Narration of Violence or Violence of Narration: Bahram Beyzaie's The Eighth Voyage of Sinbad and The One Thousand and First Night

Bahram Beyzaie is one of the most distinguished Iranian playwrights. Beginning his career in the early 1960s and still working, he is considered as a playwright who has always been looking for discovering and inventing non-classic and non-western narrative templates. To fulfill this purpose, he has made considerable use of classic Iranian literary sources, among which the One Thousand and One Nights and Ta'ziyeh texts are special cases. By analyzing Beyzaie's two plays, Hashtomin Safar-e Sandbad (The Eighth Voyage of Sinbad, 1964) and Shab-e Hezar-o Yekom (The One Thousand and First Night, 2003), which were produced within a forty-year period, this article attempts to highlight some of Beyzaie's methods of narration, particularly in relation to violence.     

The Conte-en-vers: Expanding Stith Thompson's X-File of Obscene Motifs

The conte-en-vers is a narrative dealing with bawdy subjects presented in verse form and with a certain elegance of expression that contrasts markedly with its licentious content. La Fontaine's Contes, provide material through which to explore bawdy stories that were circulating during the seventeenth century. Furthermore, La Fontaine's followers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries afford a rich source from which to glean information about erotic folktales current in France during that period. The conte-en-vers genre is of special significance to folklorists because the authors incorporated current folklore motifs into their tales, making of them an important, though neglected, repository of folklore during three centuries. The conte-en-vers provides a corpus which facilitates the task of filling in Stith Thompson's blank category of obscene motifs, X700-749 “Humor Concerning Sex.”     

The adoption of cattle pastoralism in the Arabian Peninsula: A reappraisal

The translocation of livestock into the Arabian Peninsula was underway by the sixth millennium BC. It remains unclear, however, whether nascent pastoralism in Arabia focused on specialised cattle herding, intensive caprine husbandry, or more extensive forms of sheep, goat and cattle management. Here, the role of Bos in Neolithic animal exploitation systems in the Arabian Peninsula is re-examined in the context of fisher-hunter-gatherer groups inhabiting the coasts of the Arabian Gulf, agro-pastoralist settlements located in the Jordanian highlands, and hunter-herder communities in adjacent Jordanian steppe (badia). By the late sixth millennium BC, cattle from southern Mesopotamia were imported to the Arabian littoral via Ubaid exchange networks but remained a relatively unimportant part of local hunter-gatherer-herder subsistence for at least a millennium. New zooarchaeological evidence indicating cattle herding in the Jordanian highlands by the late eighth millennium BC suggests a southern transmission route originating out of Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B settlements and the subsequent spread of cattle along the Sarawat mountains into the interior or down the relatively arid Red Sea coast via land or boat. Cattle eventually played a central role in the symbolic and ritual lives of herders in southern Arabia, but the use of the term ‘cattle pastoralism’ to describe early Neolithic subsistence systems in the region is premature.     

Jane Eyre's ‘Arabian Tales’: Reading and Remembering the Arabian Nights

This article considers the significance of the Arabian Nights in nineteenth-century memoirs and accounts of childhood. Taking Jane Eyre (1847) as my chief example, I investigate the nature of the childhood encounter with the stories and the intensity of the child's emotional and sensory engagement with the work. I then consider how these stories and books function not only as childhood souvenirs, but also as stand-ins for childhood itself in the construction of an autobiographical subject. Finally, I offer a reading of the presence of the Arabian Nights within the narrative of Jane Eyre and its role in structuring the memories of its eponymous heroine.     

A Decadence Baedeker: D’Annunzio’s The Triumph of Death

This article investigates how Gabriele D’Annunzio’s The Triumph of Death brings together Nietzsche’s ideas and Wagner’s music and interweaves them with the motifs of literary Decadence and the author’s own particular sexual politics. The novel is an experimental text striving to be a Gesemtkunstswerk, an integrated work that incorporates music, painting, poetry, regional folklore, and private thoughts about personal and national power. I discuss the novel’s themes of violent sexuality and the anxiety of powerlessness and explore their implications for the fascist political aesthetics in which D’Annunzio played a pioneering role.     

The meaning of El Roi and the mythological dimension in Genesis 16

Abstract

This article discusses the literary debt of the story of Hagar in Genesis 16 to the Ugaritic text KTU 1.23, suggesting that behind the present tale lie ancient royal ideological motifs. These have a bearing on the present form of the story, ans suggest a message of hope to an exilic readership. The divine epithet Roi is explained as “seen”, expressing Hagar's surprise at surviving a vision of God.     

Heritage Noire: truth,history, and colonial anxiety in The Blair Witch Project

When watching the film The Blair Witch Project we seem to be witnessing through its clumsy, apparently uncrafted footage the unmediated documentation of 'reality' as it occurs. This article argues that the carefully crafted deceit of The Blair Witch Project may be understood as part of a subversive 'public history' project that uses modern history's own scientific motifs and methodologies against itself and challenges its basic tenets. If positive myths of the past are structured into what we tend to call heritage, i.e. shared narratives affirming a positive sense of self and region or nation, then this paper argues that The Blair Witch Project takes the same notion and subverts it, giving its chosen audience a dark and unsettling sense of its own history.     

Visible Archaeological Remains in Towns and Parks

This paper relates a specific and professional understanding of the nature of archaeological sites to management needs and approaches. It focuses on how the nature of the resource itself relates to a system of valuation, conservation and preservation. The perspective taken is that of the contribution of landscape planning to the development of tourism and heritage management. One of the central aims is to explain the visual values of archaeological remains in the landscape, relating them to the different measures of preservation available for archaeological sites. Examples are included from Latvia and other European countries.     

The body-mind of Oscar Wilde's reviews for the Pall Mall Gazette

Little is known about the circumstances of Oscar Wilde's employment by the Pall Mall Gazette, and even less is known about his engagement with its editorial policies. His reviews are often neglected, but when examined are considered in isolation rather than as a contribution to a serial format. The Pall Mall Gazette's structure provides a new context in which to understand Wilde's reviews, which were inevitably shaped by the paper's editorial policies. The paper hired reviewers who could help it maintain a balance between politics and light relief. With an understanding of audience affect and cognition, Wilde employed a range of strategies to manage reader response. The reviews analysed in this article show Wilde exploring the material, and psychological aspects of books and reading.     

The Problems of Horace Ars Poetica 119–120

A famous passage in the 1st-century Greek merchant's handbook, Periplus Maris Erythraei, reports a Roman attack on the city of Eudaimôn Arabia – Aden in present-day Yemen. No such campaign is known from other sources, and the passage has been ascribed to a scribal error, to an otherwise unknown Roman campaign and to a mix-up with the well-known Arabian campaign of Aelius Gallus. The author argues that none of the above is correct, and that the report of the Periplus is in fact the result of a misinterpreted passage in Augustus’ political will – the Res Gestae.     

Covering the Building of a Kingdom: The Saudi Arabian Authority in The London Times and The New York Times, 1901–1932

The orientalist literature subjected the Middle East in an exotic way — mostly as an “Arabian Nights” society ruled by traditional sultans and/or tribal chiefs — rather than modern governance structure's “bureaucracy.” The presumption within postcolonial scholarship has been that this perception influenced the policy landscape in the United States and Europe, especially the media depictions of the oriental leaders and leadership. The paper empirically tests this hypothesis through content analysis using Weber's categorization of leadership of two newspapers of record — The New York Times in the United States and The London Times in the United Kingdom — during the period of state building in Saudi Arabia (1901–1932). I find that rather than depicting the Saudi leadership as “backward,” these newspapers in particular, tend to overstate the development of the Saudi state during this period. As Weber is best known for his three types of authority, it benefits the discipline to see how the interpretive communities of Western journalists operationalized “authority” in terms of politics and religion of Saudi Arabia as this monarchy emerged.     

Brideprice and Prejudice: An Audio-Visual Ethnography on Marriage and Modernity in Mt Hagen,Papua New Guinea

The relationship between bridewealth and women's autonomy is not only discussed amongst anthropologists, development practitioners and other scholars but also amongst brides themselves. Women continue to embrace such marital exchanges, despite their knowledge of ‘modern’ development discourse about the constraints of the practice on women's status and its links to gender-based violence. This paper provides a visual exploration of contemporary brideprice practices and women's autonomy in Mt Hagen. We draw on scenes from our ethnographic film (An Extraordinary Wedding: Marriage and Modernity in Highlands PNG) to explore deliberations and developments that occurred in the case of a particular marriage that took place in 2012. We argue that the institution of brideprice has the potential to enhance the visibility of some women and the importance of their contribution to their own and husbands' kin groups. Despite current tensions regarding brideprice, it can serve as an avenue for the enhancement of women's political participation. The particular brideprice exchange featured in our film, raised concerns for the participants, which we consider in terms of three questions: Does brideprice commodify women? Does it play a role in gender-based violence? Is it inimical to aspirations for modernist individuality? We discuss the importance of bekim (‘return gift’) and suggest that this practice challenges the notion of brideprice as a commodity transaction. We argue that, while there may be an association between brideprice and gender-based violence, brideprice, in and of itself, is not causative of violence. The marriage represented in the film, and discussed in this paper, reveals the creativity of participants in adjusting the values inherent in the customary practice of brideprice to their contemporary aspirations.     

Iraq,Afghanistan and the future of British military doctrine: from counterinsurgency to Stabilization

The campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan have had profound effects on both the British and US militaries. Among the most important is the way in which they have challenged traditional assumptions about the character of unconventional conflict and the role of the military within comprehensive strategies for encouraging sustainable peace. In the UK, the most important doctrinal response has been JDP 3–40 Security and Stabilisation: the military contribution. Security and Stabilisation is an ambitious attempt to synthesize elements of counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, peace support and state‐building within a single doctrine that reflects the lessons learned from recent British operational experience. This article examines the purpose, impact and potential value of this important innovation in British doctrine. To do so, the article explores the genesis of Stabilization; analyses its impact upon extant British doctrine for counterinsurgency and peace support; discusses its relationship with the most important related US doctrines, FM 3–24: the counterinsurgency field manual and FM 3–07: the stability operations field manual; and debates the function of doctrine more broadly. It concludes by summarizing the primary challenges Security and Stabilisation must overcome if it is to make a serious contribution to the theory and practice of such complex interventions.     

Women's Social Networks and Female Friendship in the Ancient Greek City

This paper explores how women used their social networks within the ancient Greek urban environment in two spheres: first with regard to their civic engagement, and second with regard to their social relationships. By examining the types of social networks in which women were involved, how they were used and their impact on social relations, it argues that historians should broaden their conception of women's contribution to the Greek civic environment. Such an approach shows how women negotiated social and economic status within the polis community, how they used their social capital as a resource for social and civic engagement and sheds light on their personal relationships. These relationships not only enhanced women's well‐being and allowed them to determine their own roles in community life, but also formed the basis of their engagement with the polis. Considering the social networks to which women belonged, and the differing types of social capital embedded in them, further enables an examination of female friendship. Recognising the contribution of women to the polis community is necessary in order to understand the wider social and civic relationships within the ancient city.