THE PUZZLE OF THE BANQUET HALL OF THE DUKES: THE PROFESSIONALIZATION OF SWEDISH HISTORICAL RESEARCH STUDIED THROUGH LUDWIK FLECK'S “THOUGHT COLLECTIVE” AND “THOUGHT STYLE”

In 1312, the Swedish dukes Erik and Valdemar Magnusson married the Norwegian princesses Ingeborg Haakonsdaughter and Ingeborg Eriksdaughter at a ceremony in Oslo, Norway. In 1313, the two couples were reunited at a purpose-built banquet hall, believed to have been located in the medieval Swedish town of Lödöse. The main source of information concerning these events is the Swedish medieval rhyme chronicle The Chronicle of Duke Erik. However, a closer reading of the chronicle reveals that Lödöse is never mentioned in relation to the banquet hall. The article discusses the passing down of knowledge through generations of the same professional collective, in this case the professional collective of Swedish historians during the twentieth century, and demonstrates how the validity of once-established prescientific knowledge persists. To achieve its goal, the article applies Ludwik Fleck's terms “thought collective,” “thought style,” and “tenacity in science,” as well as Thomas Kuhn's concept of the “paradigm,” to a historiographical case study of how the proto-idea of the banquet hall being located at Lödöse has survived to become an established scientific fact. The location of the banquet hall concerns but a minor detail in the turbulent political situation of the Swedish kingdom during the first decades of the fourteenth century. However, the continuing reiteration of this minor detail is evidence of a larger phenomenon, namely how contemporary historical research is influenced by scholars in the prescientific past.     

Beautiful Geography: The Pictorial Maps of Ruth Taylor White

This paper explores the career of Ruth Taylor White, an American cartographic illustrator who published a significant number of pictorial maps from the 1920s into the 1940s. Taylor White’s ‘cartographs’ (as she called them) were characterized by her signature bobble-headed cartoon characters who romped through colourful, attractive landscapes. These visually rich and highly narrative maps simultaneously strove for accuracy and engaged in profound stereotyping with regard to culture, race, gender and class. They reveal not only the aesthetic and conceptual preferences of their maker but also the cultural biases of their middle-class, white American audience.     

Arctic trophy hunters,tourism and masculinities, 1827–1914

Trophy hunting in the Arctic happened in an intersection between tourism, expeditions and hunting. This study contributes to a discrete history of masculinity within the context of trophy hunting organized from North Norway and to a broader understanding of Arctic masculinity. As trophy-hunting expeditions are primarily a male, even masculinist, practice, an analysis from a gender perspective is unavoidable. By taking an empirical approach I investigate performances of masculinity in written accounts of Arctic trophy-hunting expeditions from 1827–1914. The use of masculinity as a pivot demonstrates that a modification of the prevailing perception of Arctic masculinity is necessary. While the general understanding is dominated by an emphasis on physical strength, roughness, ingenuity, and self-realization, qualities connected to traditional knowledge of trappers, sailors and explorers, my analysis shows that trophy hunting introduced aristocratic ideals such as gentlemen’s sport, self-discipline, hunting morals, care for nature and knowledge to their home communities. Trophy hunting made possible performances of different forms of masculinity, not only the conquest and mastery of nature, but also the interest in and care for nature. Women accompanied as family members and hunters, and took part in the hunt more than has been commonly noted.     

Rethinking music geography through the mainstream: a geographical analysis of Frank Sinatra,music and travel

This paper brings a new perspective to music geography by focusing on how a particular mainstream musician helped to construct, subvert, and circulate meanings associated with travel. It asserts that Frank Sinatra, via his music and actions, engaged with travel in ways that frequently ran counter to how it has commonly been enacted in American music and popular culture. Particular attention is paid to the singer’s travel-themed album, Come Fly With Me. By the time of its release in 1958, Sinatra, via a public persona that encompassed performer, ‘playboy’ and businessman, was a central figure in promoting an alignment of leisured mobility with postwar economic success. The paper interrogates how Sinatra’s celebrity allowed him to embody travel in certain real and imagined ways. It also examines what the resulting representations revealed about performances of gender, ethnicity, and status, and the expected modes of behavior that were associated with them, in America’s postwar consumer-driven society.     

ET SI C'ÉTAIT PAR LA FIN QUE TOUT COMMENÇAIT? PEN BEFORE PLOT,OR TRESCH ON POE'S REVERSALS

This brief comment offers some reflections on John Tresch's “Compositor's Reversal.” Contrasting his approach with Gaston Bachelard's, I situate Tresch in the tradition of reading Edgar A. Poe's Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym as a riddle to be decoded. I suggest that Tresch's analytical emphasis on material composition practices rather than Pym's content opens up insightful ways of reading both Pym itself in terms of its composition, style, and narrative voice, and also Poe's well‐known programmatic Philosophy of Composition. The key achievement of Tresch's article beyond its engagement with Poe scholarship is its contribution to the study of writing practices and media studies more broadly. By demonstrating the tight connection Poe forged between natural theology and the material practice of typography, Tresch inserts the typesetting process as an important step in the historiographical trajectory between pen and typewriter. He shows that the mid‐nineteenth‐century context of natural theology marks a decisive difference in connotation between Poe's compositional play with questions of authorship and plausibility, of truth and appearance both described in and performed by his narrative, and later concerns with the apparatus and its potential for the production of an écriture automatique.     

Reinterpreting Springwells Ceramics in the Great Lakes Region of North America

The original ceramics typology developed for Younge/Western Basin Tradition Springwells phase (ca. AD 1160–1420) assemblages included three variants known as Macomb Linear, Macomb Interrupted Linear, and Springwells Net Impressed ceramics. This discussion considers how subregional variation in Springwells decorative styles reflects participation in a larger regional social network.     

西方收藏明朝成化与正德时期汉藏风格的唐卡

本文从西方学者们对收藏在各大博物馆和私人手里的成化和正德时期的数组风格相似、并有明确汉藏文题记的唐卡的研究成果入手,厘清了迄今为止各种学术观点的对与错,并在此基础上,综合性地提出了自己的观点,指出汉藏艺术风格(或藏汉艺术风格)从明初以来到明正德时期衰变的过程,不仅是此前相关研究的盘点和总结,而且推进了此研究向深度和广度的进一步发展。     

让材料自己说话——浅论当前历史传记写作的一种趋势

《陈寅恪的最后二十年》、《顾颉刚和他的弟子们》、《束星北档案》等著作,代表了当前历史传记写作的一种趋势。《陈寅恪的最后二十年》的文本近似历史叙事散文;《顾颉刚和他的弟子们》的文本更接近史学论文;而《束星北档案》则类同电视记录片的文稿。这些著作共有的特点是:在修撰方式上,大量运用了第一手材料;在文本风格上,力求作品深入浅出、雅俗共赏;在写作理念上,坚持真实第一,尊重历史。这一趋势非常值得重视。     

河南北宋壁画墓的题材及艺术特色

北宋墓室壁画是宋代绘画的重要组成部分,题材有日常生活、孝行故事、超度升仙和装饰性画面等四类,布局、构图都遵循一定的程式,但构思巧妙、技法多变,体现了北宋绘画艺术的丰富多彩与繁荣昌盛。     

隋书概说——兼议《出师颂》卷

本文分析了隋代书法在中国书法史上承前启后的特殊状况,指出隋代北方铭刻的主要成就是逐渐摆脱了前朝篆隶书体而形成了楷书书体,南方的纸书在跃出章草畦径的过程中初步酝酿出草书的章法,楷书已成熟定法。“书”之所以能够有“法”并且成为一门高雅的艺术,是因为隋代完成了“普法阶段”,最好的例证就是智永和隋贤的存世之作。