scholarly journals The Advent of the Europeans and the History of the Development of Tamil Grammar Texts

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 91-98
Author(s):  
Jaiganesh B
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social History ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Linguistic History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Literary Writing ◽  
Development Of Language

Grammatical and linguistic history, like Tamil literary history, has its own antiquity and continuity. Grammatical writings have kept on showing up as the literary writing has increased and changed. Grammatical texts based on the knowledge of literature, the knowledge of the language, or the critical objectives of the language, the literature that appears in that language, later become more closely identified with social history. Numerous grammatical works have appeared in Tamil but many of them do not exist. However, many of the available texts are qualified enough to speak of the grammatical richness of Tamil. With the grammatical richness of a language, it is possible to estimate how ancient the literary richness of that language and the origin of the speakers of that language are. Thus, the numerous grammars available in Tamil serve as evidence for measuring the antiquity of the Tamil language. The origin of grammatical texts is not a linear one, but one that is continually developing to suit the occasions, the blend of dialects, and the progressions in the writing. This change sets the stage for the development of language. Thus, Tamil grammar texts have undergone a series of changes. This article sets out to evaluate the background to the development of nineteenth-century grammar textbooks following the arrival of Europeans, who occupy a significant place in this change.

The History of ‘the Reading Public’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Collini
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Reading Public ◽  
Reading Matter ◽  
History Of ◽  
Victorian Periodicals

This chapter argues that accounts of ‘the reading public’ are always fundamentally historical, usually involving stories of ‘growth’ or ‘decline’. It examines Q. D. Leavis’s Fiction and the Reading Public, which builds a relentlessly pessimistic critique of the debased standards of the present out of a highly selective account of literature and its publics since the Elizabethan period. It goes on to exhibit the complicated analysis of the role of previous publics in F. R. Leavis’s revisionist literary history, including his ambivalent admiration for the great Victorian periodicals. And it shows how Richard Hoggart’s The Uses of Literacy carries an almost buried interpretation of social change from the nineteenth century onwards, constantly contrasting the vibrant and healthy forms of entertainment built up in old working-class communities with the slick, commercialized reading matter introduced by post-1945 prosperity.

The Geological Unconscious

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Groves
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Literary History ◽  
German Language ◽  
Stable Point ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Current Climate ◽  
Environmental Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
Point Of Reference

Already in the nineteenth century, German-language writers were contending with the challenge of imagining and accounting for a planet whose volatility bore little resemblance to the images of the Earth then in circulation. In The Geological Unconcious, Jason Groves traces the withdrawal of the lithosphere as a reliable setting, unobtrusive backdrop, and stable point of reference for literature written well before the current climate breakdown, let alone the technologies that could forecast those changes. Through a series of careful readings of romantic, realist, and modernist works by Tieck, Goethe, Stifter, Benjamin, and Brecht, the author traces out a geological unconscious—in other words, unthought and sometimes actively repressed geological knowledge—where it manifests in European literature and environmental thought. This inhuman horizon of reading and interpretation offers a new literary history of the Anthropocene in a period where this novel geological epoch, though arguably already underway, remains unnamed and otherwise unmarked. These close readings also unearth an entanglement of the human and the lithic in periods well before the geological turn of cotemporary cultural studies. In those depictions of human-mineral encounters on which The Geological Unconcious lingers, the minerality of the human and the minerality of the imagination becomes apparent. While The Geological Unconcious does not explicitly set out to imagine alternatives to fossil capitalism, in elaborating a range of such encounters and in registering libidinal investments in the lithosphere that extend beyond Carboniferous deposits and beyond any carbon imaginary, it points toward alternative relations with, and less destructive mobilizations of, the geologic.

Joost Halbertsma and the Lexicon Frisicum1

2019 ◽  
pp. 93-109
Author(s):  
Anne Dykstra
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Internal Consistency ◽  
Cultural Nationalism ◽  
Civil State ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
Linguistic History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Insight Into

Joost Halbertsma’s Lexicon Frisicum, published by his son Tjalling in 1872, was the first dictionary to contain modern Frisian, spoken in the Dutch Province of Friesland. As such, it is considered the basis of modern Frisian lexicography. In his dictionary, Halbertsma focuses much attention on the cultural and linguistic history of the Frisians. At the same time, he was very concerned with the Netherlands as a free civil state, and he used ancient Frisian customs and habits to comment on the national and political situation of his time. Dykstra addresses criticism levelled at Halbertsma’s dictionary, such as that it lacked internal consistency and coherence, tends to digress, and uses Latin as meta-language, making it largely inaccessible to Halberstma’s contemporaries. Even with its shortcomings, Dykstra evaluates the ways in which Halbertsma’s Lexicon Frisicum provides insight into various aspects of nineteenth-century linguistics, lexicography, culture, and cultural nationalism.

scholarly journals pre-eighteenth-century traditions of revivalism: damascus in the thirteenth century

2005 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
konrad hirschler
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social History ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Current State ◽  
History Of ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Large Sections

this article examines whether it is possible to trace eighteenth- and nineteenth-century revivalist thought to earlier ‘medieval’ examples. the discussion is centred on the issue of ijtiha¯d/taqli¯d, which featured prominently in revivalist thought. taking the example of scholars in thirteenth-century damascus, it firstly compares the respective readings of ijtiha¯d/taqli¯d, by focusing on one individual, abu¯ sha¯ma (d. 1267). it secondly asks whether a scholar like abu¯ sha¯ma, who had adopted a reading similar to later revivalists, also took a critical and oppositional stand against large sections of his contemporary society, i.e. a revivalist posture. it is this article's main contention that the example of abu¯ sha¯ma shows the need to study in more detail possible revivalist traditions prior to the ‘grand’ movements. the combination of the history of ideas and social history might allow a deeper understanding of how and in what contexts calls for reform and opposition to the current state of affairs were expressed.

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