Barbarian interest in the Excerpta Latina Barbari

Joseph Justus Scaliger dubbed the text of Parisinus Latinus 4884, the sole surviving witness to a Merovingian Latin translation of a now lost Greek world chronicle, the Excerpta Latina Barbari. The name was essentially a judgement on the linguistic abilities of the translator, but it is suggestive. What is there in the chronicle to appeal to the ‘barbarian’ inhabitants of Gaul? An answer to this question can offer some insight into the provenance of a neglected, but intriguing text. It will be proposed that the Greek original of the Excerpta was composed as a gift for the Austrasian king Theudebert I and was intended to elicit his aid in the war against the Ostrogothic rulers of Italy. The translation is another matter. It seems to have been undertaken about two centuries later in the context of the missionary push to the north and east from Frankish territory.     

《孔圣宗师出身全传》考论

《孔圣宗师出身全传》是中国古代唯一以孔子为中心人物的章回体长篇小说,它比较严格地遵照史载．将一人言行编成若干故事,演为传记小说,此为首创,在中国古代小说史上亦属罕见。用通俗小说体例来展现圣人生平与思想,在孔子形象与儒学传播史上意义非凡。但《孔圣宗师出身全传》版本稀少,在相当长的时期内罕为人知,鲜有人论及。本文就该书的体例结构、题材本事与“全相”模式的来源,及其对孔子形象的传播影响略作考论,认为《孔圣宗师出身全传》“年谱式”体例借鉴了《阙里志．年谱》,题材主要出自《孔子家语》,“全相”模式深受《孔子圣迹图》的影响。《全传》使孔子形象与思想更利于被普通百姓理解、接受,具有独特的传播优势。     

胡适年谱思想略论

胡适在撰写年谱的学术活动中,就年谱体例的发展与创新、年谱的功用与价值、年谱与传记的关系等问题,形成了丰富系统的思想,并对年谱体裁的发展产生了重要影响.胡适认为年谱应该揭示谱主学问思想的变迁沿革与发展脉络,总结其学术地位与学术贡献,年谱不仅要记述谱主的成就,也可以进行评判与批评,指出他的错误与短处.胡适总体上是将年谱视为传记之一种,但也注意到年谱在内容、体例、功用等方面与一般传记又有一定的区别.     

Mutilated memory: Reconstruction of the past and the mechanisms of memory among 17th century Otomis

Based on a chronicle written and translated by the Otomi — an indian group living in Querétaro City to the east of the Mexican Bajio, this work intends to describe the way they conceived the Spanish Conquest in the mid‐XVIIth century. By recalling, interpreting and idealizing their past these indians elaborated a version that conveys a complex and hopeless search for autonomy and identity in a context of social decay and crisis. This text is also a rare manifestation of colonial indian literature. Its analysis discovers the way Indians could use writing, oral and written sources to create and express an original way of coping with the past, time and colonial society.     

Can silence speak volumes? Widukind's Res Gestae Saxonicae and the coronation of Otto I reconsidered

The Res Gestae Saxonicae, Widukind of Corvey's chronicle of the rise of the Ottonian kings, waxes lyrical about Otto I's coronation as king at Aachen in 936 but passes in silence over his coronation as emperor at Rome in 962. This causes difficulties of interpretation, because the text is generally considered to constitute a unified narrative up to the end of its shortest surviving recension, dated to 967 or 968; scholars have previously dealt with these difficulties by claiming that Widukind's work was a ‘subtle polemic’ against the role of the pope in the making of an emperor. This article suggests instead that only the sections documenting events up to c.961 constitute a unified text, subsequent chapters being no more than hastily compiled addenda. Widukind's notorious omission of the imperial coronation was thus an accidental feature of the text, not the cornerstone of an ideological claim about the emperor's direct connection to God. His portrayal of the Aachen coronation establishes Otto's multiple claims to be the rightful king without differentiating qualitatively between them.     

南梁始建秦州考

《北齐地理志》据《梁书·徐文盛传》、《梁书·杜崱传》以证南梁始建秦州于今南京市六合区时在武帝太清年间。实际上,《梁书·徐文盛传》所载"秦州"不治今南京市六合区,《梁书·杜崱传》所载郭元建攻秦州刺史严超远岁非太清二年(548年),二者皆不可为据。经考证,本文认为南梁始建秦州于今南京市六合区宜在大宝三年(552年)三至五月间。     

The early section of the Worcester chronicle

The Latin chronicle traditionally attributed to Florence of Worcester is examined, and it is suggested that its early portion, down to the end of the reign of Æthelred the Unready, was compiled at Ramsey Abbey in Huntingdonshire during the last two decades of his reign. The repercussions of this on the transmission of the vernacular texts of the Anglo-Saxon chronicle are explored.     

关于中国史学传统的继承问题——读《清通鉴》

中华民族血脉及其文化从古至今连绵延续、未曾有过中断的重要原因之一 ,是有着良好的修史史学传统。通鉴体 (编年体 )是修史传统中重要的一种体例。在现代社会 ,这种编年体体例仍是必要的。《清通鉴》就是颇可称道的这种体例的史学巨著     

《新安志》续修钩沉

自南宋罗愿《新安志》纂成之后,宋元明时期不断续修和补充,有史记载的就有近十次,具有一定的连续性,这在我国方志的纂修历史上有典型意义。随着时间的推移,除《徽州府志》、《新安志补》等传世外,其它续修之作佚失,续修情况不明,相关记载屡有舛误,也就有了钩沉补阙的必要。这对深入研究《新安志》、徽州文化及方志史都有重要意义。     

Euhemerus and the Chronicle of John Malalas

In spite of Warren Treadgold's recent contention to the contrary, no new insights on the Sacred History of Euhemerus of Messene are to be gleaned from John Malalas and the account of the gods found in his chronicle. They cannot be directly connected to Euhemerus, or even to a complete version of Diodorus Siculus’ lost sixth book, which related a version of the Sacred History. We would, nevertheless, like to know the source for what Malalas says about the gods. Previous efforts to identify the author of the euhemeristic narrative in the chronicle of Malalas prove unavailing and misleading. Taking into account the parallel version of this narrative found in the Excerpta Latina Barbari, it would seem that the most likely author is Bouttios, one of the authorities cited for a few other items by Malalas. Treadgold has included this Bouttios in the list of authors he considers to be nothing more than inventions of Malalas. But, unlike the others on Treadgold's list, the existence of Bouttios can be independently corroborated. We are, moreover, in a position to offer some speculations about Bouttios and his work.     

长江下游史前刻划符号

长江下游史前陶器上的刻划符号处于中国字发展历程中从原始记事符号到字出现之间的过渡阶段,长江下游是中国明起源的中心之一。     

“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.     

Foreword

This second issue of Colonial Latin American Review for 2003 offers four articles that focus primarily on colonial Mexico, if from different disciplinary perspectives. In “El misterio de los cap?´tulos perdidos de la Cro´nica mexicana de Hernando de Alvarado Tezozomoc”, Roc?´o Corte´s does some detailed scholarly sleuthing to propose a reconstruction of the original text of Tezozomoc's late sixteenth-century chronicle. Professor Corte´s suggests a solution to the supposed lacunae in this chronicle, and in so doing helps to establish a more accurate sense of the range of the chronicler's historical concerns. The article by art historian Ilona Katzew, “The Virgin of the Macana: Emblem of a Franciscan Predicament in New Spain”, surveys the iconographical history of the cult of this Virgin, a cult born of a seventeenth-century event in the Mexican missionary borderlands, but actively and broadly promulgated by the Franciscan order throughout the following century for reasons apparently as pragmatic as devotional. In “ ‘El plato ma´s sabroso’: Eucarist?´a, plagio diabo´lico y la traduccio´n criolla del can?´bal”, Carlos Ja´uregui studies the trope of cannibalism as it emerged in the writings of a series of colonial writers, from early historians of the Encounter through the Mexican Creole Baroque as represented by Sor Juana Ine´s de la Cruz. Professor Ja´uregui is particularly interested in the evolution of this trope over time as a means to articulate notions of similarity and difference with regard to indigenous peoples and Europeans. In our fourth article, “A Reinterpreation of Nahuatl Poetics: Rejecting the Image of Nezahualcoyotl as a Peaceful Poet”, Professor Jongsoo Lee offers a persuasive revisionist argument regarding the work traditionally attributed to the Texcocan “poet king”.     

An English chronicle entry on Robin Hood

This short article introduces a previously unknown pre-Reformation chronicle entry about Robin Hood. Until now, no English chronicle entry has been discovered, and only Scottish authors are thought to have set Robin in a chronological context. The new find places Robin Hood in Edward I's reign, thus supporting the belief that his legend is of thirteenth-century origin. It contains a uniquely negative assessment of the outlaw, and provides rare evidence for monastic attitudes towards him (topical, in light of the outlaw's anti-monastic behaviour). By mentioning Sherwood it buttresses the evidence for a medieval connection between Robin and the Nottinghamshire forest with which he has become so closely associated. It also constitutes more evidence for the strength of West Country Robin Hood traditions in the late middle ages.     

汉番禺城故址新考

关于两汉时期岭南地区经济都会番禺城故址所在历来多有争议,本文通过细致的考证分析,否定了今广州旧城区说这一学术界的主流观点以及番禺沙湾说、顺德简岸说等异说,并通过历史文献资料、历史地名遗存、地貌状况、汉墓葬点分布、历史水道交通条件、历史城市生态环境等多重证据,认为秦及南越国时期的番禺城在今广州旧城区,但汉武帝元鼎六年(前111年)则将南海郡治与番禺县治并置于旧番禺城之南,并考订两汉新番禺城的具体方位当在今广州市番禺区市桥北一带,论文相应还探讨了东汉末年番禺县城迁回旧址的时间、原因和意义。