Companion Series Research Articles

Douglas Hamilton and John McAleer, eds. Islands and the British Empire in the Age of Sail. Oxford History of the British Empire Companion Series. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. 240. $85.00 (cloth).

Douglas Hamilton and John McAleer, eds. Islands and the British Empire in the Age of Sail. Oxford History of the British Empire Companion Series. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. 240. $85.00 (cloth).

A Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal ed. by Hollingsworth, Mary, Miles Pattenden, and Arnold Witte

Reviewed by: A Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal ed. by Hollingsworth, Mary, Miles Pattenden, and Arnold Witte Wolfgang Reinhard A Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal. Edited by Hollingsworth, Mary, Miles Pattenden, and Arnold Witte. [Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, vol. 91] (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2020, Pp. xviii, 705, 43 figures and 7 tables. € 252,52. ISBN: 9789004310964). Obviously, recent Anglophone publishers successfully continue to produce expensive collective volumes on many different subjects. Most outstanding is Brill’s extensive series of Companions which includes the present impressive volume on early modern cardinals. The several thousand cardinals of the Roman church have always fascinated historians because of their many different activities and social roles. This big handbook presents some thirty different important aspects of the cardinals’ typology. But does it integrate these details successfully? [End Page 195] (1) The first of the eight parts of the book concerns the concept and functions of the cardinal. It starts with a chapter on medieval legal history. In the early modern period the College of Cardinals lost much of its collective power, but often this loss was compensated by an increase of power of individual cardinals. The popes simply needed cooperators. Next, after the rites of promotion and the activities in conclave the formal and informal roles of the hybrid quasi-institution of the cardinal-nephew are analyzed. (2) The significance of cardinals’ ecclesiastic and ecclesiologic activities in the Church can certainly not be covered exhaustively. The handbook selects chapters on ecumenical councils and theology, on the Inquisition and the Penitentiary, and on the protectorate of religious institutions. (3) In continuation, one reads on the secular power which the cardinals wielded as legates, as protectors of nations, as political leaders of the Richelieu type, and in their specific role as prince-bishops of the Empire. (4) The chapters on property and wealth besides an analysis of the income of cardinals include additional contributions on their social background and education, on their household and on the strategic consequences of their testaments. (5) The city of Rome is concerned when cardinals act as administrators of the Papal States or as governors of the vacant see. They also left their mark on their titular churches and on their sumptuous palaces. (6) “Mission” starts with an overview of cardinals in global history concerning in particular the Islam, the religions of Asia, the Jews, and the primal religions. Special chapters concern Eastern Churches, the church of Spanish-America, and, in contrast, the activities of the Propaganda Fide. (7) “Cardinals and literature” presents early modern historiography on early modern cardinals, which first of all consisted in collections of biographies, but also includes treatises on the ideal cardinal and some biographies of saintly cardinals, in addition, cardinals profiled as book collectors and even as founders of libraries. (8) On the other hand, they profiled as patrons of the visual arts and music. After an analysis of their wardrobe, the book demonstrates how their portraits and their tombs left an extensive impact on the scenery of early modern Rome. With equal balance of gender 31 authors produced 35 chapters. The three editors wrote more than one. According to their institutional affiliation eight contributors originate from Italy, seven from England, five from Germany, four from the USA, two from Scotland and France respectively, and one each from Belgium, the Netherlands and Finland. Considering their names, however, we may assume that at least four of them were no natives of the countries of their universities—an additional demonstration of the international character of this endeavor. Nevertheless, I could discover only one or two theologians on the list, but several historians of art—another remarkable fact. A selection from the long list of contributors is an impossible task and unjust, because they are all equally proven experts, who have already published in the field of their special competence. Extensive notes demonstrate the high level of their learnedness. When for example sometimes evidence might be missing as in the case of Markus Völkel’s book in chapters 16 and 22, then this defect is compensated in the brilliant general bibliography of 70 pages. Nevertheless, the book’s strength is also its...

Florian Dolberg: Agreement in language contact: Gender development in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Studies in Language Companion Series 208)

Article Florian Dolberg: Agreement in language contact: Gender development in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Studies in Language Companion Series 208) was published on October 1, 2022 in the journal Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics (volume 8, issue 2).

Stern, Tom (Ed.) The New Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche

Stern, Tom (Ed.) The New Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche. Reviewed by Stavros Patoussis. The Cambridge Companion series is a widely acclaimed way for students and scholars to acquire a wide yet sophisticated perspective into the respective main topic. A new Cambridge Companion on Nietzsche represents the consistently growing knowledge and persisting interest in scholarship on him. The following review will first focus on each contribution to the volume. Afterwards, there will be an overview on the merits of the Companion as an introduction to Nietzsche, as well as its scholarly qualities asking what the new edition is able to set as a standard for contemporary interpretations of his philosophy.

Generalized Frobenius partitions, Motzkin paths, and Jacobi forms

We show how Andrews' generating functions for generalized Frobenius partitions can be understood within the theory of Eichler and Zagier as specific coefficients of certain Jacobi forms. This reformulation leads to a recursive process which yields explicit formulas for the generalized Frobenius partition generating functions in terms of infinite q-products. In particular, we show that specific examples of our result easily reestablish previously known formulas, and we describe new congruences, both conjectural and proven, in additional cases. The modular structure of Jacobi forms indicates that all of the coefficients of the forms are of interest. We give a combinatorial definition of these “companion series” and explore their combinatorics via the counting of Motzkin paths.

The Cambridge Companion to the Apostolic Fathers. Edited by Michael Bird and Scott Harrower

With a few exceptions, this is an excellent addition to the Cambridge Companions series, which according to the website furnishes ‘authoritative guides, written by leading experts, offering lively, accessible introductions to major writers, artists, philosophers, topics, and periods’. Accordingly, the volume does not intend to break new ground, but to orient readers to the Apostolic Fathers. It is divided into two parts. Following an introduction, the first nine chapters present focused essays on themes relating to the corpus as a whole, a strength of the collection not found in earlier introductions (S. Tugwell, The Apostolic Fathers [1989]; M. Günther, Einleitung in die Apostolisichen Väter [1997]; C. Jefford, The Apostolic Fathers: An Essential Guide [2005]; P. Foster [ed.], The Apostolic Fathers [2007]; W. Pratcher [ed.], The Apostolic Fathers [2010]), and an advance over R. Grant’s cursory discussion of a few of the same themes (The Apostolic Fathers [1964]). Chapters 9–17 are dedicated to each of the texts. 1 and 2 Clement are discussed together, as are Polycarp’s Letter to the Philippians and the Martyrdom of Polycarp, and the Epistle of Diognetus and the Fragment of Quadratus; Papias’s fragments are also given a chapter. The decision to group the first two pairs, perhaps based on economy of scale, is an unfortunate one: apart from the names, 1 and 2 Clement and Polycarp’s letter and the Martyrdom are unrelated. The introduction by Scott Harrower which orients readers to the Apostolic Fathers would have been strengthened by a discussion of what occasioned the creation of the collection in the seventeenth century (Clare Rothschild deftly reconstructs that background in ‘On the Invention of the Patres Apostolici’, New Essays on the Apostolic Fathers [Tübingen, 2017], pp. 7–34). Even as Harrower agrees that the collection is an artificial one, he tacitly endorses the untenable position that first warranted its creation, that the corpus deserves to be treated as a special case because its authors knew one of the 12 apostles or knew people who did (p. 2). That can be said with confidence only of Polycarp and of Papias although his fragments were not included in the seventeenth-century collection.

Fibonacci series from power series

We show how every power series gives rise to a Fibonacci series and a companion series involving Lucas numbers. For illustrative purposes, Fibonacci series arising from trigonometric functions, the gamma function and the digamma function are derived. Infinite series involving Fibonacci and Bernoulli numbers and Fibonacci and Euler numbers are also obtained.

How a West African language becomes North African, and vice versa

AbstractUpdating the methodology of Hayward, Richard J. 1991. A propos patterns of lexicalization in the Ethiopian language area. In Daniela Mendel & Ulrike Claudi (eds.),Ägypten im afroorientalischen Kontext. Special issue of Afrikanistische Arbeitspapiere, 139–156. Cologne: Institute of African Studies, using the concept of colexification (François, Alexandre. 2008. Semantic maps and the typology of colexification: Intertwining polysemous networks across languages. In Martine Vanhove (ed.),Studies in language companion series, vol. 106, 163–215. Amsterdam: John Benjamins), this paper, for the first time, provides quantitative evidence that the languages of the West African Sahel/Savanna form a lexical-typological language area characterised by shared colexifications absent further north. It then uses the linguistic comparative method to determine how languages entering or leaving this area, or coming into increasing contact with it at its edges, have converged with their new neighbours within the past millennium. The results indicate sharp differences in the respective roles and rates of borrowing and calquing, with the latter acting almost exclusively to increase shared colexifications.

The Theatre and Films of Conor McPherson: Conspicuous Communities by Eamonn Jordan

Reviewed by: The Theatre and Films of Conor McPherson: Conspicuous Communities by Eamonn Jordan Susan Cannon Harris THE THEATRE AND FILMS OF CONOR McPHERSON: CONSPICUOUS COMMUNITIES. By Eamonn Jordan. Critical Companions series. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2019; pp. 248. What exactly does one want from a “critical companion”? That is the question I was left with after finishing The Theatre and Films of Conor McPherson: Conspicuous Communities (2019), the most recent entry in the Critical Companions series published by Bloomsbury for its Methuen Drama imprint. Edited by Patrick Lonergan and Kevin J. Wetmore Jr., the series runs to about thirty volumes, some dedicated to genres, movements, or histories, and others to single authors. Eamonn Jordan’s contribution follows the series formula: about 85 percent of the book is written by him, with the remaining 15 percent made up of a cluster of short pieces by other authors who provide “alternative perspectives”—in this case, an interview with McPherson, critical essays by Lisa Fitzpatrick and Maha Alatawi, and a brief musing by New York Times theatre critic Ben Brantley. Although Jordan is listed as sole author, this book is thus neither a scholarly monograph nor an edited collection, but a kind of lopsided hybrid. Possibly this model was designed for the volumes that synthesize a large body of disparate material into a coherent narrative, with the critical essays [End Page 125] then rectifying some of that narrative’s omissions. Even so, as I worked my way through The Theatre and Films of Conor McPherson, I began to wonder about the purpose of the book-length, single-author survey. If the goal is to gather all the information a scholar might need about a particular figure in one place, it seems to me that something digital and easily updated would do a better job, at least for authors who are still alive and productive. If the purpose is to lay down a baseline for future critical readings of that author’s work, then at some point analysis and interpretation have to take precedence over the collection of information. If the purpose is to provide instructors with contextual material to assign to students along with the plays and films, then we would expect whatever chapter we are assigning to make a clear argument about the work that could then be expanded on or debated in discussion. The Theatre and Films of Conor McPherson only really fulfills the first of these expectations. It provides a comprehensive overview of McPherson’s career in theatre, film, and television, from the early monologue plays of the 1990s through the Bob Dylan–inspired musical Girl from the North Country (2017). It is organized thematically around McPherson’s favorite modes and preoccupations, some familiar (monologue plays, the supernatural) and some more surprising (there is a chapter on “Apocalyptic Dispossessions” and another on Christmas). Even readers familiar with McPherson’s catalog will be introduced to new works, whether it be the profoundly unsettling two-hander Come on Over or the differently disturbing BBC miniseries Paula. As in his earlier Dissident Dramaturgies, Jordan provides valuable accounts of first productions. He also helpfully collates the first round of critical responses to many of these plays and films. Jordan notes in his introduction that he tried “to be as comprehensive as possible about each work” he discusses (5), and in this he has very much succeeded. Jordan also promises readers an analysis and interpretation of McPherson’s work that will take in “gendered arguments” (11) but focus on McPherson’s engagement with neoliberalism. Here the results are mixed. Jordan argues that McPherson’s fascination with small-time crooks is a critique of “the ‘commodification of everything’” that avoids “being simplistically hostile to contemporary capital, which most critics of neoliberalism seem to be” (11–12). This is a reasonable and promising approach. But here as in so many of the later chapters, Jordan marches the reader plot point by plot point through each of the works discussed until analysis is overwhelmed by summary. Chapter after chapter strikes out in a promising direction, only to lose its way in a forest of information and wander into anticlimax. For instance, Jordan devotes a section of his...

The Cambridge Haydn Encyclopedia ed. by Caryl Clark and Sarah Day-O'Connell

Reviewed by: The Cambridge Haydn Encyclopedia ed. by Caryl Clark and Sarah Day-O'Connell Erick Arenas The Cambridge Haydn Encyclopedia. Edited by Caryl Clark and Sarah Day-O'Connell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. [xxxvii, 486 p. ISBN 978107129016 (hardback), $170; ISBN 9781316422847 (e-book), $215.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, general index, index of compositions. Among the many types of biographical literature on major composers, the genre of the single-volume, multi-author reference compendium is distinctive in its appeal to researchers at many levels. Its best examples provide an authoritative and engaging starting point for investigations into its subject's life, works, and major critical and cultural contexts. They also serve as a digest of current approaches to research and analysis in these areas. With its encyclopedia volumes on George Frideric Handel, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Hector Berlioz, Richard Wagner, and Giuseppe Verdi, Cambridge University Press has become a mainstay of the genre in recent years. The Cambridge Haydn Encyclopedia is a significant addition to the series, even as it exposes a difficulty in developing this type of literature. The pool of subjects is rather exclusive, since they derive from the extensive and influential bodies of research that have accumulated around canonic composers. Joseph Haydn has already been represented in the genre by Haydn (David Wyn Jones, ed. [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002]), an outstanding volume in the Oxford Composer Companions series. Acknowledging that this work, along with the more recent Das Haydn-Lexikon (Armin Raab, Christine Siegert, and Wolfram Steinbeck, eds. [Laaber: Laaber Verlag, 2010]), continues "to ably serve the reference needs of Haydn scholars, performers and listeners" (p. xv), Caryl Clark and Sarah Day-O'Connell have steered The Cambridge Haydn Encyclopedia in a decidedly less conventional direction. The result is a text that is informative and thought provoking, but uneven as a reference source. Instead of a survey of essential knowledge on works, genres, important persons, and contexts, The Cambridge Haydn Encyclopedia is "organized around clusters of ideas" (p. xv). Consequently, it diverges from the form and substance of a typical biographical reference volume in several ways. An elementary example is its lack of documentary and evidentiary appendixes. Such elements are not necessarily crucial; in other compendiums their usefulness and durability certainly vary. One helpful traditional component often seen in an appendix—a chronology—does endure here, but it is placed within the front matter. Another component, a critical works list with catalog cross references, does not. The lack of such a tool is regrettable, since the use of Hoboken numbers is not thorough across many articles, as well as the index of compositions. The absence [End Page 413] of such research tools suggests that nonspecialist readers may still need to consult more-conventional reference sources to use The Cambridge Haydn Encyclopedia to its fullest. The book's distinctive focus on ideas is reflected above all by the scope of its articles. Written by a group of sixty-seven international scholars, the individual contributions total just under ninety items, fewer than the numbers typically found in works with a more conventional contextual approach. Strongly guided by historiographical considerations, their coverage moves outward from traditional categories of context, style, and reception to encompass current or novel themes that lie beyond the purviews of the encyclopedic forerunners mentioned above. The articles take two forms: concise contributions, classified as "entries," and a small group of extended contributions, described as "conceptual essays" (p. xvi). Since a thematic arrangement of the essays and articles would not offer any clear benefit, all are ordered together alphabetically. A detailed thematic guide would have been a welcome aid to understanding how "clusters of ideas" could be perceived and traced through these articles. The eighty-one entries address a wide range of subjects. Traditionally rooted subject entries such as "Court," "Church," "Enlightenment," "Reception," and "Aesthetics" can be found, but they are complemented by entries focusing on subjects such as "Composers and Music Professionals," "Teaching and Students," and "Amateurs," as well as broader intellectual or practical matters bridging them, including "Relationships and Friendships," "Gender," "Commerce and the Market," and "Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism," to name just a few. Reception is covered over three discrete entries: "Reception, Contemporary...

Experiencing Chopin: A Listener's Companion by Christine Lee Gengaro

Reviewed by: Experiencing Chopin: A Listener's Companion by Christine Lee Gengaro Laura Pita Experiencing Chopin: A Listener's Companion. By Christine Lee Gengaro. (The Listener's Companion.) Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018. [xxiv, 181 p. ISBN 9781442260863 (hardcover), $42; ISBN 9781442260870 (e-book), $39.50.] Timeline, glossary, bibliography, discography, index. Christine Lee Gengaro's Experiencing Chopin: A Listener's Companion appears nearly simultaneously with two other books on Chopin: Alan Walker's comprehensive biography Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2018) and the essay collection Chopin and His World (ed. Jonathan D. Bellman and Halina Goldberg [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017]), which brings together a substantial group of Chopin scholars. Experiencing Chopin is Gengaro's first publication on nineteenth-century music, as her principal area of research is film music and music in popular culture. (An earlier book is Listening to Stanley Kubrick: The Music in His Films [Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2013].) With Experiencing Chopin, Gengaro explores the niche of critical literature for the nonspecialist. The book belongs to the Listener's Companion series, which provides readers "a deeper understanding of pivotal musical genres and the creative work of … iconic composers and performers." This task is accomplished by placing readers "in specific listening experiences in which the music is examined in its historical context with regard to both compositional and societal parameters" (p. ix). Experiencing Chopin is organized into ten chapters, supplemented by a timeline, a glossary of musical terms, and selected readings and listening lists. Most of the chapters use biography as a context to discuss a set of pieces, usually from a specific genre. Chapter 1, "The [End Page 473] Piano Lesson," examines Chopin's etudes in relation to his experiences as a music student in Poland and as a teacher in Paris. Chapter 2, "Chopin's Concert Life," deals with Chopin's performances from his years as a child prodigy through adulthood and the composition of the two piano concertos. Chapter 3, "Confidants and Collaborators," explores Chopin's relationships with some of his Polish mates and close friends in Paris while commenting on his collaborative work with Auguste Franchomme on the Grand duo concertant sur des thèmes de Robert le diable and his Sonata for Cello and Piano in G Minor. Chapter 4, "Creative Nocturnes," looks at Chopin's stay in Vienna in 1830 and the influence of John Field on his nocturnes, while chapter 5, "Devotion to Poland," considers Chopin's mazurkas and polonaises in the light of his nationalism. The ballades and Chopin's relationship with George Sand are the focus of chapter 6, "Love, Chopin Style." Chapter 7, "Chopin and the Voice," discusses Chopin's songs in the context of his fondness for vocal music and his association with the poets Stefan Witwicki and Adam Mickiewicz. In chapter 8, "Musical Inheritance," Gengaro observes the influence of Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart on Chopin's preludes and the variations on "La ci darem la mano." As part of an examination of his piano sonata, chapter 9, "Maladies among the Melodies," presents various theories on Chopin's fragile health and the cause of his death. The last chapter, "Modern Chopin," offers a study of the endurance of Chopin's legacy in popular culture as reflected in the use of his music in cartoons and his presence as a character in films and video games. Gengaro's book is not a standard text of music history and criticism but rather an investigation of both Chopin's artistic and mundane self—a "portrait of an actual man, touched by genius" (p. xv). The author makes clear from the beginning that her aim is to use the historical contexts of creation and reception, and musical commentary on the pieces, to connect readers with Chopin's musical world and thus inspire them "to sit back and really listen" (p. xv). In doing so, she draws from historical facts and quotes extensively from correspondence and other personal sources—by Chopin, his lovers, friends, and students—while also indulging "in some invention and speculation" (p. xv). Whether Gengaro has been successful in such a venture is not easy to answer...

A harpsichordist’s handbook

This new volume in the Cambridge Companion series brings together 17 studies on ‘just about every aspect of the harpsichord’, as the editor proclaims, covering a period from the late 15th century to the present. In his introduction Mark Kroll writes: ‘As a harpsichordist, I have long felt that we needed a comprehensive but user-friendly source of information about the instrument and its repertoire’ (p.1). Inevitably, there is some overlap with earlier publications on this subject, especially with Keyboard music before 1700, ed. A. Silbiger (1995; 2/2004) and Eighteenth-century keyboard music, ed. R. Marshall (1992; 2/2003) but there is also a great deal of important new information, especially about countries and regions that have hardly been discussed in previous studies. The book’s 17 chapters are the work of 14 contributors, active as performers, university academics, or both. Material is sometimes duplicated between chapters. The essays can be divided in four categories: genres (virginalists, contemporary harpsichord music); composers (Domenico Scarlatti, J. S. Bach, G. F. Handel); countries and territories (England, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Russia, the Netherlands, northern Germany, south Germany, the Austro-Hungarian empire, and colonial Spanish and Portuguese America); and the instrument (its history, construction, tuning and temperament). Standing by itself is an essay about the role of the harpsichord in ensemble playing.

Alan Nadel, The Theatre of August Wilson

Alan Nadel, The Theatre of August Wilson London: Methuen Drama, 2018. Pp. 224. ISBN: 9781472530486. Konstantinos Blatanis Published as part of Methuen Drama’s series of critical companions, this latest addition to the ever-growing scholarship on August Wilson’s work bears the signature of an author whose expertise on the playwright is significant in terms of both time and depth. Over the span of the past three decades, Alan Nadel has offered to this field a number of original and influenti...

G. A. Bremner (ed.), Architecture and Urbanism in the British Empire (Oxford History of the British Empire Companion Series)

G. A. Bremner (ed.), <i>Architecture and Urbanism in the British Empire (Oxford History of the British Empire Companion Series)</i>

The Cambridge Companion to Quakerism ed. by Stephen W. Angell and Pink Dandelion

Reviewed by: The Cambridge Companion to Quakerism ed. by Stephen W. Angell and Pink Dandelion Jean R. Soderlund The Cambridge Companion to Quakerism. Ed. by Stephen W. Angell and Pink Dandelion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. xvi + 394 pp. Notes, bibliography, and index. Cloth £74.99; paper £24.99; Ebook $28. The Cambridge Companion to Quakerism, edited by Stephen W. Angell and Pink Dandelion, is a useful guide to the spiritual and cultural diversity of contemporary Quakerism. It is quite different from The Oxford Handbook of Quaker Studies (2013), also edited by Angell and Dandelion, which provided more detailed essays on Quaker history, beliefs, worship, witness, and expression, but in each of these areas focused primarily on Friends in Great Britain and North America. The Cambridge Companion to Quakerism, rather than offering comprehensive analyses, serves much like a tourist's guidebook, expertly pointing to significant landmarks in the complex history, theology and spirituality, and social testimonies of global Quakerism. The volume introduces readers to Friends throughout the world, but requires scholars and seekers to dig more deeply through first-hand research and experience. This is not a criticism—the book amply fulfills its mission as part of the Cambridge Companions series. The suggestions for further reading that accompany each chapter and the volume's substantial list of references provide suitable direction for in-depth study. Ten of the eighteen essays are written by two (and in one case four) authors, which contributes to the liveliness and accessibility of the volume. The multitude of voices, as well as the nature of Quakerism [End Page 45] throughout its history, signals the book's emphasis on exploration and inclusion. Part I, entitled "History of Quaker Faith and Practice," includes chapters on the periods 1650-1808 by Robynne Rogers Healey, 1808-1920 by Thomas D. Hamm and Isaac Barnes May, and 1920-2015 by Timothy Burdick and Pink Dandelion. These chapters provide a useful foundation for the subsequent topical discussions in Parts II to IV, offering a clear chronological framework while also suggesting how the remarkable variety of Friends' beliefs and practices developed over time. The essays are well written and direct, avoiding historiographical debates about Quakers within their religion and larger society. Part II, entitled "Expressions of Quaker Faith," includes chapters on the evolving views of Friends on fictional literature (Nancy Jiwon Cho) and material culture (Emma Jones Lapsansky), and a history of Quaker education by Stephen Angell and Clare Brown. Essays by Katherine Murray on social justice and sustainability, and Elaine Bishop and Jiseok Jung on the peace witness demonstrate the ways in which testimonies help to unify Friends globally but can create divisions locally. Murray points to the efforts of the Friends World Committee for Consultation to address climate change by holding conferences in Kenya and Peru. Bishop and Jung, within a comprehensive discussion of the Quaker peace testimony over the past century, highlight work for peace and unification of South and North Korea and efforts for the rights of Indigenous Peoples in Canada. Part III, "Regional Studies," further distinguishes this volume from previous books on Quakerism, with its attention to communities of Friends in Latin America (essay by Ramón González Longoria and Nancy Thomas), Africa (George Busolo, Oscar Malande, Ann K. Riggs, and Theoneste Sentabire), and Asia-Pacific (Stephanie Midori Komashin), as well as North America (Angell and John Connell) and Europe and the Middle East (Hans Eirik Aarek and Julia Hinshaw Ryberg). The essay on Quakers in Kenya and other African nations underscores the shift in global Quakerism, as Kenya has many more Quakers than any other nation, including the United States. Busolo et al. discuss the colonial beginnings of Quakerism in Africa then focus more specifically on Kenya, with the impact of economic challenges and cultural differences among tribal and super-tribal groups. They provide a case study of beliefs and practices of members of the Vozoli Village Meeting of Chavakali Yearly Meeting, demonstrating the impact of both Quakerism and traditional African religion and culture. [End Page 46] The chapters in Part IV, "Emerging Spiritualities," feature the impressive range of belief systems that Quakerism enfolds: "Unprogrammed Quaker Spiritualities" by Michael Birkel and Deborah L. Shaw; "Quakers...

Hofmannsthal: Jahrbuch zur europäischen Moderne 25 ed. by Maximilian Bergengruen et al.

Reviewed by: Hofmannsthal: Jahrbuch zur europäischen Moderne 25 ed. by Maximilian Bergengruen et al. Raymond L. Burt Maximilian Bergengruen, Alexander Honold, Gerhard Neumann, Ursula Renner, Günter Schnitzler, and Gotthart Wunberg, eds., Hofmannsthal: Jahrbuch zur europäischen Moderne 25. Freiburg: Rombach Verlag, 2017. 306 pp. Since 1968 the Hugo von Hofmannsthal Gesellschaft has had an active publication record to support the promotion of Hofmannsthal studies, beginning with the Hofmannsthal-Blätter, which focused on unpublished sources on the poet’s life and work and adding in 1971 a companion series, Hofmannsthal-Forschungen, that presented findings of scholars delivered at conferences or addressing specified topics. In 1993, these two publications were merged under the title of Hofmannsthal: Jahrbuch zur europäischen Moderne; the resultant periodical expanded its scope to place the poet’s life and work within the wider context of European Modernism. For its twenty-fifth year, the editors have selected seven contributions that add perspective to the life and works of Frank Wedekind, Rainer Maria Rilke, Marcel Proust, Karl Kraus and Arthur Schnitzler (as well as, of course, Hofmannsthal). Such collections may often be mined by scholars in search of a particular author or topic, whereas others may read the book in its entirety for insight into contemporary research with its variety of approaches and interpretive methodologies. In this volume, some of the articles proceed logically and methodically, and others surprise the reader with the creative twists and turns they take through their unexpected connections. The opening article by Klaus Bohnenkamp falls among the former and constitutes almost half of the pages dedicated to articles. His “‘Wir haben diesen Dichter geliebt . . .’: Hugo von Hofmannsthal und Eduard Korrodi: Briefe und Dokumente” delivers a meticulously researched investigation of the interaction of the Austrian poet with Korrodi, a Swiss journalist and the longtime editor of the [End Page 123] Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Bohnenkamp tracks every reference to Hoffmannsthal in Korrodi’s writings from 1917 to Hofmannsthal’s death in 1929. He follows Korrodi’s comments on publications from the Hofmannthal’s papers, with special attention to the novel fragment Andreas. Also included are Korrodi’s critique of Hofmannsthal’s works published in anthologies and performances of Hofmannsthal’s plays on in the German-language stage up to 1952. The essay is followed by the printing of the existent correspondence between Hofmannsthal and Korrodi and ends with Korrodi’s Nachruf of Hofmannsthal from 1929. Another example is “Selbstsucht und Selbstsuche: Schnitzlers Psychopoetik des Narzissmus,” in which Michael Navratil postulates that a general, dominant tendency can be drawn out of Schnitzler’s works revealing the defining role of narcissism in the psychological profile of his protagonists. To illustrate his thesis, Navratil ends the essay with an interpretation of Schnitzler’s “Die Frau des Richters.” In order to show the influence of Ecclesiastes on Hofmannsthal’s writings, Heinz Rölleke uses parallel textual comparisons in his “Hofmannsthal und das alttestamentarische Buch ‘Kohelet’” to great effect. Beginning with the indirect influence on the opening lines of Jedermann, he proceeds to a detailed analysis of Hofmannthal’s “Ballade des äußeren Lebens” in which he shows the unfiltered inspiration it draws from this most enigmatic book of wisdom in the biblical canon. Inspiration of a different sort of book on literature is taken up by Daniel Hilpert in his contribution, “‘Mein Fleisch heißt Lulu’: Eugenik und Sexualpathologie in Frank Wedekinds ‘Die Büchse der Pandora. Eine Monstretragödie.’” The book in question is Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis (1886). Hilpert places Wedekind’s literary production within the cultural context of the late nineteenth century, in which deviance in sexuality, race, and art were seen by many as a sign of a cultural collapse. The scientific discussion about eugenics inspired Wedekind to bring the themes of sexual pathology and eugenics into literature. Wedekind is dealing not only with the character of Lulu but with the construction of the entire plot by using Krafft-Ebing’s descriptions of sexual pathology as the narrative framework. On the artistic end of the spectrum, Johannes Ungelenk’s contribution, “Rainer Maria Rilkes ‘Die Flamingos’: Ein Kling(-ge-)ding,” starts with the traditional genre analysis of this sonnet as...

Verse Drama in England, 1900–2015: Art, Modernity and the National Stage by Irene Morra

Reviewed by: Verse Drama in England, 1900–2015: Art, Modernity and the National Stage by Irene Morra Kayla McKinney Wiggins (bio) Irene Morra. Verse Drama in England, 1900–2015: Art, Modernity and the National Stage. Series editors Patrick Lonergan and Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr. Critical Companions Series. London, Bloomsbury, 2016. 304 pages. $94.00. Irene Morra is Reader in English Literature at Cardiff University. In Modern Verse Drama in England, 1900–2015, she analyzes more than a hundred years of attempts by poets, playwrights, and theatre practitioners to return poetic drama to a valued place on the English stage. Morra’s study addresses the difficulty inherent in this endeavor given that verse is generally viewed as irrelevant to modern theatre on two counts: because Shakespeare is sufficient as the acknowledged poet of the national stage, and because verse is inappropriate expression for the subject matter of modern drama. Each section of the book considers a particular era of modern verse drama, followed by a more detailed analysis of individual playwrights and plays. Morra’s study is absorbing, if at times a bit erudite. The scholarship is exceptionally thorough. Although discussions of the better-known plays are understandably more accessible, Morra’s focus on performance, production, and poetry offers readers insight into even less familiar verse plays. In the introduction to her study, Morra notes that verse drama “occupies a vexed position in contemporary England, both on the mainstream national stage and in the historiography of modern British theatre.” She follows this observation with examples of recent verse plays and the critical response to them, observing that “verse drama is today seen at best as an anomaly, as an amusing embrace of anachronistic whimsy—and at worst as a regressive self-indulgence fundamentally opposed both to the essential demands of theatre and to the contemporary reality of the modern audience” (1). Morra contends, however, that this “assumption overlooks the extent to which the diverse tradition of modern verse drama in England has attempted variously to expand upon, revitalize and redefine the contemporary stage. It also risks overlooking the extent to which the very critical marginalization of that tradition might itself point to an essential conservatism” (6). Following an overview of the origins of verse drama in English, Morra addresses modern verse drama as an attempt to “articulate and develop [End Page 161] a much-needed and frequently experimental mode of contemporary theatrical expression” (10), concluding that it ultimately failed in this endeavor, in part because of its association with religious drama, but also because it was viewed as outmoded and “at odds with” a “socially progressive” national drama (15). The aim of Morra’s study, therefore, is to “advocate for a scholarly revaluation of what must be identified as an influential and overlooked tradition of aesthetic challenge and creativity” (15). She concludes that although verse dramatists never managed to achieve a lasting, cohesive movement, their work deserves critical attention and more general recognition. After setting the stage with a discussion of nineteenth-century poets who turned to verse drama more as poetic expression than theatre application, Morra’s first chapter considers the work of early twentieth-century verse dramatists Stephen Spender and James Elroy Flecker, who drew on the legacy of the Romantics and of Shakespeare to produce large-scale plays grounded in blank verse and history while still establishing the foundation for a verse drama that would attempt to respond to the demand for a modern theatre of new sensibilities. Chapter 2 considers early modernists who wrote verse drama that either embraced the new theatre movements of social and practical reform or reacted against those movements and toward a theatre of personal expression. Although these early twentieth-century verse dramatists rejected the “contemporary commercial stage to which Phillips and Flecker had aspired,” Morra notes that they nevertheless “found themselves in an unprecedented engagement with the realities of an innovative, progressive culture of theatrical reform” (41). This discussion considers the diverse range of possibilities in verse drama during the early twentieth-century and takes a closer look at the work of W. B. Yeats and Terence Gray, concluding that the contemporary tendency to dismiss verse drama as “‘coterie’ theatre. . .goes very...

Reception

The cinematic and televisual reception of the ancient world remains one of the most active strands of classical reception study, so a new addition to the Wiley-Blackwell Companions series focusing on Ancient Greece and Rome on Screen is sure to be of use to students and scholars alike (especially given how often ‘Classics and Film’ courses are offered as a reception component of an undergraduate Classical Studies programme). The editor, Arthur Pomeroy, himself a respected and prolific ‘early adopter’ of this branch of scholarship, has assembled many of the leading names in cinematic reception studies (including Maria Wyke, Pantelis Michelakis, Alastair Blanshard, and Monica Cyrino), alongside a good number of more junior colleagues, resulting in a varied and rewarding compendium that will provide a useful accompaniment to more detailed explorations of this field. (Some, though not all, chapters offer further reading suggestions, and most are pitched at an accessible level.) The twenty-three contributions span the ‘canonical’ and already widely treated aspects of screen reception, from 1950s Hollywood epics to adaptations of Greek tragedy, as well as ranging across material which has only more recently began to attract the attention it deserves, such as TV documentary, or adaptations for younger audiences. The volume is not as easily navigable as it might be, with the four-part division of the chapters sometimes seeming a little arbitrary. (So, for example, a chapter which discusses ‘The Return of the Genre’ in films like Gladiator appears under the heading ‘Comedy, Drama, and Adaptation’, when it might have been better placed in the first section, on ‘The Development of the Depiction of Ancient Greece and Rome on Screen’.) But rich discussions are not hard to find, especially in those chapters which show how cinematic receptions are indicators of more widely felt concerns relating to our reception of the past, as in Blanshard's assessment of ‘High Art and Low Art Expectations: Ancient Greece in Film and Popular Culture’. Michelakis’ chapter on the early days of cinema is also a valuable distillation of some of his recent work on silent film, crisply and concisely setting out the plurality of approaches that must inform our understanding of the cinematic medium (for example, spectatorship, colour, and relationships to other media). More broadly, the collection makes a solid and welcome attempt to put this pluralism into practice, with Pomeroy stressing ‘the complexity of understanding film’ early in his introduction (3). Chapters focusing on music, and costumes, for example, allow us to see productions ‘in the round’, a panoptical perspective which is still too readily avoided by much classical reception scholarship. (It is also good to see at least one chapter which ranges beyond screen media in the West.) Other vital areas of film and TV studies could arguably have received more attention. Some contributors touch on the importance of assessing audience receptions of these films, or the impact of marketing and other industrial considerations (such as screening practices), but more chapters dedicated to these approaches might have been a more sustained reminder to readers of just how widely screen scholarship can (and often needs to) range. To that end, a particularly significant chapter in the book – one of only 3 by non-Classicists – is Harriet Margolis’ account of how film historians might evaluate ancient world film. Newcomers to this field should pay particular attention to this, and to Pomeroy's introductory comments on how we should regard film as much more than a quasi-literary medium.

G. A. Bremner (Ed.), Architecture and Urbanism in the British Empire. (The Oxford History of the British Empire, Companion Series.) Oxford, Oxford University Press 2016

G. A. Bremner (Ed.), Architecture and Urbanism in the British Empire. (The Oxford History of the British Empire, Companion Series.) Oxford, Oxford University Press 2016

Dance of Thieves by Mary Pearson

Reviewed by: Dance of Thieves by Mary Pearson Kate Quealy-Gainer, Assistant Editor Pearson, Mary Dance of Thieves. Holt, 2018 [496p] Trade ed. ISBN 978-1-250-15901-4 $18.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-1-250-15902-1 $9.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 7-10 As one of the queen’s premier guard, Kazi is sent to Hell’s Mouth to capture one of her kingdom’s most notorious enemies. Instead she ends up kidnapped by human traffickers, along with Jase Ballenger, leader of the family that controls Hell’s Mouth. The pair escapes, but they’re chained together at the ankle and forced to struggle through wilderness, hoping to make it to Jase’s town safely. Stubborn arguing leads to flirting leads to some lusty encounters, but the possible relationship is put on hold when they make it to Hell’s Mouth. The Ballengers, no friend to the queen, are definitely acting suspicious, amd Jase has to protect his family’s secrets while Kazi’s tasked with sussing them out and bringing her information back to the royal palace. This is perfectly paced, moving easily from Jase and Kazi’s initial survival story to the political intrigue of Hell’s Mouth, spiced with romance and scaffolded with a carefully crafted fantasy world. Both Kazi and Jase are sympathetic in their motives and loyalties, and their bonds with family and friends and their engagement with various subplots fully flesh out their characters, making them more than just romantic partners. While this is set several years after the events of [End Page 482] the book’s companion series, the Remnant Chronicles (The Kiss of Deception, BCCB 7/14, etc.), no background knowledge is needed to appreciate this compelling mix of high fantasy, political thriller, and swoony romance. Copyright © 2018 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois