This essay presents a study of 31 kanshi poems by the Heian poet/scholar/official Sugawara no Michizane (845-903) written during his governorship in the province of Sanuki (poems 183-213). Taking...Show moreThis essay presents a study of 31 kanshi poems by the Heian poet/scholar/official Sugawara no Michizane (845-903) written during his governorship in the province of Sanuki (poems 183-213). Taking issue with common approaches to Michizane and his writings, I deal with the material in four different ways in order to show the problems inherent in these practices, while simultaneously attempting to provide alternative inroads to Michizane's oeuvre. These four issues are: 1. the discrepancies between modern and premodern 'poethood', which usually remain unquestioned but are here complicated by zooming in on Michizane the scholar and the official instead; 2. the limited scope of biographers, for whom the period in Sanuki central in this essay is peripheral to Michizane's identity; 3. a strongly selective attitude towards Michizane's writings, which I avoid by taking the entire oeuvre attributed to one single year; and 4. what I call the 'biographical fallacy', where biographers take details found in Michizane's oeuvre about his life at face value. Instead, I understand his literary compilation as a consciously subjective collection of works that was designed to portray a desirable Self. By focussing on Michizane's use of the three different personae - that of poet, scholar, and administrative official - I show how the original compositions compiled into one new work are made to take on new meaning, which act, rather than a portrayal of historical fact, constitutes a politically motivated act intended to convey a specific self-representational message, disseminated by Michizane at the time, just before the exile to Kyushu, when his position at court was rapidly deteriorating, and which can thus be seen as one bid in the political game in the high echelons of court power.Show less
Master thesis | Classics and Ancient Civilizations (MA)
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This paper re-examines the interpretative potential of Cicero's De consulatu suo, with a focus on the so-called speech of Urania (Blänsdorf 6). Starting from the increasing awareness that our...Show moreThis paper re-examines the interpretative potential of Cicero's De consulatu suo, with a focus on the so-called speech of Urania (Blänsdorf 6). Starting from the increasing awareness that our understanding of how Cicero's poetry was received is exceedingly one-sided and based on ahistoric assumptions, I seek to shift the common dismissal of his epic by investigating the little evidence we have to suggest that there was also a readership that did appreciate Cicero's poetry. Shifting focus to the poem itself, I first question what we know - and especially do not know - about the context in which the speech of Urania was originally found. Both in terms of general layout and vocabulary the text is recognisable as philosophical, but many more threads run through the poem, including Roman history and religion, the didactic language of Aratos' poetry, the nature of the cosmos and the gods, and the Roman community of city, senate, and people. These strands of meaning interact with each other in various nexus, as I demonstrate through an analysis of the overwhelming amount of verbal repetition that is found in the poem, and which does not necessarily give prominence to Cicero the consul alone. Thus, while the poem, as an autobiographical text, is certainly concerned with creating a favourable and usable public persona, its self-representational strategies also involve drawing the other players, whom in his other works Cicero is constantly involving in his concordia ordinum. This has important implications not just for our understanding of Cicero's way of speaking/writing about himself, but also for the interpretative strategies with which to approach Roman self-representational texts.Show less
Bachelor thesis | South and Southeast Asian Studies (BA)
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Social media has been able to develop itself as a necessity into the lives of Indonesian users for the past decade. There are different factors that contribute to the popularity of social media...Show moreSocial media has been able to develop itself as a necessity into the lives of Indonesian users for the past decade. There are different factors that contribute to the popularity of social media usage in Indonesia. The most important motive behind remains the wide accessibility of mobile internet devices. Social media has been a main focal point for cultural exchanging and cultural expressions. It has shaped and created idealistic lifestyles, beauty perceptions, fashion trends and religious/educational resources are shared freely in a high pace. Especially on the social network application Instagram, visual representations are easily being shared using photographic posts. Along with the impact of globalization, Indonesian Instagram users are the interlinked and in direct involvement with the outer world. It cannot be denied that social media platforms strengthen the power of the active individual agent and that the social media application becomes an empowerment tool to the audience. Besides the evident benefits, social media has brought a series of negative effects to the Indonesian society as well. Ethical conflicts and moral violations of visual social media content have inflamed the debate on social media literacy education. Also, excessive monthly expenditures are a result of the problematic high consumer culture that circulates on Instagram. Especially the most dominant group users –Indonesian youngsters– seem to be the most vulnerable group for these online complications. It is therefore of the interest to highlight how the Indonesian youth approaches and practice social media applications. This paper explores cultural Indonesian youth studies further on virtual terrain, with its focus on the photo-sharing application Instagram.Show less
