Anglo-Saxon World Research Articles

Greek History

It is quite remarkable that the study of Greek economic history has been long pursued in the absence of any overall synthesis. The revised translation of Alain Bresson'sThe Making of the Ancient Greek Economy, originally published in French in 2007, is undoubtedly a major contribution that will have a significant impact on how the subject is taught and studied in the Anglo-Saxon world. The volume is effectively divided into two parts. The first situates Greek economies in their environment, by exploring demography, sources of energy, agriculture, pastoralism, and non-agricultural production. The second part focuses on the nature of ancient markets, by examining internal and external markets, the international division of labour, and the role of currency, credit, and taxation. While the first part is primarily a useful summary of current research, the second part is an original contribution to our understanding of Greek markets. Not only are we given for the first time a detailed analysis of how theagoraand theemporionfunctioned, but Bresson is able to fully document the existence of complex networks creating an international division of labour. These are major advances, but the work has two major problems. Despite its size, it is a lopsided analysis. It is remarkable, for example, that there is not a single chapter devoted to labour, and that its nineteen-page index lacks any reference to terms such as wages, class, exploitation, poverty, or consumption. And, while Bresson offers an excellent description of many economic aspects, the book is distinctly unconvincing whenever it tries to explain patterns or the nature of Greek economic growth. It will be essential for any future work in Greek economic history, but for a comprehensive framework that can actually explain things, we will unfortunately have to wait.

Calico Craze? Zum geschlechtsspezifischen Konsum bedruckter Baumwollstoffe im 18. Jahrhundert. Ein Blick von England zur Alten Eidgenossenschaft

Summary The history of printed cottons has become a widely noticed topic at the interface between global history, history of material culture and history of commodities. In this history, the role of Switzerland has largely been neglected, although this region became one of the most important places of production of printed cottons in Europe. This paper approaches the history of these textiles both from a comparative perspective and from a perspective of gender. The paper shows that, unlike in England, the production of printed cottons was not perceived as a threat but as an advantage to the domestic economy. It illustrates that, while female consumption of these textiles was not morally questioned, cottons were not used to create amale cosmopolitan look either, as was the case in the Anglo-Saxon world.

Murphy, J.Illness or Deviance? Drug Courts, Drug Treatment, and the Ambiguity of Addiction. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 2015. 219 pp $94.50 (cloth) $26.95 (paper) $26.95 (ebk) ISBN 978‐1‐4399‐1022‐1

Murphy, J.Illness or Deviance? Drug Courts, Drug Treatment, and the Ambiguity of Addiction. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 2015. 219 pp $94.50 (cloth) $26.95 (paper) $26.95 (ebk) ISBN 978‐1‐4399‐1022‐1

The Material Culture of Daily Living in the Anglo‐Saxon World. Ed. by Maren CleggHyer and Gale R.Owen‐Crocker. Exeter Studies in Medieval Europe. Exeter: University of Exeter Press. 2011. 386 pp., 70 illus., b/w and line drawings. £60. ISBN 978 0 85989 843 0.

Early Medieval EuropeVolume 24, Issue 2 p. 243-244 Book review The Material Culture of Daily Living in the Anglo-Saxon World. Ed. by Maren Clegg Hyer and Gale R. Owen-Crocker. Exeter Studies in Medieval Europe. Exeter: University of Exeter Press. 2011. 386 pp., 70 illus., b/w and line drawings. £60. ISBN 978 0 85989 843 0. Nicholas A. Sparks, Corresponding Author Nicholas A. Sparks Medieval and Early Modern Centre, University of SydneySearch for more papers by this author Nicholas A. Sparks, Corresponding Author Nicholas A. Sparks Medieval and Early Modern Centre, University of SydneySearch for more papers by this author First published: 25 April 2016 https://doi.org/10.1111/emed.12145Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume24, Issue2May 2016Pages 243-244 RelatedInformation

Внешняя политика Великобритании и проблема китайского выбора Дэвида Кэмерона

The article reveals and analyses current state of the United Kingdom (UK) foreign policy and its outlook. While London is traditionally (alongside other states of Anglo-Saxon world) considered as a recognized ally and a junior partner of the United States (US), nevertheless, dynamics of international relations since the end of 2000s demonstrates that it cannot be stated with dead certainty. The conclusion based on analyzed evidence is that in spite of taken steps and efforts, and measures implemented in recent years, and declarations of British authorities, in fact London tends to pursue diversification of its foreign policy. Meanwhile, it cannot be said that it’s smooth and seamless process. It’s being criticized by Washington. But the White House lacks tools to influence the UK’s position.In the meantime, nowadays London faces serious challenges, and cooperation with Washington is not a priority. The reason, in part, is driven by the fact that US administration has nothing new to offer and cannot provide security. Also, the United States pursue their own interests at the expenses of interests of their partners more often and in more uncovered way. This implies search of new foreign policy options.Currently, the most burning foreign policy problems for the Conservative government of David Cameron are the relations with European Union (EU) in view of the plans to hold referendum on whether or not to remain a member of the European Union and the relations with China and Asian countries. At the same time for London it is necessary to keep good relations with American administration regardless of its partisan views and political affiliation.

Book Review: The Marxism of Manuel Sacristán: From Communism to the New Social Movements by Renzo Llorente (trans. and ed.)

Renzo Llorente (trans. and ed.) The Marxism of Manuel Sacristan: From Communism to the New Social Movements, Brill, Leiden and Boston, 2014; 312 pp: 9789004223554, 119 [euro] (hbk) The Portuguese writer and Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago once famously said, 'writers make national literature, while translators make universal literature'--a statement that nicely captures what Renzo Llorente has accomplished for the international Marxist tradition with his book The Marxism of Manuel Sacristan: From Communism to the New Social Movements (TMMS hereon). Llorente, a professor of philosophy at the Madrid campus of Saint Louis University, has translated and compiled a list of twenty pieces, made up of articles and interviews by arguably the most important Spanish Marxist philosopher of the 20th century, Manuel Sacristan (1925-1985). Until this publication by the international publisher Brill, only a couple of pieces of Sacristan's oeuvre had been translated into English, and efforts to popularise his thought in the Anglo-Saxon world had been, unfortunately, significantly scarce. (1) In TMMS, Llorente seeks to fill this void with a carefully selected list of materials, whose translation and edition is marked by exemplary and meticulous work, a characteristic that he seems to take from Sacristan's own substantial work, which brought to the Spanish-speaking world translations of various of the works of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Antonio Gramsci, Theodor Adorno, Georg Lukacs, Karl Korsch, Galvano Della Volpe, Ulrike Meinhof, W. V. Quine, and other significant figures within and outside the Marxian tradition. The sixteen articles and four interviews contained in TMMS are preceded by a magnificent introduction by the editor in which we are given a taste of the intellectual and practical development of Sacristan's life, especially under the Franco dictatorship. Persecution, harassment and imprisonment were a constant in this experience, where Sacristan's theoretical-political practices flared up tensions, not only with the dictatorship, but also within the Communist Party of Spain, as well as the International Communist movement. Llorente provides materials produced by Sacristan during the 1960s and all the way up to the final years of his life, when the Spanish philosopher was more than convinced that Marx's work had to be adapted to the new circumstances and social movements that expressed them. These materials are organised in three parts, with the first one, 'On Marx and Engels', containing some of Sacristan's most famous articles, such as 'Marx's scientific work and his notion of science' and 'Engel's task in Anti-Duhring. In the first of these essays, first published in 1980, Sacristan examines the 'crisis' surrounding the scientific status of Marx's contributions, a crisis explained, in part, by the 'deceptive illusions' (p. 29) contained in the representations of thinkers like Sollers, Althusser and Coiled, and by the crass misunderstandings of major critics such as Popper and Bunge. For Sacristan, the key to unveiling Marx's scientific contributions is to first understand the multiple notions of science at work in Marx's work, which according to him can be identified as being three: 'the notion of science that I have called normal, la science; the Hegelian notion, Wissenschaft...; and a notion of Young-Hegelian inspiration ... the idea of science as critique' (p. …

Humanidades Digitais e Investigação Histórica em Portugal: perspectiva e discurso (1979-2015)

Influenced by the recent international tendency towards the consolidation of the disciplinary area known as Digital Humanities, in the last few years Portuguese academia has undergone a movement of renewal of the discourse about digital technologies in research, teaching and dissemination of humanities. Taking a long-term perspective on the ties between History and digital methodologies, this article discusses, on the one hand, the novelty of such discourse, presenting it as a renewed and reworked practice that, in some cases, harkens back to the 1980s. On the other hand, the article addresses the fact that this renewal, unlike what is happening in the Anglo-Saxon world, is developing in a relatively modest way and without a significant institutional framework. Nevertheless, empirical data from recent years, especially since 2010 shows that Digital Humanities have managed to congregate a growing and increasingly prominent research community.

Brain Death and Organ Removal: Revisiting a High-Stakes Question

Brain Death and Organ Removal:Revisiting a High-Stakes Question1 Bernard N. Schumacher The irreversible cessation of all brain activity as a criterion for death, including that of the brain stem, was suggested in 1968 by the now famous report of an ad hoc committee at Harvard Medical School. For several years now, this criterion has once again been the object of rather well-publicized critical reflection, chiefly in the Anglo-Saxon world and, more recently, in the German-speaking world. The German philosopher Ralf Stoecker has even gone so far as to assert, during his March 21, 2012, speech to the German Ethical Council (Deutscher Ethikrat): “To my knowledge there is no convincing argument for the validity of the concept of brain death, today even less than in 1997,”2 the year in which Germany authorized the removal of organs from a human being whose death had been certified according to this cerebral criterion. In opposition to those who say that medical science has succeeded in proving the appropriateness of the brain-death criterion, he concluded that “recourse to the concept of brain death today, moreover, is no longer sufficient to determine whether or not it is permissible to remove organs.”3 He [End Page 1239] therefore considers the debate about brain death “useless.”4 His position is not an isolated case. It is along the same lines as the stance taken by a number of Anglo-Saxon physicians, legal scholars, and philosophers who have expressed serious doubts as to the legitimacy of the brain-death criterion. “No plausible and coherent account has been advanced to explain why brain-dead patients are dead,”5 the American bioethicist Franklin G. Miller had explained three years earlier, following his colleague Robert D. Truog, who thinks that “the concept of brain death is seriously problematic.”6 The American philosopher Don Marquis ratchets up the rhetoric: “The orthodox legal definition of death is indefensible.”7 Brain death is likewise described by the American bioethicist Robert M. Veatch as being “old-fashioned” and “less and less plausible,”8 all the more so because, as the American physician Ari Joffe notes, “When one examines the rationale for BD being death itself, it is surprisingly hard to justify.”9 This school of thought denounces the fact that the brain-death criterion was implemented in order to correspond to actual praxis. It is said to be, in the final analysis, a “legal fiction”10 or “convenient”11 [End Page 1240] along the lines of what the German philosopher Dieter Birnbacher very recently described as a psychological “strategy of suppression”12 or, as the German legal scholar Wolfgang Höfling put it, an “illusory self-deception.”13 The American physician Robert Taylor points out the fact that we know perfectly well that persons who are declared brain dead are actually alive but that we want to consider them dead. The criterion of brain death, these thinkers say, is ultimately a societal construct and not a truth based on reason and science.14 These authors wish to break the taboo that surrounds any questioning of the brain-death criterion. The refusal to take into consideration even the hypothetical possibility of an error in this regard was illustrated by recent medical-ethical guidelines issued by the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences (Académie suisse des Sciences médicales, or ASSM) with regard to the “Diagnosis of death in the context of organ transplantation.”15 Why this silence and refusal even to reargue the legitimacy of the brain-death criterion? If we were to find that it was wrong (i.e. [End Page 1241] illegitimate), people often say, it would have disastrous implications for the removal and transplantation of vital organs at a time when we see an ever-increasing shortage of donors. On the other hand, the continuation of this practice would be tantamount to approval of putting living persons to death and, in the final analysis, of using them only as means to an end for the benefit of other persons—or to quote the very telling image of the German philosopher Hans Jonas, approval of engaging in the “vivisection”16 of a person under...

VENACULAR POETS IN BEDE AND MUIRCHÚ A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF EARLY INSULAR CULTURAL HISTORIES

This comparative study examines the treatment of named vernacular poets from the Gaelic and Anglo-Saxon worlds in the subsequent literary cultural histories of their traditions. Both societies developed sophisticated bilingual intellectual cultures. After a brief survey of historical poets and anonymous secular texts from both vernacular literatures, this essay examines two accounts that involve vernacular poets from Latin texts written by clerics. Muirchú maccu Machtheni wroteVita Sancti Patricii(ca. 690) and briefly mentioned the presence of the poets Dubthach maccu Lugair and Fiacc Finn Sléibte at the pagan court of Lóegaire mac Néill in Tara in the fifth century. Bede devoted a full chapter of hisHistoria Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum(ca. 731) to the poet Cædmon at the monastery of Whitby sometime in the second half of the seventh century. The presence of these three vernacular poets in the works of two clerics suggests their perceived potential contributions to the Church. But their treatment in later cultural history differs markedly between the self-referential Gaelic world and more reticent Anglo-Saxons. In the Gaelic tradition Dubthach and Fiacc are recorded in law tracts, hagiography, martyrologies, genealogies, prose narratives, and poems. In the Anglo-Saxon tradition Cædmon does not exist outside of Bede's account. It is suggested that the legally recognized social rank, formal training, and professional status of poets in Gaelic society helps explain the discrepancy in subsequent cultural acknowledgement.

Cosmas of Prague: Narrative, Classicism, Politics by Lisa Wolverton

Cosmas of Prague: Narrative, Classicism, Politics. By Lisa Wolverton. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press. 2014. Pp. xviii, 307. S65.00 clothbound, ISBN 978-0-8132-2691-0; ISBN 978-0-8132-2692-7 e-book.)This book is second monograph about Cosmas (c. 1045-1125), oldest Czech chronicler and canon of Chapter of Prague; it also is first written by a non-Czech author. Lisa Wolverton, author and associate professor of at University of Oregon, aims at offering a reinterpretation of main piece of Czech medieval historiography, which has been reached by author during her work on an English translation of Cosmas's chronicle. She is particularly interested story, narrative shape and style of Cosmas' history (p. 2). She offers a detailed analysis of language, way of expression, intentions, and content of chronicle; at same time, she contextualizes and compares it works of some contemporary historians of Latin Europe. She wants read Cosmas chronicle in all its fullness with new eyes (p. 18).The book is composed of seven chapters. In introduction, author gives fundamental information about present study of Cosmas's work, its author, and chronicle itself, as well as discusses her book's goals. Her work is motivated by tendency Anglo-Saxon world overlook Cosmas's chronicle or consider it only relation chroniclers' view on women. Wolverton wants bring the text into interpretative frame of Anglophone medievalists (p. 3). At same time, she would like correct supposed absence of Czech (and Polish) literature, with only a handful of articles and one monograph trying to analyze text on its own terms (p. 3). However, Wolverton neglects several recent works by Czech historians (such as Martin Wihoda, Petr Kopal, Josef Zemlicka, and this reviewer) that analyze problems similar those examined by author.In second chapter, The Historian's Craft, she analyzes sources of Cosmas's narrative detail, examines method of composition, and successfully reconstructs Cosmas's procedures for work. Using a detailed analysis of Cosmas's text, she disproves Dusan Trestik's hypothesis that Annales Pragenses served as Cosmas's source and considers other sources. She states that Regino of Prum deeply influenced Cosmas because of language, way of expression, source of information about past events, and especially craft of history.The third chapter, The Pessimistic Theory of Power, is dedicated Cosmas's political opinions on politics and functions of law, appointment and position of monarch, and critique of political power. …

“Hypotranslating” and “Hypertranslating” Theories in Nabokov’s Alice in Wonderland and Eugene Onegin

My paper means to discuss the development and the application of Nabokov’s theories of translation in Anja v str a ne cude s (1922) and Eugene Onegin (1964). By using both Steiner’s and Newmark’s approaches, I will point out that Nabokov aims for a communicative translation, for a “hypotranslation”, in Carroll’s work, in order to make it more understandable to the Russian readership. Conversely, Nabokov uses a literal translation in Eugene Onegin , thus making the target text “awkward”. Such technique arises a sense of “foreignness” in the Russian readers, and paves the way for a metaphorical “hypertranslating” process. I will, therefore, demonstrate that the latter represents a generator of “overtranslating” elements, from a cultivated reader’s perspective, as a consequence of the clash between the Russian and the Anglo-Saxon worlds. Keyword Nabokov hypotranslation hypertranslation foreignness

Kořeny a současnost sportovního kaplanství

The main objective of this article is to introduce the phenomena of chaplaincy to the Czech sports context. Chaplaincy has helped shape the character of athletes and aided them in resolving their personal problems for several decades, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world. Another intention is to illustrate the importance of the comprehensive development of athletes, including the spiritual component. The authors first conduct a broad examination of the profession of chaplaincy from areas which have already been established in the Czech Republic – the hospital, military and university environments. Then within the realm of sports chaplaincy analysis is carried out on the experience from the Anglo-Saxon world of sports, where the specific profession is the most developed and has the longest tradition. In the conclusion, two core sport chaplaincy models are illustrated with emphasis on the applicability of international experience to the Czech sport context.

Assessing Creative Writing in a Postmodern Era

How to teach creative writing at school? If the procedures inherited from writing workshops have undoubtedly proved efficient as regards text production, it is also clear that in Switzerland, as elsewhere in Europe and in the Anglo-Saxon world, the present use of evaluation grids with their numerous items prevents secondary school pupils from adopting the stance of an author. Why? Simply because the most innovative and “literary” texts are always surprising: They are “different”, and could not possibly result from writing guidelines devised only to facilitate a mechanical evaluation itself conceived for the sake of some illusory objectivity… Now, in our postmodern age with its rejection of models, what is more difficult than assessing the quality of creative writing? In our approach, we suggest restoring confidence in the teacher, an expert reader if any, who, acting as a publisher, dramaturge, or mere aesthete, knows how to take his pupils’ texts seriously, acknowledge their aesthetic value, and look at apparent clumsiness as a possible promise of innovation. The teaching of creative writing lies both in this specific reception of budding works and in the teacher’s performative utterances that, then and there, make the pupil a writer.

Miguel Romero (1945–2014): A Political and Intellectual Portrait

Miguel Romero (1946–2014) was one of the most prominent figures of Spain's revolutionary Left and became the editor of the political journal Viento Sur in 1992. His death on 26 January 2014 offers an opportunity to look back at his political and intellectual life and to present him to the Anglo-Saxon world at a time when Spain is at the center of European politics due to the major economic and political crisis that it is suffering. Romero's militancy began in the anti-Franco student movement in the sixties, and he formed part of a minority that never accepted the new political regime that emerged in the seventies after the end of the dictatorship. He wrote on international politics, the post-Franco Transition, the Spanish Civil War and the Spanish Revolution, the relationship between politics and social movements, and strategic affairs.

Tradition and Modernization: Siting Philosophy for Children Within the African Outlook

In this philosophical paper, we investigate the project of doing philosophy with children in Africa. While the philosophy for children program has its roots in the Anglo-Saxon world, we contend that it can sit well in Africa if given an African outlook. We challenge Eurocentric specialists, who are attempting a wholesale introduction of the Matthew Lipman model of philosophy for children in schools in Africa, to realign their perspective. This paper takes a critical look at the currency of the post-colonial and Africanization agendas in education by exploring the plausibility of a uniquely African philosophy for children program. We argue that for any philosophy to be African, it should be an amalgamation of the traditional and the modern in order to epitomize the twenty-first century African existential conditions that ameliorate educational practices previously subject to Eurocentric hegemony.

Global Age Essays on Social and Cultural Change by Martin Albrow (review)

268 Max Weber Studies of Weberian ideas in the 21st century is n at work just across the Channel. Peter Ghosh St Anne's College, University of Oxford Peter Ghosh Martin Albrow, Global Age Essays on Social and Cultural Change (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2014), 250 pp. ISBN 978 3-465-04211-2. €23.90. The fourteen essays collected in this anthology span a period of almost twenty years, during which the well-known author devel oped and elaborated his thesis regarding the emergence of a new age, the global age, that he argues has succeeded the modern age. Some reservations against the label notwithstanding, the thesis falls thus squarely within the 'postmodernist' body of work that has been particularly influential in the Anglo-Saxon world, but it also goes somewhat beyond that literature by endeavoring a positive char acterization of what makes the contemporary age unique, namely its globality. If we follow Albrow, then it is precisely this global ity which brings modernity to a close and ushers in an entirely new phase in the history of humankind. But should we follow him? Albrow himself mentions one pos sible objection to his sweeping claim: Might one not conclude, as indeed several globalization scholars have done, that the 'epochal shift' that has been in the making for more than three decades now, is better to be understood as an 'extension of modernity' beyond the spatial boundaries of the West, where it had been concentrated for two to five centuries, to all parts of the globe, thus integrating the entire social world into a 'single system' (38)? As Albrow's affirma tive usage of the term 'global' or 'world society' and his consequent rejection of methodological nationalism show, he does sympathize with the latter idea but dismisses the former. Why so? The main reason Albrow cites for his rejection of the extension thesis is that it underrates the 'rupture' represented by the above shift while at the same time overrating the supposed 'continuities' of globalizing developments with modern institutional arrange ments and 'symbolic orderings', which, however, they actually supplant and render obsolete in his assessment (39). Manifestations of the rupture Albrow sees are (1) the massively increased mobil ity, interconnectedness, and world awareness of billions of people© Max Weber Studies 2015. Book Reviews 269 around the world and the emerg and places of centrality that are their counterparts of the mode equate society with the nation-s sense anymore); (2) the appeara business organizations, financia which, like the former, have been ical innovations (especially in th portation, information, and com credibility to the idea of world tation to humankind as the ulti ity and ethicality; (3) the demise in post-Holocaust and Hirosh growing emphasis on our capab destructiveness, environmental the collapse of socialism, as sugges as the turning point at which m begins (40,48,73ff„ 81,116ff.). In and of themselves, Albrow' Whether or not they usher in a beyond the modern age is a diff depends less on 'the facts' than employed. This, I believe, is Alb tualization of modernity is charac modern, or 'old modernity' in h chy, command and control, asse have been phased out in the age really? That they have lost some the West does not mean they h everywhere. A theorist of globa such 'paradigms' are the above-m the methodological nationalism dred years of (Western) intellect has become a liability in an era horizons and to treat humanity as behave responsibly (81ff.); techno of modernity' [113]) that directs o guities of technological change constraints, positional goods, and of the future' (129); and perhap (145ff.).© Max Weber Studies 2015. 270 Max Weber Studies All of these features can certainly be li ing modernity to them is arguably mo could easily draw up another list of f are associated with the modern, but ar account even though they are no less points to a first weakness in Albrow's the lack of a sufficiently worked out out such a theory, any list of features ap and this is a second weakness, if we fa by modernity, then its juxtaposition t edly differs substantially from it becom or faith rather than being grounded i...

Exploring Another’s Subjective Life-World

Regarding the relationship between phenomenology and the social sciences, significantly different traditions exist between German-speaking countries and the Anglo-Saxon world, which create many misunderstandings. Phenomenology is not just a research method; in its origin, it is a philosophy and has epistemological and methodological implications for empirical research. This essay pursues several goals: First, some basic tenets of Husserl’s phenomenology and Schutz’s mundane life-world analysis are restated. Second, an approach of “phenomenological hermeneutics” is presented that complies with the postulate of adequacy and aspires to understand other people’s life-worlds more profoundly than the widely accepted research practice of treating interview transcripts as data. The methodical procedure is illustrated using selected pieces from a case study of a patient who suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and became severely disoriented. Third, some crucial implications of such an approach are discussed in regard to a phenomenology-based ethnography.

Food, Eating and Identity in Early Medieval England. By Allen J. Frantzen (Rochester, N.Y., Boydell Press, 2014) 290 pp. $90.00

A simple bone spoon with a leaf-shaped handle illustrates the cover of Frantzen’s study of how food shaped identities in Anglo-Saxon England. Excavated from the middle Saxon settlement site at Flixborough, Lincolnshire, the spoon stands for the material culture of food production and consumption, the subjects that Frantzen seeks to elucidate in this genuinely interdisciplinary book. Most of our images of medieval food relate to feasting and its associated ceremonies—drinking, singing, and making speeches—because those are the occasions most frequently described in contemporary written sources. Frantzen widens his study beyond literary texts to include the words found in Old English to describe foods and the physical objects associated with agriculture and cooking, as well as the material evidence of the ordinary, everyday items used by the Anglo-Saxons to grow, transport, prepare, and eat their food. In addition to spoons and knives, he considers bowls, cups, cooking pots, and kneading troughs. He examines not only the tools of consumption but also the food producers—those who planted fields, kept swine, caught fish, brewed beer, or ground wheat—and the objects that they used in the production of food and drink.Close focus on the material (and on excavated food waste) enables Frantzen to set legal and admonitory evidence about food discipline (for example, from penitentials) in new light. He argues that discussion of Anglo-Saxon social identity has paid too little attention to material culture, failing to acknowledge the extent to which the material world (amply evidenced through the archaeological record) served to construct social systems. Central to his study, therefore, is the integration of physical objects with linguistic and textual evidence, with an emphasis on the ordinary and mundane, and with the networks of food production and distribution that gave objects meaning in communication. Because food is personal in the literal sense of becoming part of the body, Frantzen argues that the act of eating is “the most-identity-producing point in the food network,” thus conferring on the objects associated with it (cups, spoons, etc.) the capacity to reveal individual identities, just as larger, often shared, objects involved with production—like quernstones and iron tools—signal community identity (173).Frantzen locates his study theoretically in two contexts—Bourdieu’s theory of habitus (as developed in recent Anglo-Saxon archaeology) and Frazer’s theory about social identity (“situational identity” in this work) in medieval culture.1 Frantzen frequently criticizes other scholars who have not engaged with theory, and with those who have perpetuated a polarized Anglo-Saxon world, contrasting the feasting of the rich with the hunger of the poor. He is markedly less transparent about his own ideological stance, particularly his repeated implication that the Church represented a negative force, exerting an unwelcoming control over lay society. Observing religion only through the lens of legislation and prescription seriously distorts its role in creating and enriching social identities. Frantzen clearly enjoys the anticlerical satirical poem The Seasons of Fasting (early eleventh century), with its ridicule of priests who failed to obey the injunctions of their preaching, but he never mentions the place of food at the heart of Christian liturgy in the Eucharist. His demonstration that fish became more plentiful in the late Anglo-Saxon period as a mark of high status that only the wealthy could afford, however, is important; fish was a luxury, not a fasting food. The increased finds of fish bones after c. 1000 do not reflect adherence to stricter rules about abstinence, as had once been thought.Methodologically, the book has much to contribute but, as Frantzen admits, it is harder to provide explanations of objects than it is of texts. He has asked many questions of his spoons, but they do not always have the answers. To misquote Grierson, “It has been said that the spoon cannot lie, but it owes this merit in part to the fact that it cannot speak.”2

The Anglo-Saxon World, by Nicholas J. Higham and Martin J. Ryan

It seems ungenerous to say that many readers of this splendidly illustrated and highly informative book will first open it to see whether or not it measures up to another, published over thirty years ago. For all the fresh discoveries made since its publication, the 1982 volume The Anglo-Saxons put together by James Campbell, Eric John and Patrick Wormald still occupies an authoritative place at the head of undergraduate reading lists on the history of pre-Conquest England. To read the present book only to see how far its authors, Nicholas Higham and Martin Ryan, have succeeded in living up to their predecessors’ standards would seem the wrong way to approach this new introduction to Anglo-Saxon England, which clearly seeks to synthesise a good deal of more recent scholarship into a form suitable for new readers. But, in truth, the shadow of The Anglo-Saxons lies so heavily over much of this book that the comparison cannot be avoided. The debt manifests itself most immediately in the organisation of the book, not only in the decision to accompany the predominantly political history of the main text with annotated but semi-detached illustrations of objects and artefacts, but also in the various short essays on major ‘sources and issues’ appended to each chapter in the manner of its predecessor’s nineteen ‘picture essays’. A similar sense of familiarity may strike the reader in the closing pages, where Higham comments on the extent to which ‘the basic structures of England owe much to the Anglo-Saxon past’ (p. 426), in much the same way that Campbell concluded his volume with a rumination on how England’s later inhabitants might set about ‘weighing their debt to and links with the Anglo-Saxon past’.

Taalkundig-stilistische analyse: de casus Wilders / Pechtold

Abstract Linguistic-stylistic analysis: the Wilders / Pechtold caseThis article focuses on a form of stylistic investigation named ‘linguistic stylistics’. This form of stylistics does not involve experiments; rather, it is made plausible, on the basis of linguistic analysis, that stylistic choices create particular effects. Linguistic-stylistic research boasts a rich tradition in the Anglo-Saxon world. To this day, however, Dutch discourse studies have barely adopted this form of text analysis. The main objective of this article is to argue and demonstrate that a linguistic-stylistic approach is fruitful for analysing Dutch discourse. A detailed analysis of the speeches held by the Dutch politicians Geert Wilders (PVV, the Dutch Party for Freedom) and Alexander Pechtold (D66, Democrats ‘66) in parliament during the General Political Debates of 2008 and 2009 serves as an example. It is argued that in the Lower Chamber politicians need to adopt a certain stance towards two heterogeneous, functionally distinct types of audiences: their fellow politicians and ‘the public at large’. Analysis of media opinions shows that in their speeches Geert Wilders and Alexander Pechtold gave the impression of adopting different stances towards these two types of audiences. Wilders came across as a ‘political outsider’ who kept himself aloof from his colleagues in The Hague, and as a politician who as a ‘man of the people’ was close to society. Alexander Pechtold came across as an ‘insider’ in the Dutch Parliament who kept a certain distance from society. It is argued that numerous stylistic devices are likely to contribute to these general impressions ‐ including stylistic devices that to this day have received scant attention in the analysis of political discourse.