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The connection between a colony and its founder, centre and margin, is always paradoxical. Where once Britain sent colonists out into the world, now the descendents of those colonists return to interrogate the centre. This is a book about four of these returners: Harold Williams, journalist, linguist, Foreign Editor of The Times; Ronald Syme, spy, libertarian, historian of ancient Rome; John Platts-Mills, radical lawyer and political activist; and Joseph Burney Trapp, librarian, scholar and protector of culture. These were men, born in remote New Zealand, who achieved fame in Europe—even as they were lost sight of at home. Men who became, from the point of view of their country of origin, expatriates. A writer of penetrating insight, Martin Edmond explores the intersections of past and present in the lives of these four extraordinary individuals. Their stories combine, in the hands of this award-winning writer, to a moving reflection upon New Zealand’s place in the world, then and now.
First Published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Looking at encounters of European travelers with Egypt in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this collection of essays focuses on the experience of the less well known travelers and institutions. Contributors include: Lisa Bernasek, Briony Llewellyn, A.J. Mills, Charles Newton, John David Regan, John Rodenbeck, John Ruffle, Sarah Searight, Nicholas Warner. Vol. 23 No. 2
This book demonstrates the complexity of nineteenth-century Britain’s engagement with Palestine and its surrounds through the conceptual framing of the region as the Holy Land. British engagement with the region of the Near East in the nineteenth century was multi-faceted, and part of its complexity was exemplified in the powerful relationship between developing and diverse Protestant theologies, visual culture and imperial identity. Britain’s Holy Land was visualised through pictorial representation which helped Christians to imagine the land in which familiar Bible stories took place. This book explores ways in which the geopolitical Holy Land was understood as embodying biblical land, biblical history and biblical typology. Through case studies of three British artists, David Roberts, David Wilkie and William Holman Hunt, this book provides a nuanced interpretation of some of the motivations, religious perspectives, attitudes and behaviours of British Protestants in their relationship with the Near East at the time.
From Herodotus's day to the present political upheavals, the steady flow of the Nile has been Egypt's heartbeat. It has shaped its geography, controlled its economy and moulded its civilisation. The same stretch of water which conveyed Pharaonic battleships, Ptolemaic grain ships, Roman troop-carriers and Victorian steamers today carries modern-day tourists past bankside settlements in which rural life – fishing, farming, flooding – continues much as it has for millennia. At this most critical juncture in the country's history, foremost Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson takes us on a journey up the Nile, north from Lake Victoria, from Cataract to Cataract, past the Aswan Dam, to the delta. The...
Geography of the Gaze offers a new history and theory of how the way we look at things influences what we see. Focusing on Western Europe from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, Renzo Dubbini shows how developments in science, art, mapping, and visual epistemology affected the ways natural and artificial landscapes were perceived and portrayed. He begins with the idea of the "view," explaining its role in the invention of landscape painting and in the definition of landscape as a cultural space. Among other topics, Dubbini explores how the descriptive and pictorial techniques used in mariners' charts, view-oriented atlases, military cartography, and garden design were linked to the proliferation of highly realistic paintings of landscapes and city scenes; how the "picturesque" system for defining and composing landscapes affected not just art but also archaeology and engineering; and how the ever-changing modern cityscapes inspired new ways of seeing and representing the urban scene in Impressionist painting, photography, and stereoscopy. A marvelous history of viewing, Geography of the Gaze will interest everyone from scientists to artists.
It's Good to Be a Woman tells the stories of a group of women who came out of Bryn Mawr College determined to have lives of their own, to find meaningful work, to make a difference. Follow these stubborn, can-do optimists as they navigate the turbulence of the sixties and early seventies, confront crisis (divorce, sickness, getting fired), and build lives and careers, charting new territory for women in the professions.
The Alhambra, the 'red fort' on its rocky hill above Granada with its fountained courts and gardens and intricate decoration has long been a byword for exotic and melancholy beauty. In a stimulating new book in the 'Wonders of the World' series Robert Irwin, Arabist and novelist, examines its engrossing and often mysterious history. Built by a bloody and threatened dynasty of Muslim Spain, the Alhambra was preserved as a monument to the triumph of Christianity. Much of what we see is the invention of later generations. Its highly sophisticated decoration is not just random but full of hidden meaning. Even its purpose - palace or theological college - is not always clear. Its influence on art...
The publication of Edward Said’s Orientalism in 1978 marks the inception of orientalism as a discourse. Since then, Orientalism has remained highly polemical and has become a widely employed epistemological tool. Three decades on, this volume sets out to survey, analyse and revisit the state of the Orientalist debate, both past and present. The leitmotiv of this book is its emphasis on an intimate connection between art, land and voyage. Orientalist art of all kinds frequently derives from a consideration of the land which is encountered on a voyage or pilgrimage, a relationship which, until now, has received little attention. Through adopting a thematic and prosopographical approach, and attempting to locate the fundamentals of the debate in the historical and cultural contexts in which they arose, this book brings together a diversity of opinions, analyses and arguments.