English Tradition Research Articles

Представление о душе и теле в древнеанглийской традиции

The author examines the 10 th century ancient English poem Soul and Body through the prism of the soul, spirit and body in the Old English tradition, which has survived in two versions. The first, which was part of the poetry book Exeter Book, is a short version of the conversion of the unfortunate soul to the flesh. The second version is an expanded version of the poem, listed in the Vercelli Book along with Christian sermons and poems, also represents the con- version of the tormented soul to the flesh, as well as a monologue of the saved soul. However, unfortunately, the speech of the redeemed soul was not fully preserved due to damage to the Vercelli Book collection. This article provides an author's translation of the second version of the poem. The article focuses on the dualism of René Descartes. Thus, an extended version of the Old English poem Soul and Body precedes the dualism of René Descartes, whose main ideas are the duality of the ideal and the material, the independence of the soul and body. The philosophy of René Descartes is to accept a common source – God as the creator who forms these two independent principles that we find in this poem. The spirit, as shown in the work, is the divine principle in man, created in the image and likeness of God, and appears as the highest part of the soul, and the soul, in turn, is the immortal spiritual principle. In the framework of the Judeo- Christian culture, a central doctrine of the presence of the soul arose, suggesting the elevation of man over all other living beings due to the presence of it. According to religious ideology, a person’s position in the dolly and mountain worlds directly depends on the purity of the believer’s soul, on his refusal from sinful thoughts and deeds. As soon as the Judeo-Christian teaching is fixed as the main religion, a person endowed with a soul is considered as the only ration- al creature created in the image and likeness of God. The existence of the soul is not limited only to the Judeo-Christian idea of the world around us, for example, the Quran also contains the idea of the unity of man and soul, and, undoubtedly, the soul of a righteous Muslim ascends to heaven after death.

Fitting Memorials for Seamus Heaney: Irish Poets’ Elegies and Elegiac Tributes

Fitting Memorials for Seamus Heaney: Irish Poets’ Elegies and Elegiac Tributes Joseph Heininger (bio) To say death is regrettable is only saying something about death, but to communicate that feeling is saying something about life. bernard o’donoghue In a remarkable gift of literary and cultural enrichment, many Irish poets have written elegies and elegiac poems for Seamus Heaney. His death on August 30, 2013, in Dublin was mourned throughout the world, and in response, Irish poets have written memorable elegies. Rather than adhere closely to elegy’s traditional conventions, however, Irish poets have reshaped the genre’s forms and techniques so that greater breadth, depth, and thematic reach distinguish their elegies. Among these poets are Michael Longley, Kerry Hardie, Theo Dorgan, Eamon Grennan, Paddy Bushe, Mark Roper, Bernard O’Donoghue, Sean Lysaght, and Leontia Flynn. I have selected their elegies because they offer significant perspectives on the art of contemporary Irish elegists. Each poet memorializes Seamus Heaney by remaking elegiac conventions in innovative and varied ways. Outstanding elegies have also been written by Michael Coady, John F. Deane, Katie Donovan, Thomas McCarthy, Ignatius McGovern, Medbh McGuckian, Paul Muldoon, and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, among others. Before examining some of the Irish elegies, I shall discuss the critical contexts for my inquiry. In The English Elegy, Peter Sacks points out the traditional subjects and forms for elegy: wanting to deny the fact of death; praise for the person’s attributes and virtues; pastoral or antipastoral imagery; personal lament and spoken loss; communal mourning and rituals of lamentation; and use of the pathetic fallacy.1 The contributors to The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics also state: “Traditionally, the functions of the elegy were three, to lament, praise, and console. All are responses to the experience of loss: lament, by expressing grief and deprivation; praise, by idealizing the deceased and preserving her or [End Page 105] his memory among the living; and consolation, by finding solace in meditation on natural continuances or on moral, metaphysical, and religious values.”2 Historically, after John Milton’s “Lycidas” and Alfred Tennyson’s “In Memoriam,” the English elegy may or may not address whether hope or consolation can be found amidst grief and shaken faith, or lost faith. This difficulty in finding any kind of consolation or hope is also true of the contemporary Irish elegy. The traditional elegiac conventions are incorporated in many Irish elegies but with an emphasis on Irish features, genealogies, and idioms. Whether in Irish or English, Irish elegies demonstrate elegy’s importance in expressing what Eavan Boland and Mark Strand designate as a “cultural grief ” together with private grief: “In the traditional elegy, the grief the poet expresses is rarely a private one. More often, it is a cultural grief. . . . That the elegy speaks to this, that it locates the cultural customs of death in whichever society it occurs, adds greatly to its power.”3 In his influential study of Heaney’s elegies, Jahan Ramazani positions the work of several Irish poets: “While questioning, analyzing, and even attacking the elegy’s major subgenres and conventions, Heaney—together with such Irish contemporaries as John Montague, Michael Longley, and Derek Mahon—energetically reclaims them for our time.”4 I endorse the idea that “the best elegies will always be sites of struggle between custom and decorum on the one hand, and private feeling on the other.” I do not agree, however, with the contention that Heaney and his contemporaries attack and subvert elegy’s conventions and subgenres; this critical position overstates the case. Peter Sacks concludes his study with a discussion of W. B. Yeats’s “In Memory of Major Robert Gregory.” He places Yeats within the English tradition, yet his study also prompts the question whether Yeats’s elegy belongs instead to an Irish tradition of cultural elegy and lamentation. Yeats invokes John Synge and George Pollexfen as Irish exemplars akin to Robert Gregory, and hews to English tradition by holding up the image of Robert Gregory to his Renaissance likeness, Sir Philip Sidney: “our Sidney and our perfect man.” Yeats’s poem accommodates personal lamentation and cultural elegy, and this joint impetus shows the excellence of the modern Irish elegy...

Chinese Anthologies of American Literature, Multiculturalism, and Cultural Import-Export

Chinese Anthologies of American Literature, Multiculturalism, and Cultural Import-Export Qin Dan (bio), Joe Lockard (bio), and Shih Penglu (bio) Discussions of the anthology genre need to emphasize the genre's scale of importance. Understanding the centrality of the anthology genre as a foreign language and cultural teaching vehicle can illuminate that importance. For many non-native readers encountering English or American literatures, the anthology is either the basic or an exclusive means of access, using selected short texts or excerpts rather than complete novels, dramas, or non-fiction prose volumes. For these readers, a literature anthology replaces the variety of texts that native English speakers would ordinarily employ in their studies. The anthology genre mediates foreign-ness to readers for whom English-language narrative is alien. The importance of anthologies grows as the likelihood of classroom exposure to a wider range of literature diminishes. Theoretical discussions have addressed American literature anthologies as artifacts of nationalism, racial exclusion, gender discrimination, and their interrelationships (Lockard and Sandell 2008). These editorial ideologies emerged in the context of the use of anthologies by Americans attempting to define, assemble and explicate their own literary traditions. Yet today "to discuss the 'American-ness' of American literature is to discuss minority discourse of the United States" (Lockard and Sandell 2008, 230). Contemporary American literature anthologies have paid particular attention to cultural groups that have been denied citizenship or equal rights, have been economically or socially marginalized, or have been suppressed by means of law. These anthologies range from the first African American literature anthology, The Book of American Negro Poetry (1922) edited by James Weldon Johnson, to Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar's foundational Norton Anthology of Literature by Women: The English Tradition (1985), to early compendia of gay literature such as Winston Leyland's Angels of the Lyre: A Gay Poetry Anthology (1975). U.S. literature anthologies are not only for domestic readers: they are created, published, read, heavily used, and exert influence far beyond the [End Page 277] borders of the United States. What is the relationship between U.S.-published American literature anthologies and those published elsewhere in the world? Is this a heavily dependent relationship, copying prevailing organization and selections of standard American literature anthologies, or is it a more autonomous relationship that adapts, explicates, and shines a different ideological light over the landscape of American literatures? As with so much U.S. culture, have American literature anthologies become a product that replicates American cultural self-positioning and values? Might there be a reflexive reception through which these anthologies are re-invented to mediate both Chinese and U.S. cultures? Anthologies are the primary and often exclusive vehicle for American literature studies in China. Virtually all these anthologies are edited and published domestically, and few if any U.S.-published anthologies are employed in university classrooms. There are two classes of American literature anthologies—a) "indigenous" anthologies published locally, and b) anthologies from trade publishers or UPes. Anthologization practices in China are complicated by use of the term "English" to cover both English and American literatures and by creation of mixed American-English anthologies. Frequently a mixed anthology contains near-entirely American literature, or even in the case of Hong Zengliu's American Fiction: The Canons of British and American Literature (2003), contains only American literature despite the appearance of "British" in the title. We shall discuss this second class in terms of both entirely American literature anthologies and mixed American-English anthologies. The frequent collapse of a distinction between "American" and "British" literature indicates a destabilization of these national categories in "English" anthologies published in China. After reviewing the modern history of Chinese anthologies of American literature and their editorial ideologies, we will discuss selected examples as they relate to multiculturalism. We will conclude with a theorization of the uses of U.S.-style multiculturalism in Chinese-produced anthologies of American literature. The argument that will emerge, broadly phrased, is that Chinese anthologies of American literature tell us as much or more about China as they do about the United States or American literature. The present study locates itself within the context of Chinese-U.S. comparative studies, especially as they...

«Тень ночи» Харрисона Бёртуисла: поэтика композиции

The article is devoted to one of the most notable music pieces written by the British composer Harrison Birtwistle; it belongs to the late period of his activity as a composer (written in 2001). The composer decided to write a preface to this piece where he explained his main ideas and this fact served as a starting point for research on the techniques used by the composer in this composition. The key idea of the piece is the multiple interpretation of the melancholy phenomenon which is shown in different aspects such as “Melencolia” by Albrecht Durer, interpreted by a number of outstanding philosophers. British Barock tradition is represented by the poetic “School of Night” and one of its members, George Chapman who has written a poem “Shadow of night” which has given its name to the composition by Birtwistle. Another Barock author, composer John Dowland composed a song“In darkness let me dwell” which became a source of melodic element in Birtwistle`s composition. This element is developed in different ways and is included in such phenomenae as “processional” form, melodic “line”, preference of different ostinato figures, drones, orchestration as a means of articulating the development of form, rhythmic variations, post-serial twelve-tone technique. Analysis of Birtwistle`s “Shadow of night” appears for the first time in Russian music theory and it reveals the main features of late Birtwistle`s style: the deep interest to melancholy as a multifaceted phenomenon designating not only sorrowful images and dark mood but also revealing its link to the inner source of creative power, “the humor of the night”.

Творчество П. Г. Вудхауза и западноевропейская литература XX века

P. G. Wodehouse is one of the most distinguished representatives of the British comic tradition and the most widely acclaimed British humorist of the 20th century. His contribution, however, goes beyond humorous literature. The article shows that Wodehouse’s creativity is not limited to entertainment alone and explores how his works influenced the 20th century Western European literature. The study is an analysis of a complete corpus of prosaic texts by P. G. Wodehouse and E. Waugh. Researchers usually provide a brief comparison of the two writers refereeing to Waugh’s essay about Wodehouse’s books. Waugh was the first to draw attention to the originality of Wodehouse’s fictional world for the 20th century literature. The article is the first attempt to provide a detailed comparative analysis of the two authors. The results indicate a certain creative interaction between the two. Both of them kept track of each other’s work, their fictional worlds were in interplay. Both Wodehouse and Waugh wrote about the “bright young things”, however, explored the subject differently. The article concludes that the novels by Waugh are the satire on the dying British aristocratic culture, whereas Wodehouse writes about “timeless” characters. The article considers the role of allusions to Wodehouse’s novels in the works by Waugh and vice versa. The article provides evidence that Waugh alludes to Wodehouse’s texts to add tragedy to his works. The episodes and figures Wodehouse uses to create a comic effect or share the joie de vivre, are used by his counterpart to confirm the absurdity of reality, shallowness of high society, evidence of the decay of the classic British culture.

The Fabulous Journeys of Alice and Pinocchio: Exploring Their Parallel Worlds by Laura Tosi with Peter Hunt

Reviewed by: The Fabulous Journeys of Alice and Pinocchio: Exploring Their Parallel Worlds by Laura Tosi with Peter Hunt Jan Susina (bio) The Fabulous Journeys of Alice and Pinocchio: Exploring Their Parallel Worlds. By Laura Tosi with Peter Hunt. McFarland, 2018. Books speak to other books, both consciously and unconsciously. I frequently pair the reading of texts whose themes or plots overlap: Louisa May Alcott's Little Women and Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer; Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz; and Heinrich Hoffmann's Struwwelpeter and Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. But, although I often include both Alice and Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio in a history of children's literature course, it has never occurred to me to pair these two novels. After reading Laura Tosi's study that is intended to be "a critical narrative and a parallel reading of two classics, which records mutual interests and avenues of exploration between and across diverse linguistic, historical, and national borders of England and Italy" (2), such a pairing now appears obvious to me. The most useful aspects of this study lie in Tosi's carefully examination of Pinocchio, drawing upon her own scholarship as well as that of other Italian scholars not previously translated into English. As an Italian children's literature scholar, Tosi spends about sixty percent of the book examining Pinocchio and the other forty percent focusing on Alice. While Peter Hunt's name also appears in the title, he contributes just two short sections to this volume—the first in chapter 2, detailing how Alice and Pinocchio function as gendered children's books, and the second in chapter 4, discussing the use of fairies by Carroll, Collodi, George MacDonald, and Charles Kingsley—and in the Appendix his own quirky contemporary fairy tale, "The Strange Meeting in Wonder-Tuscany," in which he imagines the meeting of these two famous protagonists. Tosi acknowledges that Alice and Pinocchio differ in many ways, including their literary sources, authorial intentions, and the widely differing political and cultural backgrounds of the authors, yet she makes compelling claims for similarities between the two distinctive texts. Both books were written by eccentric bachelors who [End Page 192] published under pen names, and both were intended for a dual audience of children and adults. Building on the work of Ann Lucas Lawson, who has previously written on the similar nature of the authors' biographies, their frequent use of talking animals, and the pivotal use of courtroom scenes, Tosi argues that the books are also similar in their structure and composition: both are episodic wanderings of a protagonist who is confronted by a series of odd and somewhat threatening creatures during their travels. Curiously, both authors constructed the stories in two distinct sections. While Carroll intended Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass to be separate texts, the strong interlocking and mirroring of characters and episodes between the two volumes has led many publishers and makers of film adaptations to blend them into a single text. Similarly, Collodi produced Pinocchio in two distinct stages. Pinocchio I, initially published in the children's magazine Giornale dei bambini in 1881, originally ended with what is now chapter 15, which features the protagonist's gruesome death. At the request of the magazine's readers, Pinocchio II begins with his revival and chronicles his continuing struggle to become a real boy. Both texts are strongly influenced by the fairy tale and fantasy tradition. In addition, each is lauded as a national literary icon; Alice is considered stereotypically British and Pinocchio is viewed as an embodiment of Italian culture. Both texts are highly theatrical in nature, with Alice being influenced by the British pantomime tradition and Pinocchio growing out the world of puppetry. Alice and Pinocchio experience unexpected and grotesque body changes; after eating, Alice grows either too tall or too short for her environment and experiences an elongated neck, while Pinocchio is famous for his nose that grows when he tells lies. Metamorphosis occurs in both books, with the Duchess's baby transformed into a pig in Alice's arms, and...

Exploring Criteria for the Inclusion of Trademarks in General Language Dictionaries of Modern Greek

This paper explores the inclusion of genericized trademarks that have made their way into Greek dictionaries. Genericized trademarks constitute a special type of neologism, balancing between non-lexical and lexical, between "proper" and "common". Although the goal of creating a brand name is to make a specific product easily recognizable by distinguishing it from the rest of its kind, the trademark might become so well-known and widely used that it starts denoting all similar products, becomes part of the general vocabulary and gains lemma status in dictionaries. Given the fact that very little, if any, documentation exists on the subject, be it publicized lexicographic policies, style guides, or any references in the relevant literature, the main aim of the article is to explore some of the criteria by which such items have made their way into dictionaries of Modern Greek. First, an overview of genericized trademarks and brand names in Modern Greek dictionaries is presented. Then, based on the etymological information in the dictionaries, the paper investigates now many genericized trademarks are borrowed by other languages compared to Greek and which these languages are. The list of all these items is cross-checked against two different corpora to compare the frequency of their lexical use to that of their non-lexical use. Finally, the article attempts to test whether the main criteria used in the English lexicographic tradition to differentiate the two forms of use also apply in the case of Modern Greek.

The Routledge Research Companion to the History of Evangelicalism

Relatively neglected before the late 1980s, the historiography of evangelicalism, one of the world's largest religious movements, has burgeoned over the last three decades. Given the proliferation of articles, collections, and monographs on the subject, an enterprise that seeks to chart the field and set out proposals for future lines of enquiry is particularly welcome. The volume comprises a total of sixteen essays, mostly by established scholars, grouped in broad thematic sections with the first five concerned with key features of evangelicalism: evangelical identities, the Bible, the cross, spirituality, and revival and revivalism. This is followed by a group of essays on evangelical encounters with the ‘other’: Rome, Eastern Christianity, Islam, and evangelical mission in both the Atlantic North and the Global South. Finally, there is a group of essays on the relationship of evangelicalism to a range of social and cultural themes: the end of the world, race, gender, culture and the arts, money and business, and globalization.All of these essays represent thoughtful contributions to the existing literature. Thus, the essay on identity, for example, seeks not to add a further definition of evangelicalism to an already overcrowded field but to trace the main contours of the debate and analyse some of the reasons why this issue is so often and so fiercely disputed. It concludes by pointing to the explosion of evangelicalism in the Global South as inevitably generative of new questions and new forms of contestation. A number of authors make notably creative use of the opportunities offered by their topics. The essay on the Bible, for example, eschews a rehearsal of the familiar debates around inerrancy in favour of an emphasis on the centrality of the Bible to evangelical faith and its popular appropriation both directly and through the medium of hymns and songs. Similarly, the essay on culture and the arts avoids a catalogue of evangelical attitudes by genre and instead offers an illuminating analysis of evangelical encounters with the arts and evangelical cultural production according to the contexts in which they occurred: the home, the church, in evangelism, and in wider society. If a general theme emerges from this body of work it is the complexity of the phenomena under consideration, the unhelpfulness of the stereotypes by which evangelicalism is commonly interpreted both by insiders and outsiders, and the need to understand its development among multiple axes frequently defying generalization and always demanding nuance in any attempt at characterization.Given the treasure on offer in this volume it may seem churlish to ask for more, but at least two topics are unrepresented here: evangelicalism and politics and evangelicalism and the body have a salience that clearly calls for similarly thoughtful treatment and might be included in a later edition. A more serious reservation concerns the strong North Atlantic focus of the majority of the writing. To some extent this is inevitable given the origins of the movement and the historical approach intrinsic to the volume, but given the transformation of evangelicalism since the mid-twentieth century into a movement principally located in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, it is surprising that essays focused on evangelical complexity should so largely exclude the ramifications of this expansion. In a handful of cases this has a potentially significant impact on the analysis offered. The conclusion, for example, that ‘Wealth for the evangelical is always likely to remain ambiguous’ (266), derived principally from a survey of the British tradition, would surely be subject to reappraisal given the powerful themes of health and prosperity characteristic of much evangelicalism in the Global South. However, these criticisms do not detract from the achievement of this volume, which should be regarded as essential reading for anyone who wishes to think afresh and creatively about the history of this dynamic and protean form of Christianity.

КАНАДСКАЯ ПОЛИТИЧЕСКАЯ КУЛЬТУРА В ОЦЕНКЕ КАНАДСКОГО ФИЛОСОФА ДЖ.П. ГРАНТА

The article discusses contemporary approaches to the study of political culture in Russia and North America. The main theories of Canadian political culture's genesis in American and Canadian research are specified. The author analyzes Grant’s views on the development of Canadian political culture and their difference from the views of L. Hartz, S.M. Lipset, and I. McKay. The article presents the main ideas of Grant on Canadian nationalism, identity, nation and state's evolution, as well as perspectives of Canadian society in the second half of the 20 th century. Along with the American political scientist S.M. Lipset, who expressed his opinions about the differences between Canadian and American nations, Grant justified those differences in the context of historically determined British traditions in Canada and the objective biculturalism of the bilingual Canadian nation. During the crisis of Canadian liberal tradition, Grant expressed valuable thoughts about the technology's role in the life of contemporary society. The author criticizes his ideas about the Continentalism policy, which was actively developed in Canada after the Second World War. It is concluded that, in his works on the development of Canadian political culture, the evolution of Canadian culture, nation and state, J.P. Grant outstripped the ideas of his contemporaries – Canadian and American scholars, although he expressed many predictions in hyperbolic form.

Differences between automotive and traffic terms in England and the United States

The subject of this research is the different automotive and traffic terms in the English language from the perspective of their variance. The article explores the similarities and differences between the terms of the topic group “Automobile Transportation” in the British and American variants of the modern English language. Special attention is given to the etymology of the terminological units in questions. On the examined examples of terminology, it can be observed that some basic concepts carry national arrangement within the American and British tradition of formation of terminology. For selection of language material, this article utilizes such sources as The Oxford English Dictionary, The Dictionary of Transport and Logistics, Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners, Oxford Dictionary of Current English, Cambridge Dictionary Online, and Collins English Dictionary Online. The scientific novelty of this research is justified by the insufficient elucidation of the problem of territorial variance within the English language on the material of transportation terminology, which is a reflection of national perception of the surrounding world. The authors make a conclusion that despite the importance of the standardization and formalization processes, it is necessary to remember that terminology vastly reflects professional worldview.

La Femme Qui Lisait Des Romans Anglais by Sylvia Tabet

Reviewed by: La Femme Qui Lisait Des Romans Anglais by Sylvia Tabet Eilene Hoft-March Tabet, Sylvia. La femme qui lisait des romans anglais. Lattès, 2019. ISBN 978-2-7096-6058-7. Pp. 300. Jane Austen's title, Sense and Sensibility, names the dilemma of Tabet's protagonist, Juliet. Like Austen's Elinor, Juliet struggles with the question of marriage and whether her choice of partner should be determined by reason or emotion. Unlike all of Austen's heroines, Juliet is already twenty-five years into a happy, stable marriage with many of the accoutrements of success: children on the cusp of independence, a thriving and nourishing academic career, and a sensitive and solicitous partner. Her second-guessing about her life choices begins when she attends a professional conference in Rio that brings her in contact with a photojournalist, Jeremy. In this exotic Brazilian setting far from the national despondency and anxieties of post-Bataclan France, she finds Jeremy irresistible. Consequently, she fully contributes to the dalliance that lasts the duration of the conference. Once back in Paris, Juliet assumes that the amorous arrangement can continue as it began, without having to decide between the reasonable choice, François, and the romantic choice, Jeremy. (There are hints that having them both would give some kind of liberatory parity with men.) Jeremy, however, presses for exclusivity, promising not only exhilarating passion but constant adventure, this last confirmed by his new job assignment to Lebanon, where he wants Juliet to follow him. She hedges, seeking guidance in therapy and in literature, especially that of the novelists of English tradition (Austen, the Brontës, Hardy, Woolf, etc.). The book's a-chronological flashbacks and interior monologue reveal the various considerations poured into Juliet's agonized decision-making: her revisions of key memories, her methodical comparison of the two men and the lives associated with them, and the maternal "advice" she extrapolates from the notebook of literary quotes her mother kept. (Both Juliet's parents died in her youth, leaving her to make her own way as an adult.) Anxiety, perimenopause, grief, and the negative Zeitgeist around her contribute to this hardcore case of dithering. At times, readers need to keep a tight rein on the novel's chronology to be able to follow its seemingly endless tergiversations. This reader also found the insertion of extensive plot summaries of the beloved British authors something between pedantic and disruptive. On balance, later chapters pick up speed and emotional resonance. Possibly the most important aspect of this novel is its reminder that the life decisions of older adults are no less complicated than those of the young, compounded as they tend to be with histories, commitments, and dwindling opportunities. What would Jane Austen have had to say? [End Page 252] Eilene Hoft-March Lawrence University (WI) Copyright © 2020 American Association of Teachers of French

Music, Fable, and Fantasy: Thomas D’Urfey’s Wonders in the Sun and the Eighteenth-Century Political Animal

This article considers a strange, understudied work of eighteenth-century musical theatre, Thomas D’Urfey’s Wonders in the Sun (1706). This highly intertextual, generically heterogeneous comic opera is a pastiche of literary and performative modes and ultimately a machine for generating wonder; it draws on elements from Aristophanes’ The Birds, seventeenth-century masque and semi-opera, as well as the lunar fictions. The article situates this play not only within a history of literary wonder and stage spectacle, but within the English tradition of politicized animal fable. Discussing D’Urfey’s comic opera against selections from John Gay’s Fables, it argues that the utopian/dystopian animal in these imaginative satires reveals the period’s twinned fascinations with discovery and alterity, as well as emergent discomfiture with anthro- and Eurocentric Enlightenment beliefs.

THE ARTISTIC EMBODIMENT OF THE IMAGE OF ENGLAND IN THE «LETTERS TO ANOTHER ROOM» BY RAVIL BUKHARAYEV

The problem of the writer’s self-identification, especially of such a multifaceted one as Ravil Bukharayev, is closely connected with one of the topical problems of modern literary criticism and cultural studies – the problem of the Other. Ravil Raisovich Bukharayev (1951 - 2012) – a Tatar poet, writer, philosopher who wrote in Russian, lived for more than 20 years in England. In his work he demonstrates a new cultural situation, the ability to seamlessly apprehend the universal art culture, literature and worldview ideas from ancient times to the present day at the same time preserving his national and religious identity. The poetry by R. R. Bukharayev has repeatedly become the object of scientific research while the philosophical prose by R. R. Bukharayev is still waiting for his researcher. This article represents the experience of a scientific study of the artistic world of RR Bukharayev’s prose based on the example of his novel Letters to Another Room [1]. The results of our study suggest the following conclusions: The novel by R. R. Bukharayev “Letters to Another Room” presents the perception of England through the Other’s vision of it. R. R. Bukharayev representing himself as the Other in relation to the English tradition upends the preconceived idea of the English “gentleman” as the only bearer of the English literary and cultural tradition. Irony and self-irony help the narrator to isolate himself from Englishness of the created text: 1)The image of England in the novel by R. R. Bukharayev is ambiguous: on the one hand, the narrator found a real House with a wonderful garden, a place of rest and creativity in it, on the other – the author is far from idealizing English society. He seeks maximum objectivity in the artistic presentation of the image of England in his novel. 2)A distinctive feature of R. R. Bukharayev’s narrative is an integration of Russian and English realities in the text, which is manifested in comparisons of English everyday realities with memories of Russian life. In the minds of the author the images and associations connected with English and Russian literature and culture organically coexist.

The Romantic Grotesque of George Gordon Byron

The article explores the affi nities between Byron’s works with the seventeenth-century literary tradition of carnivalesque discourse. These affi nities can be traced in his comical burlesque writings, such as The Devil’s Drive (1813), Beppo (1818), The Vision of Judgement (1822) and Don Juan (1819–1824). There is a well-established British critical tradition which sees the author of Don Juan as a continuator of Alexander Pope’s eighteenth-century mock-heroic convention, but his use of the grotesque mode makes him the heir of Miguel de Cervantes or Francisco Quevedo. Byron’s literary identifi cation with the poetic style of the seventeenth-century baroque can be detected in his predilection for a comical deformation of characters, images and meanings. The poet uses the language of monstrosity and transgression to achieve political and religious provocation and to lure his reader into the world of a liberated language, freed from conventional connotations.

The Field of Life of Alexey Alexeevich Nikishenko

The article depicts the scientific biography of the former head of the Department of Ethnology of the Moscow State University Alexei Nikishenkov, one of the most prominent Russian ethnographers. The author investigates biographical data, the scientific approach, the role the field research played in the life of Nikishenkov and his activities at the Moscow State University as the head of the Department. The author draws attention to the fact that Nikishenkov conveyed the ideas and approaches of both Russian (Soviet) and British anthropological traditions as he had been studying the latter since late 1970s. His field research in Buryatia was clearly different from expeditions of other scientists: having conducted a series of field research there, he later returned there as a family member more than 10 times. Nikishenkov had raised a group of prominent scholars in Russia and the scientific heritage that he left has not been properly praised yet.

TOPONYMIC LEXIS AND METHODS OF ITS LINGUISTIC STUDY

Methods of the toponyms research - etymological, historical and formant - are analyzed diachronically and synchronically with the main emphasis on English tradition both linguistic and lexicographic. Ttraditional linguistics has several basic methods which are used in the study of toponyms: etymological, historical, formant, typological. Two of them, which can be considered as complementary, are etymological and historical, allow us to trace the genesis of toponyms, to identify the connection between toponyms and other layers of vocabulary. Historical method, in addition, provides an opportunity to gather information about the cultural and historical background behind the toponymic vocabulary. Format method is directed at the study of toponyms as elements of the lexical system, characterized by a certain structure, which constituent parts are differentiated by a number of specific features. Typological method serves as a means of studying for the toponyms complexity as a structured system. Etymological and historical methods for the study of place names remain relevant, which are explained not only by their importance for linguistic studies, but also by their relevance to other fields of science, such as history, ethnography, geography and cultural studies. The conducted research showed that the methods used in linguistics for toponymic vocabulary, especially in their complexity, give sufficiently complete information about the etymology of this lexicon category, including the structure and semantics. Thus, the study showed that the methods used in linguistics for studying toponymic vocabulary, especially in their totality, provided fairly complete information both about the etymology of this vocabulary category, and about structure and semantics.

‘[A] single, true, certain authenticity’: The authenticity wars in English twentieth-century folk and medieval music revivals

At intervals throughout the twentieth century, serious disputes about authentic musical values arose amongst performers, collectors, scholars, directors, reviewers, and audiences in the folk and medieval music spheres. Analysis of these controversies offers insights into the deep emotions, fantasies, and desires in arguments around authenticity in medievalism. This essay considers two examples of English musical revivalism, one exemplified by the folk song collector Cecil Sharp, the other by Christopher Page, the medieval literature and music scholar and director of music group Gothic Voices. In the writings of both men, emotional concerns about the purity of English musical traditions reveal the role music is given in the maintenance of English nationalism, and more generally in defending notions of identity and social order against feared sources of contamination.

The city and the beloved witness: Mapping cityscapes of Delhi in Agha Shahid Ali’s poetry

The reputation of Agha Shahid Ali, the Kashmiri-American poet, as a poet of exile is well established. Much of his poetry deals with themes of loss, lamentation, and longing where he speaks in a powerful voice about the plight of people of Kashmir. Shahid’s personal memories are not only of Kashmir but also of Delhi, the city where he was born, studied, taught, and published his first collection of poems. In his poems about Delhi he revisits both old Delhi and New Delhi: he roams around the city, listens to Qawwali at Saint Nizamuddin’s mausoleum, meets Muslim butchers, remembers his parents, remembers Shahjahan, and recites Bahadur Shah Zafar’s poem. This article investigates the representations and recollections of Delhi in Agha Shahid Ali’s poems and explores the city’s centrality in understanding socio-cultural history, the importance of particular individuals, and spatial specificity. It studies how the poet explores the city in relation to its languages, histories (the Rebellion of 1857, Partition, post-Partition), and cultures (Mughal and modern). I further investigate how Ali’s literary cartography of Delhi is influenced both by indigenous genres such as Shehr Ashob and the modern English poetic tradition, and how certain Indo-Islamic tropes become central to the poet’s literary memorialization of India’s capital city.

‘The Great Britain of the South’: the Law of Contract in Early Colonial New Zealand

Abstract Some nineteenth century writers like the Scottish born poet William Golder, used the term ‘the Great Britain of the south’ as a description of his new home. He was not alone in this characterisation. There were of course other possible perspectives, not least from the Māori point of view, which these British writers inevitably fail to capture. A third reality was more specific to lawyers or at least to those caught up in the legal system. The phrase ‘the Great Britain of the south’ fails to capture the complexity of the way that English law was applied in the early colony. The law administered throughout the British Empire reflected the common law origins of colonial legal systems but did not mean that the law was identical to that in England. Scholars have emphasised the adaptability of English law in various colonial settings. New Zealand contract law of this time did draw on some English precedents. The early lawyers were steeped in the English legal tradition. At the same time, English authorities were used with a light touch. The legal and social framework within which contract law operated was also quite different. This meant, for example, that mercantile juries were important in adapting the law to local conditions. Early New Zealand contract law provides a good example of both the importance of English law in a colonial setting and its adaptability.

Introduction: Debates on Experience and Empiricism in Nineteenth Century France

Introduction: Debates on Experience and Empiricism in Nineteenth Century France