Email: anggisyahputri98@yahoo.co.id
SHAKESPEARE’S
DRAMA
Based
on historical truth, the Historical plays, concerned mainly the study of
previous English kings. Roman histories were included and reflect the
Renaissance Elizabethan's interest in antiquity. Shakespeare was much
interested in the subject of kingship and the use and abuse of power, which is
one of his favorite themes.
The
Renaissance tradition of violent melodrama was seen in the Tragedies, expressed
in rhetorical speeches and concerning events that are controlled by a mixture
of circumstance and fate, and by man's own doings as well as the determining
aspects of his personality. They are full of human folly, hatred,cruelty, lust
and horror, as well as love and compassion. The whole gamut of human
experienceis included in these plays.
The
Comedies are lively and full of dramatic irony, strange coincidences and oddly
assorted characters. Sometimes they are farcical or romantic, and as their name
indicates always end happily; whereas tragedies, by definition, end unhappily.
Despite
presenting some difficulty for people to immediately understand the full
meaning of his writing, the reason Shakespeare is as popular today as he was in
his own time, is that theatres throughout the English speaking world are
assured success when presenting Shakespeare's plays. Shakespeare's stagecraft,
the poetry and powerful imagery of the writing and his profound understanding
of human nature are the unique characteristics of his work have enabled them to
endure the passing of four hundred years.
It
was Shakespeare's own working knowledge of the theatre that contributed to his
stagecraft. The main plots of his plays are often supported with subplots and
the two (or more) are frequently carefully interwoven to support and extend
each other. The subtle juxtaposing of dramatic, romantic and sometimes comic
situations works upon the emotions of the audience, thereby heightening their
involvement in the action and constantly drawing them into the world of
illusion that Shakespeare creates. He uses such techniques as introducing a
short comic scene before a highly dramatic one so as to relax his audience in
order that the effect of the coming drama will be more strongly felt by the
audience.
Techniques
as the 'soliloquy' where the actor talks to himself so as to reveal his innermost
thoughts, and also 'asides' (particularly in comedies) where an actor makes a
quick remark to the audience were widely used by Shakespeare. The plays were
mostly written in blank (unrhyming) verse. The ideal vehicle for lifting the
emotions of the audience. Prose is also used to provide contrasts in mood,
tempo, situation and sometimes to show the social differences between high and
lowborn characters. Rhyming couplets are also included on occasion, usually
spoken by metaphysical characters and to signify the ending of scenes.
The
use of language, the poetry and imagery contained in the lines produced by
Shakespeare are reason that his plays should be carefully read as well as heard
on the stage. His writing is filled with beautiful simile and metaphor, imagery
and allusions, as well as an infinite understanding of the meaning and feeling
of words. This skill enables his characters to perfectly express the
complexities of their personalities, their emotional states and interpersonal
relations.
The
imagery which stems from a multitude of sources, is frequently used to
strengthen the basic themes and tones of his plays. These are sometimes further
supported by symbolism both in speech and action. In the play 'Hamlet', one of
the themes of which is the corruption of the monarchy and court, there are
constant references to images of disease, infection and physical corruption.
Shakespeare
had an insight into the workings of the human personality which enabled him to
provide the characters he created with qualities of enduring interest. It is
this as much as anything that makes his plays popular with modern audiences. He
had an insight of men from kings and courtiers to drunkards and country
bumpkins. He understands the intricacies of the mind, the conflicting emotions
of men and the forces that motivate them. Each character is a complex living
individual, never stereotyped, and frequently finely contrasted in the plays.
The outcome of the action is often determined by this contrasting of personalities
and their strengths and weaknesses. This is particularly so in the tragedies;
Macbeth is ruined by his lust for power, Hamlet's death is a result of his own
inability to make decisions.
HAMLET
Hamlet,
the prince of Denmark whose father, the king, has been murdered by Hamlet's
uncle who takes over the throne. Hamlet finds out about it and vows to revenge
his father's death. However, he is unable to make the decision to actually kill
his uncle and keeps delaying it until numerous tragedies occur. Only when
Hamlet himself is dying is he able to finally do what he first intended.
The
next two extracts are to show Hamlet's troubled frame of mind. In the first
(which is a soliloquy) he contemplates suicide as a means of resolving his
dilemma. The second shows Hamlet talking to his one trusted friend, Horatio,
and contrasts his own personality with that of his friend.
To be, or not to be; that is the
question
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to
suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous
fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of
troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die:
to sleep;
No more, and by a sleep to say we
end
The heart-ache and the thousand
natural shocks
That
flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to
sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay,
there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what
dreams may come
When we have shuttled off this
mortal coil,1
Must give us pause. there's the
respect
That makes calamity of so long
life;2
Since my dear soul was mistress of her
choice
And could of men distinguish, her
election3
Hath sealed4 thee for herself; for
thou has been
As one, in suffering all, that
suffers nothing,
A man that fortune's buffets and
rewards
Hath ta'en with equal thanks; and
bless'd are those
Whose blood and judgement are so
well Commingled5
That they are not a pipe for
fortune's finger
To sound what stop she please. Give
me that man
That is not passion's slave, and I
will wear him
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart
of heart,
As I do thee ...
The
selection below is from a soliloquy where Hamlet makes one of his frequent
resolutions to act, shows the imagery of corruption that is used throughout the
play.
'Tis now the very witching time of
night,
When churchyards yawn and Hell
itself breathes out
Contagion6 to this world; now could
I drink hot blood,
And do such bitter business as the
day
Would quake to look on ...
And again when Hamlet wishes he
were dead;
O, that this too too solid flesh
would melt,
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not
fixed
His canon7 against self-slaughter!
Oh God! God!
How weary, stale, flat and
unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this
world!
Fie on it, sh, fie!8 'tis an
unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank9 and
gross10 O in nature
Possess it merely. .
Divisions of Shakespeare’s plays
Phase
1
From
the late 1580s to 1594, Shakespeare experimented with different kinds of comedy
in Love’s
Labour’s Lost,
The
Comedy of Errors,
Two Gentlemen of Verona, and The Taming of the Shrew. He began to explore English
history in his first `tetralogy’ (a linked sequence of four plays) comprising Henry VI (in 3 parts) with Richard III. Titus Andronicus was his first tragedy.
Phase
2
From
1594 to 1599 Shakespeare continued to concentrate on comedies and histories.
The comedies of this period ö A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, and Much Ado About Nothing ö are mainly in his best-loved `romantic’
vein, while his fuller command of histories appears in the second tetralogy: Richard II, Henry IV (2 parts), and Henry V. This second period also includes
the historical King
John and
a sentimental tragedy, Romeo and Juliet.
Phase
3
In
the third period, from 1599 to 1608, Shakespeare abandoned romantic comedy
(except for Twelfth
Night)
and English history, working instead on tragedies and on the disturbing ‘dark’
comedies or `problem plays’Measure for Measure, All’s Well that Ends Well, and Troilus and Cressida. The tragedies usually regarded as
the four greatest are King Lear, Macbeth, Hamlet, and Othello, although a second group of tragic `Roman plays’ includes the equally
powerful Antony
and Cleopatra, along with Julius Caesar and Coriolanus. To this period also belongs the tragedy
Timon
of Athens,
possibly written with Middleton.
Phase
4
Shakespeare’s
final phase, from 1608 to 1613, is dominated by a new style of comedy on themes
of loss and reconciliation: Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest are known as his late `romances’.
Shakespeare seems to have interrupted his retirement in 1613 to collaborate
with John Fletcher in Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen. Most of the fictional stories in
Shakespeare’s plays were adapted from earlier plays and romances, while his
historical dramas are derived from Plutarch’s biographies of Roman statesmen
and from Holinshed’s rather slanted account of English history, the Chronicles (1577).
Three Great Plays of Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo
and Juliet tells the story of two important
families in Verona, in Italy. The families hate each other. Romeo, the son of
Lord Montague, falls in love with Juliet, the daughter of Lord Capulet. But
when people hate each other, everybody around them is affected. The story does
not end happily because Romeo and Juliet cannot escape from the war between
their families and live happily together. In this play, hate has more power
over people's lives than love.
All
three stories in this book have sad endings. In each story, the main characters
die. They die because they, or others, are weak, greedy or very foolish.
Macbeth
Lord
and Lady Macbeth (Macbeth) are greedy, and as a result a lot of people die.
Macbeth is also weak. Lady Macbeth says, 'Macbeth is too kind, too gentle.
There are things that he must do but he is afraid to do them. I must speak to
him, and make him brave.' He becomes a murderer and a cruel king because his
wife tells him that he must perform evil acts. By the end of the play, Macbeth
does not care about anybody. When his wife dies, he says,' It would be better
if she died at another time.
King
Lear
'In
the third story, King Lear, the king is an a very old man. His great age
makes him weak and foolish. He does not understand the characters of his three
daughters, and he believes Goneril and Regan when they say that they love him.
He thinks that his youngest daughter, Cordelia, does not love him because she
refuses to use such fine words. But Goneril and Regan are greedy for power and
they do not care about their father.
Many
of the characters in these stories have a lot of faults but, like real people,
they have good qualities and moments of greatness too. Macbeth is a fine army
commander. He wins an important war and King Duncan admires him. Lear is a
great king. The King of France thinks that he is a good man, and the Earl of
Gloucester loves him. Even the Montagues and the Capulets end their quarrel —
but too late.
Synopsis
of the Tempest
The
play opens with a shipwreck on an enchanted isle where the usurped Duke of
Milan, Prospero, and his lovely daughter, Miranda, have been living for 12
years. Prospero has become a master magician, and Miranda has grown into a
charming maiden. Prospero, with the aide of his sprite Ariel, has conjured a
violent storm to cause the shipwreck. All those aboard the ship—Alonso, the
King of Naples, his brother Sebastian, Alonso’s son Ferdinand, Alonso’s
counselor Gonzalo, and Prospero’s brother Antonio—jump overboard for fear of
dying in the storm. Miranda, having watched the storm wrack the ship, is
assured by her father that it was all a magical illusion. He relates the tale
of their journey to the isle—how his brother Antonio teamed with Alonso to
overthrow him. Though Prospero and Miranda were abandoned at sea, they were
able to survive because Gonzalo secretly stowed money, clothes and Prospero’s
sorcery books on the boat. Prospero and Miranda eventually landed on the island
and encountered Caliban, a demon son of the witch Sycorax, now slave to
Prospero.
After
relating their history, Prospero causes Miranda to sleep and commands Ariel to
ensure that the nobles are safe on the island. Ariel informs Prospero that the
rest of the fleet has returned to Naples believing that Alonso is dead. Ariel
has pledged allegiance to Prospero because Prospero freed Ariel from Sycorax’s
curse. Prospero, in return, promises to free Ariel when his plans are complete.
Ariel scatters the nobles around the island, leading Ferdinand into a cave
where Miranda, never having seen any other man besides her father, falls
instantly in love. Though Prospero approves of the match, he pretends to be
critical of Ferdinand and sets him to work hauling logs.
Alonso,
Sebastian, Antonio, Gonzalo and the lords Adrian and Francisco wander the
island, presuming Ferdinand dead. Gonzalo conjectures that Ferdinand could
still be alive since they survived the shipwreck. Ariel lulls all to sleep
except Sebastian and Antonio, who plot the murder of Alonso to take over
Naples. Ariel, cloaked in invisibility, overhears the plan and wakes Gonzalo,
who warns Alonso just in time. On another part of the island, the drunken
Trinculo, another survivor of the shipwreck, encounters Caliban; they are soon
joined by the king’s butler, Stephano. After tasting “spirits” from Stephano,
Caliban declares him to be a god and vows devotion. Back at the cave, Prospero
spies as Miranda and Ferdinand exchange vows of love and promise to marry.
Prospero, happy with the match, blesses their union. Caliban encourages
Stephano to kill Prospero, marry Miranda and take over the island. Ariel
overhears the scheme and leaves to warn his master. To torment the nobles,
Ariel and other spirits reveal a lavish banquet that vanishes as they try to
eat. Ariel appears in the form of a Harpy to rebuke them for their cruel
behavior toward Prospero, declaring it the cause of their current sorrow. At
the cave, Prospero conjures a performance by goddesses and nymphs. When
Caliban, Stephano and Trinculo show up to enact their plot, Prospero sends
Ariel and other fairies after them to torment them and keep them out of the
way.
The
royal party is brought, spellbound, to Prospero, where he forgives them for the
injuries of the past. He reveals the supposed-dead Ferdinand and his own
daughter, Miranda—both safe, playing chess and newly engaged. As father and son
reunite, Prospero frees Ariel and returns the island to Caliban’s control.
Stephano and Trinculo repent their scheming, and Alonso restores Prospero’s
dukedom. All board the ship to return to Italy. Prospero renounces his magical
powers and requests that Ariel provide calm seas for the voyage home.
William
shakespears comedy plays ‘’Synopsis of The Comedy of Errors’’
Egeon,
a merchant from Syracuse, is arrested and condemned to death for illegally
entering Ephesus, a rival city. Brought before Solinus, the Duke of Ephesus,
Egeon tells the tale of his misfortune. Many years before, Egeon’s wife Emilia
gave birth to twin sons. At the same time, a lowerclass woman gave birth to
another pair of twin sons, whom Egeon bought to serve his twins. Sailing home,
Egeon’s ship encountered a huge storm and wrecked. Egeon’s family tied
themselves to opposite ends of a mast—Emilia grabbed their youngest twin and
one servant boy, while Egeon took care of the eldest twin and the other
servant. The mast split in half, and Egeon watched helplessly as his wife and
son drifted away. A ship from Corinth rescued Emilia and a ship from Epidaurus
rescued Egeon; Egeon’s ship was too slow to catch up with the other and the
family was separated. Egeon returned to Syracuse and named the surviving boys
after their lost brothers: his son, Antipholus, and the servant, Dromio. When
Antipholus turned 18, he took Dromio with him on a quest to find his lost
brother. After five years, Egeon set out to find the son he had raised, and so
his travels brought him to Ephesus. The Duke, moved by Egeon’s story, grants
him until the end of the day to raise the thousandmark ransom that will save
his life.
Antipholus
of Syracuse and his servant Dromio arrive in Ephesus the same day disguised as
natives of Epidamnum. Antipholus sends Dromio to the Centaur, a local inn, with
their money and luggage. When Dromio reappears, it is not his own servant but
his servant’s twin—Dromio of Ephesus who serves Antipholus of Ephesus. Dromio
of Ephesus scolds Antipholus for being late coming home to his wife for dinner,
and Antipholus of Syracuse in turn beats Dromio for denying that he received
any money. Dromio runs off and Antipholus sets off in search of his gold.
At
the home of Antipholus of Ephesus, Adriana is fuming because her husband is late
to dinner. Dromio of Ephesus reports that his master denied having a wife and
refused to come home. Infuriated, Adriana sets out to find her husband. Dromio
of Syracuse returns to Antipholus of Syracuse when Adriana and her sister
Luciana appear. Mistaking him for his brother, they convince Antipholus of
Syracuse to come home with them to dine and instruct Dromio of Syracuse to
stand guard at the door. When Antipholus and Dromio of Ephesus arrive, they
find their door locked against them. Enraged, Antipholus of Ephesus decides to
give a gold chain that he ordered for Adriana to the Courtesan instead.
Meanwhile,
Antipholus of Syracuse has fallen in love withLuciana, though she protests that
he is married to her sister. The kitchen maid, Luce, claims that Dromio of
Syracuse is her love. Antipholus and Dromio decide that both women are witches
and plan to leave Ephesus. Antipholus sends Dromio to book passage on the next
ship. Angelo the goldsmith delivers the gold chain meant for Antipholus of
Ephesus to Antipholus of Syracuse.
Antipholus
of Syracuse tries to pay the goldsmith, but the goldsmith insists he’ll collect
payment later. Antipholus of Ephesus, still angry at his wife, sends his Dromio
to buy a rope’s end to beat Adriana. Angelo meets Antipholus of Ephesus in the
street and demands payment for the gold chain. Antipholus refuses to pay for a chain
he has not received and is arrested. As Antipholus is being led away, Dromio of
Syracuse arrives to report that their passage out of Ephesus is booked.
Antipholus instructs him to go to Adriana for bail.
As
Antipholus of Syracuse walks about town wearing the gold chain, Dromio of
Syracuse appears with the bail money. When the Courtesan appears and demands
the chain he promised, Antipholus believes she too is a witch and makes a
speedy exit. The Courtesan decides to go to Adriana and inform her that her
husband is mad.
Dromio
of Ephesus returns to his master with the rope’s end. Adriana, Luciana, the
Courtesan and Dr. Pinch arrive, hoping to cure the men of their madness.
Antipholus and Dromio of Ephesus are bound and taken away by the doctor. Antipholus
and Dromio of Syracuse appear with their swords drawn to fend off witches. The
women run for help, fearing the madmen have escaped. Adriana returns to find
Antipholus with his sword drawn. She calls for him to be bound, but he and
Dromio seek sanctuary in a nearby priory. The Abbess of the priory refuses to
yield them up.
The
Duke approaches with his prisoner, Egeon. Antipholus and Dromio of Ephesus have
escaped from Dr. Pinch and are keen to explain their version of the day’s
events. The Abbess appears, with Antipholus and Dromio of Syracuse. For the
first time, the two sets of twins are seen side by side. The Abbess recognizes
Egeon as her husband, from whom she was separated in the shipwreck many years
before.
The
Duke grants Egeon a full pardon upon hearing the amazing tale. Antipholus of
Syracuse is now free to declare his love to Luciana, and all depart to end the
happy reunion with a family feast.
CIVILIZATION
What is Civilization?
What is civilization? Civilization is
the state of condition of persons living and functioning together, jointly,
cooperatively so that they produce and experience the benefits of so living and
functioning jointly and cooperatively. The word "civilization"
derives from the Roman word for "city". It implies a society
involving cities, and cities involve people living and acting together,
jointly, cooperatively, interactively.
That as counter-posed to people living singly or in very small
units, on their own, individually, independently.
Thus civilization involves social cooperation, that is the
opposite of individualism's "rugged independence" with its
competitive survival of the fittest. Civilization involves joint survival via
joint action. Only civilization is capable of providing improved quality of
life: security, material abundance, the arts, culture, the possibility of
individual fulfillment and of happiness.
Individualism pursues return to the original state, the opposite
of civilization, the consequent survival competition, the state of the animals
unable to function in any mode other than the competition for survival.
The future of mankind is civilization. Civilization builds on our
only real biological advantage -- intelligence and rationality. Civilization
implies, means, requires: society, communal action, social sharing,
"socialism" and, ultimately, communism, the full cooperative sharing
with our fellow persons. Human society must, and it therefore will, so become
or we will regress to the animals from which we came.
To support the development of civilization is to be a civilized
person. To oppose it is to be primitive, barbarian, essentially an animal.
But, what is the purpose of civilization? What is the purpose of
the social structure that we create? Certainly the structure is not an end in
itself. To we humans what matters is our personal and individual security,
fulfillment and happiness. Therefore, the purpose of civilization must be to
promote and achieve that goal.
·
The society
exists for its individual members -- not the individual members existing for
the society.
·
The economy
exists for society's individual members -- not the members existing for the
economy.
·
The
government exists for the members of society -- not the members existing for
the government.
Early Civilizations in
the Middle East to About 1000 B.C.E.
By
4000 B.C.E., people had settled in large numbers in the river-watered lowlands
of Mesopotamia and Egypt. By about 3000 B.C.E., when the invention of writing
gave birth to history, urban life and the organization of society into
centralized states were well established in the valleys of the Tigris and
Euphrates rivers in Mesopotamia and the Nile River in Egypt. Much of the urban
population consists of people who do not grow their own food, so urban life is
possible only where farmers and stockbreeders can be made to produce a
substantial surplus beyond their own needs. Also, some process has to be in
place so that this surplus can be collected and redeployed to sustain city
dwellers. Moreover, efficient farming of plains alongside rivers requires
intelligent management of water resources for irrigation.
In
Mesopotamia, irrigation was essential because in the south (Babylonia),
rainfall was insufficient to sustain crops. Furthermore, the rivers, fed by
melting snows in Armenia, rose to flood the fields in the spring, about the time
for harvest, when water was not needed. When water was needed for the autumn
planting, less was available. This meant that people had to build dikes to keep
the rivers from flooding the fields in the spring and had to devise means to
store water for use in the autumn.
The
Mesopotamians became skilled at that activity early on. In Egypt, on the other
hand, the Nile River flooded at the right moment for cultivation, so irrigation
was simply a matter of directing the water to the fields. In Mesopotamia,
villages, towns, and cities tended to be strung along natural watercourses and,
eventually, man-made canal systems. Thus, control of water could be important
in warfare; an enemy could cut off water upstream of a city to force it to submit.
Because the Mesopotamian plain was flat, branches of the rivers often changed
their courses, and people would have to abandon their cities and move to new
locations.
Archaeologists
once believed that urban life and centralized government arose in response to
the need to regulate irrigation. This theory supposed that only a strong
central authority could construct and maintain the necessary waterworks. More
recently, archaeologists have shown that large-scale irrigation appeared only
long after urban civilization had already developed, so major waterworks were a
consequence of urbanism, not a cause of it.
Mesopotamian
Civilization
The
first civilization appears to have arisen in Mesopotamia. The region is divided
into two ecological zones, roughly north and south of modern Baghdad. In the south
(Babylonia), as noted, irrigation is vital; in the north (Assyria), agriculture
is possible with rainfall and wells. The south has high yields from irrigated
lands, while the north has lower yields, but much more land under cultivation, so
it can produce more than the south.
The
oldest Mesopotamian cities seem to have been founded by a people called the
Sumerians during the fourth millennium B.C.E. in the land of Sumer, which is
the southern half of Babylonia. By 3000 B.C.E., the Sumerian city of Uruk was the
largest city in the world (see Map 1–2). From about 2800 to 2370 B.C.E., in what
is called the Early Dynastic period, several Sumerian city-states existed in
southern Mesopotamia, arranged in north–south lines along the major
watercourses. Among these cities were Uruk, Ur, Nippur, Shuruppak, and Lagash.
Some of the city-states formed leagues among themselves that apparently had both
political and religious significance.
Quarrels
over water and agricultural land led to incessant warfare, and in time,
stronger towns and leagues conquered weaker ones and expanded to form kingdoms
ruling several city-states.
Unlike
the Sumerians, the people who occupied northern Mesopotamia and Syria spoke
mostly Semitic languages (that is, languages in the same family as Arabic and
Hebrew). The Sumerian language is not related to any language known today. Many
of these Semitic peoples absorbed aspects of Sumerian culture, especially
writing. In northern Babylonia, the Mesopotamians believed that the large city
of Kish had history’s first kings. In the far east of this territory, not far
from modern Baghdad, a people known as the Akkadians established their own
kingdom at a capital city called Akkade, under their first king, Sargon, who
had been a servant of the king of Kish.
Eight Features of Civilization
Cities:
As
farmers settled in fertile river valleys, they began to grow surplus or extra
food. This extra food increased the population of the settlements. In time, the
settlements grew into cities, such as Ur in Sumer or Babylon in Mesopotamia.
Organized
Central Governments:
As
cities developed and expanded, the food supply and irrigation systems needed to
be maintained. Governments, such as councils or religious leaders, began to
oversee the business and existence of the cities.
Complex
Religions:
Religious
leaders would conduct elaborate ceremonies to appease the gods (polytheism)
and insure a bountiful harvest. Floods and droughts were blamed on the gods’
abger so rituals were conducted in the temples.
Job Specialization:
As
civilizations became more complex, artisans and craftsmen were
needed to maintain specific items and tasks. No longer could individuals
do all the work. Now some concentrated on teaching, scribing,
stonecutting, and so forth.
Social
Classes:
As
jobs became specialized so did the status and needs of certain individuals. The
need for a knowledgable and educated religious leader was more respected than
an unskilled worker. Herders were needed and respected for the food, while masons
were needed for building. The slave was on the lowest rung of the social ladder
warriors and kings were on top.
Writing:
Records
were needed to keep accounts on trade goods and food storage. Writing was needed
because the information became too great. In addition, one needed to express
more complex ideas such as "belief" and "social order"
where pictures and words simply would not suffice.
Art and
Architecture:
This
expressed the beliefs and values of a civilization. Different styles were
developed and copied by societies. Often the art was used to impress visitors
and people about the beauty and power of a king or a community.
Public
Works:
The
government would order these, although costly, to aid and benefit the
community. Such things as a wall to protect from attack or a canal to aid in irrigation
would help insure the survival of a people.
How Civilizations Fall:
A Theory of Catabolic Collapse
Abstract
The
collapse of complex human societies remains poorly understood and current
theories fail to model important features of historical examples of collapse.
Relationships
among resources, capital, waste, and production form the basis for an ecological
model of collapse in which production fails to meet maintenance requirements
for existing capital. Societies facing such crises after having depleted essential
resources risk catabolic collapse, a self-reinforcing cycle of contraction converting
most capital to waste. This model allows key features of historical examples of
collapse to be accounted for, and suggests parallels between successional processes
in nonhuman ecosystems and collapse phenomena in human societies.
Western
Civilization, Our Tradition
Half
a century ago, Western civilization was a central idea, and ideal, in American political
and intellectual discourse. American political leaders frequently said that the
United States was the heir to Western civilization and that it had a duty to
defend the West against its enemies, most obviously the communist bloc led by
the Soviet Union (sometimes termed “the East”). American academic leaders
regarded the Western tradition with respect, and courses on Western civilization
were widely taught and often required in American universities. The 1950s were
an era when the leading institutions of America (and with their support and
guidance, the leading institutions of Europe as well) were confident and
articulate in identifying with and promoting the Western tradition.
Today,
Western civilization is almost never mentioned, much less promoted, in political
and intellectual discourse, either in America or in Europe. When it is
mentioned amongst Western elites, the traditions of the West are almost always
an object of criticism or contempt. Instead, real discussion of Western
civilization is usually undertaken by the political, intellectual, and religious
leaders of non-Western societies— most obviously, Muslim societies.
Indeed, the idea of the West seems to be most charged with vital energy in the
excited mind of our civilization’s principle contemporary enemy, radical Islam.
The most lively consciousness of the West actually seems to be found within the
East. But within the West itself (i.e. the United States, Europe, and also
Canada, Australia, and New Zealand)1 it sometimes seems that the Western
civilization of fifty years ago has become a lost civilization today.
What
explains this great transformation in a great civilization? Which of the West’s
traditions remains a living reality today? And what might be the fate of these
traditions in the future?
The Three Traditions of
Western Civilization
Among
scholarly interpreters of the West, it has been widely understood that Western civilization
was formed from three distinct traditions: (1) the classical culture of Greece and
Rome; (2) the Christian religion, particularly Western Christianity; and (3)
the Enlightenment of the modern era.2 Although many interpreters have seen
Western civilization as a synthesis of all three traditions, others have
emphasized the conflicts among these threads. As we shall see, the conflict
between the Christian religion and the Enlightenment has been, and remains, especially
consequential.
The
first of the Western traditions was classical culture. In the realm of politics,
for example, Greece contributed the idea of a republic, while Rome contributed
that of an empire. Similarly, Greece contributed the idea of liberty, and Rome,
that of law. When combined, these ideas gave rise to the important Western
concept of liberty under law.
Christianity
shaped Western civilization in many important ways. Christian theology established
the sanctity of the individual believer and called for obedience to an
authority (Christ) higher than any secular ruler (Caesar), ideas that further
refined and supported the concept of liberty under law. Christian institutions,
particularly the papacy of the Roman Catholic Church in its ongoing struggle
with the Holy Roman Emperor and local monarchs, bequeathed to the West the idea
of a separation, and therefore a limitation, of powers.
The
third source of Western civilization was the modern Enlightenment, which
provided the ideas of liberal democracy, the free market, and the belief in
reason and science as the privileged means for making sense of the world. More
particularly, Britain’s “Glorious” Revolution of 1688 emphasized liberty and
constitutionalism, while the French Revolution of 1789 emphasized democracy and
rationalism. The differences between the Enlightenment in Britain and on the
Continent would give rise to important divisions within the West during much of
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This was the case with regard to the
Industrial Revolution and the different responses to it: both state guidance of
the economy and Marxist ideology played a much greater role on the Continent
than in Britain or the United States.
RITUAL
ASPECTS
Ritual
performance and the politics of identity On the functions and uses of ritual
Jan
Koster
University of Groningen
The
theory of ritual presented in this article is based on the notion “territory.”
Ritual performance encompasses a set of techniques to affect the identity of
participants: away from individuality and by communal demarcation of a symbolic
territorial model in space or time.
The
form of ritual is seen as autonomous, i.e. as relatively independent of
meaning. As a set of identity-affecting techniques, the elements of ritual can
be integrated into both religious and secular settings. There is a natural
tension between individuality, responsibility and the potentially totalitarian
implications of ritual discourse.
Ritual
is claimed to be relatively harmless with respect to the symbolic territories
of designated “sacred spaces,” while it is considered dangerous under
conditions of “overflow,” when the elements of ritual are brought into public
space. The harmful secular religions of the past two centuries are discussed, culminating
in a plea for the separation between Ritual and State.
Ø Ritual
and language
What
natural language and ritual have in common is that both, even more so than
religion, are universal phenomena of human culture. As for theoretical
attention, however, there is an enormous difference between these two realms of
human activity. Linguistics has been a rich and relatively successful field,
especially after the revolutionary transformations it underwent since the
1950s. In comparison, the study of ritual has dramatically lagged behind. This
is unfortunate for a number of reasons. First of all, ritual is intrinsically
interesting as a rich area of human self-expression. Since it also is
universal, a deeper understanding of it might, just as linguistics did, clarify
something fundamental about human nature. Furthermore, ritual differs from
language in that it primarily relates to human emotions, some of them alarming,
particular in political contexts. It is for this reason, I believe, that the
study of ritual has a certain urgency.
This
has to do with the main thesis of this article, namely that ritual is about the
human experience of identity in relation to territory and therefore involves
severe ethical risks under certain circumstances.
When
the Golden Bough Breaks: Folk Drama and the Theatre Historian
Collecting
traditional tales in Lincolnshire towards the end of the nineteenth century,
the folklorist M.C. Balfour had the good fortune to encounter “an old man from
Lindsey,” who alongside a rich fund of legends could also offer a historical
account of the picturesque local lore and custom they reflected. For in earlier
times, his grandfather had told him, people were much concerned about the
forces in nature which could affect their well-being, and to control or placate
the “bogles”, the vaguely conceived supernatural beings in which these forces
were invested, they practised many ritual observances which were hardly in conformity
with the doctrines and ceremonies of established religion: the folk had ideas
of their own, and ways of their own, as they’d kept up years and years and
hundreds of years, since the time when there weren’t no church, leastwise no
church of that sort. ... So there were, so to say, two churches; the one with
priests and candles, and all that; the other just a lot of old ways, kept up
all unbeknown and hidden-like, midst the folk themselves. (Balfour 1891:
259-60)
This
eloquent little folk-lecture on village culture matches strikingly contemporary
thinking among folklorists on the antiquity and origins of folklore in general
and folk custom in particular. For it was at precisely this time that Folklore
itself emerged from its roots in anthropology and antiquarianism as an
independent discipline, devoted to the study of “survivals” from a more primitive
phase of social and cultural development, among which folk beliefs and their
associated customs could indeed be seen as an archaic alternative “church,” or
what E.K. Chambers called: “the detritus of heathen mythology and heathen worship,
enduring with but little external change in the shadow of an hostile creed”
(Chambers 1967: 1: 94).
The
influence of this view on theatre historians (such as Chambers himself) has had
decisive implications for the place and the treatment of such customs as
display recognizably dramatic features—the folk plays—in theatre history, where
they are invariably put at the beginning, accompanied by much talk of origins,
roots and sources, and rather less of their dramatic characteristics.2 The primitive
origin of folk custom is an attractive idea, catering to both the romantic
antiquarianism and the belief in a resilient, independent village culture,
which in varying proportions inspire most academic study of folk tradition: one
acknowledges only with reluctance that scholars, unlike Lincolnshire storytellers,
are obliged to question the lore handed down by their forebears.
The
“survivalist” view of folk plays as the “detritus” of primitive ritual reflects
Folklore’s most decisive inheritance from nineteenth-century anthropology, the
notion of cultural evolution. According to this the culture of a given society
advances through a fixed sequence of savage, barbaric and civilized phases,
represented respectively by magical, religious and scientific responses to the
external environment in the important business of individual well-being and
collective survival. While some societies, to judge from the reports of
travellers, missionaries and colonial administrators, had reached only a lower (savage
or barbaric) level on this Darwinian ladder, those to which the anthropologists
had the good fortune to belong had advanced to the most civilized stage,
although residues of earlier phases still persisted here and there among the
more backward, ignorant and isolated sections of the community. This was
“folklore”—beliefs and practices from the infancy of the tribe conserved by
oral tradition and customary observance among the more infantile of its later
members.
The
prehistoric cultures of now-civilized societies could therefore be reconstructed
by applying a comparative method to evidence from widely separated times and
places: the folklore of European villages (in which remnants of primitive
culture survived), reports on the indigenous societies of Africa, the Americas
and Australasia (in which primitive culture persisted intact), and the mythologies
of ancient civilizations (which recorded the “spoken correlatives” of primitive
rites).
EUROPEAN
European Fisheries
History: Pre-industrial Origins of Overfishing
By Carolyn Scearce
In
1862 Thomas Henry Huxley, friend and promoter of Charles Darwin, was appointed
to a commission to examine claims by driftnet herring fishermen that long liners
were adversely impacting fish catches due to local overfishing (Kurlansky,
1997).
The
commission that Huxley served on dismissed the requests of the fishermen to
restrict long lining and declared the complaints to be unscientific. Huxley
held the view that nature was almost infinitely resilient and would adapt to
any pressure that humans could exert on the environment. This belief was shared
by many not only through the nineteenth century but well into the twentieth.
As
important commercial fisheries such as the Atlantic cod have collapsed toward
the end of the twentieth century, scientists, environmentalists, and law makers
have had to seriously challenge this assumption. Fishery biologists such as
Myers and Worm (2003) have estimated that the biomass of large predatory fish
has been depleted by at least 90% compared to pre-industrial levels. This
assertion does not come without controversy, as conclusive stock assessments of
fish populations can be difficult to obtain. Ocean fisheries are particularly
difficult to assess, as populations can be widely distributed, are frequently
migratory, and can be affected by environmental conditions such as water
temperature and current patterns.
Also
there is the human element to assessment. A problem that ecologists have
identified regarding measuring fishery populations is shifting base lines. When
ecologists study declining populations, there is a tendency to judge the
population based on the life-time memory of those who study the organisms
(Roberts, 2007). Older ecologists will remember the abundance of their youth
and will assume this represents a normal population level. When a population
has been declining over a period of decades or even centuries, this creates a
skewed vision of the organisms’ functioning role and carrying capacity within
an ecosystem. To obtain a better understanding of declining fisheries,
scientists have begun to look to history for answers regarding how much
exploitation aquatic species have been subjected to over time, and what undepleted
population levels may really have been. Some scientists and historians have
suggested that it is necessary to look back at least as far as the Middle Ages
to better understand what unexploited aquatic resources may have looked like
(Robert, 2007; Bolster, 2008).
This
Discovery Guide examines what some historians, archaeologists, and ecologists
have been able to uncover regarding the use of fishery resources by European
populations in pre-industrial times, particularly pertaining to the Atlantic and
Mediterranean regions.
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