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Babylon under Western Eyes: A Study of Allusion and Myth. Andrew Scheil. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016. Pp xvi+343.

2017; University of Chicago Press; Volume: 115; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1086/691307

1545-6951

Alice Ogden Bellis,

Ancient Near East History

Previous articleNext article FreeBook ReviewBabylon under Western Eyes: A Study of Allusion and Myth. Andrew Scheil. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016. Pp xvi+343.Alice Ogden BellisAlice Ogden BellisHoward University Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreAndrew Scheil’s Babylon under Western Eyes traces the use of Babylon from antiquity to the present using three lenses: Babylon as a political metaphor, a degenerate archetype, and a sublime topos. Scheil explores the ways Babylon functions as an allusion and how and when the allusive meanings enter Western thought. He distinguishes three mechanisms: displacement, adaptation, and transformation. An early example of displacement is in the Bible where Babylon comes to represent Rome in Revelation. Adaptation involves use of the term with changes to fit the new context. By transformation, Scheil intends the result of displacement and adaptation, in that there is both continuity and change. His exploration ranges from “high” to pop culture, from religious to secular texts, showing the pervasiveness and intertwined nature of the Babylon myth in the West.Part 1 focuses on “Babylon as Political Metaphor” and begins with classical culture and the Bible. Scheil’s theses are that 1) Babylon is represented both mimetically as a historical city and metaphorically and 2) Babylon is surrounded by political themes and images involving intense, apocalyptic imagery. Classical authors discussed include Herodotus, Lucan, Aristotle, Diodorus Siculus, and Ovid. Biblical books include Jeremiah, Isaiah, Daniel, and Revelation. Scheil notes the proleptic interplay between present and future in the biblical use of Babylon. Babylon is both a real city in the present (mimetic) mode, but also a prophecy for the future (metaphoric) mode. This duality is essential to Babylon’s potential use as a political metaphor in the West.In chapter 2, “Political Babylon in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages,” Scheil shows how classical and biblical Babylons merge in the works of patristic and medieval Christian authors. He begins with St. Augustine of Hippo and his City of God (416–422), where Babylon and Jerusalem are set up as polar opposites. Paulus Orosius’s Seven Books of History against the Pagans (early fifth century), the anonymous Old English Daniel (ca. 700–1000), and the Latin exegetical commentaries of the venerable Bede (ca. 673–735) are then considered. By the early Middle Ages, Babylon had become rich with allusive meaning.Chapter 3, “Political Babylon from the Great Schism to the Present,” brings Babylon as metaphor to the present with three case studies, one on the schismatic Avignon papacy and Dante Alighieri and Petrarch, a second anti-Catholic one by Protestants with Martin Luther, John Milton, and John Donne, and a third one with three parts: 1) on political Babylon in the modern world with London as Babylon, utilizing work by William Blake; 2) during the American Civil War with antislavery themes in, for example, Herman Melville’s poem “The Fall of Richmond” (1864); and 3) Protestant evangelical Babylon, as in the Left Behind series (1995–2008).Part 2 considers “Babylon as Degenerate Archetype.” Chapter 4, “The Medieval Genealogy of Babylonian Degeneracy: The Cursed Race,” argues that Babylon plays an important role in the concept of race in Western culture, that it is an origin and organizing principle of an enduring Western archetype. The primeval cursed race begins with Cain, murderer of his brother, and continues with the curse upon Noah’s grandson Canaan, often displaced upon Noah’s son Ham and his descendants, including Nimrod, the giant and builder of Babylon and the Tower of Babel, and Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon who is inhumanly debased. Cain and Ham are linked in the medieval tradition, both having been thought to have spawned a line of monsters. Schiel explains how all of these characters fit together. Chapter 5, “The Post-Medieval Genealogy of Babylonian Degeneracy and the Cursed Race Archetype,” describes the afterlife into the present, tracing the postmedieval curse of Ham, nineteenth-century scientific understanding of degeneracy, and adaptations in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century fiction of the degenerate race in H. G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and H. P. Lovecraft.Part 3, “Babylon as Sublime Topos,” comprises two chapters, “City of Ruins” (chap. 6) and “Babylon and the Coordinates of Romance” (chap. 7). Chapter 6 begins with the classical encomium urbis/excidio urbis (praise of the city/destruction of the city) tradition and moves on to the biblical prophetic warnings of impending destruction against Babylon. These classical and biblical traditions are merged in the medieval period in which Babylonian ruins come to represent life, death, and the universe. With European archaeological excavations in the nineteenth century, the ruined city topos takes on new meanings, and in the twentieth century with pulp and popular genres, the ruined city is again transformed. Although Babylon was ruined, she remains evocative of great distance, adventure, and imagination: “How many miles to Babylon?” and “beyond Babylon” (251). If pilgrims go to Jerusalem, romantic wanderers head for Babylon. This is the theme of chapter 7. Babylon was known for its hanging gardens, one of the seven ancient wonders of the world. In the Middle Ages after about 1000, Babylon develops as a metonymic figure for the East in the intersection of Crusade romance and historiography. The encounter between Islam and Christianity is dramatized in medieval romances involving various Babylon traditions. This trend continues into the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century romances. By the late nineteenth century, the equation of Babylon and romance was common. Modern authors who create displaced Babylons include Lord Dunsany, Harold Lamb, and Robert E. Howard. In addition, twentieth-century fantasy and science fiction are included in the 1999 fantasy graphic novel Stardust: Being a Romance within the Realms of Faerie by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess, and J. Michael Straczynski’s Babylon 5 television science fiction series (1994–98).In the conclusion, Scheil reflects on the complexity of the matter of Babylon, its polychronicity, and its multiple genealogies that overlap, intertwine, and crisscross over time in complicated ways. Babylon under Western Eyes is a fascinating study of an important word that has shaped western culture in powerful ways. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Modern Philology Volume 115, Number 1August 2017 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/691307HistoryPublished online February 10, 2017 For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.