British Culture Research Articles

Victoria Moul. A Literary History of Latin and English Poetry: Bilingual Verse Culture in Early Modern England

The Latin poetry of early modern English writers has typically been the preserve of classical reception studies; scholars of English literature have tended to regard it as tangential, inferior, or merely derivative. Moul’s groundbreaking study insists upon the inseparability of early modern English and Latin poetry and the impossibility of reading one without the other. Drawing extensively on her own recent investigations of early modern Latin manuscript holdings in English collections—the first such survey in modern times—as well as on early printed texts, she argues forcefully for the bilingualism of early modern English verse culture, demonstrating the constant counterpoint between the respective strands of Latin and vernacular poetry. For English literary scholars, the book’s most striking achievement is to demonstrate, as Moul puts it, ‘how English verse culture as a whole looks, feels, sounds and makes sense differently if we stop pretending that all that Latin is not there’ (p. 2). She shows not only the extent to which early modern readers and writers were steeped in classical literature but also how the classical canon as taught in humanist grammar schools differed from that of the modern curriculum and the generic, lexical, and thematic implications of that difference. In a valuable correction to a conventional view of Renaissance writers as determinedly ‘classicizing’, she demonstrates the importance of medieval and later Latin literature, as well as the biblical and vernacular traditions. By showing how the neo-Latin tradition feeds into the vernacular, and by setting vernacular poetry in its contemporary neo-Latin context, she is able to provide some new and arresting readings of familiar texts. Both Latinists and English scholars will welcome the array of virtually unknown authors who appear at every turn, offering tantalizing prospects for further study.

The Critical Analysis of the Construction of Teacher-ness Identities in Contemporary Thai Films

This article aimed to analyze the construction of teacher-ness identities in contemporary Thai films. The Thai teacher-ness identities represented in films were a unit of cultural analysis in contemporary popular culture, a methodological approach informed by British Cultural Studies. The researcher analyzed the texts of nine teacher-related films released in cinemas between 1977 and 2017, under the theoretical framework of the construction of social realities. The findings indicated that teacher representations were presented in three ways: 1) the ideal teacher-ness, 2) the negotiation with the ideal teacher-ness, and 3) the non-ideal teacher-ness. In general, teacher characters were created to exhibit consistent and different from the social realities. However, the representations of teacher-ness identities that appear in films have not kept pace with the changes in teacher-ness identities in the real world, due to the political, socio-cultural, and ideological landscape in Thailand, which has undergone enormous changes. The representations of teacher-ness identities thus need to be transformed in accordance with those changes. The influence of changing social realities of teacher-ness as well as competing for hegemonic discourses in the teaching profession, in particular, and teacher education, in general, plays a critical role in shaping the representations of those teachers. In addition, film, as one of the socio-cultural institutions, tend to produce and reproduce teacher-ness identities to be in line with social norms and expectations.

The image of the interpreter and his “Living Emblems” in “The Pilgrim’s Progress” by John Bunyan and its adaptations for the contemporary readers (the 17th – the 20th centuries): on the issue of text evolution

The article focuses on one of the episodes of ‟The Pilgrim's Progress” by John Bunyan (an episode in the House of the Interpreter) and the change in its emblematic content in the adaptations of J.Bunyan's book for readers of the 19th – the 20th centuries. The object of study is the meaning of the Interpreter’s image and that of the content and form of the seven emblematic descriptions in the episode. The subject of the study is the transformation of the source text in the adaptations of the 19th – the 20th centuries. The study is based on J.Bunyan's book and texts by Helen L. Taylor, ‟Little Pilgrim's Progress” and artin Powell 's comics. The tasks of the study were as follows: to determine the meaning of the episode in question in the plot of the book; establish the meaning of the Interpreter’s image in the context of the 17th – 18th c. English culture; to analyse the connection of the emblem complex with the Baroque religious culture; describe the changes in the adaptations of the Pilgrim's Progress for readers of the 19th and the 20th centuries. The study showed that the Interpreter’s image is the key one. The shift in cultural paradigms led to the destruction of the original set of emblems, but the authors of the adaptations used J.Bunyan’s emblems to create their own mini-sets that met the needs of their readership. Although both the formal and the content of the original text have changed in many respects since the 17th century, both the role of the Interpreter and the purpose of the emblems in the adaptations have been remaining unchanged.

Licensing libel in seventeenth-century England: John White’s First Century of Scandalous, Malignant Priests in context/s

Abstract This article explores the polemical history of John White’s First Century of Scandalous, Malignant Priests (1643) to argue that the revolutionary public culture of England’s mid-century civil wars transformed seventeenth-century libellous politics by rendering ad hominem defamation into a routine element of formal partisan print culture for the first time in English history. The article concludes by demonstrating that when the Century reappeared in print eighty years later to excoriate a new generation of clergymen, public defamation had become a mundane, although still controversial, element of English political culture.

A Corpus-Based Study of the Chinese Translation of Color Metaphors in Shakespeare’s Plays

Metaphor is a fundamental cognitive concept and this study utilizes a corpus-based approach to explore the vibrant color metaphors used in Shakespeare’s plays, as well as the Chinese translations of these metaphors by Liang Shiqiu, Zhu Shenghao, and Fang Ping. The primary focus of this analysis is on the translation methods and strategies employed by these three translators, with an emphasis on how they transfer the form, content (i.e., function), and meaning of the color metaphors into Chinese. Both rhetoric and conceptual metaphors are examined to provide insight into the translation practice of these three individuals. It found that there exists a significant similarity among the three translators in literally translating a majority of the color metaphors in Shakespeare’s plays; however, distinct differences emerge in their adoption of de-metaphorization while translating nonconforming color metaphors. Three major factors are discussed to account for the similarities and differences in translating color metaphors: (1) the shared cultural experiential sources for the color metaphors in English and Chinese cultures; (2) the universality of metaphorical thinking among people from different cultural backgrounds; (3) the skopos (purpose) of the three translators in translating Shakespeare’s plays during various historical periods. This study has significant implications for global corpus-based drama studies and metaphor studies, as well as corpus translation studies.

The role of EFL learners’ L2 self-identities, and authenticity gap on their intention to continue LMOOCs: insights from an exploratory partial least approach

A research study on the L2 Motivational Self-systems (L2MSS) and technology acceptance of Foreign Language Learners (EFL) in relation to Language Massive Open Online Courses (LMOOCs) is warranted. In response, 336 Iranian EFL learners participated in three LMOOC platforms, learned language online in line with their language institutes, and answered questions about their L2 selves’ identities and attitudes toward LMOOC. The results of Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) showed that learners with positive future images of language learning and intrinsic interests in the target English culture are more likely to engage in LMOOC in the future. Further, they found LMOOC a useful and comfortable system, which enabled them to fulfill their obligations and meet others’ expectations. The authenticity gap in Iranian EFL is also worth mentioning since learners tended to have a more positive attitude toward unstructured language contexts than structured ones. As an implication of these findings, scholars should examine the factors contributing to increasing the authenticity gap in LMOOCs to accelerate the completion rate of these courses. LMOOC designers should take advantage of this issue by adding additional features to their platforms and running their courses in response to learners’ instrumentalities. The study also added a new conceptual framework to CALL, LMOOC, and language learning motivation literature.

‘Circumstances Sufficiently Appalling to the Country People’: Suicide Burial in Thomas Hardy’s ‘The Grave by the Handpost’

Abstract Thomas Hardy’s 1897 short story, ‘The Grave By the Handpost,’ set in early nineteenth-century Dorset, explores the custom of suicide burial at the crossroads before the practice was outlawed in 1823. The story, which draws from family history, local accounts, and articles in the Dorset County Chronicle, tells of a widowed sergeant who feels forsaken by his son, and in a state of despair, takes his life. The coroner rules a felo de se (or ‘felon of himself’), and the sergeant’s body is buried at the parish boundary between two villages. In contrast with other customs, suicide burial was characterized by a unique capacity to shame both the deceased and the deceased’s family in perpetuity. While suicide itself would not be decriminalized until 1961, I argue that Hardy sought to destigmatize the coupling of suicide and shame that had predominated in British culture for centuries. This approach follows from Thomas Hardy: Folklore and Resistance (2016) in reading Hardy’s view of folk culture in flux, as rural communities evolved to reimagine their inherited customs. Hardy espoused what he called ‘evolutionary meliorism’, a belief that communities might develop more ethical responses to human situations than were codified in the law. I argue that the villagers’ response in ‘The Grave’ demonstrates this idea in practice, and I conclude that their decision to reject this custom on ethical grounds marks ‘The Grave’ as an important late Hardy work.

‘All Together Now’: “Yellow Submarine” (1968), The Beatles, and Children’s Film

This article examines The Beatles’ classic animated film, Yellow Submarine (dir. George Dunning, 1968) in terms of its appeal to multi-demographic audiences. While it has become de rigueur to argue in favour of Yellow Submarine as an artefact of the late-1960s counter-culture, its status as a children’s film has largely been overlooked. This article will argue that Yellow Submarine invites, and is able to sustain, a range of interpretations, particularly regarding its dual status as a quintessential film for children and family audiences, and as a much more adult-oriented production that captures the revolutionary spirit of the period. While Yellow Submarine embodies aspects of late-1960s British and North American culture, the author argues that the narrative transcends national cultural specificities and attempts to appeal to universal human desires and emotional states through its balancing of utopian consensus and cultural diversity, and through the galvanizing presence of The Beatles.

Teaching culture through EFL classes in Turkey: a qualitative study of teachers’ conceptualizations and pedagogical orientations

ABSTRACT Reconsideration of culture pedagogy, in terms of what culture refers to and whose culture dominates English language teaching is a prevalent issue in language teaching. Therefore, in this study, we conducted one-on-one interviews with 17 in-service teachers of English language at three private K-12 schools in a northwestern city of Turkey to examine their conceptualizations of culture and pedagogical orientations towards teaching culture. We analysed the data by using Jackson’s seven facets of culture and Larzén-Östermark’s classification of teachers’ three orientations towards teaching culture. Our findings revealed “culture as learned” as the dominant facet and “cognitive orientation” as the dominant orientation towards teaching culture. However, when teaching culture in a private school, the teachers seemed to experience tensions between the goal of authenticity and the scripted curriculum from the selected textbooks. Few teachers reported parental pressure and resistance regarding the teaching of English culture. Our findings suggest implications for EFL teacher education.

Beachy Head, Ancient Barrows and the ‘Alembic’ of Romantic Archaeological Poetics

This article identifies for the first time the ‘lone antiquary’, which Charlotte Smith refers to in her poem Beachy Head, as Rev. James Douglas, one of the most significant and interesting early archaeological writers. My contention is that not only do Douglas’s specific findings and theories about stratigraphy, fossilisation and the culture of Britain’s earliest inhabitants contribute to the historical, antiquarian background to Smith’s poem but also that the transformative nature of his poetics informs her work. In particular, both Douglas and Smith are concerned with the relationships between facts and fancy, rubble and aura, scepticism and belief. I argue that the barrows, which Douglas excavated and upon which Smith mused, were an important site for the development of the Romantic archaeological imagination and, as such, represent a suggestive contribution to the new Material Romanticism critical turn.

Contributors

Other| April 01 2023 Contributors Pedagogy (2023) 23 (2): 417–421. https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-10693136 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Permissions Search Site Citation Contributors. Pedagogy 1 April 2023; 23 (2): 417–421. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-10693136 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsPedagogy Search Advanced Search Ryan Baxter graduated from the University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts in 2017 with a BA in English language and literature. Following this, he completed a master of letters on the Gothic imagination at the University of Stirling in 2019. He is currently a master's student in English at Central Michigan University on the lookout for opportunities to gain teaching experience. His research interests include the Gothic from the late eighteenth century to the present, cinema and broadcast cultures in Britain and Ireland, theories of haunting and spectrality, epistemology, landscape studies, and spatial theory.Kelly L. Bezio is associate professor of English at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, where her research and teaching intersect with and inform the fields of cultural studies, biopolitical theory, American literature before 1900, critical race studies, literature and science, and health humanities. Her interdisciplinary scholarship foregrounds how insights from the past help... You do not currently have access to this content.

‘… sure to delight every ballet fan’: Consuming ballet culture through girls’ periodical Girl, 1952–60

This article focuses on the ways that ballet was presented for girl readers to consume in Girl (Hulton Press, 1952–64). Girl was a weekly publication, part of girls’ periodical culture in Britain, which was thriving in the 1950s and 1960s. The ballet content it contained was one aspect of the growing British cultural engagement with ballet in the mid-twentieth century. This broader engagement included watching films and attending performances. In addition, for younger participants, especially girls, this may have been accompanied by participation in ballet classes and reading ballet fiction and non-fiction. Girl encompasses all these forms of engagement with ballet through key fictional comic strip ‘Belle of the Ballet’, photographs of performances, pin-ups featuring dancers and paintings about ballet, articles and non-fiction companion volumes. Arnold Haskell, significant in changing how ballet was understood in Britain, was also involved with content in Girl. This connection resulted in readers having the opportunity to compete for an annual ballet scholarship and participate in ballet lessons. In exploring ballet in Girl, the article draws together considerations of how ballet practice, costume, other media involving ballet and dancers’ street clothes were portrayed and the ways that class, ballet and girls’ culture were intertwined.

The Politics of Unpolitics

AbstractScholars of populism have suggested that it might best be described as ‘unpolitical’, rather than apolitical or anti‐political. This term captures the populist claim to stand morally above the sphere of politics (which it deems inherently corrupting), while being simultaneously drawn to engage in it. But such ambivalence towards politics is not limited to populist actors; indeed, ‘unpolitics’ might be considered intrinsic to British political culture. Most obviously, Conservatives historically portrayed themselves as unsullied by ideology, above party competition, and deriving their values from embodied experience rather than political reasoning. But, while traditional Conservative unpolitics emphasised hierarchy, new anti‐deferential forms of unpolitics emerged in the postwar period. These were based on claims to be ‘ordinary’, which was defined in opposition to the ‘political’ in ways that made the latter seem necessarily illegitimate. Focussing on unpolitics shows that populism grew out of mainstream British political culture, as well as in opposition to it.

‘Skip the warts’: Personal Branding and Pornification inThe Look of Love

As the owner of the Raymond Revuebar in Soho and as publisher of pornographic magazines, British businessman and property magnate Paul Raymond had a lasting impact on British culture. The Look of Love seeks to assess that impact in its dramatisation of his life. The biopic locates Raymond as an early exponent of ‘personal branding’ via scenes which depict his flair for public relations and his crafting of a public image emphasising wealth and luxury. It also critiques this process, suggesting that his commitment to personal branding leads him to commodify those closest to him, among them his former wife, girlfriend and daughter. Where typically the juxtaposition between the public and private self has been utilised in biopics in order to convey a figure’s personality, The Look of Love exploits actor Steve Coogan’s associations with impersonation to rework this convention: the film suggests that even in supposedly private moments, Raymond was always seeking to impress an audience via his recreations of iconic film characters. But just as Raymond is represented as committed to this branding project, exploiting those around him to consolidate it, the film itself commits to this version of his life at the expense of others: namely, how Raymond’s ventures and activities were critical in what has been called the developing ‘pornification’ of British society. It is telling that the film includes a sequence in which Raymond instructs a prospective female model to ‘skip the warts’ when recounting her life story: there are warts which the film itself leaves unexamined.

Scripting the Nation: Court Poetry and the Authority of History in Late Medieval Scotland by Katherine H. Terrell

Reviewed by: Scripting the Nation: Court Poetry and the Authority of History in Late Medieval Scotland by Katherine H. Terrell Joanna M. Martin katherine h. terrell, Scripting the Nation: Court Poetry and the Authority of History in Late Medieval Scotland. Interventions: New Studies in Medieval Culture. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2021. Pp. viii, 232. isbn: 978–0–8142– 1462–6. $99.95/£94.95. Katherine Terrell’s Scripting the Nation is a detailed, engaging, and authoritative account of the relationship between late medieval Scottish historiography and courtly poetry. This book takes a fresh approach to the well-established subject of Anglo-Scottish literary relations by considering how these two apparently distinct strands of Scotland’s literary culture interweave with one another and with analogous English traditions to define a sense of Scottish nationhood. Terrell observes that ‘the very nature of a border implies a relationship between sides; borders are points of interaction as well as separation’ (p. 49), and the monograph skilfully maps the appropriation and repudiation of English sources in the development of the two Scottish genres. Her detailed account covers chronicle literature composed in the aftermath of the ‘Wars of Independence’ (1279–1328, 1332–1357), in which Scotland’s political integrity was constantly under threat from English aggression, and the vernacular verse of the early sixteenth century, composed before the defeat of James IV by the English at the Battle of Flodden in 1513. The first three chapters of this book focus on the development of Scottish historiography and its methods of shaping, and indeed ‘actively promoting,’ national identity and ‘Scotland’s political destiny’ (p. 10). Chapter One considers the patronage of historiography as England and Scotland embarked on an ideological battle to define their borders. This chapter shows how English and Scottish records of the past were ‘interdependent’ (p. 14): Scotland’s chroniclers set about refuting the narratives of their English forebears by also co-opting their rhetorical strategies in an act of ‘writing back’ (p. 4). Terrell also argues for the prominence of the ‘genealogical mode . . . in Scottish historical writing, which, like much medieval history writing is often more concerned with the present-day uses of the past than with establishing an accurate record of past events’ (p. 35), and later in the study she identifies these same genealogical tropes in Older Scots courtly poetry. Chapter Two explores the influence of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s narratives of national origin in his Historia Regum Brittanie on Scottish historians, including Baldred Bisset and John of Fordun. Terrell shows how Fordun, in his Chronica Gentis Scotorum, negotiates the contradictions of his English sources and challenges their authority, much in the way that Robert Henryson, an important link between the scholastic tradition of the chroniclers and Older Scots verse, does in his critical evaluation of Chaucer’s authority in Testament of Cresseid. Chapter Three is an exploration of Walter Bower’s influential Scotichronicon, an expansion of Fordun’s text, which Terrell characterises as ‘a compendium of Scottishness that will facilitate nationalist sentiment’ amongst his readers (p. 80). After this comprehensive guide to the development of nationalist sentiment in Scottish history writing, Chapter Four turns to Older Scots vernacular literature and the often-paradoxical relationship to English texts it shares with Scotland’s Latin chronicle tradition. She explores the increasingly ‘grandiose’ (p. 94) nationalistic [End Page 106] claims made by the authors of vernacular offshoots from Bower’s Scotichronicon, such as the Scottis Originale, and the dynamics created by their co-existence in manuscript anthologies such as the Asloan Manuscript with texts of English origin or those which express enthusiasm for the Chaucerian tradition: ‘the result is a curious dichotomy, in which English culture is both denounced and venerated’ (p. 101). Chapters Five to Seven turn to the most technically brilliant of the Scottish poets, William Dunbar and Gavin Douglas. Identifying the shared concerns of poets and chroniclers with ‘ancestral’ narratives (p. 128), Terrell offers detailed and perceptive close readings of many of Dunbar’s poems. She suggests convincingly that Dunbar’s poetry mirrors the tensions at the heart of James IV’s reign as the Anglophile impulses of his court were tempered by deteriorating relations with Henry VIII...

Brazen as Falstaff, Devious as Iago: Sir Ralph Lane's Approach to Holding Office in Ireland and Virginia

AbstractMuch has been made of the ideological connection between the mental world of servitors in Elizabethan Ireland and the origins of early English colonial endeavor in North America. In this vein, the case of Sir Ralph Lane, the first governor of the Roanoke colony and, later, muster-master general of Ireland, would seem to present a historiographically promising test case, one that might not only link Ireland and the Roanoke Colony but also could show, following recent suggestions, how attitudinal, behavioral, and aspirational commonalities existed between early modern English military culture and the ethos of early English colonial endeavor. Lane's record on both sides of the Atlantic, however, rather than painting a picture of the applicability of martial virtue and military discipline at times of crisis, demonstrates instead the stark reality of the impulsive and appetitive culture of the garrison in the Elizabethan period and its corrosive effects. Lane's remarkable capacity for corruption, willful mismanagement, and wily self-defense in an Irish context in fact amplifies and complements troubling tendencies that scholars have recently detected in Lane's famous discourse of his government in what was commonly termed Virginia printed in Hakluyt's Principal Navigations. Lane can indeed serve as an emblem of common features shared by Elizabethan Englishmen drawn to office in Ireland and Elizabethan/Jacobean Englishmen drawn to settle in Virginia, but largely because of his mendacity, venality, and irresponsibility.

Clare A. Simmons. Medievalist Traditions in Nineteenth-Century British Culture: Celebrating the Calendar Year. Medievalism 20. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2021. Pp. 238. $99.00 (cloth).

Clare A. Simmons. Medievalist Traditions in Nineteenth-Century British Culture: Celebrating the Calendar Year. Medievalism 20. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2021. Pp. 238. $99.00 (cloth). - Volume 62 Issue 2

VANITY FAIRIN RUSSIAN: TO THE 175 TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FIRST PUBLICATION

The article examines four Russian translations of Thackeray’s Vanity Fair: the early translation by Irinarkh Vvedenskii; the translations made by V. Stein and L. Gay at the turn of the century, and the translation by Mikhail Dyakonov published in 1933-1934. The latter, canonical for Russian culture, was published with a commentary by Gustav Speth in the Academiapublishing house. Different translation strategies are discussed: first, Vvedenskii’s strategy of coauthorship with the translated author, which is sometimes at odds with the intonation of the original. Secondly, Shtein’s and Gay’s aspiration to translate an acknowledged classic ‘word for word’, resulting in obscure expressions and syntactic structures. And finally, Dyakonov’s foreignizing, philologically accurate approach. As can be seen on the material of Dyakonov’s letters to the proofreaders of Academia, syntactically and phonetically foreignizing translation is his conscious strategy. It is noted that the corrections made by the editors M. Lorie and R. Galperina in 1953 and 1968 are mostly insignificant: they incorporate stylistic equivalents, strive for syntactic simplicity and remove ambiguity of certain expressions; besides, Lorie translates charactonyms in a later edition. The article also focuses on Shpet’s scholarly commentary, which has not been republished since his arrest in 1937. Unlike footnotes in later editions, Speth’s commentary primarily clarifies the function of a particular detail. The analysis demonstrates that Dyakonov’s translation method and Speth’s approach to the commentary require intellectual effort from the reader and are aimed at a deep understanding of English culture.

Emma Hanna. Sounds of War: Music in the British Armed Forces During the Great War.

When Joan Littlewood and the Theatre Workshop staged Oh! What a Lovely War in 1963, combining wartime soldier’s songs with an end-of-pier music hall staging, they hit on an important truth about the British experience during the Great War: it was a war suffused with music. It is perhaps ironic that the frequently negative reaction by military historians to this production may have held back serious study of this important topic. But Emma Hanna has admirably addressed the resulting gap in Sounds of War. British musical culture in 1914 had reached perhaps a high point for diversity and ubiquity. From promenade concerts to front-parlor pianos, church choirs to folk song revivalists, colliery bands to tea dances, and with the gramophone industry taking off to democratize the audience, it could be argued the role of quotidian music had never been greater. The armed forces were extremely active participants in this culture, with bands performing at parades and in bandstands across the UK. Interestingly, there was considerable concern in 1914 that the standards of military music were in decline. Mobilization posed further problems; army bandsmen doubled as stretcher-bearers, and when they were sent to the front this led to difficulties for military bands on the home front. Almost immediately this was seen as a problem for stirring up the requisite martial emotions at recruiting meetings and for fund-raising drives.

James Epstein and David Karr. British Jacobin Politics, Desires, and Aftermaths: Seditious Hearts.

James Epstein and David Karr have over many years produced some of the finest analyses of late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century British radical political culture, with an emphasis on the way such culture is manifested in performance, bodily gesture, and space. In British Jacobin Politics, Desires, and Aftermaths, they bring together much of that material, alongside several new essays, to offer a wide-ranging analysis of how we might “read the stirrings of the ‘Jacobin’ heart” (1), both in the reform debate of the 1790s and in its aftermath. Epstein and Karr do not interrogate the stated aims of the players in this debate. Instead, they analyze the concept of British Jacobinism by attending to the “effervescent sense of possibility” in the affective practices and proclamations of the reform movement (1). They note that “seditious desire was inchoate, half-formed, shouted across tavern tables, muttered in private conversations, chalked on walls” (1). Such practices pose a challenge to analysis, and Epstein and Karr “accept a certain provisionality as we try to get at that which is in excess of words” (5). But they respond to this challenge through a focus on performance and on space. They explore “Jacobin” engagement with what they term “serious play,” which was a response to government restriction and repression, but which also “involved creative experimentation in modes of political action and identification” (4). And in the book’s chapters, they trace such “play” through physical spaces, “sites of articulation and feeling—the club room, lecture hall, mass outdoor meeting, theater, tavern, coffeehouse, street, chapel, courtroom, prison, convict ship, as well as the imagined space of America … and the experience of exile in New South Wales” (5–6).