bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
From Bastard to Angel
Authors: Swindell Todd
Published: September 2022

After fifteen years abroad in Europe and North Africa, Harold Norse made San Francisco his home in 1971. The city continued to host a vibrant poetry scene centered in the North Beach neighborhood of City Lights Books and the Caffé Trieste. The decade and a half since Norse’s exile had seen the end of literary censorship and rise of the counter culture in the United States. Norse found himself in a significant capacity to establish himself as one of the groundbreaking poetic voices that existed outside the confines of academia as well as heteronormative society. Taking cues from the underground press as well as avant-garde poetry journals, Norse published his own literary magazine, Bastard Angel, in three volumes between 1972 and 1974. It was a unique and vibrant mixture of established authors such as Jean Genet, Anaïs Nin, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Diane Di Prima. The story of Bastard Angel magazine provides an illuminating entry into Norse’s unique position at a pivotal shift in American arts and culture towards the close of the 20th century documenting his role as a bridge between the groundbreaking writers that came before along with the new generation of visionary voices.
Eliot: “We had the experience but missed the meaning”
Authors: Sicari Stephen
Published: September 2022

Otto wants to understand the relation of “the holy” to reason (the sub-title of his book is “An Inquiry into the non-rational factor in the idea of the divine and its relation to the rational”). For Eliot, the moment of intense experience is a purely secular experience (meaning primarily “in time”) that, as one dwells on it in memory as a focus of meditation, takes on higher and higher meaning associated with events in Christ’s life. This resolves a problem Eliot scholars have long had, how religious experience and rational thought can work together to produce what Otto calls “the idea of the holy.”
Stevens: “We reason of these things with later reason”
Authors: Sicari Stephen
Published: September 2022

As with Eliot (but not due to any influence of one poet on the other), Stevens works to understand the nature of religious experience in a way that Otto helps explain. The title of this chapter expresses Stevens’ attempt to “reason” about intense moments of experience, and the close readings of poems demonstrate his developing awareness of the nature of religious experience as occurring in the world but toward higher and fuller experience. This corrects the majority of critics who want a purely “secular” Stevens, critics who refuse to see how this secular poet expands the real until it includes divine things. Religious experience occurs in in this world, in“a secular age” (the title of Charles Taylor’s magisterial book).
Stevens: “And yet what good were yesterday’s devotions?”
Authors: Sicari Stephen
Published: September 2022

Usually considered lonely and aloof, even Stevens expresses in his poetry a desire to renew something called Church where “being there together is enough.” Typical of Stevens is his sense that everything becomes stale and tired and needs constant renewal. He does not reject the Church in favor of something called Nature, as the British Romantics might have wished, especially Wordsworth; but instead seeks to reform our notion of Church by making the earth a sacred place for communion. In The Rock, one of his last poems, he imagines “curing” the Rock (a figure of the earth as a hard place, and also a figure for the Church); curing as healing, and as preserving, and as pastoral serving. In the poem that follows, “St. Armorer’s Church from the Outside,” he places his ever-new chapel of breath just outside a dilapidated church.
Shalom alikoum! Challenging the Conflictual Model of Jewish-Muslim Relations in France through Stand-up Comedy
Authors: Bharat Adi Saleem
Published: September 2022

This chapter tackles the conflictual model of the relationships between Jews and Muslims in France through stand-up comedy. It follows the journey of Younes and Bambi, a comedic duo who gained a degree of prominence in France and often greeted their audiences with ‘Shalom alikoum’. Moreover, the duo's sketches showcase a cathartic release for their mixed audiences who may have conflicting representations. Whilst they are not the only comedic duo recognized in France, the younger Franco-Maghribi comedians showed a more sustained focus on relations and interactions among Jews and Muslims. The dilemma of stand-up comedy tends to focus on race or ethnoreligious identifications with simultaneous plays on and with stereotypes.
Afterword
Authors: Everett Samuel Sami
Published: September 2022

This chapter highlights the struggles of recording the history of Jews migrating and interacting in France. It notes the Jews of Europe have more prominence in Israel and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict had been an internal rupture. Music and theatre are some of the creative outputs that showcase the reality of coexistence. However, political interest would not fail to intersect with creative interactions. For example, cinema features the appropriation and reappropriation of history. The chapter also acknowledges the apparent division between people that could either result in shame or disgrace. Also, culture appears to be absent from history since modernity demanded other languages and other homes to prevail.
Samuel Hirszenberg, 1865-1908
Authors: Cohen Richard I. , Rajner Mirjam
Published: September 2022

Samuel Hirszenberg is an artist who deserves to be more widely known: his work intertwined modernism and Jewish themes, and he influenced later artists of Jewish origin. Born into a traditional Jewish family in Łódź in 1865, Hirszenberg gradually became attached to Polish culture and language as he pursued his artistic calling. Like Maurycy Gottlieb before him, he studied at the School of Art in Kraków, which was then headed by the master of Polish painting, Jan Matejko. His early interests were to persist with varying degrees of intensity throughout his life: his Polish surroundings, traditional east European Jews, historical themes, the Orient, and the nature of relationships between men and women. He also had a lifelong commitment to landscape painting and portraiture. Hirszenberg's personal circumstances, economic considerations, and historical upheavals took him to different countries, strongly influencing his artistic output. He moved to Jerusalem in 1907 and there, as a secular and acculturated Jew who had adopted the world of humanism and universalism, he strove also to express more personal aspirations and concerns. This fully illustrated study presents an intimate and detailed picture of the artist's development.
Success In Łódź
Authors: Cohen Richard I. , Rajner Mirjam
Published: September 2022

This chapter looks at the decade that Samuel Hirszenberg spent in his hometown. It examines how he found individuals who began to show interest in the arts, were eager to purchase paintings, his and those of others, and were turning to cultural and artistic projects to bolster Łódź's reputation and, no doubt, their own self-image. Hirszenberg continued to create pleasing genre scenes as well as programmatic works rooted in the Jewish experience upon resettling in Łódź. As the chapter displays, he also painted several works that highlighted the diversity of his art and its goals and the complexity of his artistic persona. The chapter emphasizes that Hirszenberg immediately became involved in Łódź's cultural life, a move occasioned by a growing interest in his art. It explores Hirszenberg's public involvement and association with Teresa Silberstein, a Jewish art collector and one of his various supporters. In conclusion, the chapter elaborates on the 1898 exhibition in Łódź which illuminates Hirszenberg's artistic persona at the time. It presented the image of an artist who was able to simultaneously inhabit different worlds and juggle separate identities.
The Poznański Palace Commission
Authors: Cohen Richard I. , Rajner Mirjam
Published: September 2022

This chapter focuses on Samuel Hirszenberg's significant turn at the end of the century: the commission from the Poznański family in 1898 or 1899 to take part in the renovation of Izrael Poznański's palace. The Poznańskis lived very much like other industrialists in the city. Building magnificent palaces had become one of the staples of the Łódź textile magnates. The chapter also introduces Hilary Majewski, the most influential local developer from 1872 and the city's chief architect. Majewski was the main promoter of the neo-Renaissance style, which, in the second half of the nineteenth century, became one of the most popular architectural styles among the bourgeoisie involved in expanding and secularizing European cities. The chapter then explicates the intensive building activity of the Poznański family project and the sculptural work on the palace exterior. It introduces some of the architects and sculptors involved in the renovation of the palace. The chapter concludes by looking at Hirszenberg's sketches and murals for the dining room which consist of two sets of images: in situ oil paintings installed in the arched panels above the fireplace and above the two doors of the dining room's western wall, and a number of preparatory sketches.
Moroccan Narratives of Dystopia
Authors: Caporale Marzia
Published: September 2022

This chapter focuses on the Tangier representations found in Leïla Kilani's film Sur la planchet. Kilani's aesthetics of representation combine social awareness with her artistic vision of numerous cinematic traditions. Since recent film trends showcase the need to express a reflection on social and cultural changes, Moroccan films painted a portrait of a culture struggling to define its identity as a modern nation. Also, Moroccan narratives of dystopia feature a series of foreign invasions, colonial domination, and political instability. The personal story of failure in Sur la planchet suggests that society was regulated by inflexible vertical power structures that impede true progress.
Cultural Capitals in Crisis
Authors: Rice Alison
Published: September 2022

This chapter tackles the connection between Paris and Athens and its influence on Vassilis Alexakis, who wrote the following in La clarinette. Alexakis has admitted that the environment and language of France spurred his creative freedom to write a novel. However, Paris seemed to be different from other urban centres after Alexakis experienced intense solitude. The epistolary text hones in on Paris and Athens' economic challenges and xenophobic attitudes. As Alexakis responds to Jacques Derrida's L'autre cap, La clarinette also covers the efforts of engaged individuals and associations to help migrants arriving in capitals that are ill-equipped to receive them.
Shaping Mediterranean Geographies
Authors: Giovanangeli Angela
Published: September 2022

This chapter discusses the Musée des Civilisations de l'Europe et de la Méditerranée (MuCEM) shaping the narratives of Mediterranean countries and cultures. The national museum's opening continued the ongoing dialogue on practices and people of the Mediterranean region. The MuCEM focuses on the connection of the Mediterranean to Europe. The rise of European museums covering transnational narratives also coincides with the European Union's political, economic, and social developments. Additionally, present-day urban strategies invest in building a local identity in Marseille as proof that a modern economic city is locally linked to its inhabitants. The museum presented the Mediterranean as a region with a parochial outlook valuing the locals.
Introduction
Authors: Guesnet François , Polonsky Antony
Published: September 2022

This introductory chapter shows how the long history of Jewish autonomous organisations in pre-partition Poland–Lithuania accustomed Jews to working in representative bodies. Government attempts to reform or even to abolish Jewish self-government in the nineteenth century led to the emergence of very different systems in the different partitions, some more and some less effective. Everywhere Jewish self-government persisted and from the late nineteenth century was seen as the basis for a system of Jewish national autonomy. Although it proved incapable of implementation both in Poland and in Lithuania, kehilot continued to function and acquired new responsibilities. Jews were also represented both in parliament and on municipal councils. It is clear that the long tradition of Jewish self-government had a significant impact on the Jewish commitment to representative government elsewhere, above all in Israel. It does also seem, paradoxically, that participation in Polish and Lithuanian parliamentary life and, even more, engagement in local government in both countries, even for those parties committed to a national understanding of the Jewish identity, was more fruitful and brought greater results.
The Beginnings of Jewish Self-Government in Poland
Authors: Heyde Jürgen
Published: September 2022

This chapter examines the contribution of the Jewish economic elite to the development of Jewish self-government in the Kingdom of Poland up to the sixteenth century. Beginning with the earliest cases of Jewish community and court organisation, the chapter discusses self-government as a tangled process of communication between Jewish and non-Jewish actors. It also analyses the role of the Jewish economic elite as an element of the community leadership, through the lens of non-Jewish documents, the largest part of the available source material for this period. The chapter provides a particular case, that of the Fischel family of Kraków, who, despite having to fight against being banned from the community in the 1470s, quickly rose into the ranks of the kahal elders and dominated Jewish community life in Kraków well into the sixteenth century. Their story highlights various aspects of the tangled history explored in the chapter: the struggle for domination in the community and beyond, resistance to these efforts, the use of non-Jewish authorities in inner-Jewish conflicts, and the significance and limitations of non-Jewish agendas to Jewish self-government in the early sixteenth century.
The Emergence of Medinat Mehren
Authors: Borýsek Martin
Published: September 2022

This chapter examines the existence of a specific quasi-political entity, the Moravian Landesjudenschaft or, to use the language of Shai takanot, Medinat Mehren (the Land of Moravia). The chapter explores the emergence of this concept and sets it in its political and historical context. First, the chapter describes the Moravian community of the mid-seventeenth century in its historical, political, and cultural context and the relation of the takanot to the General Ordinance Regarding Moravian Jewry of 1754, the Habsburg government's replacement for Jewish internal legislation. It then comments in more detail on the collection of texts now known as Takanot medinat mehren and assesses their textual history and the role of Israel Halperin in preparing the critical edition. After a detailed overview of the collection's contents and language, the chapter analyses how the original Shai takanot regulated one specific issue, namely the authority of community offices and office-holders and, more specifically, how it established a balance of power between the respective communities and districts into which the Jewry of the land was divided.
Permanent Crisis
Authors: Kaźmierczyk Adam
Published: September 2022

This chapter shows how Jewish self-government functioned during a period of profound crisis for the Polish–Lithuanian state and demonstrates the ways in which political and structural conditions influenced its form and functions. Jews in the commonwealth constituted a unique confessional group with regard to their number and, above all, their religion, but the subject of this chapter is their obligations to the state as taxpayers. The chapter analyses Jewish self-government in the light of the non-Jewish sources which highlight this issue. As is evident, Jewish self-government was not an institution independent of the outside world, but combined Jewish traditions with those adopted from the commonwealth's political system. In addition, particularly in the eighteenth century, Jewish representative bodies remained under the influence of various institutions and people in the commonwealth. They evolved and adapted to the structural, economic, and social conditions, and it is difficult to treat them as completely autonomous representatives of Jewish society.
Did Jewish Self-Government Exist in the Kingdom of Poland between 1815 and 1915?
Authors: Markowski Artur
Published: September 2022

This chapter considers whether synagogue supervisory boards were a continuation of the traditional form of Jewish self-government or simply a state agency designed to control and administer the Jewish community. The main sources for evaluating this issue are the petitions and complaints of Jews against the kahals and ḥevrot dating from the establishment of the Congress Kingdom. There are also the subsequent denunciations of their illegal activity which exist for the whole period down to 1915. What is clear from these documents is that in the course of the nineteenth century the structures of Jewish self-government, first the synagogue supervisory boards and then somewhat later the Board of the Jewish Community of Warsaw into which the local supervisory board was transformed, evolved from a subordinate, almost passive, position to one of activity and significant authority. The concept of ‘self-government’ during this period raises a number of issues, as do its various models, which this chapter describes.
Stewards of the City?
Authors: Kozińska-Witt Hanna
Published: September 2022

This chapter uses Kraków as a case study. It examines Jewish participation in local government in the second half of the nineteenth century. Jews represented over 30 per cent of the town's inhabitants, and the community was overwhelmingly Orthodox. From the early nineteenth century there began to develop a progressive group, interested in modernising ritual and acculturation. By the mid-1860s these two forms of Jewish identity were in sharp conflict. The chapter first explores the legal basis for municipal self-government and its election procedures. It then reviews Jewish participation in municipal elections and changes in political mobilisation and the ideology of the Jews elected to the city council, followed by an analysis of their activities, distinguishing between interventions of general municipal concern and specifically Jewish ones. A point of interest is the presence of municipal officials in the Jewish district of Kazimierz. Finally, the chapter discusses antisemitism in the municipal arena.
‘One of Them’ as ‘One of Us’ Jewish Demands for National Autonomy as a Means to Achieve Civic Equality during the First World War
Authors: Silber Marcos
Published: September 2022

This chapter examines the connection between Polish views on civil rights and equality for Jews during the First World War and the increasingly vociferous Jewish demands for national rights. It argues that this connection is crucial to understanding the increasing popularity of autonomist ideas and demands amongst Polish Jews during the First World War and subsequently. The chapter first focuses on the dynamics of viewing Jews in the Polish lands simultaneously as ‘one of us’, and therefore entitled to representation, and as ‘one of them’, aligned with ‘foreign’ interests and therefore requiring that their participation in shaping the ‘common good’ be limited. Next, the chapter describes the way this dynamic was reflected in the behaviour of the elected institutions of the emerging Polish state. Finally, the chapter focuses on how autonomist demands attempted to transform ‘one of them’ into ‘one of us’ or, in other words, how the autonomist discourse of nationality tried to find an appropriate place for Jews in the new Polish state.
The Struggle in the Polish Parliament for Jewish Autonomy and the Nature of Jewish Self-Government
Authors: Rudnicki Szymon
Published: September 2022

This chapter discusses how the calls for national and cultural autonomy played out in the interwar years in Poland. The achievement of national sovereignty in Poland and the immediate necessity of establishing the state's frontiers exacerbated the tendency to view Poland as a national project in which only Poles were fully fledged citizens, and the participation of other nationalities was rejected. Ethnic minorities obviously took a different view. As newly independent Poland was taking shape, the Zionists, the Jewish People's Party (Folkists), and the Bundists saw the Jews as a nation and put forward a programme of national and cultural autonomy. They proposed to base this demand for autonomy on ethnic communities, united in a Jewish national council which would be the capstone of the system. This would be recognized as part of the state apparatus. The scope of the autonomy sought would include religion, culture, education at all levels, social welfare, and the organisations of economic life.
The End of Jewish Self-Government
Authors: Zamoiski Andrei
Published: September 2022

This chapter takes a look at how the basis of former Jewish self-government was gradually eliminated by the Soviet regime. The First World War and the Russian Revolution and civil war dramatically changed the political, social, and economic landscape of eastern Europe. Historically and culturally a part of the Jewish community of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Jews in Soviet Belarus now had to adapt themselves to new realities. Practically all Jewish political and public organisations were undermined and destroyed by the Bolsheviks after 1918. Jewish self-government could no longer exist in the Soviet state, where all spheres of life were subordinated to the control of the Communist Party.
Initialising
Authors: Maddrey Joseph
Published: September 2022

This chapter introduces the film Brainstorm, of which the makers spent more than a decade transferring the revolutionary concept of an ‘empathy machine’ from page to screen. It details how the 1984 film continued to inspire viewers to imagine possibilities for the future, making it a fixed piece of film history more than an idea in evolution. The screen story of Brainstorm embodies the ambitions of sci-fi cinema going back to the 1950s, as well as the turbulent culture of the Western world in the 1960s and 1970s. The chapter talks about how the film foreshadows technological breakthroughs around the turn of the twenty-first century, making Brainstorm startlingly relevant to the digitally enhanced Information Age. When it was released in US theatres on September 30, 1983, it was hyped as the boldest genre film since Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Streaming
Authors: Maddrey Joseph
Published: September 2022

This chapter discusses the final cut of Brainstorm, which begins with an opening credits sequence featuring state-of-the-art computer graphics during 1983. The ethereal music of the film was by composer James Horner, who turned down a competing offer to score the film WarGames because he saw that Brainstorm had the potential of becoming a very great film. The chapter covers the goal of Brainstorm, which was to create a training scene for viewers to bring them up to speed with what the machine can do. It highlights how Douglas Trumbull sought to quickly establish his characters as relatable human beings and avoid the ‘stereotypical’ depiction of scientists. The chapter mentions co-screenwriter Philip F. Messina, who complained that the bicycle ride scene was a weak depiction of the main character.
Origins
Authors: Dawson Anna
Published: September 2022

This chapter briefly explains the origins of the films in the writings of JRR Tolkien, the animated film from 1978, and the BBC Radio serial in 1981, before Peter Jackson attempted his trilogy of films.
Representation
Authors: Dawson Anna
Published: September 2022

This chapter considers the wide spectrum of representations that run throughout The Lord of the Rings trilogy, primarily masculinity and femininity, but also racial stereotypes. Theorists cited include Laura Mulvey (‘the male gaze’) and Steve Neale (‘masculinity as spectacle’).
‘A marine suburb of London’
Authors: Oulton Carolyn W. de la L.
Published: September 2022

Literary representations of Brighton are diverse and often contradictory: across a range of fictional texts it simultaneously invokes healthy air and pollution, codified ritual and excess, fashion and vulgarity. Easily accessible from London through an efficient rail service, it both suggests urban sprawl and traps criminal characters within claustrophobic and clearly delineated boundaries. From the mid-nineteenth century the capacity for varied responses was virtually limitless, as the railway brought different classes of invalid to be captivated by the same sights. In the twentieth century these contradictions and instabilities were intensified through Brighton’s reputation as a site for staged ‘adultery’. Its most extraordinary literary claim is its ability to align itself with different moods – and modes - at the same time.
‘First and finest publicity agent’
Authors: Oulton Carolyn W. de la L.
Published: September 2022

Chapter 5 charts the construction of a Kentish ‘Dickens Country’, as late nineteenth and early twentieth century literary tourism combined healthy exercise with literary appreciation of specific (often coastal) locations. As established resorts, Folkestone and particularly Broadstairs were well able to capitalise on the desire for an immersive visitor experience. Local authors might be suspicious of these memorialising acts. But the curation of built and literary heritage at the fin de siècle and into the 20th century nonetheless achieved what some early adopters of the railway had urged as indispensable to the health of the nation: with the rise of Dickens-related museums and festivals it became possible for visitors to engage in literary appreciation while dispensing with reading altogether.
Juvenal Satires Book III
Authors: Godwin John
Published: September 2022

Juvenal is the last and in many ways the greatest of the four major Roman verse satirists, and this book aims to offer more evidence of Juvenal’s status as one of the finest satirists the world has seen and one of the best wielders of Latin to have survived from the ancient world. Juvenal’s third book of Satires consists of three complete poems (Satires 7,8 and 9). Satire 7 takes a jaundiced look at intellectual life in Rome, bemoaning the financial poverty which is the lot of the writer, the lawyer and the teacher in an age where patrons may shower them with praise but rarely with cash. Satire 8 is an excoriating account of the old ‘noble’ families and how their current representatives are anything but noble in their behaviour both at home and in the provinces. The scandalous Satire 9 returns to the theme of patronage in a superbly acid dialogue with a certain Naevolus who has served his patron sexually and who now complains of the poor returns for his extensive and energetic labours. All three poems purport to describe and to critique Roman society, but they do so with an irony which draws attention to the medium as well as the message and which makes the speaker of the poetry often the target of his own abuse. The text is accompanied by a literal English translation and the commentary seeks to explain both the factual background to the poems and also the literary qualities which make this poetry exciting and moving to a modern audience.
Commentaries
Authors: Godwin John
Published: September 2022

The commentary seeks to elucidate and explain the background and the significance of every line of Satires 7, 8 and 9. Little previous knowledge of the languages, history and culture of the ancient world is assumed. The Latin is explained both in relation to what we know of the Roman world of the 1st century CE and also in relation to the literary and satirical tradition in which Juvenal was writing. The commentary gives the reader sufficient information to understand historical, mythological and literary references, while also directing readers towards other sources of information and alternative viewpoints. Above all, the commentary seeks to show the rhetorical and poetic power of the Latin text, analysing the use of literary devices and showing how and where the poet displays his superb mastery of the language and the metre. The comments are keyed to the translation and a reader without Latin will still be able to use the commentary for explanation of the content of the satires.
Introduction
Authors: Pechey Graham
Published: September 2022

The Introduction traces Pechey’s intellectual career, noting the trajectory of his commitments from communism to High Anglicanism, and adumbrates the contents of the book’s chapters. Among the topics discussed are Pechey’s engagement with developments in South African politics, his preference for the essay form, his consciousness of his Englishness, and the importance to him of the work of Mikhail Bakhtin. Pechey’s increasing interest in the lexical details of literary texts is charted, and the distinctiveness of his own style is considered. The qualities of his work include a refusal to allow the literary to be dominated by the political, a sensitivity to the skilful deployment of language in literary works, and a fidelity to the struggle for social justice.
‘Cultural Struggle’ and the Narratives of South African Freedom
Authors: Pechey Graham
Published: September 2022

Culture as a means of resistance is traced from the Bambatha rebellion in 1906, considering, among other issues, the response to the nationalist victory in 1948, the Freedom Charter of 1955, the counter-texts of the Pan-Africanist Congress and the Black Consciousness movement, and the uprising of 1976. The writings of Sol Plaatje, Peter Abrahams, and Bloke Modisane are explored as exemplars of the shifting function of the literary, rhetorical, poetic and other forms of writing that characterized the various phases of the cultural struggle. The chapter ends with the productions of the years of the Emergency of 1984-1986 and after, arguing that the narratives produced by writers like Menán du Plessis, Njabulo Ndebele, and Zoë Wicomb are neither black nor white, but are a rich and complex exfoliation of the empowering openness of the Freedom Charter. They are multipersonal, polyphonic; they refuse, in the name of the singular, all totalizing or homogenizing perspectives, including those that have been elaborated in the name of freedom.
The Post-Apartheid Sublime: Rediscovering the Extraordinary
Authors: Pechey Graham
Published: September 2022

This chapter offers an account of the unfolding post-apartheid condition within which South African writing takes place; the working premise of the investigation is that writing (at its best) relates to its surrounding condition as the latter’s most fully reflexive self-knowledge. The chapter positions itself beyond the space opened up by Njabulo Ndebele when he called for a post-heroic culture of irony, the local, the ordinary, and takes as its focus J. M. Coetzee’s novel, The Master of Petersburg, which is seen as standing to Ndebele’s writing in a relation of illuminating complementarity. The more Coetzee’s work engages the Western literary canon of the past, the more it globalizes, without dilution, the particular situation from which it speaks. The literature which South Africa’s post-apartheid condition both needs and can deliver is a version of the sublime, admitting us to a sphere of what Bakhtin calls “absolute innovation, miracle”.
‘The Woman’s Rose’: Olive Schreiner, the Short Story, and Grand History
Authors: Pechey Graham
Published: September 2022

This chapter offers a close analysis of another work by Schreiner: the short story “The Woman’s Rose”. The work of Schreiner is best understood in the context of two narratives and their fruitful mutual illumination. One of these she herself created outside the fiction in her feminist rewriting of the history of civilization. The other – never spelt out by her but none the less reconstructible by us – is the irreducibly particular colonial history in which she was formed and which her fiction challenges not so much thematically or ideologically as with its formal brevities and discontinuities. As this chapter shows, the second of these two narratives energizes and clarifies her understanding of the first. The chapter examines the context of Schreiner’s own upbringing and background, and the context of South Africa in the late nineteenth century, including the influence of mining capital and the intense concentration of all the ills of social (including sexual) parasitism that characterize this period. The close reading of the text of the story includes a consideration of its autobiographical elements and the importance of the anonymity of place and characters.
Roy Campbell, F. T. Prince, and the Lexicon of Emigration
Authors: Pechey Graham
Published: September 2022

This chapter brings into a single focus two phenomena of the first half of the 20th century: the globalization of certain South African words; and the emigration of some of its major poets. The interest is then to track the use – or, conversely, significant non-use – of these words in the work of those same writers. Trek is examined for its burgeoning extension of meaning in a wide range of English contexts; for its dramatic appearance in a poem by Wilfred Owen (much quoted by Roy Campbell); and for its variously negative and positive charges in the tribal polemics of the white South African state. F.T. Prince is adduced as the revealing counter-example of a poet who is not known for his use of specifically South African words and in whose work the only exception to that rule is a little-known horticultural word that has never migrated. The essay ends with some reflections upon the falling out of use of most of the old words lovingly connoting the landscape of pre-industrial South Africa – and its obverse: namely, the long life assured to another (newer, utterly loveless) word from that territory: apartheid.
Periphrases, Portmanteaux, and Plurals: Aspects of Roy Campbell’s Poetic Diction
Authors: Pechey Graham
Published: September 2022

This final chapter explores another aspect of Campbell’s oeuvre. Campbell typically withholds from us the words we expect to hear; he delights in holding before us words we have never before heard; and he steers the vocabulary of English into some highly unusual paths. In short, he puts diction firmly back on the agenda of criticism. A close examination of two of Campbell’s poems, “Vespers on the Nile” and “The Jug of Water”, reveals the value of attending to his chosen diction. Campbell asks of us a care in reading his words which matches his own care in choosing them, giving to each of them by rhyming or repetition the relative weight he wishes, mingling the flavours these words (like water) bring with them from their other contexts. A concern with diction, the chapter shows, is not a mere dilettantish hobby but a marker of our ability to do the fullest justice to poetry, and to what poetry can achieve.
Delivery
Authors: Graves Andrew
Published: September 2022

An overview of the film, it’s release, critical acclaim, impact on wider audiences, its cultural significance and cult appeal. A look at the creation of Prevenge the movie, its inception, impetus, societal context and its relevance within 21st century horror.
Brat’s Entertainment
Authors: Graves Andrew
Published: September 2022

A look at how the film seeks to re-examine the mother child relationship, switching clichéd Hollywood style representations for more cynical, visceral viewpoints, hinging on deeper set fears around parenthood and the life changing process which ensues. This chapter will tap into Prevenge’s obvious links to Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby, Cronenberg’s The Brood and other umbilical connections such as Demon Seed, The Exorcist, The Baby, Aliens and Village of the Damned, while also discussing Alice Lowe’s pregnancy and its impact during the making of the film.
Mourning Gory
Authors: Graves Andrew
Published: September 2022

An examination of the grieving process as experienced by the character of Ruth and a comparison of other recent films dealing with female protagonists and loss, such as Hereditary and The Babadook. This section will also look at the ways in which the film utilises more post-modern horror aspects within its structure, such as naturalistic dialogue and urban settings; but also, how the film includes more traditional genre elements with its grand guignol flourishes and obsession with human fears about birth, life and death.
Karaite Origins
Authors: Lasker Daniel J.
Published: September 2022

This chapter traces the origins of Karaism. Karaite Judaism emerged as an alternative form of Judaism in the ninth century in the Islamic Middle East. The exact circumstances of its creation are unclear; some historians assume that it was a medieval revival of Second Temple sectarianism, while others believe it was totally a medieval invention. One of the complicating factors in reconstructing the history of Karaism is the possible connection between the medieval movement and what are known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Ultimately, the Islamic environment in which Karaism arose is important for understanding many features of the movement, but beyond that context there were internal Jewish factors behind the Karaite–Rabbanite schism. Anan ben David, who is commonly regarded as the founder of Karaism despite his connection to Ananism and not Karaism, was considered either a reviver of long-dormant beliefs and practices or a dishonest and reprehensible rebel against rabbinic authority. Regardless of its origins, the Karaite movement became consolidated in the tenth century and has survived to this day.
Exegesis
Authors: Lasker Daniel J.
Published: September 2022

This chapter studies Karaite biblical exegesis, the most significant characteristic of which is a rejection of the authority of the textual interpretations embodied in what rabbinic Judaism calls the oral Torah. Biblical interpretation is one of the outstanding contributions of Karaism to Jewish civilization. The first verse-by-verse biblical commentaries were written by Daniel al-Qumisi. The Karaite emphasis on the contextual-literary meaning of the text, based on rigorous philological methodology, challenged Rabbanite thinkers, who felt obligated to defend the exegesis that they had received through inherited tradition and which was the basis of their religious observance. Karaite exegetes were well aware of Rabbanite teachings, which they criticized, and Rabbanite exegetes reacted to Karaite disapproval of their biblical interpretations by sharpening their own exegetical tools. There was, however, more to the relation between Karaite and Rabbanite commentators than polemical exchanges; exegetes on each side learned from their colleagues on the other side. The give and take between the two groups had the effect of enriching both.
The Future of Karaism
Authors: Lasker Daniel J.
Published: September 2022

This chapter reflects on the future of Karaism. It is clear from the descriptions of Karaite history, beliefs, practices, and intellectual accomplishments that Karaite Jews have shown great tenacity over the years in maintaining their identity as a separate Jewish group. In their attempt at ensuring continuity, Karaites adopted a number of survival tactics. The Karaite community is actively pursuing a policy of creating an Israeli Karaism. A number of other younger, Israeli-born members of the community have also taken upon themselves leadership roles. The use of modern technology, such as internet sites and blogs, has been adopted by both Israeli and American Karaites to help their educational efforts. Moreover, the Karaite religious council in Israel has agreed to conversions and empowered the independently established Karaite Jewish University in the United States as the training tool for Karaites by choice. Ultimately, the future of the oldest surviving alternative Judaism remains to be seen.
Macklin and the Novel
Authors: Ballaster Ros
Published: September 2022

Charles Macklin’s career invites us to think about what happens when the actor steps ‘out’ or ‘off’ the stage into the pages to feature as a character in an extended printed and fictional narrative. What is the role of the actor in the business of novelistic character? And is the representation of a well-known actor in a novel different from that of other non-acting celebrities? The chapter addresses these three questions through three different parts Macklin played in the history of the novel: first, as a walk-on part adding to the realism of a novel in Maria Edgeworth’s Harrington (1817); second, as the subject of (fictionalised) and novelistic pseudo-biography in Edward Kimber’s Juvenile Adventures of David Ranger (1757); third, as an author-actor very aware of the rise of the novel as a challenge to the (classical) authority of stage drama and especially stage satire in his own dramatic works, especially two meta-theatrical pieces, The New Play Criticiz’d (1747) and The Covent Garden Theatre; or, Pasquin turn’d Drawcansir (1752).
Macklin and Censorship
Authors: O’Shaughnessy David
Published: September 2022

This chapter discusses the various interventions made by the Examiner of Plays on Macklin's plays before they were performed. It highlights various bawdy and political elements that were thought inappropriate for performance. The chapter argues that there is a persistent strain of personal satire that this censorship reveals and further that this is a marker of his commitment to Enlightenment principles of societal and self-improvement. The chapter discusses Macklin's nod to Elizabeth Chudleigh (1721-1788) in Covent Garden Theatre and argues that this piece anticipates the gendered realignment of the public sphere that unfurled over the subsequent decades. Moreover, Macklin adroitly underlines the failings of post-1745 London to fulfil the Enlightenment claims of the newly reaffirmed Hanoverian project in the play. The chapter also identifies Lawrence Dundas (d. 1781) as an inspiration for The Man of the World's Hector MacCrafty/ Pertinax MacSycophant.
Decolonising the Conrad Canon
Authors: Kelly Alice M.
Published: September 2022

In the context of decolonisation movements across Higher Education in the UK and around the world, this book shows that decolonial, queer, feminist readings are possible in even the deepest corners of the colonial literary canon. Decolonising the Conrad Canon turns to Joseph Conrad’s lesser-known works in search of textual breathing spaces, in which female characters of colour speak, think, gaze, and yearn, and follows them off the page into their transmedia afterlives. Through this intervention, the book challenges the ubiquitous recirculation of white male voices as uniquely endowed to speak the history of Empire and turns instead to the many powerful indigenous women that live forgotten in the Conrad archive and the myriad adaptations housed within it. Presenting Immada and Edith’s queer desires in The Rescue and its periodical illustrations, Aïssa’s anti-colonial resistance in An Outcast of the Islands and her characterisation on its pulp book covers, the feminist relationships of Almayer’s Folly and Nina Almayer’s embodiment in Chantal Akerman’s adaptation La Folie Almayer, this book argues that Conrad’s female characters of colour deserve to be read as viable, meaning-making protagonists who matter. Decolonising the Conrad Canon interrogates race, gender, and character status in literary scholarship to propose alternative methods for teaching, reading, and studying not just Joseph Conrad but all those seemingly immovable author-Gods like him.
Aïssa Agency, Race and the Articulation of Desire in An Outcast of the Islands
Authors: Kelly Alice M.
Published: September 2022

Chapter 3 examines the depiction of the Malay-Arab female character, Aïssa, in An Outcast of the Islands to interrogate how racial and colonial constructions of imperial sexuality affect her relationship with the white Dutch male character, Willems. Using Homi Bhabha’s seminal postcolonial theories on cultural enunciation and mimicry, the chapter argues that Aïssa’s invocations of whiteness, which appear to be the result of Willems’ racist manipulation and abuse, subversively work to parody and destabilise the putative virtue of white womanhood. This chapter contextualises these implicit challenges to white supremacy within the explicit anti-colonial resistance of Aïssa’s articulate critiques of colonial politics and soulful defence of her love for Willems in the face of European opposition. In voicing her experiences of cross-cultural desire, of universal, un-articulable, existential yearning, Aïssa is structurally positioned as a protagonist of the novel, rather than the ‘tropical’ cypher for which she has been remembered.
The Shelleys and Browning on Art, Aesthetics and Poetics
Authors: Suzuki Rieko
Published: September 2022

This chapter examines Browning’s views on art by teasing out his aesthetics and poetics in the two painter/art poems as well as in his letters and ‘Essay’. ‘Fra Lippo Lippi’, for example, can be interpreted partly as Browning’s approval of the naturalism or realism that succeeded the idealism of Fra Angelico and Giotto, thereby breaking from the widely held view that Lippi’s art was inferior to that of his predecessors. In ‘Old Pictures of Florence’, medieval architecture, such as Giotto’s unfinished bell-tower, exemplifies a Christian worldview that emphasizes the significance of incompletion or imperfection as opposed to the perfected art of ancient Greece. This chapter argues that Browning’s aesthetic preference had an individual motivating factor, deriving from a deeply personal decision to move away from, and hence displace, the poetic influence of Shelley.
‘The Triumph of Life’ and Fifine at the Fair
Authors: Suzuki Rieko
Published: September 2022

In elucidating Shelleyan influence on Browning, this chapter singles out Shelley’s last, unfinished poem, ‘The Triumph of Life’, as being comparable to Fifine on two grounds: the use of dream vision, and the underlying dramatic situation of being torn between passion for one’s wife and for another woman (with the former less obvious than the latter). Fifine is a statement about Romanticism as Browning had first encountered it through his immersion in Shelley’s works, which were then partly discarded but partly assimilated, as first argued by John Woolford. Browning acknowledges his debt to the Romantics, and in particular Shelley, regarding the visionary nature of his work, but also as a man with complicated emotional life, which Browning initially perhaps could not understand but came around to appreciating, as he was to undergo such experiences himself.
Elizabeth Barrett and Shelley
Authors: Suzuki Rieko
Published: September 2022

The three sections that make up this chapter trace Shelleyan resonance/influence in Elizabeth Barrett’s writings, from her early works to her later poem, Casa Guidi Windows. Section One focuses on Barrett’s The Battle of Marathon, Prometheus Bound and The Seraphim. In Section Two, a comparison between Shelley’s “The Triumph of Life” and Barrett’s “A Vision of Poets” is undertaken. One can read Barrett’s “Vision” as a corrective to Shelley’s pessimism concerning the role of poets as they figure in his last poem. Section Three examines Casa Guidi Windows, as it utilizes some Shelleyan ideas and motifs, which derive largely from his Defence of Poetry. The chapter argues that Barrett’s use of the seasonal trope, as dramatized in Shelley’s ‘Ode to the West Wind’, deserves further attention. Finally, in order to provide a reading that deviates from the conventional interpretation, Isobel Armstrong’s formulation of the ‘radical aesthetic’ is deployed.
Introduction
Authors: Scheopner Erin Kate
Published: September 2022

The introduction provides context for understanding the Anglo-Irish relationship during the 1916-22 period. It delves into the history of the British national press and British press coverage of Ireland. It also details the development of the phrase 'Irish question'.