Caius College Research Articles

Peter Jespersen Lyne

Awarded a classical scholarship at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, Peter Jespersen Lyne gained first class honours in part I of the national sciences tripos before completing …

Lord Cooke and Cambridge

This article seeks to explain the enduring formative influence that early life in Cambridge and at Gonville and Caius College exerted on Lord Cooke’s intellectual (and social) development. It suggests that his early experiences provided something of a platform which enabled Lord Cooke to take a leading part in the subsequent development of New Zealand’s separate legal identity.

The problem of the broken stick reconsidered

originally caUed the "Senate-House Examinations," after the name of the building in which they took place, and later they became known as the "Mathematical Tripos." Afterwards, the best solutions were published. The ensuing volumes can be found in the Rare Book Collections of the British Library in London and the University Library in Cambridge. In the morning session of January 18, 1854, there was posed [13, pp. 49-52] an elementary problem in geometrical probability that was destined to become a classic. The British call it "The Problem of the Broken Rod," whereas Americans refer to it as "The Problem of the Broken Stick." It says, "A rod is marked at random at two points, and then divided into three parts at these points; shew [sic] that the probability of its being possible to form a triangle with the pieces is 1/4." The exact value of the probability is of little interest, except possibly to numerologists. What is interesting is to see how various later authors, apparently unaware of the original formulation of the problem, reinterpreted what it means to break a stick "at random," and developed fresh methods to solve it. Be advised that I am employing the word "random" in the narrow technical sense used in probability and statistics to refer to any chance phenomenon that is governed by the uniform distribution over a suitable sample space. This usage was recommended by de Finetti [1, p. 152] and [2, p. 62], who was writing on the very topic of random division. However, even with such a restriction, there is more than one way to interpret what is meant by the term "random," depending on the identity of the sample space, just as in Bertrand's Paradox [3], [11]. I shall examine two of these interpretations in detail. Although the problem originated in England, it found its way to France, possibly with the aid of John Venn, wh o was enrolled as an undergraduate at Gonville and Caius College at the time. Presumably, he had taken the exam and done well on it, for he was awarded the title of "Mathematical Scholar" at his college later in the year. The first journal publication was in the founding volume of the Bull. Soc. Math. de France in 1875, written by t~mile Lemoine [6]. Lemoine formulated a discrete version of the problem by considering the rod as a measuring stick divided into equally spaced intervals and allowing the breaks to occur only at their endpoints. This gives rise to a finite number of outcomes, and he treated them in the traditional way, interpreting the word "random" as meaning that all trisections of the rod at a given scale are equally likely. He made tables and calculated the ratio of the number of favorable cases to the number of possible ones. Then he passed to the limit as the scale decreased to zero. In this way, he found the answer to be 1/4, in agreement with the Cambridge Examiners, whom he does not cite. Subsequently, several French mathematicians, including Lemoine himself [7], showed that the same answer could be obtained by formulating the problem directly in terms of the continuum and solving it by use of geometry. References can be found in [7] and [12]. They took as their sample space an equilateral triangle and interpreted the trilinear coordinates of a sample point as the lengths of the broken pieces, as in Figure 1. Relative area provides a uniform distribution of probability on the space. Thus, for them, random trisection of a rod amounted to choosing a point "at random" in the triangle.

John Anthony Seymour-Jones

John Anthony Seymour-Jones was born on the 7 April 1911 in Birmingham. His father was an ear, nose, and throat surgeon. After attending Shrewsbury Public School, he won a classics...

David Tabor. 23 October 1913 — 26 November 2005

David Tabor died in Cambridge on 26 November 2005. At the time of his death he was Emeritus Professor of Physics and an EmeritusFellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. He was a humane and gentle man, yet despite his modesty he was a formidable and respectedscientist. With Philip Bowden (FRS 1948), he laid the foundation for understanding friction and lubrication and the way in which contactingsurfaces interact. Both Bowden and Tabor had great physical insight and were empiricists who favoured the most direct and simple approach toproblems. They built up a research group that was interdisciplinary and motivated to basic research but with a flair to see the practical advantages of their research to industry. As individuals they would both have achieved much, but the way in which they integrated produced anexceptional ‘team’. There are many examples of the benefits of their collaboration. Their research started in Cambridge; during theWorld War II period they ran a laboratory in Melbourne, Australia, with both returning to Cambridge after the war. Initially, they were part ofthe Chemistry Department but left Physical Chemistry to become part of the Department of Physics in 1957, when Nevill Mott FRS was Head of Department. After Bowden's death in 1968, Tabor became Head of the Physics and Chemistry of Solids (PCS) Group as it was called, and remained Head until he retired in 1981. Tabor continued as an Emeritus Professor and researcher. In 1992, a new group (Polymers and Colloids) was founded and worked in the ‘Tabor Laboratory’. A visiting Professorship at Imperial College, London, continued and papers were produced up to 1998. He was, indeed, a scientist of great originality and versatility.

Aneignungen, Entfremdungen. The Austrian Playwright Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872) by Marianne Henn, Clemens Ruthner, Raleigh Whitinger

AUSTRIAN STUDIES l6 (20 8) 207 give us an Alltagsgeschichte of the court but they do document key moments of interaction between the Emperor, his higher officials and third parties of the most diverse kind. They also repeatedly underline the key role of the Obersthofmeisterin deciding which events were worthy of being recorded and in balancing the volatile microclimate of the court. In general the contributors confirm the established view that court ceremonial was diminished under Emperor Joseph II only to be revived under Leopold II and Francis II (I). In some ways things became even more elaborate after 1800 with the creation of the office of Oberzeremonienmeister.Some have seen this as the prelude to nothing more than the elaboration of ceremony for itsown sake. However, as Karin Schneider points out in a concluding survey of the nineteenth century, even less is known about the nineteenth-century court than about its earlymodern predecessor. It can only be hoped that this stimulating volume will inspire further attempts to decode the language of ceremonial and to ascertain its meaning in the political and social system of theHabsburg Monarchy. GONVILLE & CaIUS COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE JOACHIMWhALEY Aneignungen, Entfremdungen. TheAustnan PlayurrightFranzGrillparzer (1791-1872). Ed. byMarianne Henn, Clemens Ruthner and Raleigh Whitinger. New York: Peter Lang. 2007. + 141 pp. 47,70. isbn 978-0-8204-6375-9. The nine essays bymainly American and Austrian scholars were given as papers at a symposium held in 2004 at the University of Alberta, Canada. From the original theme of 'Inter/Nationalism' other lines of approach developed (academics, unlike their students, cannot be expected to adhere to a topic!) that are broadly encompassed by the title of the volume: Aneignung is understood in the context of Grillparzer's use of mythical and historical subject matter and also the often political message derived from his plays in different periods of theatrical history, whilst Entfremdung refers to Grillparzer's treatment of 'otherness', whether cultural, ethnic or in terms of gender. The essays on nationalism and stage productions most clearly relate to the original theme of the symposium. Dagmar Lorenz discusses Grillparzer's opposition to war and militarism and his belief in a multinational Habsburg state as an antidote to the concept of theGerman nation-state which, ironically, Laube in his period as director of the Burgtheater from 1849 to 1867 sought to foreground at the expense of Grillparzer's complex character portrayal and view of the unpredictability of historical developments. Clemens Ruthner attempts a postcolonial reading of encounters with an often barbaric 'other'; inGrillparzer's plays and travel journals attractive women are able to transcend any discussion of the barbaric (p. 63), although Jason's marriage toMedea is a nightmare vision of the possible consequences of any interplay of civilization and barbarism. In the essays on theatre history Johann H?ttner sketches the course of pro ductions in Habsburg Austria, while Evelyn Deutsch-Schreiner usefully reconsiders theways inwhich official views of the dramatist (Nazi or Aus trocen trie) coloured 2 8 AUSTRIAN STUDIES l6 (20 8) productions and robbed the plays of their ambiguity and vitality. In recent decades that situation has improved, with inner conflicts and confusions within the characters being highlighted in productions such as Thomas Langhoff s J?din (Salzburg, 1990/1, with Ulrich M?he as Alphons) or Martin Kusej's K?nig Ottokar (Salzburg, 2005, and subsequently at the Burgtheater). No doubt wisely, Deutsch-Schreiner chooses to ignore some of themore ludicrous manifestations of Regietheater in recent years. On a related note, Clifford Bernd uses Ottok?r to emphasize Grillparzer's sense of pageant and theatricality, even ifhis plays lack the dramatic clash of powerful characters. In other contributions Wolfgang M?ller-Funk contrasts LibussawiXh Brentano's Die Gr?ndung Prags as examples of 'the narrative matrix of gynaecocracy' (p. 72). William Reeve provides a Freudian analysis of sexual symbolism in Rustan's humiliating 'failure as aman' as his dream punishes him forhis 'repressed desire to kill his father' (pp. 129, 131). Katherine Arens seeks to present Das Kloster von Sendomir as a complex tale of political and historical allusions and literary intertextuality that allows a fourfold narratological approach: Grillparzer, she concludes, is 'realistic without being realist, historical...

Robert Brady's Intellectual History and Royalist Antipopery in Restoration England

The tory reaction of the early 1680s witnessed an assault by royalists on the intellectual genealogy of their opponents, tracing whig ideas to their Catholic and Calvinist roots. This attack was epitomized in Oxford University's anathematisation and burning of seditious books in 1683. It was also embodied in the additions made by Robert Brady, court physician and master of Caius College, Cambridge, to his True and Exact History of the Succession of 1681 when he republished it in 1684. As this article shows, the actions of Oxford and Brady were representative of the culture of political memory amongst Restoration royalists who penned histories of seditious ideas. Catholic ideas of popular sovereignty and papal deposition of monarchs were traced from their perceived medieval origins through their scholastic descent and reiteration by Counter-Reformation Jesuit theorists. A parallel history of Calvinist resistance theory was tracked from the mid sixteenth century to Restoration nonconformists via Elizabethan puritans and Civil War preachers. In learned tomes, pamphlets, and popular verse, royalists conflated Catholic, Calvinist, and whig intellectual heterodoxy, an argument reiterated after the Revolution by Mary Astell. The labelling of such ideas as ‘popish’, whatever their origin, highlights a little recognised royalist strain of antipopery. In addition to providing an account of the early history of histories of political ideas, this article thus offers an alternative approach to Restoration royalism than the question of it as ‘absolutist’ or ‘constitutionalist’.

Francis Oughterson Brown

Francis Brown grew up in Greenock and in the West End of Glasgow, and was educated at Kelvinside Academy and Loretto School. In 1940 he went to Gonville and Caius...

Ernest William (“Bill”) Deane

Bill Deane was born in 1918. His father, Dr Norman “Doc” Deane, was a general practitioner in Christchurch, Dorset. Bill was educated at Sherborne School and then went up to...

R. A. Fisher's 1943 unravelling of the Rhesus blood-group system.

R. A. Fisher's 1943 unravelling of the Rhesus blood-group system.

Edward Timms: An Appreciation

Edward Timms Photographcourtesy ofIan Foster Edward Timms: An Appreciation RITCHIE ROBERTSON StJohn 'sCollege, Oxford This, the fifteenth volume of Austrian Studies, is dedicated to Edward Timms, its founder editor. In the year of his seventieth birthday, it gives us the opportunity to celebrate Edward's many achievements within and beyond academic life. Edward Timms was born in 1937, the third of nine children of the Rev. and Mrs John Timms. His father was a clergyman who held a living in Devon formost of Edward's childhood. Edward was sent in 1946 to board at Christ's Hospital at Horsham in Sussex, a county that was to play a large part in his life. From there he gained a scholarship toGonville and Caius College, Cambridge, in 1956. Here his teachers included E. K. Bennett and F. J. Stopp, the latter of whom encouraged what was to become a lifelong interest in literary satire. After graduating with a First inModern Languages, Edward spent a year teaching English inNuremberg, and it was at this time that he first came across Karl Kraus. By his own account, in the preface to the first volume of Karl Kraus. Apocalyptic Satirist, he asked a friend why there were no really critical writers in German ? presumably the conservative canon of the Cambridge German syllabus had screened them out ? and was advised to read Karl Kraus. On returning to Cambridge, Edward began doctoral research on Kraus, under the supervision of Peter Stern, an ?migr? from Prague and one of the towering Germanists of his generation. Stern owned a complete set of Die Fackel which had belonged to his father, a Czechoslovak diplomat, and himself published an important essay, 'Karl Kraus's Vision of Language', in theModern Language Review for January 1966. Edward did much of his research inwhat was then the Stadt- und Landesbibliothek inVienna (now theWienbibliothek im Rathaus), with guidance from the Kraus scholars Paul and Sophie Schick. His thesis was successfully submitted in 1967 as 'Language and the Satirist in theWork of Karl Kraus'. By that time, Edward had begun his teaching career as a lecturer at the newly founded University of Sussex, a vigorous and ground-breaking institution dedicated to interdisciplinary studies. There he met Saime G?ksu, a student of theoretical physics from Turkey, who became his wife. After only two years at Sussex, however, theymoved to Cambridge, 2 Edward Timms: An Appreciation where Edward was appointed to a university lectureship and became Fellow and Director of Studies in Modern Languages at Caius. They remained there, bringing up three children, Yusuf, Defne and Sebastian, till their return to Sussex in 1992. After a quarter of a century in Cambridge, Edward was clearly ready for new departures. One such was the founding of Austrian Studies, a yearbook originally published by Edinburgh University Press. Its inception in 1990 owed much to the encouragement of Martin Spencer, a gifted editor who had recently moved to Edinburgh, and whose tragically early death was a sad blow. To work with Edward on Austrian Studies was an education: nominally co-editor, I learnt from him a great deal about editing ? how to assemble a coherent body of essays, how to discern what an essay needed to attain itsfinal form, how to deal tactfully with contributors, and how to improve an essay or review decisively through minor adjustments. I also admired Edward's ability to devise witty and pointed titles, a giftmuch in evidence in the chapter headings of his Kraus books. Thanks in large measure to Edward, Austrian Studies has done much to raise the profile of Austria and Austrian literature, especially among British Germanists, who could all too easily concentrate on a line of historical development that went from Weimar via Berlin to Bonn (or Berlin again), bypassing Vienna. It was valuable to have in the background the exemplary figure of Peter Stern, who contributed a review article on Wittgenstein to the first volume of Austrian Studies and an article on V?clav Havel to the fourth, and whose own literary canon included Nestroy, Stifter, Grillparzer, Kraus and the Prague writers surrounding Kafka. In 1992, after considerable negotiation, Edward returned to the University of Sussex as Professor of German...

Health in an unequal world

William Harvey was born in Folkestone on April 1 1578. He was educated at the Kings School Canterbury Gonville and Caius College Cambridge and the University of Padua graduating as doctor of arts and medicine in 1602. He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1607 and was appointed to the Lumleian lectureship in 1615. In the cycles of his Lumleian lectures over the next 13 years Harvey developed and refined his ideas about the circulation of the blood. He published his conclusions in 1628 in Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus which marks the beginning of clinical science. In it Harvey considered the structure of the heart arteries and veins with their valves. By carefully devised experiments and supported by the demonstration of the unidirectional flow of the blood in the superficial veins of his own forearm he established that the blood circulated and did not ebb and flow as had been believed for more than 1000 years. (excerpt)

Statisticians in Stained Glass Houses

Abstract Statistics and stained glass may seem an odd combination, but the windows of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, say otherwise. Anthony Edwards explains.

The Interdisciplinary Century: Tensions and Convergences in Eighteenth-Century Art, History and Literature by Julia V. Douthwaite, Mary Vidal

MLR, IOI.2, 2006 537 the fragments according to their internal logic'. That said, Ariew as translator is good. His version is clear, easily readable, and generally accurate. If he does not make a distinction in some sections between words such as 'raison' and 'raisonnement' or 'bonheur' and 'felicite, other distinguished translators similarly have not done so. The introduction is short and efficient but not as detailed asA. J.Krailsheimer's (Har mondsworth: Penguin, I966) orAnthony and Honor Levi's introductions. As with all available translations, the notes are very brief, designed for the general reader rather than an academic readership. However, a joint Anglo-American scholarly translation of Pascal is in the pipeline (and, yes, I am part of that team, so read the final sentence with appropriate caution). Scholars may be tempted towait for that. GONVILLE & CAIUS COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE NICHOLAS HAMMOND The Interdisciplinary Century: Tensions and Convergences inEighteenth-Century Art, History and Literature. Ed. by JULIA V. DOUTHWAITE and MARY VIDAL. (SVEC, 2005:04) Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation. 2005. xxxiv+3I2 pp. ?65. ISBN o 7294-o858-2. The volume opens with an outstanding introduction, written by its two editors. This provides clear summaries of the succeeding sixteen articles and, more impressively, a forceful and sophisticated polemic arguing for the virtues of interdisciplinarity. While there is no mistaking the enthusiasm for expansive scholarship, this is no simplistic encouragement to intellectual anarchy. It is surely right that here the En cyclopedie assumes a central role: on the one hand it is amonument to the taxonomic (disciplined) approach, yet it is precisely this characteristic that encourages creative associations across individual entries. Furthermore, its value endures. In her con tribution, Miriam Wallace suggests that 'even more than other period scholars, [we eighteenth-century specialists] have a tendency to replicate in our scholarship the epistemological assumptions of our objects of study'. Many of the essays make a virtue of this potentially limiting assertion. Interdisciplinarity has many origins. The multivalent term 'discipline' is examined by various contributors, giving due attention to both the nexus of control and pu nishment and to the essentially more positive axis of being a disciple. Even the latter, however, can have negative aspects. Isabelle Michel-Evrard's text includes more acronyms than a history of the Soviet secret service but behind these initials hides a series of institutions, funded by the French state and dedicated to furnishing the means for collaborative research. Yet the introduction notes a counter-example, also from France, where a university professor, committed to the interdisciplinary cause, was obliged to ring-fence his subject to protect the jobs of his disciplinary colleagues. These examples are 'real life', and none the less valuable for that; the majority of material ismore theoretical, although not narrowly so. Mimi Hellman provides an innovative study of those hybrid luxury items that might include, say, a clock, porcelain figurines, and bronze decoration and which delighted the rich in eighteenth-century France. These objects, made by a vari ety of individual artisans governed by strict guild regulations, were assembled by 'marchands-mercier', forbidden tomake anything themselves but uniquely allowed to amalgamate. The disparate nature of these artefacts surely demands the inter disciplinary approach to their analysis provided by Hellman but she acutely goes beyond this to suggest that interdisciplinary scholars could themselves emulate the 'marchand-mercier' in their eclecticism. Joan Schwarz and Lisa Graham both jux tapose and interrogate two very disparate sources. The former considers English property law concerning women in relation to Clarissa; as both a trained lawyer and 538 Reviews a professor of English literature she uses her formidable range of expertise to em phasize the foundational nature of the legal discourse inRichardson's text. Graham confronts Manon Lescaut and the Nogent Affair. The widowed Madame de Nogent's only daughter 'scandalously' began an affair with an eighteen-year-old servant, lead ing to her confinement in a convent via the dreaded 'lettre de cachet'. Graham's concern is not with the accidental connection between the 'scandalous' behaviour of Mademoiselle de Nogent and Des Grieux but rather with the similarities between Prevost's 'fictional' text and the 'factual' police dossier on the hapless heiress. Laurent Loty outstrips his fellow...

The treatment of carcinoma of the breast. Proceedings of a Symposium held at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, 9 September, 1967. Edited by Antony S. Jarrett. 9½ × 6¼ in. Pp. 64, with 26 illustrations. 1968. Excerpta Medica Foundation. 14s

The treatment of carcinoma of the breast. Proceedings of a Symposium held at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, 9 September, 1967. Edited by Antony S. Jarrett. 9½ × 6¼ in. Pp. 64, with 26 illustrations. 1968. Excerpta Medica Foundation. 14s

Shakespeare’s Tragic Skepticism. Millicent Bell. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2002. Pp. xx+283.

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewShakespeare’s Tragic Skepticism. Millicent Bell. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2002. Pp. xx+283.Colin BurrowColin BurrowGonville and Caius College, Cambridge Search for more articles by this author Gonville and Caius College, CambridgePDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Modern Philology Volume 103, Number 1August 2005 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/499184 Views: 4Total views on this site Permission to reprint a book review printed in this section may be obtained only from the author.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

100 years of hormonology: a view from No. 1 Wimpole Street

100 years of hormonology: a view from No. 1 Wimpole Street

The Classical Sublime: French Neoclassicism and the Language of Literature by Nicholas Cronk (review)

MLRy 100.3, 200S 815 in the process of destroying Port-Royal (to which Racine was now reconciled) and the mixed signals sent out by the fact that at the end of Athalie Joas will not be the liberating king that everyone hopes him to be, a factwhich is underlined by Racine in the text ofthe play and in the rare footnotes which he himself inserted. These quibbles aside, each chapter contains fresh and exciting interpretations of both familiar and less familiar material. Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge Nicholas Hammond The Classical Sublime: French Neoclassicism and the Language of Literature. By Nicholas Cronk. Charlottesville: Rookwood Press. 2002. ii + 2iopp. ?32. ISBN 1-88636-522-9. Nicholas Cronk's book takes as its subject matter the seventeenth-century French preoccupation with pseudo-Longinus' first-century Greek treatise, Peri Hupsous, or On the Sublime. Longinus suggests, among other things, that simple yet powerfully moving discourse can be termed 'sublime' and is productive of ecstatic experience in the reader or listener. Cronk's work is original in considering in detail the im? portance of Longinus for seventeenth-century literature. Based on a thesis written a good ten years before Sophie Hache's La Langue du ciel: le sublime en France au XVIT siecle (Paris: Champion, 2000), its publication none the less post-dates the appearance of the latter, and the two works do not, unfortunately, take each other into account. Cronk's focus is on the seventeenth-century questions and debates to which an interest in Longinus was, he suggests, a response. He observes, namely, not just the reader-oriented view of language encouraged by Peri Hupsous, but the undercurrents of Platonism and poetic enthusiasm which can be seen to support this. He relates Boileau's 1674 translation of Longinus to broad ideas of poetic fury and inspiration, to hermetic discourse, and to minor genres such as the 'devise'. A number of classical theorists, using emblems, for example, as metaphors for poetic discourse more generally, are able to discuss Plato's ideas without appearing to affronta rational Aristotelianism which Cronk takes to be the dominant mode of seventeenth-century discourse. So Boileau's translation of Longinus constitutes a participation in a taboo aesthetic, a reaction against an officiallysanctioned obsession with clear and distinct ideas; and Cronk goes into much detail about the contrast between the ineffable power granted to discourse in the Traite du Sublime and the nomenclaturism of con? temporary linguistic debate. Sublimity introduces into seventeenth-century French literature an element of affectwhich should be seen as a defining part of classicism. To maintain this is to place a tremendous amount of weight on the term 'classi? cism'; those who see this as a somewhat false and falsifying appellation in the first place will not find much to detain them in the idea that its definition should be expanded . In this regard, Cronk's book seems dated. Moreover, his case hangs on the assertion that in Longinus, and subsequently in Boileau, transcendence stands as the opposite to rationalism, exaltation as the opposite to explanation. This fails to take into account the complexity of Peri Hupsous, in which we find an agile movement between an ecstatic sublimity and cognition. This is evinced in, apart from anything else, Longinus' own initial aim to write a useful treatise: to encourage thinking about the sublime is to render graspable sublime experience. More (or at least mention) should be made of Longinus' contradictions: these nuance the seventeenth-century interest which Cronk so importantly identifies, making inspiration and ecstasy only one part of the story. But The Classical Sublime, clearly and interestingly written, remains a very worthwhile contribution to seventeenth-century studies. Emmanuel College, Cambridge Emma Gilby ...

Leslie Bodi (review)

576 Reviews of a great composer. Hans Rudolf Vaget provides a fascinating counterpoint to the implication of cultural decline in the nineteenth century in his study of Thomas Mann's development from a negative view of Hamburg's modernity in Buddenbrooks to an appreciation of its liberal Hanseatentum (as the birthplace of Hans Castorp) in The Magic Mountain. Finally JenniferJenkins explores another aspect of Hamburg's modernity around 1900, showing how Frederick Law Olmsted's New York Central Park influenced the development of the innovatory Winterhude Stadtpark. The old Burgerrepublik may have failed to survive into the nineteenth century, but its ideals were constantly invoked in response to the challenges of national integration and industrialization. On the other hand that did not prevent Hamburg, including its elites, fromsuccumbing to National Socialism. This volume is strongest on the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. For the rest, it raises interesting questions that challenge Schramm's rather self-satisfied vision without, however, providing an alternative. Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge Joachim Whaley Literatur, Politik, Identitat? Literature, Politics, Cultural Identity. By Leslie Bodi. (Osterreichische und internationale Literaturprozesse, 18) St. Ingbert: Rohrig. 2002. 606 pp. ?39. ISBN 3-86110-332-x. Leslie Bodi's great achievement is Tauwetter in Wien: Zur Prosa der osterreichischen Aufklarung, ij8i-iyg$, firstpublished in 1977 and recently reissued with an updated bibliography (Vienna, Cologne, and Weimar: Bohlau, 1995). Not only does it display unrivalled familiaritywith a fascinating and little-known subject, the literaryresponse to Joseph H's ill-starred attempt at enlightenment from above, but it is written in a natural, easy style that makes it a delight to read and reread. This generous selection from Bodi's occasional essays now reveals the intellectual and biographical context from which Tauwetter in Wien developed. An autobio? graphical preface recounts his upbringing amid the assimilated, multilingual Jewish bourgeoisie of inter-war Budapest, and also mentions several years of school in Mi? lan. Since leaving Hungary in 1956, he has been an exceptionally active presence in German studies in Australia, with links to the Hungarian intellectual diaspora around Agnes Heller. His essays reveal a constant preoccupation with the role of intellectuals in dictatorships. The early 1780s in Austria, when Joseph's relaxation of censorship unleashed a vast pamphlet literature from which serious social criticism developed, are presented as a paradigmatic 'thaw', in which the authorities try to modernize an anachronistic-order by allowing limited freedom of expression which they soon retract when writers demand structural changes. Analogies are drawn not only with the Soviet thaw of the early 1960s but with Gorbachev's glasnost. Other essays deal with German revolutionary writers, including Georg Forster and his wife Therese Huber, who reveal the ambivalences of radical intellectuals entangled in a revolution that goes savagely awry. Three essays on Heine, which deserve to be widely known, look closely at his complex imagery of revolution, while other essays show how closely Bodi followed the fates of writers in the GDR and in the new landscape created by the opening of the Stasi files. It was fortunate that, while still in Hungary, Bodi worked on an edition of Forster, the firstGerman to visit the Pacific; Therese Huber wrote the firstGerman novel set in 'Neu-Holland'. Essays on these writers introduce a series concerned with references to Australia in German literature (surprisingly many: Friedrich Gerstacker, Anton Wildgans, and Egon Erwin Kisch all travelled there) and with German-language cul? ture in Australia. These illustrate Bodi's interest in Australia's multicultural society MLR, 100.2, 2005 577 (supported by his colleague Michael Clyne, whose work on pluricentric languages he often cites) and in the place of Austria within German language and culture. As features of Austrian identity Bodi singles out an intense linguistic consciousness and a fondness forparody. Both are illustrated from the Austrian Enlightenment, the for? mer in an important essay entitled 'Sprachregelungals Kulturgeschichte. Sonnenfels: Uber den Geschaftsstil (1784) und die Ausbildung der osterreichischen Mentalitat', the latter by a study of Paul Weidmann's astonishing Der Eroberer (1786), which anticipates Joyce's 'Oxen of the Sun' in its resourceful parody of innumerable styles. Generally, the reflections on identity are welcome in suggesting how to liberate one? self...

Letters

Letters