Mkhitar Sebastac Ilec Writing Question

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Mkhitar Sebastac Ilec Writing Question

A)

Write a short paragraph (around 5 lines each) outlining the significance of FOUR of the following themes we have discussed in class so far with regard to their relation to the course’s focus on art, politics, and nationalism.

1) Hovsep Emin

Born Hamadan, Iran in 1726. In 1744 he moved to India to join his merchant father in Calcutta.

He had great appreciation for English military discipline and Enlightenment.

An army should not fight by brute strength alone without an understanding of liberty (acting like a free man, not a slave) and knowledge. He argued that in warfare the psychological precedes the physical.

  • He valued individualism

1751 He moved to London

1755 He befriended Edmund Burke, the Whig (liberal) intellectual and was introduced to circles of the nobility and intelligentsia

1756 he enrolled in the military academy in Woolich.

1757 he enlisted as a volunteer in the British-Prussian War v. France

1759 he travelled from London to Ejmiacin via Cilicia and the Western part of the Armenian Plateau.

He had an audience with the Armenian Catholicos and discussed moves towards Armenian liberation from Persian and Ottoman rule. Then he had talks with the Armenian meliks of Karabagh and King Erekle II of Kartli (Georgia).

He argued that the death of Nader Shah, ruler of Iran (1722-47), ushered in an era of devolution advantageous for liberating Eastern Armenia from Iran.

2) Mkhitar Sebastac‘i

LEC 3→ ppt titled “The French Model for the Mkhitarists”

As a growing political, economic, and cultural power in Europe with the largest population, France wished to advance its commercial objectives in the Near East through Christian satellites, particularly Catholic co-religionists.

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  • In the 16th century France established a center in Aleppo to purchase raw Persian silk largely from Armenian merchants from Julfa.
  • Under Cardinal Richelieu France took direction from Rome of the Counter-Reformation mission to the Near East. He republished an Armenian grammar and dictionary and distributed free of charge to missionaries.
  • As a result Aleppo became a primary location for Armenian conversion to Catholicism. One of the converts was the 19 year old Mkhitar Sebastac‘i who founded an Armenian Catholic monastic congregation that bares his name.
  • Contributions by Sebastac’i
  • ◦a) monastic order with oath to religion and homeland. It continues until today.
  • ◦b) schools to provide higher level of more European education.
  • ◦c) “academy” like the Académie Francaise to regularize the Armenian language.
  • ◦d) press and publication
  • 2. new interpretation of Armenian identity with basic separation of church and state
  • 3. language standardization
  • unitary medium of high culture as classical Armenian purified of Latin infiltration, instead of Latin and Greek

highlighted info is in specific talking about Sebastac’i :))

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3) The varied significance of the figure Vartan Mamikonian in Armenian discourse

  • Mamikonian is an Armenian aristocratic of the 5th century CE
  • Mamikonian is involved in a war against Zoroastrian Persians who seek to impose their religion upon the Christian Armenians
  • This hostility between Armenians and Persians comes to a head in 451 where there is a battle of Avarayr
  • The armenian historical sources of that period present Mamikonian and his forces as being religious martyrs
  • However, here for the first time in armenian history, the figure of Mamikonian is presented as being a secular martyr, a patriot who is a martyr to the defense of his homeland; has been updated and desecualized and securalized in order to function as a symbol (Model) for the new type of Armenian patriot they seek to develop
  • This also includes the geography of Armenia, taken from the work of Movses Xorenac’i and we see the presentation of Armenian beauty and the resources of the homeland extolled in order to infuse national pride
    • In this work, the beauty of Armenia is presented for its true natural beauty, we encounter a natural epithet

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4) Romantic Nationalism

  • Romantic Nationalism is also known as romanticism.
  • Wounds of Armenia focuses on the activities of an Armenian “freedom fighter” Aghasi who joins the Russian offensive against the Khanate of Erevan and gives his life for the cause, fighting to take the Erevan fortress in 1827. Hence the subject and medium are contemporary and the ethos is one of romantic nationalism to inculcate patriotic involvement in the nationalist project.
  • Romanticism emphasized the personal, the individual, the distinctive and hence the national: national and ethnic cultural origins.
  • Sahib is one of the first Western minion exponents of what we call romantic nationalism.
  • Romanticism
    • Reaction against excesses of neoclassicism
    • Rejection of precepts: Order, Calm, Harmony,
    • Balance, Rationalism.
    • Classicist subordination of part within whole.
    • Political implication: subject subordinate in state. Quietest maintenance of status quo.

      B)

    • Passages for identification and comment
      • Write notes on FOUR of the following passages citing the author and work and then dealing with such issues as context, speaker(s), addressee(s). Then elaborate the wider significance of the citation within the work as a whole in terms of thought, symbolism, etc., where appropriate relating those to the theoretical perspectives of Gellner, Smith, and Anderson.
      • 1. Have you seen the village alone in the valleyAnd the splendid gardens spread out round itAnd the golden ears of corn and calm brook—Have you heard the lark’s sweet songs? Hovhannes Hovhannisian Tell Me Have You Seen My Homeland (3rd paragraph in specific
      • 2. And our fathers’ bones erupted in loud applause,For the Armenians’ fire in not snuffed out.And so many victims were jubilant For the revenge we took in a stream of blood.Masis broke into a smile, Mother. Mkrtich Peshiktashlian Death of the Brave Son
      • 3. But I, who am Armenian,My own Armenians know;I want no stranger bridegroom;A widowed stream I flow. Raphael Patkanian The Tears of Arax
      • 4. Give me thy hand, and take my hand. Why should we pull apart? We have been separated long By unkind fates and storms. Mkrtich Peshiktashlian We Are Brothers (verse 2 in specific)

      • C) Essay

      • Choose one of the essay questions. Try to provide a clear thesis, organize your essay carefully and give particular examples to support your general assertions.
      • 1) Commenting on the development of Armenian nationalism in the 1870s, the newspaper editor Grigor Artsruni stated “Yesterday we were an ecclesiastical community, today we are patriots, tomorrow we will be a nation of workers and thinkers.” From our reading this term so far both of literature and theoretical perspectives on nationalism argue for or against Artsruni’s interpretation of the development of Armenian corporate identity from the 18th century up to his date of writing.

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As you can see this is divided into three parts… A,B,C in the beginning it is asking you to answer in 5 lines each one and I have notes written down under each one to make it easier and so you dont use outside sources. Then B is poems and the poems are attached. Lastly C is 2 questions just pick 1 out of the 2 and answer it, but let it be 2 pages double spaced.