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<p>[QUOTE="+VGO.DVCKS, post: 8182627, member: 110504"]Thanks, [USER=84905]@Tejas[/USER] and [USER=91240]@SeptimusT[/USER], for some stimulating and commensurately thoughtful comments.</p><p>...This is primarily by way of amplifying [USER=91240]@SeptimusT[/USER]'s observations. For someone who likes to hang out in the Middle Ages, one thing leaps off the page. Especially over the 11th and 12th centuries, continuing into the 13th, the Europeans in Iberia, Norman Sicily, and the Frankish Levant benefited profoundly from the cultural and intellectual sophistication of their respective, neighboring Muslim and Jewish communities. The kings of Aragon-Castile undertook a vast project of translating and disseminating the entire contents of Jewish and Muslim libraries (which, as early as that, they left intact), especially in Toledo. Right, this was a sort of miniature version of the Great Library of Alexandria, and was crucial to the so-called '12th-Century Renaissance' in Europe. Norman kings of Sicily had their heirs educated by Muslim and Jewish tutors. And the dramatic mercantile expansion of the Italian city-states during the Crusades --vis-a-vis the Middle East as well as Byzantium-- went some distance toward setting the cultural as well as the economic stage for the better known one.</p><p>In other words, regarding the Western cultural tradition, what you're looking at has as much to do with appropriation from other cultures as it does with anything communally 'made from scratch.' While this is especially resonant in my context of choice, that's hardly the end of it. ...Is the Hellenistic period an irreducibly western phenomenon ...Really? The whole point of distinguishing it from the Hellenic age is the willingness of Greeks (right, from Alexander III) not only to draw from, but to adopt vast amounts of cultural and scientific knowledge from areas which were, especially at the time, well east and south of Europe. You could look at [USER=110350]@DonnaML[/USER]'s admirable level of investment in Egypt, from Pharaonic times to the 'colonial' issues of the Roman Empire. Or Constantine's own espusal of the Central Asian religion of Mithras, prior to his conversion to another one, of pretty emphatically Middle Eastern origin.</p><p>...From a comfortable historical distance, as these examples are, I like to think of them as exemplifying the better side of 'appropriation' --bugbear that it is to 'political correctness' (sometimes appropriately, in other contexts). Starting with the Vikings' adoption of both western European and Byzantine influences, and proceeding to the examples already mentioned, I have to admire the intellectual agility of Westerners who knew a good thing when they saw it, and didn't blink about summarily adopting it.</p><p>...But, No, there is no such thing as a 'pure' Western cultural tradition. As an American, I get even more traction with this. Culturally, Black Americans have given us A Whole Screaming Lot of everything we have. ...That wouldn't make you think we were still a colony of someplace or other in Europe. Cultural history is All About cultural synthesis. It's effectively redundant.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>
[QUOTE="+VGO.DVCKS, post: 8182627, member: 110504"]Thanks, [USER=84905]@Tejas[/USER] and [USER=91240]@SeptimusT[/USER], for some stimulating and commensurately thoughtful comments. ...This is primarily by way of amplifying [USER=91240]@SeptimusT[/USER]'s observations. For someone who likes to hang out in the Middle Ages, one thing leaps off the page. Especially over the 11th and 12th centuries, continuing into the 13th, the Europeans in Iberia, Norman Sicily, and the Frankish Levant benefited profoundly from the cultural and intellectual sophistication of their respective, neighboring Muslim and Jewish communities. The kings of Aragon-Castile undertook a vast project of translating and disseminating the entire contents of Jewish and Muslim libraries (which, as early as that, they left intact), especially in Toledo. Right, this was a sort of miniature version of the Great Library of Alexandria, and was crucial to the so-called '12th-Century Renaissance' in Europe. Norman kings of Sicily had their heirs educated by Muslim and Jewish tutors. And the dramatic mercantile expansion of the Italian city-states during the Crusades --vis-a-vis the Middle East as well as Byzantium-- went some distance toward setting the cultural as well as the economic stage for the better known one. In other words, regarding the Western cultural tradition, what you're looking at has as much to do with appropriation from other cultures as it does with anything communally 'made from scratch.' While this is especially resonant in my context of choice, that's hardly the end of it. ...Is the Hellenistic period an irreducibly western phenomenon ...Really? The whole point of distinguishing it from the Hellenic age is the willingness of Greeks (right, from Alexander III) not only to draw from, but to adopt vast amounts of cultural and scientific knowledge from areas which were, especially at the time, well east and south of Europe. You could look at [USER=110350]@DonnaML[/USER]'s admirable level of investment in Egypt, from Pharaonic times to the 'colonial' issues of the Roman Empire. Or Constantine's own espusal of the Central Asian religion of Mithras, prior to his conversion to another one, of pretty emphatically Middle Eastern origin. ...From a comfortable historical distance, as these examples are, I like to think of them as exemplifying the better side of 'appropriation' --bugbear that it is to 'political correctness' (sometimes appropriately, in other contexts). Starting with the Vikings' adoption of both western European and Byzantine influences, and proceeding to the examples already mentioned, I have to admire the intellectual agility of Westerners who knew a good thing when they saw it, and didn't blink about summarily adopting it. ...But, No, there is no such thing as a 'pure' Western cultural tradition. As an American, I get even more traction with this. Culturally, Black Americans have given us A Whole Screaming Lot of everything we have. ...That wouldn't make you think we were still a colony of someplace or other in Europe. Cultural history is All About cultural synthesis. It's effectively redundant.[/QUOTE]
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