriously has no moral. Its depiction of a hawk carrying off a nightingale, preaching the futility of either resistance or pleading, appears to communicate the counsel, commonly designated as “Machiavellian,” that a ruler must know how to imitate a beast as well as a man. Such instruction—which advises that unjust actions are justifiable and necessary for a ruler—is clearly at odds with Hesiod’s explicit exhortations to his brother Perses to work hard and avoid hubris, and his caution that unjust kings or lords (basileis) will be punished by Zeus. I argue that Hesiod’s addressing the fable to kings “who themselves have understanding” explains the lack of a moral. To substantiate my claim I compare Hesiod’s and Machiavelli’s ranking of intellects, and illuminate Hesiod’s position with particular reference to and comparison with Machiavelli’s Prince, and examples drawn from the Old Testament and Old Irish law.     

A Witness to the Early Reception of Bonaventure’s Collationes in Hexaëmeron: Nicholas of Ockham’s Leccio at Oxford (c. 1286) — Introduction and Text

Abstract

This essay presents a brief introduction to and an edition of Nicholas of Ockham’s Leccio at Oxford, which begins with the biblical verse, O altitudo diviciarum sapiencie et sciencie Dei (Romans 11. 33). This leccio may have been Nicholas’s inaugural sermon as a Master of Theology at Oxford and therefore dates to 1286. Whatever the precise genre of Nicholas’s leccio, the text is also important because much of it copies entire sections of St Bonaventure’s (d. 1274) Collationes in Hexaëmeron. Nicholas’s text is therefore a witness to Oxford University practices of the late thirteenth-century and to the late thirteenth-century reception of Bonaventure.     

Le Danger des liaisons: Censoring Laclos’s Liaisons dangereuses

When Pierre-Ambroise-François Choderlos de Laclos’s Liaisons dangereuses first appeared in late March 1782, it was an immediate succès de scandale. Laclos’s focus on his characters’ libertine psychology and his creation of a “monstrous” female villain, Merteuil, distinguished the novel from mainstream eighteenth-century French works. As an analysis of the novel’s reception demonstrates, Laclos’s suggestive portrayal of female sexuality and empowerment—and, specifically, of Merteuil—led first to the text’s association with dangerous works known as “mauvais livres” or “livres philosophiques” such as the Marquis de Sade’s Justine (1791) and the anonymous Histoire de Dom Bougre, Portier de Chartreux (1741), and later contributed to its classification as a pornographic work at the time the concept was invented in the early nineteenth century—and, ultimately, to its censorship in 1823. If the novel was devoid of explicitly sexual scenes, it nonetheless elicited such images in the minds of (at least some of) its readers and thereby caught the attention of the authorities. Les Liaisons dangereuses may be one of the most prominent historical cases of a book being banned not for what was depicted in its pages, but for the fantasies it inspired—providing a compelling twist to the adage that “pornography is in the eyes of the beholder,” or the mind of the reader.     

Of reaflac and rapina: accusations of violence in two Old English lawsuits and the Libellus Æthelwoldi

This article examines the meaning and function of the Old English noun reaflac in two tenth-century lawsuit documents, Sawyer 877 and Sawyer 1211. It suggests that reaflac was the vernacular counterpart to the Latin terms violentia and rapina. Such connected terminology suggests that a collection of now lost tenth-century Old English charters, like S 877 and S 1211 in form, was the original source for the twelfth-century Ely house chronicle, the Libellus Æthelwoldi. Charter draftsmen purposefully selected a language of violence in order to delegitimize a rival party’s claim to an estate, regardless of whether any acts of violence had taken place. Reaflac formed part of this narrative strategy in early English lawsuit documents because of its association with contemporary discourses on moralized wrongdoing.     

A Door of Hope Re‐opened: The Fifth Monarchy,King Charles and King Jesus

A Door of Hope was the manifesto of the Fifth Monarchists’ desperate uprising in London in January 1661, a few months after the Restoration of Charles II. While the rising itself is well known, its manifesto has never been examined in detail. Probably based on a sermon to Venner's congregation, it displays a defiant conviction that the Restoration could be understood as part of God's providential plan, the next step towards the imminent kingdom of Christ on earth. But it also reaches out to a much wider constituency, all the supporters of the “Good Old Cause,” offering a programme that might appeal to many radicals. And the author draws on secular, republican discourse to buttress his apocalyptic claims, revealing close links between even the most extreme Fifth Monarchists and wider currents of interregnum radicalism.     

John Milton and the Beard-Hater: encounters with Julian the Apostate

ABSTRACT

This is a study of John Milton and Julian the Apostate, last of the pagan emperors. It follows two trajectories. The first takes as its subject Julian’s “School Edict” of 362 AD, which barred Christians from traditional classical education; while the second concerns a literary text by Julian himself, the Misopogon or “Beard-Hater,” in which he ironically attacked his own aversion to Antiochene Christianity, including the performance of plays. These discussions offer an opportunity to re-examine Milton’s comments on early Christian views of drama, as well as his own drafts for sacred dramas. All these discussions turn on the question of how the Christian is to approach pagan literature, one of the oldest intellectual debates within Christianity. I argue that Milton’s attitude to Greek literature as an entire process was shaped by his attitude to this specific debate, and that this can be seen afresh by viewing it through the eyes of its most powerful critic in antiquity, Julian the Apostate. I also furnish an account of the early-modern editorial tradition of Julian.     

Balbuena's Grandeza mexicana and the American Georgic

Bernardo de Balbuena’s Grandeza mexicana (1604) stands between two worlds. One of the earliest and most spectacular poetic celebrations of the wonders of the city of Mexico, this text was addressed both at the American and the Spanish audience, producing a duplicitous message. The capital of New Spain is presented as one of the most loyal and productive colonies of the Hispanic empire, though it is also celebrated for its economic autonomy and cultural supremacy with regards to the metropolis. These dualisms are also noticeable in the poetic style of Balbuena’s work, which, following the traditional idea of the Wheel of Virgil, adopts old classical models to portray the New World whilst anticipating Baroque poetics. Following the example of Virgil, Balbuena fashioned his literary career as a process organised in three distinct evolutionary stages, beginning with a bucolic text, Siglo de Oro en las selvas de Erífile, and culminating with an epic poem, El Bernardo. Grandeza stood between these two, adapting the rural setting of the Georgics to an urban context, and offering an idealised account of the Virgilian praise of human industry, which placed Balbuena and the other members of the lettered class on the forefront of Mexican society.