The Influence of Tibetan Buddhism on Contemporary Mongolian Eco-literature——Case Studies on Xue-boGuo's Novels

Tibetan Buddhism,one of the important sects of Buddhism,is believed by a lot of researchers to have disseminated into Tibet from India,Nepal and its adjacent Han nationality congregating areas in around 7th century.The subsequent spread of Buddhism in Tibet experienced two periods of fast diffusion,during which the original Buddhist doctrine merged with Tibetan traditional culture,and a new form of religion with typical Tibetan characteristics came into being.     

The Development of Tibetan Culture

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The Earthworks of Brinklow,Lilbourne, and Earl’s Barton

Fyfield Hall, a timber-framed aisled hall in Essex, has been tree-ring dated to 1167–85. It was built with passing braces, notched lap joints and curved arcade braces, and underwent major repairs between 1391 and 1416, when the central arcade posts, arcade plates and braces were replaced, but, curiously, in a late twelfth-century style with passing braces. To repair the building in the archaic style might seem surprising, but tree-ring dating shows that such developments were not unusual. This study examines the building in detail and looks at later developments on the site.     

The Danzón,North American Racial Discourses,and Reflections on Early Jazz

This essay proposes a way of understanding the formation of jazz as part of a broader transnational exchange of culture. It argues that the processes by which jazz came into being closely resemble others taking place in Cuba and elsewhere, and thus calls for analysis that positions jazz as part of a hemispheric exchange of cultural influences that extend beyond the United States. Second, it reviews and critiques existing scholarship on New Orleans jazz from a transnationalist perspective. It suggests that such literature presents turn-of-the-twentieth-century New Orleans culture as insular, with little or no recognition of the international movement of artists and musical forms. Finally, it suggests that the cultural projects associated with jazz in the United States have necessitated a strong emphasis on the contributions of black US artists to the exclusion of Hispanics.     

Colonies and Colonisation in Bulwer Lytton’s The Caxtons,A Strange Story and The Coming Race

Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, an eminently popular novelist, published The Caxtons in 1849. Though sub-titled A Family Picture and mainly concerned with domestic life, it included a lengthy disquisition on colonisation and emigration, its value to British society and its role in extending civilisation by spreading ‘God’s law, improvement’. His colonial example was ‘Australia’. A Radical MP in the 1830s, but opposed to the encroachment of ‘democracy’ and supportive of the Corn Laws, in the early 1850s Lytton turned to the Conservative Party. In 1858–59 he served as secretary of state for the colonies. In the light of his experience, his view of Australia and of self-governing colonies was modified, as A Strange Story (1862) shows. But in 1871, in The Coming Race, an elaborate satire on democracy and egalitarianism, he made a distinct addition to the colonial theme of The Caxtons. He did not doubt that ‘improvement’ and colonisation produced evidence of ‘the triumph of civilization’, but a metaphor embedded in the later novel indicated the inevitability of displacement of aboriginal inhabitants by Anglo-Saxon settlers.     

Lucrecia Martel’s Nueva Argirópolis: Rivers,Rumours and Resistance

This article analyses Lucrecia Martel’s 2010 short film Nueva Argirópolis, which was commissioned by the Argentine Ministry of Culture as part of the Bicentennial celebrations. It explains how the film both inhabits yet contests the discourses of the modern nation state underpinning those celebrations, in particular through its representation of conflict between the state and indigenous groups. Its representation draws on images proposed by an earlier work, Sarmiento’s utopian tract of 1850, Argirópolis, images including the river and the island which in Martel’s film undergo a resignification, which overturns Sarmiento’s understanding of relationships between geography, capital, nation and ethnicity. Political and cultural debates of particular relevance to indigenous communities, such as access to land, as well as the way the indigenous are represented in state discourses, surface obliquely in this short film, which both represents diegetically the circulation and relay of rumours of indigenous resistance, as well as suggesting these formally through a soundtrack suffused with murmurs and barely audible sounds. The unsubtitled words of indigenous actors, as well as the authorities’ attempts at investigation of indigenous political activity through staging encounters of (failed) interpretation, and the subversive mimicry by indigenous activists of hegemonic ideas of national foundation are themselves muted, rumoured suggestions of a resistance which always lies just outside this short film’s visual grasp.     

The Vatican and Mussolini’s Italy

This essay reviews a new history by Lucia Ceci of Italo-Vatican relations during the Fascist period, and evaluates its contribution to the vast but often polemical literature on the subject of Church–state relations in modern Italy. Ceci offers a detailed, sophisticated analysis that focuses specifically on leadership and decision-making in the Fascist regime and the Vatican respectively. Her argument that the Vatican’s relations with Fascist Italy were conditioned by a strategic choice to maintain diplomatic relations in exchange for autonomy in the state and civil society, while compelling, makes some contradictory and unconvincing claims. Ultimately, what is needed is a conceptual framework that can account for the complex reality of a relationship characterized by points of mutual interest and complementarity but also fundamental disagreement and open conflict.     

Between Spectacle and Science: The Aurora in Central Europe, 1870s–1880s

Abstract

The article discusses the return and reception of two Austro-Hungarian arctic expeditions in 1874 and 1883, respectively. Both expeditions conducted extensive auroral research. The article focuses on the media discourse of the time: how the expeditions including their scientific aims and outcomes were perceived in the Viennese press and society. The reception given to each of the expeditions and the manner by which each was covered in the press differed greatly; accordingly, the aurora borealis, a quintessential polar phenomenon itself, was ascribed with strikingly dissimilar meanings in the media. Whereas in 1874 domestic interests were projected onto the Arctic, with the aurora symbolizing the monarchy's bright future, in 1883 media attention focused on local events such as the International Electrical Exhibition in Vienna; the Arctic no longer served as a potent symbol for Austro-Hungarian affairs. Analyses of various forms of media such as texts, poems, and illustrations show the cultural situatedness of scientific knowledge and its popularization. Representations and interpretations of the aurora can only be understood within the political, social, technological and cultural contexts of the time.     

Nation,Ethnicity, and Canada in Laura Goodman Salverson’s The Viking Heart

This article argues that expressions of national identity in twentieth-century Euro-Canadian literature often conceive of the nation as existing in both ethnic and ostensibly pluralist, immigration-based models, and that the former is frequently valorized over the latter, resulting in the implicit legitimation of settler colonialism. It does so by examining a few major theorizations of nationalism—constructivism, ethno-symbolism, and ethnonationalism—and suggesting that literary critics’ frequent adherence to the constructivism of Benedict Anderson can sometimes obscure the aforementioned dynamic. Finally, this article reads Laura Goodman Salverson’s The Viking Heart (1923) as a text that renders in all its contradiction the problem of ethnicity and nation in Canada, arguing that Salverson combines (but does not synthesize) the twin forces of ethnicity and liberal pluralism that make up the Euro-Canadian imagination’s split conception of the nation.     

The Seventy Years War, 1744–1815, and Britain’s Fiscal-Naval State

Abstract

This article argues that we should view Britain as fighting a ‘Seventy Years War’ with France between the battles of Fontenoy in 1745 and Waterloo in 1815. Through years of hot and cold war, Britain struggled to build the military power needed to prevent it from falling under the domination of France. In hindsight, many view the British as inevitable imperialists, confidently building towards their global empire of the nineteenth century. In reality, eighteenth-century Britons frequently fretted about the threat of invasion, military weakness, possible financial collapse, and potential revolution. Historical developments only look inevitable in hindsight and with the aid of the social sciences. The struggle to defend itself in Europe during the Seventy Years War saw Britain develop a ‘fiscal-naval state’ that built a global empire.