In Defense of the Freedom of the Arts and Sciences: An Unknown Bartók Letter from 1933

Towards the end of 2005, the School of Humanities and the School of Informatics of the Masaryk University in Bmo completed an electronic corpus assembling the texts of Czech private correspondence. In a limited extent, the assembled material was made accessible in the framework of the Czech National Corpus, under the filename Korpus soukrome koresponcence - dopisy. In full, the material has been presented in a set of two CDs and a printed publication Czech Language in the Contemporary Private Correspondence. Letters, e-mails, SMS authored by Z. Hiadka et al. In the mentioned set, the CDs present 2000 letters, 1000 e-mails and 2000 SMS (tagged, in a full text version and in photocopies), the publication shows the possibilities of the linguistic interpretation of the assembled texts. The present article shows the methods of creating a corpus of the correspondence texts. Specifically it targets the issues of tagging the language of the private correspondence from the viewpoint of sociology, dialectology and morphology.

This book is a compilation of essays by authors who were previously published elsewhere. Its main focus is on Ferenc Koszorús, a wartime colonel of the Hungarian army fighting as an ally of Germany who ostensibly was responsible for saving the Jews of Budapest with the so-called Koszorús Action during the German occupation of Hungary. Some of the articles also examine the roles of Regent Miklós Horthy and the Hungarian government in the destruction of close to one half million of its Jewish citizens, mostly in German death camps. The reviewer marshals facts, documentation, and works by prominent historians to demonstrate that Koszorús had little to do with the survival of the Budapest Jews in July 1944. The myth of Koszorús as a wartime champion of the Jews was invented by the colonel himself in his postwar memoirs. In the volume, the editor Géza Jeszenszky points out that most non-Jewish Hungarians were either active supporters of the deportations or were passive bystanders. It may be this sad fact that prompted him to mythologize and create a hero who allegedly saved the life of three hundred-thousand Jews.

Despite an efflorescence of historical scholarship on the theme of monarchy in nineteenth-century Britain, the views of the great Victorian man of letters Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) in this regard have been explored only in fragmentary and incomplete fashion. The present article aims to offer a comprehensive survey of Carlyle's thought regarding monarchy, arguing that on the whole, Carlyle was strongly and consistently opposed to monarchy on the hereditary principle, claiming that this had become an absurd anachronism in the modern (democratic) world. Instead, Carlyle strongly and consistently promoted a merit-based aristocracy of talent, in which the ‘best’ man would rule, regardless of heredity or social origin. Indeed, in his historical writings, he was quite prepared to endorse regicide as a means to replacing inept hereditary monarchs with low-born men of destiny such as Oliver Cromwell. Although Carlyle refrained from publicly demanding the abolition of the monarchy in contemporary Britain, his private correspondence and conversation were replete with sneers and snide asides regarding Queen Victoria and her predecessors.

En América, las poblaciones nativas tuvieron una importante participación en los procesos de transporte, distribución y conducción del correo. El Virreinato de Nueva España no fue la excepción. Desde el periodo colonial los indígenas estuvieron profundamente involucrados en la circulación de la correspondencia tanto oficial como particular. En el presente artículo se analiza la manera en que se organizó tal práctica poco después de 1764, momento en el que el correo fue transformado en un monopolio de la Corona española. Se plantea la hipótesis de que la labor de los indígenas fue esencial para el intercambio de correspondencia de todo tipo, y que dicha condición derivó en la asignación de significativos privilegios por parte del gobierno. En efecto, parte de la excepcionalidad de la transformación del aparato de correos estuvo en convertir a los indios en una ‘élite’ ligada a los procesos de comunicación. De ahí que se creara un fuero específico para juzgarlos, se les permitiera portar armas y pudieran circular con amplia libertad, entre otros.

The present article analyzes the intellectual formation of Monteiro Lobato (1882-1948) during the period in which he studied at the São Paulo Law School (1900-1904). Thus, we investigate his activities inside and outside the Academy, the authors with whom he had contact and his contributions in the academic and general press. This analysis is made using primary sources (private correspondence, student and general circulation periodicals, and documents in archives) and secondary sources (his later published writings and biographical works). In conclusion, we can say that from a strictly academic point of view Monteiro Lobato was an average student, but he left his mark by participating actively in the academic and social life of São Paulo at the turn of the 20th century.

Lone‐actor terrorists are very often presented as emotionally and/or cognitively impaired—yet is it really the case? The present article provides the first rigorous assessment of the hypotheses according to which a high level of negative emotions, especially anger, and a lack of cognitive flexibility and complexity play a role in lone‐actor terrorists’ violent actions. Using a sample of lone‐actor terrorists’ writings, we use the LIWC (a fully automated language use analysis software) to compare terrorists’ cognition and emotion with those of other control groups, most notably nonviolent radical activists. Results strongly support the first hypothesis but clearly refute the second one, suggesting that lone‐actor terrorists are in fact characterized by a specific combination of high‐anger and high‐cognitive complexity. These method and results lay the groundwork for a more systematic and nuanced analysis of the psychology of terrorists, which is currently in a deadlock.

Although vehicular violence is prevalent in North America, it is difficult to document because it is typically recorded as a violent act, without reference to the use of a vehicle, or as an “accident” or a traffic violation. It occurs anywhere in the motor vehicle transportation system when the vehicle is intentionally used as a weapon; as the supporting environment for violent acts; or as a platform for creating suffering, injury, or death. Vehicular violence can be directed outward, as, for example, in a carjacking or physical assault; or inward, as in deliberately crashing a vehicle in a suicide act. Common targets of vehicular violence include police officers and transportation workers like taxi drivers. Vehicles are also used as platforms for sexual assault or drive-by shootings. Social, psychological, and traffic-specific conditions contribute to vehicular violence; for example, competition for the roadway, stress, depression, anger, rage, vengefulness, and alcohol consumption. In the present article, a proposed framework for viewing vehicular violence is presented with three zones of immediacy – the mediate (tangential use of the vehicle in the violent act), intermediate (where the vehicle is used to facilitate the violence), and immediate (where the vehicle is the actual weapon). These zones reflect a continuum that reflects the proximity of the vehicle to the aggressive intent.

The paper aims at revealing the cultural and rhetorical features of the Romanian letter-writing by outlining the key stages in the evolution of the letter in Europe and in the Romanian cultural space. In the subsequent ages, the profile of the rhetorical frame that enabled the development of letter-writing was governed by distinct guidelines, from the discursive canons of the Antiquity and the attempts to set out an epistolary theory in the postclassical age or the emergence of the medieval epistolary manuals and of the works of epistolary rhetoric from the Renaissance to the flourishing of private correspondence in the Baroque and the Enlightenment. The natural tendency to adapt the epistolary rhetoric to the idiomatic resources of the vernacular languages spoken in Europe favoured the outset and the advancement of a Romanian epistolary style whose cultural and rhetorical coordinates are sketched in the present article.

The transformations occurred in the world of communication and in the cultural contest that the media have greatly contributed to determine, ask the social researchers for more empirical investigation and theorical consideration on the constitutive aspects of the link communication-education, within the new technological and anthropological scenarios. The interest of the Media Education has been progressively focused on these aspects, and the present article on Violence in TV, and juvenile deviance in Southern Italy takes part in this interest. This Italian research wants to verify the consistence and quality of the effects that in TV can have on the juvenile people in sample-regions like Campania and Calabria, where a subculture of violence is shared, linked to the presence of camorra or ‘ndrangheta in these areas. The first results from the analysis of data about a wide sample of 1.560 subjects, have put in evidence some significant trends related to the TV consume, leisure time and value scale of Southern Italian children and teen-agers, and to opinions, attitudes and behaviour they have towards in TV and actual violence. After taking into consideration the connection between actual experiences and mediate experiences from the representations of in TV, and the different vision of in adults and children, the research team is currently working on a qualitative investigation of the observed phenomenon, in order to verify the social representations of shared by juvenile people (children and teen-agers) and adults (parents and teachers) in the social areas took into exam (Campania and Calabria).

The present article is an attempt to shed light on a plethora of research studies concerning bullying and acts of violence within school settings. Furthermore, a basic aim of the chapter is to present different facets of school bullying. The presentation and interpretation of different theoretical approaches and the connection with the pro ile of different fragile community members aims to gain an understanding of bullying and victimization. Social and cultural heterogeneity seems to reinforce intimidating forms of aggression. Furthermore, the article emphasizes on suggestions that deal with the root causes of aggression, abuse and violence to help schools prevent and deal with this serious issue and become the nurturing learning environments and democratic school that they should be.

The internet and social media sites are used extensively by violent extremist actors, providing new areas of inquiry for journalists reporting violent extremism. Based on 26 in-depth interviews with Norwegian media professionals, the present article describes how journalists monitor, assess, and make use of online information in investigative reporting of violent extremist groups in today’s networked media environment, characterized by complex interaction patterns, a plurality of voices, and blurred boundaries between private and public communication. While existing research on journalists’ use of social media as a source has tended to emphasize breaking news, the present article focuses on longer-term investigative efforts of journalists. The article gives insights into journalistic investigative practices in the networked media environment, in general, and in reporting violent extremism, in particular.

This article utilizes the recently-discovered archive of a firm of Irish land agents to investigate landlord-assisted emigration from some of the firm’s client estates during the 1840s, and during the famine years in particular. Such emigration was not merely a response to starvation in Ireland: much of it was also a precondition for improvement of estates, especially in western parts of Ireland. It is concluded that landlord-assisted emigration during the famine was probably on a larger scale than modern historians have hitherto assumed: however, precise and verifiable estimates of the numbers involved will remain an impossibility.

The present article is an attempt to reassess English novelist Margaret Drabble in relation to women’s issues. She has usually been termed as a writer who presents an ambiguous stance towards feminism and this view has been heavily influenced by her characterization as a moral writer. However a richer and more complex view of her writing can be achieved by paying attention to her career as a whole and to a tenuous sensuousness which now and then appears in her work. The starting point is a letter to Margaret Drabble written by Saul Bellow which has never been published and in which the American novelist complains about his portrayal as a failed seducer in Drabble’s short piece “A Success Story” (1972). The disclosing of this previously unknown letter also provides the opportunity for new insights into the publishing milieu in Britain in the 1960s and 1970s

The article publishes a previously unknown letter to Joseph Stalin in defense of Dostoevsky’s legacy, written in 1948. Until now, this document was preserved in the archival collection of the prominent Dostoevsky scholar A.S. Dolinin in the Manuscript Department of the Russian National Library as a letter by an unknown author. The present article not only identifies the author’s name but also introduces a previously unknown figure into the history of Dostoevsky studies, whose biography the author attempts to reconstruct. This figure is Elena Ivanovna Nesterova (1916–?), born into an Old Believer family, who graduated from a teachers’ institute and worked as a librarian at the Udmurt Republican Pushkin Library in the 1940s. Living and working in Izhevsk, Nesterova dreamed of becoming a scholar of Dostoevsky’s works and continuing her philological education in graduate school. In 1946, she wrote an essay on Dostoevsky’s humanism for this purpose, which was sent to Leningrad University and came into the hands of Professor A.S. Dolinin. The correspondence that ensued between them reveals not only Dolinin’s compassionate, generous, and truly pedagogical character but also paints a portrait of Nesterova, who, though shaped by Soviet upbringing, had been deeply influenced by Dostoevsky’s works from a young age. Moreover, she managed to gather around her a circle of literary enthusiasts who shared her views. When the campaign against Dostoevsky erupted in December 1947, Nesterova found the courage to stand up in defense of her beloved writer by writing a letter to Joseph Stalin.

The recently adopted Russian federal legislation provides for imposition of the so-called ‘administrative’ sanctions for dissemination of any information regarding issues related to ‘social equality’ of diverse sexual orientations or gender identities ‘among minors’ for certain purposes (listed in the relevant provision). Under the new laws, such conduct qualifies as an administrative offence. In parallel with the aforementioned amendments, Art. 127 of the Family Code of Russian Federation was modified to prohibit adoptions by married same-sex couples and unmarried citizens of any state where homosexual marriage is permitted. The present article is written in the attempt to explore whether the recent Russian legislation is compatible with international standards of human rights protection deriving from the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights and the relevant jurisprudence of international bodies. Is there any possibility to justify the restrictive laws under international law, bearing in mind the support of this legislative trend by the majority of the Russian population?