How the past was used : historical cultures, c. 750-2000 /
This book explores how societies put the past to use and how, in the process, they represented it: in short, their historical culture. It brings together anthropologists, historians, and literary scholars to address the means by which societies, groups, and individuals have engaged with the past and...
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Corporate Authors: | |
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Group Author: | ; |
Published: |
Published for The British Academy by Oxford University Press,
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Publisher Address: | Oxford : |
Publication Dates: | 2017. |
Literature type: | Book |
Language: | English |
Edition: | First edition. |
Series: |
Proceedings of the British Academy,
207 |
Subjects: | |
Summary: |
This book explores how societies put the past to use and how, in the process, they represented it: in short, their historical culture. It brings together anthropologists, historians, and literary scholars to address the means by which societies, groups, and individuals have engaged with the past and expressed their understanding of it. 00The utility of the past has proven almost as infinitely variable as the modes of its representation. It might be a matter of learning lessons from experience, or about the legitimacy of a cause or regime, or the reputation of an individual. Rival versions and interpretations reflected, but also helped to create and sustain, divergent communities and world views. With so much at stake, manipulations, distortions, and myths proliferated. But given also that evidence of past societies was fragmentary, fragile, and fraught with difficulties for those who sought to make sense of it, imaginative leaps and creativity necessarily came into the equation. |
Carrier Form: | xi, 316 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm. |
Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
ISBN: |
9780197266120 0197266126 |
Index Number: | D13 |
CLC: | K0 |
Call Number: | K0/H847 |
Contents: | Introduction. What is historical culture? / Peter Lambert ; Themes in historical culture / Björn Weiler -- Imagining Rome in medieval Constantinople : memory, politics, and the past in the Middle Byzantine Period / Dimitris Krallis -- The present and the past in the sagas of Icelanders / Haki Antonsson -- Monastic historical culture and the utility of a remote past : the case of Matthew Paris / Björn Weiler -- Legend and historical experience in fifteenth-century Ottoman narratives of the past / Dimitri Kastritsis -- The chronicler and the count : law, libel, and history in the early modern Atlantic World / Richard Kagan -- The poetry of history in early modern India / Allison Busch -- The immediacy of a remote past : the Saxon Wars of 772-804 in the 'cultural struggles' of the Third Reich / Peter Lambert -- Ancient past, modern ceremony : Thailand's Royal Barge Procession in historical context / Matthew Phillips -- La Rosca de Investigación y Acción Social : reimagining history as collaborative exchange in 1970s Colombia / Joanne Rappaport -- Chinese history as a constructed continuity : the work of Rao Zongyi / T.H. Barrett -- Memory as theatre : using a Ghanaian ritual to recall past greatness and to redress recent reverses / Richard Rathbone -- Conclusion: Future directions? / Peter Lambert & Björn Weiler. |