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[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 âWestern civilizationâ 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 âWest.â While I disagree with a number of Stearnsâ specific judgments, the main lesson is clear: cultural retrospection involves a cumulative reordering of possessed and retrieved
Comparative Literature – Duke University Press
Published: Jan 1, 2006
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