The Middle Ages as Genre

Notes on Contributors

The study of medieval literature at the end of the nineteenth century expands rapidly at the same time that the developing field of anthropology demonstrates a great interest in performances and rituals of what were regarded as primitive or decadent cultures, and in some subtle and some obvious ways, medieval literature and ethnic theatricality were thought of as analogous to one another. Moreover, at the same time that detailed literary scholarship was reconstructing the physical production of medieval drama, anthropology was engaged in a new practice of reconstruction by display. In the late nineteenth century, certain strands of high imperial culture quite literally exhibited a deeply ambiguous relation to the theatrical, and nowhere is this relation more strikingly demonstrated than in the developing field of anthropology. One of the topics in this chapter is the ways in which the concept of the medieval in the late nineteenth century is redefined by the rise of anthropology, an anthropology that owed a debt, if not directly to Nietzsche and Darwin, than to the popular understanding and appropriation of Nietzschean ideas, especially in regard to ideas of race and progress. I argue, therefore, that some of these analogies were visually expressed. At precisely the moment when the study of medieval literature and culture achieve academic institutionalization, the medieval is imagined again as both foreign and indigenous.

Reading Contagion: The Hazards of Reading in the Age of Print

IN MARCH 1875, A CHICAGO TRIBUNE CORRESPONDENT reported that a miners’ strike in Brazil, Indiana, continued with conditions worsening and the “breach between labor and capital widen[ing].” The year-long labor dispute found the striking miners “dogged and sullen” and was taking a dreadful toll on the men and their families. Many of the town's merchants initially supported the strike, but they increasingly feared violence would ensue as the striking miners became more vigilant and defiant. One merchant stated that he had witnessed other strikes, but none of them had “men so determined not to yield,” and he believed it would be necessary to bring in the military to prevent an outbreak of violence. The Tribune correspondent predicted that a “revolution in labor” was imminent because the desperate mine operators were willing to hire Black workers to take the place of the striking miners. The mine operators were “confident that, if negro labor [was] adopted unanimously, it [would] completely and effectively crush strikes, which [had] become so frequent and arrogant of late as to make any dependence on white labor impracticable.” African American workers, according to the correspondent, were more dependable than white laborers, and they would not become “turbulent at trifles, and for many other reasons that are apparent.” As a result, some midwestern mine operators had already arranged to fill their mines with Black workers, and “others will follow suit.”1The newspaper correspondent's prediction about a “revolution in labor” was accurate—during the height of labor unrest in the late 1870s, Northern industrialists sought measures to undercut the burgeoning labor movement by importing African American workers from the South into their predominantly European American worksites. Industrialists were encouraged by two overarching factors: first, Black workers from the South traditionally earned lower wages than their Northern counterparts and would therefore cost less; and more importantly, due to racist exclusionary measures, as well as the relatively small African American population in the North, semi-skilled and skilled worksites were dominated by European American workers. Industrialists correctly assumed that the racism of their workers would cause an exceedingly vitriolic reaction to the idea of Black workers replacing them. In addition to the typical labor conflict issues, racialized violence would invariably ensue. Industrialists then found justification to utilize draconian measures on the strikers—enforced by local militia or police—to ensure that the replacement workers would be allowed to work in relative safety, and to ensure that industrialists continued to make profits.2This racial dynamic became increasingly prevalent throughout the Midwest as rapid industrialization and massive population growth created whole new categories of workers. European American workers braced themselves for the possibility of a chaotic economic transformation by frantically jockeying for occupational viability within the racial hierarchy. In the environment of an increasingly racialized labor movement, Black and other non-white workers, with few exceptions, were forced to the bottom of the economic ladder.Among midwestern states, Illinois was particularly distinct due, in part, to the massive growth of Chicago as a central industrial hub for the region. In comparison to adjacent midwestern states, Illinois was also unique because of its relatively small African American population. By 1890, the African American population in Illinois was only 57,028 (1.5 percent of the state population); in 1900, 85,078 (1.8 percent of the state population). The dearth of a substantial Black population, coupled with a significant rise in anti-Black sentiment throughout the state, helped to create the perception that African American workers were unable to perform technologically advanced labor. Thus, Black Illinoisans of the late nineteenth century were often forced out or excluded from more desirable occupations and, subsequently, forced to the periphery of the labor movement.This article explores the labor activism of Black Illinoisans during the tumultuous late nineteenth century in the context of this relatively new phenomenon—that is, the racialization of labor. Of course, historians generally acknowledge this period as the Second Industrial Revolution in the United States. Yet for African Americans, the period also signified a time in which their racial “character” was under severe scrutiny—not only in labor, but also in virtually every aspect of Black American life. Notions of white racial superiority invariably circumscribed Black people as inferior outsiders—undeserving of a place within mainstream American life. Thus, to most European Americans, it made perfect sense within the twisted logical framework of white supremacy to categorize labor based upon race.In the context of heightened anti-Black sentiment, Black Illinoisans were faced with a difficult decision: should they remain with the larger labor movement that increasingly viewed them as “inferior” workers? While the European American working class famously fought for labor issues such as unionization, safer working conditions, and the eight-hour workday, Black Illinoisans during the nineteenth century also supported these issues. Yet Black workers were forced into a hybrid labor activism—an activism where they fought for their rights not only as workers but also as workers who were gradually excluded from higher-skilled occupations based upon their race. In addition to the racialized occupational environment, Black workers were also forced into a battle for their civil rights during the late nineteenth century as they fought against the inimical rise in white supremacy throughout the United States.The concept of racializing labor was not entirely novel to Northern industries. As historian Jacqueline Jones explained, white Northerners had always expressed their apprehension over emancipating Black people from slavery in moralistic terms. As early as the eighteenth century, they claimed that free Black laborers had shown a lack of restraint in public—displaying “racial” behavior that European American city dwellers found galling. Various groups of African American workers came under attack by the early nineteenth century for advertising for services in a supposedly unseemly fashion. For European American workers, their goal was to maintain their advantageous position in the workplace, and any other socio-political aspect in which there was the perception of losing ground within the racial hierarchy. Thus, European American workers developed new forms of self-definition that would establish a sharper distinction between “white” and “Black” labor.3One of the earliest and staunchest proponents for disrupting the burgeoning labor movement through racialization was co-owner of the Chicago, Wilmington, and Vermillion Coal Company (CW&V) Alanson Sweet. He quickly developed a reputation for slashing wages and firing workers when he forced workers at the Michigan Central Railroad Company to take a pay cut during a dispute in 1862. Workers that protested were fired and replaced with African American workers from the South.4 Sweet believed that the reaction of his predominantly white workforce would be intensified with the importation of an all-Black strikebreaking unit that would likely lead to violence. When violence inevitably ensued, Sweet and his co-owners were then able to utilize state-sponsored protection to ensure the protection of both his imported workers and his property.5As a co-owner of the CW&V in Braidwood, Illinois, during an economic depression, once again, Sweet reduced workers’ wages. Predictably, the unionized miners refused any pay cuts and went on strike. After some convincing, the CW&V co-owners acquiesced to Sweet's ideas on importing African American men to disrupt the conflict. “With the mines filled with colored men,” he assured his fellow owners and stockholders, “it is believed that the Company will not be burdened with the expense of another strike for many years.”6 The CW&V co-owners may have been willing to agree to Sweet's concept due to their past failures. In an 1874 labor dispute with their workers, both recently arriving European immigrants and white workers were recruited as strikebreakers. Instead of being a disruptive force, the replacement miners met with the striking Braidwood miners, became informed of the ongoing labor dispute, and were subsequently convinced to leave. Significantly, the workers left relatively peaceably within days of their arrival.7The nation was in the throes of a massive railroad strike starting in July 1877. Wage cuts, and generally poor conditions and treatment touched off a nationwide strike that shut down most of the nation's railroads. The Chicago Times observed that the arrival of African American workers, combined with the news of the national railroad strike created an “anxious mood” among the Braidwood miners, and “it would take but very little to cause an outbreak in this place.” When the African American workers arrived in Braidwood, there were no friendly meetings. Instead, the striking Braidwood miners gave them an ultimatum: leave town “peaceably or forcibly.” Fearing trouble, some of the miners left town.8 However, when Sweet and the CW&V ownership alerted Illinois governor Shelby Cullom of the intimidation tactics, the state militia was brought in to restore the Black miners to their jobs. The next day, 1,250 Illinois state militia were called into Braidwood to quell the conflict, and if the strikers resisted, “the troops [would] make short work of them.” The CW&V owners understood that an escalation in violence could possibly lead to such measures—and these measures would ensure that the African American workers would be protected and allowed to work in the mines.9Convinced that order could be maintained, and the African American miners would be allowed to remain in the mine shafts, the state militia left Braidwood several weeks later. Although relative peace did prevail after the departure of the state militia, the strike continued another four months. The Braidwood strike of 1877 was the longest strike in United States’ history (to that date) and took an enormous toll on the lives of the strikers and their families. With winter approaching in November 1877, the weary miners finally gave in and ended the strike. The owner's desire to destroy the miners’ union was successful, and the company refused to hire the union leaders as well. Feeling victimized by the CW&V owners, many miners complained bitterly about working alongside the African American strikebreakers who they believed had done “all they possibly could to assist capital to crush labor.”10 For the CW&V owners, the reaction of the Braidwood miners to the importation of African Americans into the mines was the crucial element in their victory. If white and immigrant miners did not react violently, the owners would not have brought in the state militia to see that their mines and their replacement workers were protected.Race relations remained strained in the Braidwood mines during the immediate years after the strike. Nevertheless, African American miners remained in Braidwood and continued to work in the mines. At least half of the seven hundred miners in Braidwood were African American; by 1880, there were 703 Black men and their families living in the surrounding area (compared to 242 in 1870). Institutions such as the Colored Odd Fellows lodge and the First Baptist Church were established in 1878 to support the town's African American community. Reverend T. C. Fleming, who was one of the strikebreakers during the 1877 strike, was the pastor of the church.11 Despite establishing themselves as viable workers in the mines, and decent citizens in Braidwood, the small African American population continued to experience difficulties in town and the workplace.While the African American miners at Braidwood established a reputation for being viable workers and willing union men, their white counterparts insisted on following national racist trends in the workplace. Moses Gordon, an African American miner among those imported from Virginia, observed: “[African Americans] could no more get work here until the year 1877 than they could fly. . . . [I]t was the miners themselves who would come out on strike before they would allow the negro to earn his daily bread.” White workers increasingly drew the color line in the workplace and the major labor unions in the late nineteenth century. Significantly, Gordon also noted that CW&V owners fired African American workers that joined unions. Thus, the racialization of labor worked as a two-pronged attack against Black workers during the industrial era: As discriminatory policies against non-white citizens in the United States became the norm, and therefore accepted by the dominant racial group, employers increasingly utilized African Americans as strikebreakers in order to disrupt unionization. African American workers were either shunned from major labor unions by white union members who refused to allow them to join, or, as in the case in Braidwood, African American workers were threatened with termination. On the other hand, white workers—embracing the full social Darwinism of the late nineteenth century—and thus, completely accepting their collective place at the top of the racial hierarchy in American society—readily rejected African American workers from the most desirable occupations. As white workers wielded more bargaining power in the last decade of the nineteenth century, they insisted on the racialization of both the workplace and their labor unions. Gordon remarked on how this racist process in Braidwood would affect the working class: “Every nationality on the face of the globe can come here and go to work wherever there is work to be had, except for the colored man, and in nine cases out of ten the miners are to blame for it. A house divided against itself cannot stand. If the laboring class fights capital for their rights, they have enough to do without fighting against six millions [sic] of people that have got to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow.”12Strikebreaking served as an occupational and economic weapon against the racialization of labor for men like Moses Gordon. As labor historian Eric Arnesen explained, strikebreaking was a viable form of working-class activism for African Americans as they sought to strengthen their economic position during the labor upheaval of post-Reconstruction America. The most important coal mining towns in Illinois followed the practice of racial exclusion. Strikebreaking not only allowed African American workers to gain entry into desirable industrial positions, but it also represented chances for low paid Southern African Americans to earn higher wages. Their decisions to become strikebreakers were often informed choices, rationalized by a complex and changing worldview that balanced their experiences as industrial workers, farmers, and African Americans. Indeed, these Black men were neither willing tools nor ignorant serfs—rather, they were poor and ambitious men who were often recruited by coal company agents, sometimes under false pretenses. During the nineteenth century, African Americans were never the only workers used as strikebreakers in Illinois or any other Northern state. Moreover, they were never the most used strikebreakers during the height of labor turbulence of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, African Americans were usually the most visible strikebreakers because of American racism, and therefore, they were almost always the easiest targets for white working-class rage during the tumultuous labor disputes of this era.13As the Chicago Tribune correspondent predicted, other industrialists throughout the region adopted racialization as a weapon to squelch unionization among the working class. For example, in 1880, approximately one hundred African Americans were hired to replace striking coal miners in Rapids City, near Rock Island, Illinois. Tragedy struck immediately—one of the African American strikebreakers was shot and killed by a striking miner. That same year in Springfield, Illinois, mine owners resisted demands made by union officials and proceeded to import African American miners from Richmond, Virginia. The predominantly European American workforce was ordered to remove their tools from the mines and evacuate company houses. If any violence ensued, the mine operators, their property, and the African American workers, were all protected by local police officials. These drastic actions led to the demise of the union.14 In the summer of 1886, a strike for higher wages occurred in Vermillion County at Grape Creek. In this case, there was a small African American presence in the mines—yet they refused to strike with their European American coworkers. The African American miners belonged to the biracial Knights of Labor (KOL) union and refused to participate because it was “a white man's fight.” The Grape Creek operators brought in African American men from Tennessee and Kentucky under police protection. The conflict dragged out and defeated the strikers, as the mine operators brought in five to fifteen new African American workers each day.15 This pattern of racialization continued throughout Illinois during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. According to data compiled by economic historian Warren Whatley, Illinois industrialists utilized Black strikebreakers more than any state during this period. However, while Black strikebreaking increased substantially during this period—especially in high-profile conflicts—they remained a relatively small percentage of the nation's strikebreaking force.16While Northern industrialists continued to recruit Black workers from the South during the late nineteenth century, they virtually ignored Northern Black workers. This omission was particularly glaring in Illinois and other midwestern states due to the dearth of African Americans living in the region. Approximately 90 percent of the African American population remained in the South, and it was simply easier to find and recruit Black labor in the South. Another more compelling reason had to do with the collective attitudes of African Americans living in the North. While Southern Black workers were cajoled relatively easily due to precarious economic condition or general lack of knowledge of a particular labor conflict in the North, Northern African Americans simply had more exposure to Northern labor strife. Although the Black population of Illinois was quite small, they gained a reputation as ferocious labor agitators during the late nineteenth century. Like their European American working-class counterparts, they also battled for workers’ rights. To be sure, African American workers in Illinois were occasionally used as strikebreakers during the late nineteenth century—there would be a collective shift in their attitude toward the labor movement by the turn of the twentieth century as white working-class racism became more pronounced. Yet prior to the full implementation of white supremacist ideas about allegedly inferior and superior workers based upon race, Black Illinoisans were not only a part of the labor movement, in some cases they were at the vanguard of the movement.During the summer of 1877, while the Braidwood mine operators were importing African American workers into their labor fracas, more than 150 Black longshoremen from Illinois disputed recent wage cuts against the Mississippi Valley Transportation Company (MVTC). Like their Braidwood counterparts, they too were inspired by the “Great Railroad Strike” and organized their own all-Black union. In solidarity with the national movement, the workers arranged a general strike against all Illinois, employers due to the recent wage When the owners were of the strike, they hired strikebreakers. The next the striking longshoremen on the and their and that they leave the When they refused to the longshoremen them by a of in their The longshoremen then after the to ensure that none of the strikebreakers would only a few but it created quite a throughout The observed that the longshoremen may well have been within their rights to strike for higher but they no to prevent from working who willing . . . to work for the The noted that by the strikebreakers off the the Black longshoremen were a for which they be a significant in how the African American workers were in When African American workers for their rights, they were often as or workers. In Black labor activism was often viewed as chaotic and While strikebreaking was generally in white working-class when Black workers fought to their economic the they should be a that [would] last them for all time to the Braidwood which and supported striking miners during their African American workers were viewed with throughout and as workers throughout Illinois sought the same measures in unionization as other workers prior to the full of racialization in labor. As early as 1877, the Knights of Labor (KOL) established as many as seven in Illinois that African American men and into their For many Black workers, the was more than a labor the of leaders and as a than any other union in their the were able to the for African American After the national railroad strike in 1877, labor leaders recruited Black workers to the to racist to workers. goal of the labor leaders was also to the of Black workers during an 1878 African Americans the supported the and the city and with the white Chicago continued to into one of the nation's industrial the of the city was for African Americans. The battle for skilled labor in a environment, was often a losing for African American for from the South. African American men often to racist racist white and workers with the of racist to Black men out of viable As a result, Black workers in Chicago were left with occupational and often found themselves to with national of the racialization of labor was in Chicago by the last of the nineteenth century. By 1890, African Americans were as the to be laborers, workers, or to the During that decade they represented only percent of the population percent of all in the occupational for Black of or no higher than railroad or were also tools for the of such as or who were who or the of and dwellers more and the to their To ideas of racial and economic the their to an One noted that African American men of slavery . . . and became a of to the of the African American men, as a Chicago were the they are by and to were not always to ideas of racial if it in wages. A could a sense of and the of the of the South, which could lead to a was a relatively novel idea in the nineteenth Yet any that these men would allow these to into their in labor issues of the would be an Black in were the of hybrid labor activism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Black over pay In 1875, they out of throughout the during and in some of At the out because their new to He informed the all-Black that they would be to at the an before their and they would no be allowed to left over by practice that allowed workers to their out in during the and workers of all and were toward labor unionization in the Yet European American workers to follow nationwide discriminatory in labor unions by Black workers from union Black often with their own of labor activism that all-Black unions or biracial unions. For example, after the of the five Black from the in Chicago, were to their of the that were to citizens of every and and were informed that it was against the to of their in the The the men a in the where the and their while on The by the left for another where they were and served without in Chicago were to find a labor union that would their in fighting for their labor and civil rights. The them with the of unionization that they In 1886, created the Colored local and more than four hundred Black and during a The Chicago Times the the Knights had on the Black the union the colored and gave the with This represented the entry of African Americans into organized labor in Chicago and was followed within two years by a Black the which organized after from the of the Black in Chicago little time in their reputation as labor In two hundred African American joined nine hundred white in of the of and in wages. The biracial an of substantial for The owners to a through the workers by importing African American replacement workers to replace the white The between the workers was and the Black were enough to the strikebreakers to A year during another Black labor conditions, and they also the to become more about their rights and the labor was not one African American predicted, by would for their working-class men and in Illinois for more biracial union during the late nineteenth century. an African American of the that more Black workers to the union to themselves as a within the labor than a within the the for laboring men and was an of wages. have been

The material means that enables us, in the twenty-first century, to be able to read and understand medieval Icelandic sagas is unique. It is fundamentally dependent on the hand copying of medieval texts by Icelanders, initially on vellum and then in paper manuscripts, from the Middle Ages until the late nineteenth century. This in its turn is dependent on the Icelanders’ determination to preserve knowledge of their sagas from generation to generation. The history of the preparation of printed editions of saga texts is also important, although it did not gather momentum until the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The way in which the academic study of Old Norse-Icelandic literature developed is also unique but not unrelated to larger intellectual movements within Western society after the Middle Ages, as people sought to understand their own cultural roots and began to prize the earliest written texts that had survived in European languages. Without some inkling of both these topics, the history of texts and the history of Old Norse literature, a modern reader may fail to understand certain basic issues within saga studies: why many sagas are extant only in post-medieval paper manuscripts when they are assumed to have been composed in the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries; why there are variant versions of saga texts; why so many manuscripts have disappeared or been destroyed; why it is so difficult to date many sagas; how these sagas have been transmitted to modern times; how they were disseminated outside Iceland and outside Scandinavia; what role translations into Latin and various European vernaculars played in the dissemination of these texts; what post-medieval changes in cultural values have led to changes in readerly tastes for certain kinds of sagas over others; what principles have guided editors of the Icelandic sagas when preparing the texts for the use of modern readers.

The purpose of this study is to examine the notions of "exile" (qhurba) and "nostalgia" (al-hanin ila al-Watan) in Arabic and Hebrew poetry in al-Andalus (Muslim Spain). Although this theme has been examined individually in both Arabic and Hebrew literatures, to the best of my knowledge no detailed comparative analysis has previously been undertaken. Therefore, this study sets out to compare and contrast the two literatures and cultures arising out of their co-existence in al-Andalus in the middle ages. The main characteristics of the Arabic poetry of this period are to a large extent the product of the political and social upheavals that took place in al-Andalus. Some of the cities which for many years represented the bastions of Islamic civilization were falling into the hands of the invading Christian army. This gave rise to a stream of poetry that reflects the feelings of exile and nostalgia suffered by those poets who were driven away from their native land. This Arabic poetry had a substantial influence on the literary works of the Jewish poets who were reared within the cultural circles of the Arabic courts. As a consequence the Hebrew poetry they composed, in many respects, bore the stamp of the Arabic poetry in form and content. This thesis is divided into three major parts organized as follows: the first part deals with the themes of exile and nostalgia in Arabic poetry in al-Andalus. It contains three chapters: chapter one begins with a study of the origins of the themes of exile and nostalgia in the Arabic poetic tradition. Chapter two focuses on the nostalgia and lament poetry in al-Andalus describing the characteristics of each period through examining specimens of Andalusian poems. Chapter three is devoted to a study of the poetic product of Ibn Hamdis, the Sicilian (d.1133) and discusses how the themes of exile and nostalgia became the framework of both his life and his poetry. The second part of the thesis parallels the first part in that it deals with the Hebrew poetry in al-Andalus. It consists of three chapters: chapter one investigates the origins of the concept of the homeland in the Biblical sources. Chapter two discusses the form and the structural scheme of the Hebrew poetry in al-Andalus and the influence of the Arabic poetry on the Hebrew poetic works. Chapter three is devoted to a study of the poetry of the Jewish poet, Judah ha-Levi (d.1140) and his nostalgic expressions for Zion. The third part is a comparative literary study of two specimen poems of Ibn Hamdis and ha-Levi. The aim of this study is to develop methods for an analysis of the motifs and internal structure of these two poems. The linguistic analysis is focussed mainly on the levels of phonology, morphology and syntax, while the traditional analysis is focussed primarily on the content and imagery.

From Old Regime to Industrial State: A History of German Industrialization from the Eighteenth Century to World War I

The following chapters offer an overview of English literary history, which we have divided in seven parts: the Middle Ages, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the eighteenth century, Romanticism, the Victorian Age, modernism, and postmodernism. As we have emphasised in the general introduction to Literary Studies, this division has become a standard in literary studies that helps us structure our knowledge of the past and present, but it is by no means absolute. The boundaries between the periods are permeable, and the chapters often comment on authors and works which continue earlier developments or anticipate later strands of literary history. For example, prominent authors of the early modern period like Edmund Spenser drew on medieval literature and deliberately employed an archaic language and a traditional genre to develop a specifically English form of writing. This endeavour also shows that English literature always has to be investigated with a view to its sources and branches outside the British Isles. For instance, in the early modern period, English literature was strongly influenced by Italian, French and Spanish texts; the legacy of ancient Greek and Roman authors persisted into the twentieth century, though it decreased in importance; and ever since the eighteenth century, English literature has been closely associated with American literature and the ‘new’ English literatures that began to thrive in England’s colonies. Accordingly, many of the prestigious Booker Prizes for the best novel of the year have been awarded to Indian, South-African, and Australian authors.KeywordsEighteenth CenturySeventeenth CenturyLiterary StudyEarly Modern PeriodWoman WriterThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Visitors who dcribed the Lake District in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries saw its society as distinctively different from the rest of England and were struck by the survival of a numerous group of small, independent owner-occupiers. These farmers were often called ‘statesmen’, a term applied by outsiders rather than locals and not of great antiquity. Lakeland owner-occupiers preferred to use ‘yeomcn’. A good deal has been written about this social group. However, much of this relates to the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries or has focused on problems of nomenclature. Research on parliamentary enclosure in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries has established some general trends regarding changing numbers of small proprietors, while census enumerators' books have provided the basis for work on Cumbrian owner-occupiers in the second half of the nineteenth century. Less attention has been paid to, how this society changed in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when the Lake District was drawn into the mainstream of English society and economic life. The use of the term ‘peasant’ in the title of this article is deliberately contentious as there has been considerable debate on whether the term can be justified for English society after medieval times. Marshall has suggested that one has to go back to the early eighteenth century to find a real peasant society in the Lake District. but Searle has claimed that a peasantry with a near subsistence economy, little penetration of market forces, much mutual assistance and collective regulation of assets survived until the end of the eighteenth century.

Throughout the twentieth century, anthropologists and historians have regarded the Houma Indians of southern Louisiana as the descendants of the Houma Indians encountered along the Mississippi River by French explorers and settlers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Oral history of the contemporary Houma traces the group's origin to Native Americans of the Houma and other tribes who moved into the bayou country of southeastern Louisiana during the late eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries. However,anthropologists and historians from the Bureau of Indian Affairs have concluded that there is no documentary evidence of any cultural or genealogical link between the modern Houma and the Houma of the French colonial period. Available documentary sources indicate that the modern Houma originated in the nineteenth century as a multiethnic group that included Europeans, African Americans, and some Native Americans, none of whom are known to have been Houmas. The genesis of the modern group's identity as Houma Indians can be understood as a response to legally sanctioned racial classifications and race discrimination in Louisiana from the late nineteenth century on.

William Gilpin and the Latitudinarian Picturesque Robert Mayhew (bio) Eighteenth-century historians writing in the wake of Jonathan Clark’s book, English Society (1985), have increasingly recognized the continuing importance of church politics and denominational disputes to the intellectual milieu of the period. 1 More recently, the complex debates within eighteenth-century Anglicanism have started to receive the attention they deserve. As Young has shown, themes of space, the system of nature, and the design of the earth were often central to those debates within Anglicanism. 2 This growing awareness of the continued strength of ecclesiological and theological issues in eighteenth-century English society has yet to feed into the study of eighteenth-century literature in general, let alone into analyses of literary representations of landscape and nature. 3 This essay exemplifies the fruitfulness of reinvestigating the literary treatment of landscape and the natural world in the light of theological debates in the eighteenth century. William Gilpin’s picturesque aesthetic, so influential in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, is shown to draw on low-church Anglican apologetics, and, in doing so, Gilpin is shown to have been continuing a link between Latitudinarianism and literary treatments of landscape which, as I only have space to hint en passant, had been forged by Addison, Edward Young, Fielding, and others. I. Gilpin and Posterity William Gilpin (1724–1804) is remembered as the pioneer of an aesthetic approach to landscape, “the picturesque.” 4 Indeed, the standard modern biography of Gilpin is exclusively concerned with his picturesque drawings and tours. 5 If that is [End Page 349] Gilpin’s legacy, it is certainly not the one that he had hoped to leave. Writing an autobiographical Memoir (1801), Gilpin’s own evaluation of his life’s work was rather different from that which might be expected of an aesthetic theorist: “Thus Mr G[ilpin] has given an account of the only two transactions of his life, which make it worth the attention of his posterity—his mode of managing his school at Cheam, which was uncommon—and his mode of endowing his parish school at Boldre, from the profits of his amusements.” 6 The “profits” Gilpin refers to were the result of publishing his picturesque tours; therefore, as literature, the tours clearly occupied a marginal position in Gilpin’s own estimation of his achievements. Evidently, Gilpin was most proud of his affiliation to the two schools at Cheam and Boldre. From his own account of his “uncommon” management of those schools, we learn much about his scale of values. The Memoir suggests that Gilpin tried to inculcate political and religious values of liberty and Protestantism in his pupils. Politically, the boys were taught the laws of the school and, with literal Lockeanism, signed contracts promising to obey those laws, thereby “impressing young minds with an early love of order, law and liberty.” Equally, Gilpin’s schools were uncommon in the emphasis they placed on moral and religious instruction, at the expense of a classical education, because of Gilpin’s belief that “where one boy miscarries for want of classical knowledge, hundreds are ruined for want of religious principles.” 7 In one sense, Gilpin’s self-assessment of his achievements as a religious and political educator has started to attract attention through studies of the “politics of the picturesque,” which move the grounds of assessment of his life’s work away from the purely aesthetic. 8 But the role of religion in Gilpin’s achievement as a writer has not attracted attention: while Barbier accepts that “in the last analysis” nature for Gilpin is “a divine work of art,” 9 there has been no attempt to draw out the lines of influence between Gilpin’s dual religious roles of Anglican clergyman and religious educator and his picturesque oeuvre. Following the hierarchy of values in Gilpin’s Memoir, I will move from his neglected moral and religious writings, in particular their construction of nature and landscape, to the picturesque tours, showing how an attenuated and aestheticized form of the Latitudinarian approach to the face of nature influenced Gilpin’s picturesque. Before doing this, however, I will first sketch the approach to nature and landscape forged by...

The Polish ambassador to the Crimean khan Marcin Broniewski was the first to inform of the “ancient town and castle” located in the vicinity of Mangup and the settlement of Cherkes-Kermen: he visited the site in 1578. The historical name of the town remains obscure. Travelogues often call the ruins of the nameless town the “Circassian castle,” or Cherkes-Kermen after the name of the nearby village. In the late nineteenth century, the site received the common name of Eski-Kermen (Crimean Tatar for the “old castle”), which was used by the locals already in the eighteenth century. In the last decades of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the picturesque ruins of the cave town were popular among the travellers, whose accounts contained myths and legends about the ancient place along with valuable information on the condition of the site and particular objects in its territory. The archaeological excavations in 1928–1934, 1936–1937, and 1978–1982 uncovered the remains of fortifications, sacral complexes, urban buildings, and cemetery allowing the one to infer that there was a typical provincial Byzantine town in the Middle Ages. The archaeological researches in recent decades considerably expanded the notion of the layout of the town. This paper analyses all the currently available data on the topography of the town. Taking the recent years excavations into account, the topography of the town has been reconstructed by different stages, from the Early Byzantine (late sixth and seventh centuries) to the Golden Horde periods (fourteenth century).

In his treatise on romance, Traitté de l’origine des romans (1670), Pierre-Daniel Huet’s argument that the genre originated in the ancient Near East seems to reconfirm the idea of a western translatio studii. However, Huet also argues for a second origin of romance in the West. Examining Huet in conjunction with two of his representative romances—Heliodorus’ Aethiopika, and the fables of Bidpai, or Indian Panchatantra—this chapter considers how early modern translatio offers a choice of two paths to western relations to the East: the first imagined as the ancient ideal of a cosmopolis of universal brotherhood while the other led to modern Orientalism. Straddling the historical boundary between antique romance and modern novel, Huet occupies a critical transitional position. Despite his apparent cosmopolitanism, in the end, Huet’s polygenetic theory of romance suggests the beginnings of the divergence of classicism from Orientalism with a nascent imperial mentality.

Keeping Faith with Literature

From the ruined shell of Rome after the empire's fall, Hebrew literature moved into a new home — the Islamic empire — in the 7th and 8th centuries CE. It is a commonplace that Hebrew poetry reached a 'golden age' — as did Arabic poetry at the same time — in Muslim Spain in the 11th and 12th centuries. Most of this poetry may be dated specifically from the fall of the Umayyad caliphate in 1031 until the Almohad invasion of Spain in 1140. Less common is the observation that this period coincided with, and was inseparable from, a decisive historical shift in the global balance of power. For this was the juncture at which Christian Europe emerged and began to overtake Islam, militarily, economically and culturally. In which ways did the decline of the Islamic empire and the rise of Christian Europe affect Hebrew creativity?