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Peripheral Echoes: "Old" and "New" Worlds as Reciprocal Literary Mirrorings

Peripheral Echoes: "Old" and "New" Worlds as Reciprocal Literary Mirrorings [T]he Western world has its unity in this [literary] heritage, in Christianity, and in the ancient civilizations of Greece, Rome, and Israel, from which, owing to two thousand years of Christianity we trace our descent . . . [T]his unity in the common elements of culture, throughout the centuries, is the true bond between us. (Eliot 127) My remarks, invoking Eliot, are not intended as a contribution to the debate over whether such a constellation as “Western civilization” is actual or how best to teach it. Nonetheless, we can garner valuable points from scholars like Peter COMPARATIVE LITERATURE /340 N. Stearns who do expound these issues. In assessing in Western Civilization and World History (2003) the merits of the various temporal and territorial frames that different camps apply in their acts of retrospection, Stearns argues against going all the way back to the ancient Near East and Egypt or to ancient Greece and Rome as foundational, and favors instead regarding the Middle Ages and the Renaissance as the true crucible of the “West.” While I disagree with a number of Stearns’ specific judgments, the main lesson is clear: cultural retrospection involves a cumulative reordering of possessed and retrieved http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Comparative Literature Duke University Press

Peripheral Echoes: "Old" and "New" Worlds as Reciprocal Literary Mirrorings

Comparative Literature , Volume 58 (4) – Jan 1, 2006

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Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
Copyright 2006 by University of Oregon
ISSN
0010-4124
eISSN
1945-8517
DOI
10.1215/-58-4-339
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

[T]he Western world has its unity in this [literary] heritage, in Christianity, and in the ancient civilizations of Greece, Rome, and Israel, from which, owing to two thousand years of Christianity we trace our descent . . . [T]his unity in the common elements of culture, throughout the centuries, is the true bond between us. (Eliot 127) My remarks, invoking Eliot, are not intended as a contribution to the debate over whether such a constellation as “Western civilization” is actual or how best to teach it. Nonetheless, we can garner valuable points from scholars like Peter COMPARATIVE LITERATURE /340 N. Stearns who do expound these issues. In assessing in Western Civilization and World History (2003) the merits of the various temporal and territorial frames that different camps apply in their acts of retrospection, Stearns argues against going all the way back to the ancient Near East and Egypt or to ancient Greece and Rome as foundational, and favors instead regarding the Middle Ages and the Renaissance as the true crucible of the “West.” While I disagree with a number of Stearns’ specific judgments, the main lesson is clear: cultural retrospection involves a cumulative reordering of possessed and retrieved

Journal

Comparative LiteratureDuke University Press

Published: Jan 1, 2006

There are no references for this article.