Early Biographies Research Articles

A hero for their times: early biographies of NewtonIliffeRobKeynesMiloHiggittRebekaheds. Early biographies of Isaac Newton, 1660–1885(2 vols). Pickering & Chatto, London2006. pp. lxix +387; xlvii +420. £195.00 (hardback).1-85196-778-8.

Rob Iliffe, Milo Keynes, Rebekah Higgitt. eds. Early biographies of Isaac Newton, 1660–1885 (2 vols). Pickering & Chatto, London 2006. pp. lxix +387; xlvii +420. £195.00 (hardback). 1-85196-778-8. Though biography be no longer an act of worship, it is not yet a solemn and impartial judgment: we

Tao Yuanming & Manuscript Culture: The Record of a Dusty Table (review)

Reviewed by: Tao Yuanming & Manuscript Culture: The Record of a Dusty Table Zhu Mei (bio) Xiaofei Tian . Tao Yuanming & Manuscript Culture: The Record of a Dusty Table. Seattle, London: University of Washington Press, 2005. x, 319 pp. Hardcover $60.00, ISBN 0-295-98553-4. This book is concerned with Tao Yuanming (365?-427) and his manuscripts. In their leisurely mood and casual style, Tao Yuanming's poems exemplify the harmony between Chinese people and nature-the essence of "Chinese art." Tao Yuanming's renowned series of five poems "Returning to Dwell in Gardens and Fields" (Gui yuan tian ju), in which the poet gives up his profession for the life of a farm recluse, is an ideal to which many Chinese poets and intellectuals in social turmoil would subsequently aspire. Until now, he has generally been held up as a loyal subject by specialists and non-specialists. In this book, Tian suggests that the "authentic" texts through which we have interpreted Tao may not be trustworthy. The audience of Tao Yuanming has been led astray by editorial "reproduction" of Tao's text and must be warned against them. By examining the historical, social, cultural, and literary context in which Tao Yuanming was deeply embedded, along with the ideological discourses of commentators, Tian presents to us an elusive, innovative, and playful Tao Yuanming, who is primarily a writer rather than a recluse. She claims that we have misunderstood Tao as "the archetypal recluse" (p. 12) by relying on the Song image of the poet, along with the partial knowledge of earlier interpreters. Tian's reading demonstrates that contrary to the belief that Tao's works manifest a deep sense of sufficiency, calm, and arrogance, they instead betray the sorrow, fear, and restlessness in his heart. Moreover, instead of being plain and artless, Tao Yuanming's works are highly self-conscious, even performative. They never articulate any systematic thoughts. Essential to this conflicting image of Tao is, according to Tian, the "fluidity of the medieval Chinese textual world and how its materials were historically reconfigured for later purposes," that is, "the problems of manuscript culture" (p. 220). Tian's book not only changes our view of Tao Yuanming but also it is important as a study of manuscript culture. Throughout most of the book, Tian's approach is characterized by the care and circumspection that she gives to each textual variant on Tao Yuanming's life and of his poems. Hers is the most thoroughly researched book on this poet to date. She first analyzes four early biographies written within two centuries of the poet's death. These are the Song History version, the Xiao Tong version, the Jin History version, and the Histories of the Southern Dynasties version. There are both overlapping passages and differences among them. By meticulously comparing the differences, Tian demonstrates that Tao is portrayed differently based on the knowledge of the author and the issues of their time. For instance, Xiao Tong's version is part of a collection of Tao Yuanming's work, with which Xiao is [End Page 271] certainly familiar. Therefore, his version includes anecdotes of Tao's family that cannot be found elsewhere while implicitly reflecting his own readings of Tao's work. The Jin History version removes any mention of Tao Yuanming's refusal to serve the Liu Song. According to Tian, perhaps it is because Tao lived toward the end of the Eastern Jin. In contrast, the Song History promotes the perception of Tao Yuanming as an intense Jin loyalist because the fall of the Northern Song into the hands of the "barbarian" rulers was only too similar to the end of the Jin, and the loyalist sentiments could be easily related to the editors' own times. Despite all these differences, Tian suggests that these biographies are all, to a large extent, based on "Tao Yuanming's own projection of his image in his Master Five Willows" (p. 19). What is fascinating is, as Tian points out, the way in which Chinese scholars have dealt with the biographies: they read them, reconfiguring them according to their own ideological tendency or the norms of contemporary analysis and then use them as...

This Is the Dream (review)

Reviewed by: This Is the Dream Deborah Stevenson Shore, Diane Z . This Is the Dream; by Diane Z. Shore and Jessica Alexander; illus. by James Ransome. Amistad/HarperCollins, 2006 [40p] Library ed. ISBN 0-06-055520-3$16.89 Trade ed. ISBN 0-06-055519-X$15.99 Reviewed from galleys R 5-8 yrs This succinct poetic history of the civil rights movement begins with a survey of prominent aspects of segregation (separate water fountains, separate seats on the bus and in restaurants, separate sections in libraries and separate schools), then describes key actions of resistance (integrating schools, boycotting buses, sitting at lunch counters); finally, it depicts the results of the battle, a present where people can sit in restaurants, on buses, and in libraries and schools together. The approach may sound like a recipe for purposive disaster, but the book is genuinely successful. Shore and Alexander wisely resist the robotic fidelity to the "House That Jack Built" cumulation that the first line ("These are the fountains that stand in the square") and rhymed couplets suggest, instead simply using the "these are the" formula and tight rhyme scheme as effective structuring devices. Though the poetry is a little uneven, their focus on concrete, kid-understandable discrimination and specific responses makes this an unusually accessible explanation, and they manage to give credit both to the leaders and the foot soldiers in the movement. Ransome's double-page portraiture employs his familiar thickly pigmented brushstrokes and smooth, three-dimensional modeling (red, white, and blue runs as a subtle motif throughout), with images subtly reminding viewers that it often wasn't just a case of "separate" but also "inferior." In some spreads, he augments his painterly images with period photographs, often running in strips of collage across the top of the page that balance out the text boxes along the bottom; the dramatic turning point visually counterpoints his portraits of four key leaders against a photographic backdrop of teeming marchers and activists, paralleling the text's embrace of contributors unknown as well as known. This takes a tough subject for youthful understanding and distills it into a clear and compelling narrative, making it a valuable tool for [End Page 285] curricular use; pair it with an early biography such as Rappaport's Martin's Big Words (BCCB 1/02) to balance out the broader view with an individual story. Copyright © 2006 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Nelson and the bear: the making of an Arctic myth

Recent biographers of Horatio Nelson (1758–1805) have begun the job of attempting to differentiate the man from the ‘myth.’ A necessary stage in the assessment of any historical figure is the identification of the legendary aspects that make up that figure's reputation. The tale of the young Nelson engaging a huge polar bear on an ice floe off Spitsbergen in 1773 has been met with varying degrees of delight and dismissal through the years, and is one of the events an examination of which could improve an understanding of Nelson and his reputation. This paper draws upon a study of primary and secondary materials: original manuscripts and correspondence, early nineteenth-century popular biographies, souvenirs and pamphlets, periodical reviews, and a wide selection of adult and juvenile literature. This paper examines the developments of Nelsonian biography and hagiography. In a broader sense, an extended examination of the literary and visual manifestations of Nelson's encounter with the bear becomes a useful historiographical exercise into the genesis of a myth.

Becoming an Agent of Change: Analyzing Narratives by Leaders in Post-Soviet Ukraine

This paper is about the life experiences of selected individuals who, five years after Ukrainian independence, had emerged as key leaders in post-Soviet Ukraine, a society undergoing deep social and political transformations. In this paper, I argue that under these circumstances, these individuals became both the “children” and “agents” of change. In exploring this idea, I will focus on the moment in their life stories when each narrator identifies the moment when he or she began to act as an “agent” of change. More specifically, I will examine circumstances that transformed these individuals into new leaders at this unique social and political juncture in Ukraine's history. My working hypothesis is that, in addition to direct factors and a certain element of chance, other factors in their earlier biographies, during the Soviet period, have had lasting importance on these leaders' development.

Murderabilia

Murderabilia

A new source for the biography of Ibn Taymiyya

The student who approaches the study of the turbulent life of Ibn Taymiyya will soon realize that Shams al-Dīn al-Dhahabī, his renowned shāfi‘ī disciple, is indeed one of the main sources for the Hanbalī scholar's biographers. Al-Dhahabī wrote many biographical notices of Ibn Taymiyya and one of these has been identified with the manuscript source presented in this article. The article briefly introduces the source, discusses its content and its importance in relation to the early biographies of Ibn Taymiyya as is evident from the text, and raises some questions about the state of consensus towards the Hanbalī jurist among his traditionalist Damascene fellows. An edition and annotated translation of the Arabic text are appended to the introduction.

The Early Development of the Padmasambhava Legend in Tibet: A Study of IOL Tib J 644 and Pelliot tibetain 307

This article offers some new evidence on Padmasambhava, the Indian master who, according to legend, was instrumental in establishing Buddhism in Tibet. In the course of my research on tantra in the Tibetan manuscripts discovered near Dunhuang, I have found two passages relating to the early development of the legends surrounding this famous Buddhist master, neither of which have been studied to date. I The two passages are presented below in translation, and discussed in light of the other available early evidence. The results of this study reveal a mutability in the early biographies of Padmasambhava. The master's role in the Tibetan imagination grew and evolved in dramatic ways during the ninth to eleventh centuries, so that by the time of his first complete biography, the twelfthcentury Zangs gling ma by Nyang ral nyi ma'i 'od zer (1124-1192), Padmasambhava had become the single most important figure in Tibetan narratives of their early conversion to Buddhism. The new evidence presented here contributes to our understanding of how these Tibetan conversion narratives grew over the early years. The present inquiry is therefore less concerned with Padmasambhava as a historical person than with his legend and the thematic lines along which it developed.2 An evaluation of the early evidence helps to clarify both how Tibetans perceived themselves and how they understood their first encounters with the Buddhist religion. This new evidence indicates that the Padmasambhava legend initially flourished during the so-called of Tibetan history. This period stretched from 842 C.E. when the Tibetan empire collapsed, to roughly 978 c.E. when a royal court and Buddhist monastic institutions began to reappear, bringing with them a new orthodoxy. According to traditional Tibetan historical sources, this period of one and a half centuries witnessed a horrific degradation of Buddhism, as monasteries were persecuted and the teachings corrupted. Recent scholarship has begun to question this traditional version of events.3 Certainly, the Tibetans who emerged from the dark period were far more Buddhist, however such affiliation is measured, than the Tibetans who had entered it. It seems that despite the closing of the monasteries Buddhism continued to flourish at the local level. The forms Buddhism took during these years may well have been corrupt in the view of later Tibetans, but these same corruptions were fundamental to the formation of the Tibetan Buddhist identity. Freed from the watchful eye of the imperial court and the monastic orthodoxy, Tibetans of the dark period were able to make Buddhism their own. The themes, the imagery, and the strategies Tibetans developed during the inchoate years of the dark age formed the cultural foundations upon which Tibetan Buddhism was built. Only by excavating these foundations and shedding

The Cambridge Companion to Mozart (review)

Cambridge Companion to Mozart. Edited by Simon P. Keefe. (Cambridge Companions to Music.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. [xvii, 272 p. ISBN 0-521-80734-4. $70 (hbk.); ISBN 0-521-00192-7. $26 (pbk.).] Music examples, facsimiles, bibliography, indexes. Cambridge Copanion to examines the and his music from variety of perspectives. Seventeen complementary essays address the contexts in which lived and worked, the music itself and its reception, and issues of performance. Intended for students and scholar, as well as general readers, the book aims to bridge the gap between scholarly and popular images of the composer through presenting up-to-date (p. 2). Practically all the volume's essays do indeed challenge popular conceptions of and his music. opening chapters on context tackle one of the more persistent falsehoods: the belief that the was neglected and mistreated during his lifetime. Chapter 1, written by Cliff Eisen, discusses musical life in Salzburg during Mozart's tenure there. He concludes that the city was hardly musical backwater (p. 13) and while Archbishop Colloredo was undoubtedly a difficult employer . . . the Mozarts [father and son] were not good employees (pp. 19-20). He further argues that the Mozarts deliberately provoked the Archbishop by flagrantly ignoring certain compositional and professional expectations; therefore they were partly, if not mostly, responsible for their supposed mistreatment. Similarly Dorothea Link's essay on Vienna challenges the myth that the Viennese court ignored and that the composer's last decade was largely unsuccessful. Although experienced some lean years near the end of his life, she demonstrates that he actively pursued and achieved some success in all the professional avenues open to him, including winning desirable court appointment. Two chapters deconstruct the image of as childlike genius who was out of touch with the world. In Mozart and Late Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics, David Schroeder draws on Mozart's family correspondence and other evidence to prove the was keenly aware of the era's philosophical, political, and aesthetic trends (p. 48). William Stafford's discussion of The Evolution of Mozartian Biography clearly explains why the early biographies incorporated fictions and placed undue emphasis on . . . [Mozart's] wondrous childhood (p. 203). After laying this foundation, Stafford then discusses prominent themes in biographies of the composer, using them in part to trace how concepts of genius have transformed over time. Both essays suggest that popular images of the unfairly downplay the element of skill and craft in Mozart's music (p. 208) as well as the influence of his environment. Challenging long-held assumptions also extends to the chapters on music. Although Die Zauberflote, for instance, is often assumed to be without precedent, David Buch shows that it stems from fashion for fairy tale operas. As Buch notes, most scholarship has focused on allegorical interpretations of the opera. Wisely he does not address these in detail, but focuses instead on placing the opera in its theatrical context. His research leads him to reject basic premise about the work: because fairy talc operas prior to and following Die Zauberflote have no demonstrable [allegorical] content, according to Buch, he questions whether or not Die Zauberflote is in fact an allegory, stance that will surely raise some eyebrows (p. 166). Other essays in the collection also question prevailing assumptions and discuss how views of and his output have changed over time. Today most listeners consider the composer's music to epitomize beauty and elegance, but to his contemporaries it seemed congested, even rough [and] bizarre (p. 176). David Levin's essay on performance practice builds upon this point. While many strive for serene, legato surface when performing Mozart, Levin argues passionately that frequent changes in texture, articulation, harmony, and topoi are fundamental to Mozart's music; performers, therefore, should exploit this volatility of character (p. …

Classics in Clinical Dermatology with Biographical Sketches: 50th Anniversary 2nd Edition

In 1953, two young American dermatologists, Shelley and Crissey, produced a work entitled Classics in Clinical Dermatology, containing the original descriptions of 143 dermatological disorders, with brief biographical notes on the ninety-four men and one woman who had written them. The chronology extended from Robert Willan's first descriptions of psoriasis and erythema nodosum in 1808, to Sophie Spitz's recognition of melanoma of childhood in 1948. This book has long been out of print, but after a lapse of half a century the same two authors, both now retired after long and distinguished careers, have produced a second edition, adding 46 original descriptions by a further thirty-one men and one woman. The choice of subjects is deliberately eclectic, encompassing the grave (Kaposi's sarcoma, Wegener's granulomatosis, mycosis fungoides), the commonplace (acne vulgaris, seborrhoeic dermatitis, pityriasis rosea) and the obscure (rhinoscleroma, hydroa vacciniforme). Likewise, some of those commemorated are very well known (Parkes Weber, Jonathan Hutchinson), others familiar only through the name of the disorder that they described (Behcet, Bowen, Paget, Darier). Many of the original descriptions are delightful to read, surpassing anything that would be written nowadays in both the elegance of the language and the precision of clinical observation. Erasmus Wilson, for example, in describing spider naevi, talks of a publican who had ‘yielded to the temptation of his calling’, whilst Willan's observation of the sequence of evolution of the morphological changes in chronic plaque psoriasis could not be improved upon. The modern additions offer reassurance that original clinical observations continue to be made by dermatologists in routine practice (Sweet, Wilkinson, Grover). It is also pleasing to discover that the fact that the original description of Kawasaki disease was in Japanese did not prevent its general recognition and the correct eponymous attribution. The inclusion of the biographical sketches is an important element of the work; an eponym becomes rather pointless if the person concerned has vanished into obscurity. A point of interest is that many original observations of skin disease were made by surgeons or physicians; in an age when clinical practice is becoming increasingly compartmentalized it is salutary to read of those such as Paget and Hutchinson whose clinical practice and contributions ranged over almost the entire spectrum of medicine. The earlier biographies, whilst brief, do not lack colour; one individual is said to have been ‘totally devoid of any sense of humour’, whilst another is said to have had ‘a certain abruptness of manner’. By contrast, those added to the second edition are in some instances overladen with sycophancy; no doubt Shelley and Crissey have mellowed with the passing of the years. The new edition of Classics in Dermatology will certainly appeal to anyone with an interest in how our understanding of skin disease has evolved. Nor is its appeal confined to the specialist. Many of the conditions described are of general medical importance—dermatomyositis, pyoderma gang-renosum, dermatitis herpetiformis. Perhaps most important of all, this splendid book will encourage readers, from whatever clinical specialty, to rediscover the dying art of precise clinical observation and clear description.

Pierre de la Rue and Musical Life at the Habsburg-Burgundian Court (review)

EARLY MUSIC Pierre de la Rue and Musical Life at the Habsburg-Burgundian Court. By Honey Meconi. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. [xiv, 385 p. ISBN 0-19-816554-4. $120.] Music examples, illustrations, catalog of works, bibliography, indexes. Meconi's monograph on Pierre de La Rue is a welcome addition to Oxford University Press's studies devoted to individual composers of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Standing somewhat outside the expectations of a typical life-and-works volume, Meconi's book nevertheless provides fascinating insights into La Rue's world, adduced from the most meticulous consideration of archival documents, musical sources, and literary references. Pierre de la Rue unfolds in five chapters that are clearly written and free of jargon; detailed appendices, the bibliography, and indexes account for approximately one-third of the book's mass. In casting a wide net, comparing La Rue with other composers in his environs, Meconi's work will serve as an important resource for anyone undertaking advanced study of musical activity ca. 1480-1520. first two chapters explore the uncertainties of La Rue's early biography, his life at the Hapsburg court, and his status in comparison to the other musicians in service there. details of La Rue's childhood in Tournai unfold rather easily, but recovering the early years of his career presents problems resulting from confusion with the doppelganger Peter vander Straeten. To sort this out, Meconi painstakingly reconstructs the sources of assumptions made by two late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century authorities on La Rue, Edmond Vander Straeten and Georges Van Doorslaer. Meconi ultimately determines that equating La Rue and vander Straeten relies on slim evidence that takes too much explaining, and comes to the guarded conclusion that the possibility of the two being the same person is less likely than the possibility that they are different. Once La Rue becomes a member of the Hapsburg-Burgundian chapel, the doppelganger problem disappears; however, new complexities emerge regarding precisely where, when, and which member of the royal family he served. Meconi untangles a web of incomplete and inconsistent documents; intermarriages, untimely deaths, and the concomitant travels, consolidations, disbandments, and reconstitutions of the chapel; and wishful thinking on the part of previous scholars. Although this chapter may be daunting to those unaccustomed to coping with the ambiguities and frustrations of working with archival documents and layers of accrued misunderstandings, Meconi's research and methodology is beyond reproach. The Grande Chapelle and Musical Life at the Habsburg-Hurgundian Court (chap. 2) is an excellent description of the role of the chapel within the daily activities of the court and the duties of its various members, woven into the complex history of the court's peregrinations. section on La Rue's colleagues is an accounting of those members of the chapel who, in addition to being singers, also composed polyphony at one time or another during their careers; coincidentally, they all became member of the chapel only after La Rue had been there for some time. Their positions and ranks are discussed relative to La Rue, which can sometimes confuse the reader since La Rue's situation was unstable and thus cannot provide a baseline. Meconi's reason for this approach becomes clear as she navigates through numerous contradictions. Other musicians who had been at the court for less time than La Rue, or who were younger than him, sometimes surpassed him in rank, and despite his longevity at the court, he never rose to the position of premier chapelain. Dismantling long-standing claims proffered by earlier scholars, she demonstrates that La Rue did not necessarily receive preferential treatment and was not necessarily more highly esteemed by Marguerite than others, although she certainly appreciated his talents, as evidenced by numerous encounters between the two. …

Nietzsche and Proust: A Comparative Study by Duncan Large (review)

268 Reviews Stella that explores the anxieties attendant upon expressions of imperial power. In his final revelatory chapter, the chronologically oriented thrust of the argument focuses upon the writer known as Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (i539-1616), the mestizo child of both Inca and Spanish parents, whose work represents perhaps 'the last moment in which the lyric discourse that shaped empire could still be manipulated to work critically against its own erstwhile purposes' (p. 24). Unrequited Conquests offers a remarkable array of radical new avenues of enquiry into the relationship between the Old and New Worlds, placing early modern poetics at the heart of the continually disputed power structures binding the conqueror to the conquered. While there exists throughout the tantalizing glimpse of the Old Worlds of the east behind transactions with the west?an area ripe forenquiry?the insistent focus of the text ensures that it will remain a significant contribution to the field for some time to come. Royal Holloway, University of London Matthew Dimmock Nietzsche and Proust: A Comparative Study. By Duncan Large. (Oxford Modern Languages and Literature Monographs) Oxford: Clarendon Press. 2001. xi + 298 pp. ?45- ISBN 0-19-924227-5 (hbk). As time passes, the relationship between writers becomes ever more murky and multiform . Duncan Large's introduction to this ambitious work traces some ofthe intricate shadow-boxing that Proust and Nietzsche have been put through, before he himself steps into the ring to referee the real contest, as much between promotional critics as between the contenders themselves. Large's firsttask is to address a Proustian cri? ticism which either suppresses Nietzsche altogether or treats him as the go-between of a 'truer' source (Schopenhauer), a merely convenient provider of an appropriable vocabulary or set of assumptions. Large's admirably combative approach leads him to tax Derrida with methodological slippages and Kristeva with a derivativeness against which he needs to defend Deleuze's implicitly Nietzschean reading of Proust. Chap? ter 2 looks at Proust's Nietzsche, and particularly at his use of Nietzsche as a paradigm of the philosopher too dedicated to the truths of the intellect and the illusory rewards of friendship. But Proust's Nietzsche is a fictional flag of convenience, created out of an imperfect knowledge, culled in large part from Daniel Halevy's early biography. Had he been more patient, less satisfied with prejudice, Proust might have found in Nietzsche the kindred spirit that Large so deftly reveals to us. Chapters 3 and 4 delve into the perspectivisticattitudes shared by the pair: Proust's perspectivism has not the same afBrmative and exhilarating drive that Nietzsche's has, connected as it so often is with experiences of deception, and seeming as it does to entail the abandonment of notions of a unified, founding self. But Large takes us through the complex corporal and epistemological issues associated with the enterprise of self-discovery to the sunny uplands of self-creation: I would suggest that the self-creative potential of Nietzsche's 'yea-saying' Ubermensch yields a paradigm in terms ofwhich one can under stand both whyProust's narratorfeels a sense of necessity in his involuntary memories, a sense of self rescued from the world of human contingency, and why the self-revelations of involuntary memory should lead him on to a work of art?a 'metaphoricaP art of self-creation. (p. 202) This part of Large's engrossing and highly persuasive investigation leads him, with satisfying inevitability, to the future perfect as the couple's defining temporality. And so the final chapter digs deep into the strategies adopted to outwit a problematic pre? sent: Nietzsche 'exploits the virtual perspective ofthe future perfect as an opportunity MLRy 98.1, 2003 269 both to critique the nihilism of contemporary culture and to celebrate the redemptive potential of the Ubermensch' (p. 216), while Proust explores the future perfect in greater psychological close-up, as it acts with corrosive insinuationson the experience of the present moment; but it is this temporality, too, which, paradoxically, holds out the promise of redemption when east in a new light at the close of A la recherche. Overall, the case is convincingly made that, in finding new paths of thought...

The Biographical Inscription of Ptahshepses from Saqqara: A Newly Identified Fragment

A limestone block in the collection of the Oriental Institute Museum (OIM 11048), can now be identified as belonging to the niched chapel wall of Ptahshepses in The British Museum (BM EA 682), known for its biographical text recounting the life of this priestly official under successive reigns during the Fourth and Fifth Dynasties. The OIM block supplies the names of two additional kings, Userkaf and Sahure, to the Ptahshepses inscription, the former of whom is the ruler who gave his daughter, Khamaat, to Ptahshepses in marriage. A grammatical and structural analysis of the inscribed façade sets the text within the context of other early biographies, and suggests that its overtly poetic structure was intended as a performative signal to invite the active participation of visitors through recitation. Finally, the value of the Ptahshepses façade as a contemporary chronological record is briefly reassessed in relation to the Ramesside king lists and the Manethonic tradition.

The Wreck of the Belle, the Ruin of La Salle

This awkwardly titled book is yet another biography of Robert Cavelier de La Salle rather than an account of the discovery, excavation, and preservation of the French explorer's vessel, La Belle, and its contents, which archaeologists of the Texas Historical Commission located in 1995 in Matagorda Bay along the Texas coast. Robert S. Weddle, widely regarded as the dean of Texas colonial historians, has organized his material into three parts of four or five chapters each. They center on La Salle's life as an explorer around the Great Lakes and the Illinois and Mississippi River basins, his expedition to the Gulf of Mexico, and the ensuing tragedy in Texas. Weddle's emphasis on the last four years of La Salle's life reverses the weight found in earlier biographies and establishes the historical context for additional volumes that the Texas Historical Commission may sponsor or publish about the discovery of the oldest French shipwreck in America.

New Light on the Early Career of G. B. Viotti

New light is shed on G. B. Viotti's early career in a letter written by the English traveller the Revd Thomas Brand in which he describes concerts led by Viotti in Geneva in early 1780. A pupil of the famed violinist Pugnani, who also performed in the concerts, Viotti is described as the better of the two. The letter confirms the accuracy of Miel's report on the Geneva concerts in his early biography of Viotti (1827) and prompts reconsideration not only of Viotti's reputation and his relationship with Pugnani but also his repertoire and the chronology of his early works. According to the Mémoires (1825) of Madame de Genlis, Viotti collaborated with the Danish mechanician, ceramic painter, and musician Hans Henrik Pløtz on a new system of music notation; both were in Geneva in 1780.

Time to Begin Anew: Dryden’s Georgics and Aeneis by Tanya Caldwell

63 5 Page 4. Many early biographies of Brown have him born at Shifnal. Benjamin Boyce, citing the parish register and Anthony Wood, prefers Newport: Tom Brown of Facetious Memory (Cambridge , Mass., 1939), p. 5. Either way, Brown was a Shropshireman. 6 Entitled ‘‘The General Lover,’’ and divorced from its epistolary context, the poem appears among Brown’s miscellaneous verse in vol. I of his Works (1707, p. 154), which suggests that it may have enjoyed wider currency, in printed or MS collections. 7 These and other attacks by Brown and Boyer are cited in Works, I:390, 393, 481; II: 288– 291. Formerly Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London BOOKS BRIEFLY NOTED* TANYA CALDWELL. Time to Begin Anew: Dryden’s Georgics and Aeneis. Lewisburg , PA: Bucknell, 2000. Pp. 263. $44. This is the first critical study to take a serious and sustained look at the two centerpieces of Dryden’s Virgil: theGeorgics and the Aeneis (1697). Ms. Caldwell rightly assumesthatDryden’sGeorgicvision was just as central and crucial to his literary imagination as was the epic story of Aeneas. She argues that both works betray the same underlying tension; in effect , Dryden is caught between two different worlds—the heroic past of Virgil and the unheroic present ofcontemporary England. How did Dryden mediate this conflict? Through ‘‘emphasis on the poet’s rather than history’s redeeming powers, uncertainty about the future or the importance of political and historical issues, and concern ultimately with the individual. These are the building blocks, too, of course of the Aeneis, where the obviousfailureoftheheroicismanifested in the poem’s emphasis on moral truth and individual survival and virtue over the cultivation of national history and a national hero.’’ *Unsigned reviews are by the editors. Ms. Caldwell elaborates this insight with great subtlety and ingenuity, enriching her readings by constant reference to the decade in which Dryden composed his Virgilian translations. Althoughmany commentators have pointed out Williamite and Jacobite allusions in Dryden’sVirgil , Ms. Caldwell uncovers a new trove of topical meaning. Discussing the relevant works (plays, poems, translations, essays) which Dryden wrote before and after the Glorious Revolution, her book is a well-informed and far-reaching treatment of thiswatershedperiodinDryden’s life and this transitional phase in English cultural history. Unlike previous translators of Virgil, Dryden was poised (however precariously ) to give a ‘‘novelistic’’ rendering of epic themes, epic struggles, and epic characters. He achieved this effect by modulating back and forth, often within the same passage or episode, between Virgilian grandeur and pathos and Drydenesque irony and mock-heroic satire. Departing from other commentators, Ms. Caldwell finds coherence and continuity in these tonal displacements and disparities . For her, Dryden is a Modernist, and his Virgil a sort of Hugh Selwyn Maub- 64 erley; in short, Dryden gave his contemporaries the kind of classic which ‘‘the age demanded.’’ No one has produced a more comprehensive and balanced assessment of Dryden’s Virgil than Ms. Caldwell. Taylor Corse Arizona State University RICHARD MORTON. John Dryden’s Aeneas : A Hero in Enlightenment Mode. Victoria: Victoria, 2000. Pp. 136. $15.50. In selective meticulous detail, this monograph demonstrates the important truth that Dryden’sAeneidembodies‘‘the different social assumptions and moral values of a different time and place.’’Virgil (Mr. Morton spells his name Vergil) ‘‘becomes a contemporary of the translator . Not only does he seem to allude to the Glorious Revolution and the key political squabbles of the time; more centrally and viscerally he is an Englishman, his habits of mind formed by Christianity, Toryism, Lockean philosophy, and Restoration sentimentality.’’ Mr. Morton comments shrewdly and judiciously on the many ways, large and small, in which Dryden manipulates the text of Virgil to presentanAeneas‘‘whoisarecognizably post-RenaissanceEuropeanhero—aman continuing his education, through occasional backslidings and embarrassments, to an ultimate epic status which is itself ambiguous.’’ In chapters on memory and identity (the wanderings of Aeneas), on social status (Aeneas and hisfellowTrojans),on romantic love (Aeneas and Dido), on the underworld (Aeneas and Anchises), on epic combat (Aeneas and Turnus), Mr. Morton shows how Dryden produces a robust and vigorous translation, which loses much of Virgil’s pathos, ambiguity, and subtlety: ‘‘If Vergil is suggestive, he will make the...

Milburn's next-stage permanent revolution

When I learned of Health Secretary Alan Milburn's radical plan to cut cental bureaucrats in favour of primary care on the ‘front-line’, I though of two people, as well as of Milburn's early biography.

The Young Brahms: Biographical Data Reexamined

19th-Century Music, XXIV/3, pp. 276–89. ISSN: 0148-2076. © 2001 by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Send requests for permission to reprint to: Rights and Permissions, University of California Press, Journals Division, 2000 Center St., Ste. 303, Berkeley, CA 94704-1223. Does a juicy story overpower the facts? The biography of Johannes Brahms is a test case in the making. As usually written, the story of his youth has been marked by rumor, half truths, and sheer, vivid invention. Although the old stories persist, recent diggings in the archives and a closer look at the early biographies are bringing to life a very different young Brahms. If the picture that emerges is less worthy of Hollywood, it is perhaps the more inspiring as a believable account of the human spirit. Brahms is portrayed in literally dozens of biographies and articles as having grown up in a Hamburg slum, his father something of a rustic, comical musical jack-of-all-trades, the family so poor they had to send him even as a boy to play in brothels and drinking establishments (Lokals or Schanken) to help put food on the table.1 These “facts” are even used by some to interpret the character of the adult Brahms and of his music. Early biographical sketches and memoirs written during Brahms’s lifetime or shortly thereafter are free of such passages,

The Study of “Fossil Brains”: Tilly Edinger (1897–1967) and the Beginnings of Paleoneurology

Paleoneurology, the study of the evolution of the brain, lies at the interface of neurology and paleontology. In its modern form, it was founded in Germany in the 1920s, the product of the unique educational background and inspiration of Ottilie (“Tilly”) Edinger (1897‐1967). Before Edinger’s work, the history of the vertebrate brain was reconstructed almost exclusively by anatomists who compared the soft tissue brains of living fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. Structural variations among extant groups were documented and compared; their distribution was used to suggest the sequence of anatomical innovations in time. With strong preparation in both neurology and paleontology, Edinger was able to integrate comparative anatomy and the paleontologists’ tool of stratigraphic sequence. More than anyone else, she introduced the concept of time to neurology, creating modern paleoneurology. Here we relate the broad outlines of Tilly Edinger’s life and describe how she changed the way that the evolutionary history of the vertebrate brain is reconstructed and understood. Her story is particularly compelling because she began much of her innovative work while she was enduring Nazi racial laws and terrors, completing it in exile after forced emigration from Germany. Early biography and founding of paleoneurology Tilly Edinger (Figure 1) was born in 1897 into an extended and well-to-do family that was part of the academic and cultural elite of Frankfurt am Main. Her father, Ludwig Edinger, was a pioneer comparative neurologist and the founder of Frankfurt’s first neurological research institute (Kreft 1997). Before his early death in 1918, Edinger (Figure 1) provided his daughter with many contacts within the local and greater scientific community and with a role model for a life in science. She was educated first at home by private tutors, among them French and English governesses who instilled in her a

Bret Harte: prince and pauper

A biography that charts boom and bust of America's first celebrity author, once Mark Twain's chief rival in American literature In this first scholarly biography of Bret Harte in nearly seventy years, Axel Nissen sets out to reevaluate life and literary career of legendary chronicler of California gold rush. After his sensational breakthrough in late 1860s, Harte came to symbolize self-made literary man. He was a Midas of pen and a literary prince of Gilded Age. With The Luck of Roaring Camp, Tennessee's Partner, and The Outcasts of Poker Flat he reinvented American short story and laid foundations for Western. In age of mass-circulation newspapers he became America's first worldwide celebrity author. His stories were reprinted all over globe, and his sayings and doings were reported in press. His handsome face adorned newspaper columns, and his image was sold as an over-the-counter souvenir. Based on extensive new sources, Nissen's biography gives a vivid account of Harte's tumultuous life from his birth in Albany, N.Y., in 1836 until his death in a sleepy English village in 1902. Exploring mysterious and previously unresearched areas, Nissen shines a bright light into many dark corners of life of this enigmatic nineteenth-century icon. Harte was best-paid author of his day, but financial insolvency forced him into exile in Europe as a diplomat. For twenty years he lived in London, where he was darling of English aristocracy but remained apart from his wife and children. Nissen focuses on Harte's love-hate relationship with Mark Twain and examines homoerotic element in his life and work. He also offers a satisfying account of why Harte became so famous in his own time and why in ours he has suffered a decline. Harte aroused strong and conflicting feelings in those who knew him. William Dean Howells felt he was a blithe spirit who burned his candle at both ends. Mark Twain thought him the most contemptible, poor little soulless blatherskite that exists on planet today. Henry Adams considered Harte one of most brilliant men of his time. To a reviewer of an early biography he was a fugitive from home. To bigot aware of Harte's mixed ethnic heritage he was a Hebrew. To average dresser he was a fop. To pious he was a purveyor of moral filth. To reader of this innovative biography Harte comes alive both as a fascinating figure and an author ripe for revival. Axel Nissen is an associate professor of American literature at University of Oslo. In 1997 his doctoral thesis was awarded H.M. King of Norway's Gold Medal.