Crowd Of Spectators Research Articles

Concealing and Revealing the Face of Charles the Martyr King

On the afternoon of 30 January 1649, King Charles I of England (r. 1625–1649) was publicly executed on a scaffold that had been erected the previous day in front of his Banqueting House in Westminster.1 The most popularly reproduced seventeenth-century print of this event depicts a densely packed crowd surrounding the central scaffold, upon which a masked executioner holds aloft the decapitated head of the king (Fig. 1). The executioner and his four attendants face the crowd from behind the still-kneeling body of Charles, positioned like actors on a stage and standing in a way that allows for maximum visibility of their bodies and poses. In this print, the death of Charles is rendered as though it were a carefully staged and highly visible affair. The large crowd of spectators, who not only occupy the base of the scaffold but have populated all viewable galleries and rooftops, seems to heighten this impression of a theatrical spectacle unfolding in the engraving. It makes the death of Charles I discernible to the viewer, while certain details, like the king’s face, are crudely rendered and made difficult to see. The central action of displaying the king’s head is frustrated by the depiction of his face, which is reduced to a series of black dots and lines. The inventive, highly staged nature of this print brings to the fore a common theme found in representations of the executed Stuart monarch in the decade following his death: portraying while simultaneously concealing the likeness of the dead king.

Falling Stories: Cinematic Naturalism and Disability in Frank Norris’ and Stephen Crane's City Sketches

Falling Stories: Cinematic Naturalism and Disability in Frank Norris’ and Stephen Crane's City Sketches

E-sport related intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in practice. Initial psychometric properties of the “E-sport and ME” questionnaire

Background. The popularity of eSports is rapidly increasing, and PC gamers are watched by crowds of spectators similarly to traditional sports.
 The aim. E-Sport and ME questionnaire was created to assess motivation for playing video games and competing in tournaments.
 Material and methods. The theoretical background was grounded in self-determination theory (SDT).
 The results of 203 men aged 14 to 33 years (M = 20.4; SD = 3.4) were studied. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses (EFA and CFA) were conducted.
 Results. Both EFA and CFA indicated two solid factors: extrinsic and intrinsic motivation [Comparative Fit Index = 0.995, Tucker Lewis Index = 0.994, Root Mean Square Error of Approximation = 0.046 (CI 0.00 – 0.08), Standardized Root Mean Square Residual = 0.075 (χ2 = 64.16, df = 53)]. Both scales had a high level of internal consistency (> α = 0.8). Respondents from professional e-sports clubs have higher extrinsic motivation than amateurs; intrinsic motivation takes place on similar level. 
 Conclusions. The statistical analysis of e-sport and myself revealed a high level of internal consistency as well as the identification of two distinct factors. This could aid coaches and players in outlining the dominant type of motivation for playing video games. The shown version should be further explored and validated to increase its generalizability.

Торжество Свободы: национальный праздник в честь возвращения Тулона (1793 год)

In December 1793, after the end of the siege of Toulon, which had been in the hands of the British and their allies for three months, a national holiday was declared throughout the French Republic. By that time, such holidays had been completely formed and become systematic as well as acquired their own symbols. Among the essential components were a crowd of spectators, a procession, dancing, music with songs, and a banquet. Since the victory won in Toulon was long-awaited, the events on this occasion had to be grandiose. The author studies the revolutionary festival and highlights its general and special features typical of the regions. Each department celebrated the holiday in its own way: some seized an opportunity to promote the Worship of Reason and de-Christianization, others praised the goddess of victory and the brave soldiers, still others turned it into a kind of a Catholic procession. Further, the article analyses the extensive festival programme in Paris, which was developed by artist Jacques-Louis David and playwright Marie-Joseph Chénier. In some places, however, the processions were spontaneous. Of interest are the “reconstructions” of the battles in Toulon, which were undertaken at some festivals, at which mannequins depicting kings and statesmen of the allies were also burnt. In addition, the author demonstrates how the creative community reacted to the retaking of Toulon: poems and hymns were written all over the country, plays and performances were staged, exposing the tyranny and meanness of the British, as well as the cowardice of the Toulonnais that had surrendered the city, and praising the valour of the Republican soldiers.

The revolutionary movement and the practice of public funerals based on the sources of personal origins

The paper examines the tradition of politicized public funerals, which was of great importance among those who sympathized with revolutionary ideas in pre-revolutionary Russia, using materials of personal sources. Public funerals of this kind went beyond the boundaries of the traditional confessional funeral rite to a large extent and elicited serious anxiety from the authorities. It is shown that this tradition was born and formed in the second half of the 19th century and allowed the public to express political ideas bypassing the censorship restrictions of that period. The politicized funeral attracted large crowds of participants and spectators, accompanied by revolutionary songs, and ended with speeches and a civil funeral. The significance of politicized public funerals as a performative practice is shown. It is noted that politicized funerals were not always anti-religious in nature. The reaction of contemporaries to the mass politicized funeral is considered. Memoirists note the extra-state nature of a funeral of this kind, which made it possible to maintain perfect order even without the participation of the police. It is shown that by the time of the 1917 revolution, public revolutionary funerals were already a well-formed social phenomenon, and the ritual of the ceremonial burial of the victims of the revolution on the Field of Mars dates back precisely to this practice.

Chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosives (CBRNEs) preparedness for sporting event mass gatherings: A systematic review of the literature.

Sporting events often constitute mass gatherings (MGs) featuring large crowds of spectators and participants. Our objective is to understand the current state of emergency preparedness for sporting events by examining past MG sporting events to evaluate mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery against chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosive (CBRNE) events. In accordance with Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, a systematic literature review was carried out among 10 literature databases. The quality and risk of bias in each reviewed publication was assessed using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool. A total of 5,597 publications were identified. Of these, 81 papers were selected for full text reads and 25 publications were accepted. The included articles documented sporting events worldwide, ranging from incidents occurring from 1972 to 2020. Cross-cutting themes found in best practices and recommendations were strategic communication, surveillance, planning and preparedness, and training and response. More evidence-based guidelines are needed to ensure best practices in response and recovery for CBRNE incidents at sporting events. Public health risks as well as implementation barriers and opportunities to prepare for potential CBRNE threats at sporting event MGs require further investigation.

The Untold Story of the Lower Colorado River Authority by John Williams

Reviewed by: The Untold Story of the Lower Colorado River Authorityby John Williams T. Robert Hart The Untold Story of the Lower Colorado River Authority. By John Williams. River Books. ( College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2016. Pp. xvi, 265. $36.00, ISBN 978-1-62349-341-7.) In 1934 the Texas legislature granted the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) the right to dam one of the Lone Star State's most deadly and unpredictable rivers in order to control, store, and use its water to generate electricity. For centuries, the Colorado River had alternated between drought and flood stages, and efforts to control it had failed. In 1900 the Austin Dam had been swept away before a crowd of spectators who had gathered to watch raging [End Page 738]waters that eventually caused millions of dollars in property damage. John Williams describes the next three decades as an "Era of Frustration," when politicians and businessmen, including utility magnate Samuel Insull, tried unsuccessfully to dam and develop the Colorado. The frustration ended with the coming of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, growing public support for large dams, and the persistence of Congressmen James Paul Buchanan and Lyndon B. Johnson who advocated federal funding. By the end of World War II, the LCRA was selling power and expanding its customer base from towns to farms, and the people of rural Texas began to invest in modern appliances for the first time. These early days were marked by success and celebration, but they would be short-lived. For the next four decades the LCRA turned its attention to monitoring water quality, managing recreational activity on its famous Highland Lakes, and eventually shifting to natural gas, coal, and oil to produce electricity. The authority's challenges testified to the difficulty that comes with controlling nature. Williams tells this story with intimacy and with an authoritative voice in The Untold Story of the Lower Colorado River Authority. Relying largely on the LCRA corporate archives, Williams takes readers into the boardrooms and offices of the men who directed the power company's operations since the 1930s. The LCRA photographs he uses copiously throughout the book also bring to life the construction of the dams and capture the scale of the authority's development on the Colorado River. For former employees of the LCRA and for residents of Central Texas, this book should evoke vivid memories of Texas's reluctant embrace of modernization. Social and cultural historians will find Williams's account useful for its discussion of the LCRA's campaign to demonstrate the practicality of electricity for farmers and the emergence of recreational culture on the Highland Lakes. In these two sections especially, the author places this local project into a broader regional context. In other parts of the book, however, Williams dwells too long and too often on the administrative history of the LCRA, which will prove tedious for a general audience. This is a company history in the traditional sense—much of the narrative revolves around the policies and internal politics of various administrators—but it is thoroughly researched and offers a revealing look into the management of water and the production of energy in the twentieth century. T. Robert Hart University of North Carolina Wilmington Copyright © 2017 The Southern Historical Association

An Experimental Analysis of Grandstand Vibrations Caused by Crowd of Spectators during Two Football Matches

A significant dynamic load may be induced by synchronize movement of larger spectators group (like as jumping, bouncing, jouncing, swaying or abruptly rising) on a sport stadium during a sport event. This load could generate discomforting grandstand vibrations and in some extreme cases, the large grandstand vibrations are detectable by spectators even visually. A dynamic experiment is described in the paper which was realized on a steel cantilever grandstand during two football matches in the place where the most active spectators were concentrated. Vertical grandstand accelerations were observed in three points that were located at the ends of three grandstand main beams. The results of the experiment had shown predictably that the most excessive grandstand vibrations were induced by fans in the particular situations when the home team scored a goal and during the fans celebration after the matches especially. In these particular situations, the detected vibrations could be perceived by spectators as uncomfortable.

Reannealing of the Heart Ties: The Rhetoric of Anglo-American Kinship and the Politics of Reconciliation in the Prince of Wales’s 1860 Tour

On the evening of September 20, I860, a crowd estimated at thirty thousand gathered in the Detroit quays. Illuminated by the light of hundreds of colored lanterns affixed to riggings of the docked vessels, the individual faces of those who waited showed a mixture of excitement, anticipation, and fatigue, as many of them had been there for hours. (1) As the election campaign that would decide the next president of the United States was in its final, feverish weeks, mass meetings were far from unusual, but the crowd had come to engage in a decidedly unrepublican activity-welcoming the heir to the British throne. The royal visitor was none other than Albert Edward, eldest son of Queen Victoria and the great-grandson of George III, who was commencing his travels in the United States after a state visit to British North America. Any hope the young prince and his advisors had of relaxation following the frenetic pace of the Canadian tour was abruptly dashed upon his arrival in the City of the Straits. Upon landing, his steamer was besieged by curious onlookers who surged forward with such single-minded purpose that one member of the prince's retinue was shoved overboard and nearly drowned by the paddlewheel. (2) The prince was finally extricated and bundled into a waiting carriage to be conveyed to the relative safety of his hotel, but the reception he received in Detroit largely set the tone for the remainder of his visit. During his thirty days in the United States, the Prince of Wales and his suite traveled nearly twenty-six hundred miles from the sparsely settled prairies and booming commercial cities of the West to the nation's capital and then briefly to Virginia before continuing to some of the principal cities of the eastern seaboard. Nearly everywhere the prince visited, from St. Louis, Missouri, to Portland, Maine, he was enthusiastically welcomed with balls, addresses, parades, and spontaneous demonstrations of affection. Until the moment of his departure, crowds of curious spectators were his constant companions. (3) When his train stopped in rural Illinois, onlookers jumped up to peer into the carriage windows and offered their dirty hands for shaking. (4) Not even the sanctity of his lodgings was respected, as chambermaids sold strips of his bedclothes and water from his washbasin. (5) While the prince and his companions generally bore these incessant intrusions with good humor, the London Times wryly observed that the young royal was being mobbed by democratic hospitalities. (6) [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] The enormous popularity Albert Edward enjoyed during his brief visit to the United States raises several questions but none more compelling than the seeming contradiction of a nation steeped in republican tradition and intensely Anglophobic political rhetoric welcoming to its shores the great-grandson of the monarch from whom its founders had fought to obtain their liberty. At first glance, that all of this occurred against a backdrop of sectional division only heightens the inherent contradictions. As closer examination reveals, however, these fears of disunion shaped both the visit and the language Americans deployed to convey its significance. More than any other interpretive framework, Anglo-American kinship, both literal and figurative, defined the visit. Familial metaphors had long been used to describe relations between the mother country and her former colonies, but in the context of the royal visit they gained a higher emotional valence, expressing the matrix of reciprocal rights and responsibilities that continued to connect the two nations even after political separation and inspiring dreams of a common destiny. (7) By embracing Albert Edward as a kinsman, the visit's organizers reoriented the relationship between the United States and Great Britain around intimacy and affection rather than power. The language of family they popularized in the context of the royal visit lent added poignancy to the rites of remembrance and reconciliation in which the prince participated, laying a firm foundation for new avenues of Anglo-American friendship. …

Marie Ponsot’s Ever-Fixéd Mark

Marie Ponsot’s Ever-Fixéd Mark David Yezzi (bio) Every poet has her tutelary gods—those guardians, daimons, or genii of place that guide her and watch over her. Often, though not always, these are fellow writers—colleagues or eminent predecessors conjured by a Lararium of photos tucked on bookshelves or tacked above the writing desk. Their familiar faces keep watch, radiating encouragement and occasional censure, but always with an offering of fellowship, founded on a shared experience of craft and cunning. Such kindred spirits offer proof that many have spent and others will spend their lives in the pursuit of the peculiar activity of writing poems. They, too, overcame fallow periods and the loss of faith, in order to fashion something striking out of words, something life-filled and, perhaps, even lasting. Such household deities offer courage. Many such guiding spirits peer out from the poems of Marie Ponsot who, now in her tenth decade, has been recording their voices and lives in a half-dozen books of poetry, beginning with True Minds in 1956 and up through her most recent volume, Easy from 2009. (Her gods have also seen her through dozens of books translated from the French, including her brilliant versions of the Fables of La Fontaine.) Ponsot’s women—for her poem-portraits are almost always women—lead by their example. These mothers, daughters, teachers, lovers, bohemians, adventurers, scholars, and poets act out of a fierce resolve to face down successive challenges, both the ordinary and extraordinary. Let the fearless Eunice B. Winkless, photographed midair on horseback in 1904, serve as an example of the extraordinary. Winkless’s daring speaks to anyone—parent, traveler, artist, teacher—who is called upon repeatedly to take a leap of faith. Imagine the scene: it is the Fourth of July in Pueblo Colorado. Eunice Winkless rides past a crowd of eager spectators atop a tall white mare, her Gibson-girl hair swept up high on her head and tied with a black ribbon. Ponsot’s poem fixes her there: Regal as Iphigenia taking the upward course in a drift of white eyelet muslin she rides the animal horse. Merrily fife & drum pace their climb. Women think prayers, set to not-look, just in case. Men do not snigger, forget [End Page 506] their faces/ladies/bets, and stare once she reaches the platform. The crowd—women preparing to look away, men staring unflinchingly—has come to see a woman ride a flying horse (Pegasus being, as Ponsot knows, the symbol of poetry) out into thin air. What runs through her mind as stories below her, “[t]he pool glints like a tame star on the ground”? Before she has time to ruminate, the decisive moment arrives: Out & groundless horse & girl drop flying clear of equilibrium Her body jockeying air touches only bridle & with one knee, horse, as nothing to spare they head for the hope they head in dread in dread for the pool. Then follows a stanza break, like a caught breath, after which Winkless’s relief mingles with rue: To herself she says among her wet hair, “Did it again. Damn fool.” A photo of the horse and rider, caught halfway between the platform and the pool, hangs in the Smithsonian, but Ponsot’s act of ekphrasis does more than exhibit the scene or breathe life into the airborne heroine. An italic passage, which ends the poem, brings Ponsot herself into the frame: I need her dreadful ease, its immense self-reference. I watch to catch her hand-span skill addressthe radius of her practice then guess, self-tested, at its circumference. Such immense skill may only be guessed at: here is as powerful a figure for the artist as the bell-casting scene in Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev or the life-or-death fabulations of Scheherazade. The trick rider and the poet belong to the same guild; both know that in order to get the job done you have to leap. The story has a telling footnote, one which could not have been lost on Ponsot: According to a squib in Time magazine, Winkless “accepted being a part of a horse dive as a dare...

The Iridescent Blue-Black Boy with Wings (After Márquez)

The Iridescent Blue-Black Boy with Wings (After Márquez)

Nisei girls’ kabuki in wartime Arkansas: Cultural segregation and cross-dressing at Rohwer and Jerome

Despite decades of scholarly research and popular accounts produced about the Japanese American internment since the last of 10 concentration camps closed at the end of World War II, two phenomena remain either unknown or relegated to the status of anomalies: two camps called Rohwer and Jerome were located in the Deep South, in the south-eastern corner of Arkansas known as the Delta; and Japanese American (Nisei) girls as young as six repeatedly performed traditionally all-male kabuki for huge, mixed crowds of spectators there. At Rohwer and Jerome, the US government's anti-Japanese policy enforced by the War Relocation Authority (WRA) intersected with the spectacular enforcement of anti-black Jim Crow segregation laws in the Deep South. The WRA patrolled internee relations at the Arkansas camps using a policy properly dubbed “cultural segregation,” which did little to prevent highly popular Nisei girls’ kabuki shows from being performed at Rohwer and Jerome.

Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor (review)

Reviewed by: Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor Judith Richards Duffy, Eamon, Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2009; hardback; pp. xiv, 249; 30 colour plates, 6 maps, R.R.P. US$28.50; ISBN 9780300152166. Despite recent reassessments of Mary Tudor's reign as England's first crowned queen regnant, she is still best known as the monarch in whose reign almost 300 Protestants died by burning. The verbal and pictorial images in John Foxe's Book of Martyrs, published in four successively enlarged editions [End Page 205] from 1563 to 1583, ensured those deaths have remained unusually potent in English historical traditions. Now they have been revisited in Professor Duffy's most recent book, a reworking of his 2007 Birkbeck Lectures. The work retains much of his easy lecturing style, but nothing can disguise the challenging nature of some material. His wider argument attacks and subverts the enduring view that Marian Catholicism was reactionary, strong on repression and weak on persuasion. William Wizeman's The Theology and Spirituality of Mary Tudor's Church (Aldershot, 2006) had previously argued for a strong theological renewal which anticipated many Counter-Reformation decisions, but said little about the treatment of religious dissent. Duffy's is a wider-ranging work, covering the whole spectrum of Marian strategies to restore England to its Catholic loyalties. In that, Duffy's Reginald Pole, traditionally the 'invisible man of the Marian restoration', played a crucial part. A cardinal since 1536, and Mary's Archbishop of Canterbury, Pole preached frequently, encouraged others to do the same, and was the primary driver for the entire religious renewal. The tradition that the restored church failed to counter Protestant printed works with effective Catholic printed alternatives is also persuasively refuted. And much attention was paid to the refurbishing of churches to meet Catholic expectations. In brief, Eamon Duffy's new book is a comprehensive assault on the older view of Catholic failure during Queen Mary's reign. If, however, Hilary Mantel's review (London Review of Books, vol. 31, no. 18, 24 Sept 2009) is any guide, nothing could mitigate the horror of those Protestant burnings. Mantel writes: '[d]espite his careful and no doubt deeply felt disclaimers, it sometime sounds as if Eamon Duffy is cheering on the executioners.' His offence, it would seem, is that, instead of simply deploring the burnings, Duffy discusses their place in the much wider process of reclaiming England for the Catholic faith. Although he never disguises his distaste for those deaths, he also offers an entirely fresh perspective. He is insistent (if not always completely persuasive) that although the clerics were the ultimate judges, the pressure for the heresy trials came much more from the Privy Council and from Mary herself. However that may be, the bishops certainly played their part in the examinations. Making creative use of Foxe, as well as many other sources, in a chapter titled 'The Theatre of Justice', Duffy demonstrates that the examinations of many heretics, well beyond the familiar cases of Latimer, Ridley and, [End Page 206] above all, Cranmer, attracted crowds of spectators to whom all participants appealed. There, he argues, despite Foxe's interpretations, Protestant obduracy could alienate, rather than win over, the crowd. The same was true of some burnings, although London was one place where burnings were particularly problematic. Where Foxe saw crocodile tears as examiners failed to persuade their prisoners to recant and perforce proceeded to their condemnation, Duffy – at least as plausibly – sees real distress at the imminent anguish and the eternal torture of yet another soul. Where Foxe sees large crowds at burnings as Protestant demonstrations, Duffy uncovers a range of reasons – including their coinciding with market day and the uncomfortable fact that our forbears were often attracted to public executions. He also uncovers a range of responses to the dying from the entirely sympathetic to the indisputably callous. At the heart of the spectacle was 'an ideological struggle inscribed in the quivering flesh of suffering human beings' (p. 123), but the opportunity for an edifying sermon was seldom missed. One response to what Catholics understood as Protestant 'presumptuous self...

The Challenges of Enthusiasm

The Challenges of Enthusiasm

Borderland Subversions: Anti-imperial Energies in The Awntyrs off Arthure and Golagros and Gawane

Previous articleNext article No AccessBorderland Subversions: Anti-imperial Energies in The Awntyrs off Arthure and Golagros and GawaneRandy P. SchiffRandy P. Schiff Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Speculum Volume 84, Number 3JULY 2009 The journal of the Medieval Academy of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1017/S0038713400209329 Views: 99Total views on this site Citations: 7Citations are reported from Crossref © 2009 The Medieval Academy of AmericaPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Andrew Murray Richmond Fluid Boundaries in The Awntyrs off Arthure and Sir Isumbras, Open Library of Humanities 4, no.11 (Apr 2018).https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.225Randy P. Schiff Awntyrs off Arthure at the Terne Wathelyn, (Aug 2017): 1–2.https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118396957.wbemlb013Randy P. Schiff Golagros and Gawane, (Aug 2017): 1–2.https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118396957.wbemlb015Joseph Taylor Sovereignty, Oath, and the Profane Life in the Avowing of Arthur, Exemplaria 25, no.11 (Nov 2013): 36–58.https://doi.org/10.1179/1041257312Z.00000000024Mark P. Bruce, Katherine H. Terrell Introduction: Writing Across the Borders, (Jan 2012): 1–14.https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137108913_1Kylie Murray Passing the Book: The Scottish Shaping of Chaucer’s Dream States in Bodleian Library, Ms Arch. Selden. B.24., (Jan 2012): 121–139.https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137108913_8Joseph Taylor Chaucer’s Uncanny Regionalism: Rereading the North in The Reeve’s Tale, The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 109, no.44 (Oct 2010): 468–489.https://doi.org/10.5406/jenglgermphil.109.4.0468

Believe Not Every Spirit: Possession, Mysticism, and Discernment in Early Modern Catholicism (review)

Reviewed by: Believe Not Every Spirit: Possession, Mysticism, and Discernment in Early Modern Catholicism Nancy Caciola Moshe Sluhovsky . Believe Not Every Spirit: Possession, Mysticism, and Discernment in Early Modern Catholicism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. Pp. x + 374. Meticulously researched and thoughtfully composed, Believe Not Every Spirit investigates the nexus of demonic possession, ecstatic mysticism, and spiritual discernment in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century France, Spain, and Italy. At the same time, the book is also a study of bodies and of gender constructs in early modern Europe, for each of these nominally "spiritual" phenomena was, of course, manifested in fully embodied ways—usually in a body that was female. Hence, the book sets an ambitious agenda, but it succeeds admirably in tracing the interconnected evolutions of these constructs. In the Introduction, Sluhovsky writes, "in an ideal world, each page in the central chapters of this book . . . would have been divided into three columns, one devoted to exorcism, one to discernment, and one to mysticism. This synoptic configuration would have given the inherent interconnectedness of the three narratives a visual and a spatial representation" (p. 9). Wisely rejecting such a laborious presentation as unworkable, Sluhovsky instead divided his text into sequential, rather than simultaneous, parts. Each of the subsections presents its own chronological narrative for the theme under consideration, with later sections inscribing their own trajectories upon the ones presented earlier. The effect is a slow, yet effective, buildup of information, [End Page 227] analyses, and ideas. Yet, Sluhovsky's first organizational impulse was an apt one, for his themes are both deeply intertwined and intrinsically co-evolutionary. Extricating these topics from one another has the benefit of achieving greater clarity for the twenty-first-century reader, but comes at the cost of losing precisely that sense of indeterminacy that propelled the debate over the discernment of spirits, bodies, possession, and mysticism in the early modern period. Sluhovsky, ever-conscious of this paradox, navigates admirably between the authorial obligation to guide the reader through the material, and the imperative of honoring its inchoate and emergent character. As he writes, he wishes not to translate possession for the benefit of the modern reader, but to "resucitat[e] . . . its otherness and its humanness" (p. 10). Part 1, containing three chapters dedicated to demonic possession and exorcism, takes issue with current historiography by emphasizing the predictable, even boring, frequency with which such phenomena occurred in the early modern centuries. Aside from a few propagandistic texts describing particularly extreme demoniacs and their dramatic confrontations with exorcists, the vast majority of possessions were unremarkable occurrences that appear in the textual record as "trivial," "banal," and "mundane." I found this to be a fascinating recontextualization, insofar as it emphasizes the ubiquity of the supernatural during this time period—though I wonder whether Sluhovsky perhaps overcorrects in this instance. Possession, however common, could still be wrenching for the victim and her family, although exorcisms must often have provided a diversion for crowds of spectators in an age when entertainment and public action were largely overlapping categories. These are minor quibbles, however. Over time, Sluhovsky goes on to suggest, possession was increasingly "spiritualized." By this he means that the location of the possessing spirit was, with ever greater frequency, identified as inhabiting the soul rather than the body. By the seventeenth century, "the 'spiritualized' form of diabolic possession dominated exorcismal and other theological writings on the topic" (p. 31). Exorcism, meanwhile, evolved from being a quotidian healing event enacted by a wide variety of practitioners using diverse methods, to a regulated and prescribed ritual after the publication of the Roman Rite in 1614. From this point, suggests Sluhovsky, the further evolution of exorcism over the course of the seventeenth century was toward its use as a probative rite in cases of disputed spiritual inspiration, for the spiritualization of demonic possession inevitably tended toward a conflation of demonic with mystical experience, which likewise took place within the soul. The second part of the book takes up this thread by addressing mysticism, the "positive" counterpart to the demoniac's "negative" form of spiritual [End Page 228] seizure. Here, Chapters 4 and 5 recount major developments in the forms of spirituality...

“Pardon, Monsieur”: Civilization and Civility in Turgenev's “The Execution of Tropmann“

In this article, Emma Lieber situates “The Execution of Tropmann,” a late essay by Ivan Turgenev, as a key work in the author's oeuvre. Since the essay's publication, readers from Fedor Dostoevskii to contemporary critics have focused on the scene of the public execution—in which the narrator, one of a crowd of spectators, averts his gaze—as a signal instance of the reserve, moderation, and civilized refinement that are the cornerstone of the author's poetics. Lieber argues that this scene must be understood in the context of the essay as a whole, which she reads as an expression of anxiety about, and a troubled subversion of, the very civilizing influences that have been read as redemptive in Turgenev's novels and short stories. This interpretation therefore urges, not only a reconsideration of the place of “Tropmann” and its central scene in Turgenev's work, but also a reassessment of the tenor of the author's fiction.

"He Put His Thumb Up to His Nose, And Twirl'd His Fingers at His Foes": Presidential Campaign Songs in 1844

Up Beat Down South "He Put His Thumb Up to His Nose, And Twirl'd His Fingers at His Foes" Presidential Campaign Songs in 1 844 BY GAVIN JAMES CAMPBELL Whigs, Now's the Time, Vote andSing, Sing and Vote —National Clay Melodist (1844) On 17 August 1844, a Tennessee schoolteacher namedJason Niles joined a large crowd of spectators to watch the raising of a "Clay pole" celebrating the Whig party's presidential ticket of Henry Clay and Theodore Frelinghuysen. Local party organizers were undoubtedly embarassed when the pole fractured and had to be sent to the local blacksmith's shop for swift repairs. Despite the loss of about forty-five feet, the pole went up successfully and there was "shouting and singing all night." Not to be outdone, Democratic partisans carted in their own pole a week later "drawn by some 20 odd yoke of oxen," on one of which sat a fiddler. After raising their pole without incident, observed Niles, Democrats "sung 'Damn old Clay and Frelinghuysen'." Two weeks later the Whigs responded with another rally and Niles again joined a large assembly of spectators, this time serenaded by "the music of an accordian, fiddle and sweet voices of some Whig singers." As Niles's diary reveals, nineteenth-century presidential candidates could expect their bids for office to inspire a torrent ofmusic and political songs, much of it created for the occasion. Beginning with the raucous 1 840 election between William Henry Harrison and Martin Van Buren, music played an increasingly prominent role in the arsenal of campaign weapons. By 1 844 both Whigs and Democrats were convinced that music could help tip the electoral scales at a time ofbalanced and fierce party competition. Theypublished and disseminated thousands of cheap, pocket-sized booklets, or "songsters," containing newly minted political verses set to well-known tunes. These songsters were important in generating enthusiasm and invective, in sketching out a campaign's broader issues, and in uniting voters at the grassroots in public displays of party loyalty. Such functions were critical in 1 844 as the "dark horse," Tennessee's James K. Polk, sought to defeat Kentucky's Henry Clay in an election eventually decided by fewer than 40,000 popular votes. Although the annexation ofTexas and the westward expansion of slavery were the touchstones of the election, music neverthe-»39 Titlepagefrom The Clay Songster (n.d.). Courtesy ofDuke University Special Collections Ubrary, Durham, TV. C. less played an important role in creating an enthusiastic, committed, involved, and amused electorate. Songs and music celebrating presidential candidates had deep roots, but it wasn't until William Henry Harrison's "log cabin and hard cider" campaign that specially printed political songsters made dieir debut. With tides like A Drop of Cider, or the Tippecanoe Roarer, and The Ij)g Cabin Minstrel, the 1 840 songsters celebrated the virtues and achievements of"Tippecanoe and Tyler Too" while at the same time jeering at the Democratic incumbent, Martin Van Buren. Democrats scoffed at such uninspired Whig lyricism as "Van, Van, Van is a used up man." "The idea," one Democratic editor sniffed, "that the people are to be gulled by songs, widiout merit ofeither truth or patriotism, is a chimera ofentire Whig origin ." Whig organizers, on the other hand, were ecstatic, reporting that "our songs are doing more good than anything else." Although many Democrats charged diat Harrison had simply been sung into the White House, they also vowed not to be outsung again. Music helped usher Harrison into the White House, and it also helped usher him out. The composer Henry Dielman had barely finished inking in die last note I40 OAVlN JAMES CAMPBELL ofa "Grand Inauguration March" before he was furiously at work on "President Harrison's Funeral March." Harrison's sudden death after only one month in office catapulted Vice PresidentJohn Tyler into power. Very quickly, however, Tyler and the Whig leadership foundered on ideological shoals, making it clear that Tyler (caustically dubbed "His Accidency") could not bear the Whig party standard in the 1 844 contest. The only logical choice was Henry Clay. "Harry ofthe West" was no stranger to the presidential campaign trail. He had already run twice, losing...

"Emblem and Product of Sin": The Poisoned Child in The Scarlet Letter and Domestic Advice Literature

“Emblem and Product of Sin”: The Poisoned Child in The Scarlet Letter and Domestic Advice Literature Franny Nudelman (bio) When Hester Prynne is paraded before a solemn and censorious crowd of spectators with both emblems of her crime—the scarlet letter and her infant daughter—on display, she does not reveal the torment she experiences. While she “felt, at moments, as if she must needs shriek out with the full power of her lungs, and cast herself from the scaffold down upon the ground, or else go mad at once,” she successfully conceals her suffering from the crowd. 1 She cannot, however, hide her feelings from her daughter. After spending the day with Hester on the scaffold, the infant Pearl becomes ill. Hawthorne explains that the child, having drawn “its sustenance from the maternal bosom, seemed to have drank in with it all the turmoil, the anguish, and despair, which pervaded the mother’s system” (64). The suffering that Hester suppresses in public is communicated directly to her child. As a result, the infant’s body, “writh[ing] in convulsions of pain,” becomes “a forcible type . . . of the moral agony which Hester Prynne had borne throughout the day” (64). Poisoned by her mother’s feelings, Pearl expresses, indeed typifies, Hester’s moral state. Although Hawthorne tells us that Hester’s artistic embellishment of the relation between Pearl and the letter, intended to “create an analogy between the object of her affection, and the emblem of her guilt and torture,” is merely an elaboration of a prior, organic relation in which “Pearl was the one, as well as the other” (90–1), critics have accepted Hester’s mischievous elaboration of Pearl’s resemblance to the scarlet letter as Hawthorne’s own. Focusing their attentions on the letter itself, and regarding Pearl as its less articulate double, critics have overlooked Hawthorne’s consideration of the difference between the two. Pearl, described by Hawthorne as the “effluence of her mother’s lawless passion” (146), is the “living emblem” of Hester’s guilt not so much because she resembles the scarlet letter, but rather because she embodies what the letter can only represent—the very passions which motivate Hester’s transgression, and the sufferings that accompany her punishment. An important strain in critical writing on The Scarlet Letter has focused on the letter itself and, by extension, “the nature of symbolic perception.” 2 According to these accounts, the “A” anatomizes the properties of the symbol: it [End Page 193] is interesting because it means many things at once and no one thing reliably. An emphasis on the scarlet letter as a form of representation—one that fosters a degree of referential uncertainty—entails an emphasis on the problem of interpretation; critics celebrate the letter’s ability to elicit varied responses and thus create diverse readings. According to Charles Feidelson, the novel elaborates the ways the symbol acquires meanings by reenacting the Custom House narrator’s original encounter with the letter from a series of vantage points. More recently Sacvan Bercovitch has argued that the novel uses the letter to school its readers in the interpretive procedures by which liberal culture transforms difference, or dissent, into consensus. 3 Whether considered from a formal or a cultural vantage point, the letter’s power lies in its referential latitude which allows it to accumulate and sustain a variety of readings under the rubric of its own simplicity. Its indeterminacy is indistinguishable from its inclusiveness, and both determine its critical stature. 4 This emphasis on the problematics of interpretation, implicit in the fluid and inclusive nature of the symbol, has allowed critics to underestimate Hawthorne’s critique of the letter as an agent of discipline. The complex, indeterminate relationship between sign and referent which has generated such critical delight in the letter “A” is, in the context of crime and reformation, an enormous problem, one which Hawthorne addresses with a degree of care and deliberation. Bercovitch can describe the Puritan community as the novel’s “interpretive hero” because, taking a lesson in the hermeneutics of liberalism, it keeps finding and embracing new meanings for the letter (Office, 47). The community makes a mistake, however, by believing that the...

Harriet Livermore, the Pilgrim Stranger: Female Preaching and Biblical Feminism in Early-Nineteenth-Century America

On a Sunday morning in January of 1827, “all the taste and fashion” of Washington, D.C., streamed toward the Capitol to witness one of the most remarkable events to take place in the gentlemanly preserve of the Hall of Representatives: Harriet Livermore, a devout evangelical and the daughter of a former Congressman, had convinced the Speaker of the House to allow her to preach to Congress. With crowds of eager spectators spilling out of the Hall and into the street, Livermore ascended into the Speaker's Chair, which served as a makeshift pulpit, and silenced a crowd of a thousand with a sermon on the text, “He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God.” Included among her audience were congressmen, senators, and President John Quincy Adams himself, who sat on the steps leading up to her feet because he could not find a free chair. According to published reports, many in the audience wept quietly as she spoke. “It savored more of inspiration than anything I ever witnessed,” one woman marvelled. “And to enjoy the frame of mind which I think she does, I would relinquish the world. Call this rhapsody if you will; but would to God you had heard her!” Livermore's sermon was such a success that she was permitted to preach to Congress again in 1832, 1838, and 1843, each time to large crowds.