Impressive Scholarship Research Articles

The Melancholy Void: Lyric and Masculinity in the Age of Góngora by Felipe Valencia

Reviewed by: The Melancholy Void: Lyric and Masculinity in the Age of Góngora by Felipe Valencia María Cristina Quintero Keywords Melancholy, Lyric Vs. Epic Poetry, Lyric Theory, Poetic Self Fashioning, Lyric Victimization Of Women, Garcilaso De La Vega, Alonso De Ercilla, La Auracauna, Fernando De Herrera, Miguel De Cervantes, La Galatea, Juan De Arguijo, Luis De Góngora, Fabula De Polifemo Y Galatea, Soledades, Felipe Valencia, María Cristina Quintero valencia, felipe. The Melancholy Void: Lyric and Masculinity in the Age of Góngora. U of Nebraska P, 2021, 352 pp. In this lucidly written book, Felipe Valencia examines poetic practice in early modern Spain through the prism of what we might call gender and genre trouble. He is concerned with articulating a theory of the lyric by contesting the binary view of lyric and epic as opposing practices: the first associated with effeminacy, and the second with manly pursuits. He explores the intrinsic connection of melancholy, masculinity, and the depiction of victimized women in works by Garcilaso de la Vega, Fernando de Herrera, Juan de Ercilla, Miguel de Cervantes, Juan de Arguijo, and Luis de Góngora. The extensive introduction immediately displays the author’s impressive erudition and interpretive skills, as Valencia traces the philosophical and medical views of melancholy from Classical times to the present. Other topics include the impact of the print market on the production of poetry, the prestige and availability of certain genres and traditions, and the professionalization of poetry. The better part of the introduction is dedicated to new readings of poems by Garcilaso, including “A Boscán, desde la Goleta,” “Ode ad florem Gnidi,”and the first Eclogue. He analyzes the central function of myth (especially that of Apollo and Daphne) in the depiction of physical and psychological violence against women as a prerequisite for the fashioning of a lyric self; this is the theme that will be repeated throughout the book. While not a new topic—feminist critics since Nancy Vickers have exposed the need for a subjugated woman in the construction of male lyric subjectivity— Valencia goes beyond the usual psychoanalytical approach to undertake a more ambitious project, one that traces a chronological trajectory in the development of lyric practice and theory during the “age of Góngora.” [End Page 140] Chapter One, on Alonso de Ercilla, offers an original reading of the Araucana, a work that ostensibly addresses the heroic, masculine exploits associated with the epic. Valencia demonstrates that, in fact, Ercilla is repeatedly “tempted” by the lyric. This paradigmatic epic poem, written by a man who embodied the ideal of armas y letras, contains numerous tropes associated with the lyric: the praise of the beloved, the avowal of sincerity on the part of the poet, and songs of longing and grief. The latter are voiced by the Araucanian women who mourn the absence and death of their lovers during the Spanish conquest of Chile. There is, then, a displacement of the male poetic “I” associated with amatory poetry onto female voices. This gendered ventriloquism, in Valencia’s words, “constitutes a virile mastery of the feminine and thus suppresses the specter of effeminacy that haunted the lyric poet in the Renaissance” (80). Furthermore, Valencia offers the intriguing insight that the ventriloquism of the female voice embodied by the “barbaric” Araucanian women constitutes a form of colonial violence. The second chapter builds on Leah Middlebrook’s notion that Fernando de Herrera’s work represents a poetics of masculinity. According to Valencia, Herrera wants to restore virility to lyric by composing verse that is heroic (manifested in Icharian osadía), despite depicting the “lighter” themes of love and desire. Algunas obras and the Anotaciones on Garcilaso develop a theory of the lyric in dialectic with the epic. Through allusions to both Orpheus and Apollo, Herrera fashions a forceful lyric persona that subtly subverts Garcilaso in order to place himself “at the summit of the canon” (110). After a careful overview of the Orpheus myth in Classical and Renaissance texts, Valencia maintains that Herrera accentuates the psychological violence inflicted on Euridyce in order to mitigate the association of effeminacy found in some homosexual versions of the myth. Finally, through close and...

Forum: The Why and How of Global Governors: Relational Agency in World Politics

AbstractScholars of world politics can readily list the global governors of our time, but why and how did these particular actors gain agency in the first place? While there is impressive scholarship on single global governors and their respective impact, there is little comparative work and systematic theorization on what agency in world politics is and how actors gain it. This forum brings together contributions that apply relational frameworks to the question, focusing on the dynamics of self-agentification, delegation, and recognition. Individual contributions detail different empirical cases, from individuals to the G20, and introduce concepts for meso-level theorizing. Taken together, the contributions call for a more dynamic research agenda that not only allows scholars to reconstruct how agency emerges but also pushes us toward an agency-focused reframing of global governance, which is needed to ensure the continued relevance of the paradigm.

Reliquary Tabernacles in Fourteenth-Century Italy: Image, Relic and Material Culture, by Beth Williamson

The protagonists of this book are eleven fourteenth-century reliquary tabernacles. They all hail from Siena, though have ended up in collections across Europe and the US, from Baltimore and Cleveland to Lyon, London, Florence and Milan. Some are moderately well known and on public view; others are little studied and in private hands. Three-dimensional objects that were meant to be carried in procession or which formed the focal point for intense personal devotions have been transformed into flat things, displayed on walls, and often mutilated in the process. The gilded glass Virgin Enthroned, wrenched from its tabernacle (now in Cleveland), has found its resting place in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. A panel depicting the standing Virgin and Child by Pietro Lorenzetti, acquired by Bernard Berenson in 1903 for the Villa I Tatti, turns out to be the other side of an Enthroned Redeemer, now in private ownership in Milan. All but two of the surviving tabernacles have been denuded of their relics. In this work of impressive scholarship, Beth Williamson reconstructs these fragmented objects as whole pieces, made of paint and wood, of stones and human bones, animated by their materials and by devotion. At the same time, Williamson brings these scattered pieces back into conversation with one another. She argues that they belong to a particular moment of artistic innovation and reveals the importance of multi-materiality and inter-mediality in shaping their distinctive character.

Northern Memories and the English Middle Ages

Northern Memories and the English Middle Ages

Photographic Presidents: Making History from Daguerreotype to Digital

Photographic Presidents: Making History from Daguerreotype to Digital

Diamonds and Deadlines: A Tale of Greed, Deceit, and a Female Tycoon in the Gilded Age

Diamonds and Deadlines: A Tale of Greed, Deceit, and a Female Tycoon in the Gilded Age

Diamonds and Deadlines: A Tale of Greed, Deceit, and a Female Tycoon in the Gilded Age

Diamonds and Deadlines: A Tale of Greed, Deceit, and a Female Tycoon in the Gilded Age

Strike Fear in the Land: Pedro de Alvarado and the Conquest of Guatemala, 1520–1541

Historians of the early colonial period, once considered a moribund field, have opened new spheres of inquiry into the Spanish conquest of Latin America and the Caribbean. Reanalyzing early chroniclers' works, employing previously unexplored sources, and rethinking colonization processes have resulted in important contributions to conquest literature. Strike Fear in the Land much resembles the New Conquest History. The authors present a thorough and timely reassessment of the Alvarado clan—headed by Pedro de Alvarado, his brother Jorge de Alvarado, and notable cousins and kin such as Pedro de Portocarrero—and their pivotal role in Spain's conquest of Guatemala and Central America more broadly. The book illuminates negotiations between Spaniards and Indigenous groups and the Spaniards' brutal tactics employed to “pacify” Indigenous peoples resisting invasion. As highly respected scholars, W. George Lovell, Christopher H. Lutz, and Wendy Kramer craft a narrative built on archival research and work in special collections, buttressed by an exhaustive review of secondary sources. Their truly important contribution promotes understanding of mechanisms and processes laying the substrata for inequitable racial and class structures plaguing modern Guatemala.Divided into four chapters with useful appendixes, Strike Fear in the Land strongly succeeds in presenting genuinely accessible cutting-edge scholarship. The book easily elucidates questions of gender, race, and class without theoretical abstruseness; an overly theoretical approach would likely have hindered the authors' goal to illuminate conquest history in clear prose. The book successfully challenges established notions like Pedro de Alvarado's allegedly single-handed leadership of the Spanish conquest. Indeed, the authors convincingly argue that Jorge de Alvarado played a greater role than once assumed and that fluency in Indigenous languages, namely Nahuatl—a certain lingua franca throughout the region—proved essential to negotiations with Indigenous leaders (pp. 70, 72–75).All chapters present notable contributions; however, chapter 4 engages with the second book of minutes of Santiago de Guatemala's municipal council (the Libro segundo del cabildo), an invaluable sixteenth-century source long thought lost but recently located in New York's Hispanic Society of America. The chapter reveals the precarious Spanish hold on power plus the internecine discord existing among Spanish elites (pp. 80–84). Typically, supplemental materials contain specialized data and speak to expert readers, but Strike Fear in the Land instead aims to engage a broader audience and renders the appendixes approachable. This accessibility uniquely combines with original scholarship, especially in the case of appendix D, an engrossing narrative of the resistance movements led by the Kaqchikel nobles Ahpozotzil Cahí Ymox and Ahpoxahil Belehé Qat. The reverential terms ahpozotzil, “principal leader,” and ahpoxahil, “second-in-command,” refer to the leaders of the Kaqchikel polity of Iximché (p. 4n7). Initially Cahí Ymox and Belehé Qat allied with the Spanish, but in 1524 they staged an insurrection and then negotiated peace; however, discontent with the harshness of Spanish rule and brutal labor requirements led to a second Kaqchikel insurrection in 1533 (pp. 149–51). Strike Fear in the Land delves deep into the reasons why Indigenous leaders like Cahí Ymox and Belehé Qat disappear from conquest histories written by non-Indigenous people. In the process, Lovell, Lutz, and Kramer present a richer and more complex discussion of reasons for onetime allies like the Kaqchikel resisting Spanish domination.Despite its impressive scholarship, Strike Fear in the Land contains some weaknesses. Published originally as Atemorizar la tierra: Pedro de Alvarado y la conquista de Guatemala, 1520–1541 (2016), Strike Fear in the Land fails to indicate updated or abridged portions; however, the authors seemingly addressed criticisms of the earlier volume and included further Indigenous voices. A more serious flaw of the book is its exclusion of Africans, except for mentioning Africans as slaves and a prohibition against Black and Spanish men loitering near waterways, both of which appear in appendix A (pp. 103–4). Notably, Strike Fear in the Land presents a narrative focused on Indigenous peoples and Spaniards. While the book offers important correctives on Indigenous experiences of conquest history, its exclusion of Africans works against the goal of challenging established histories. While information on African participation in the conquest of Guatemala is scant, at least one African combatant appears in the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan, an invaluable Indigenous chronicle of the region's conquest. Yet, to its credit, Strike Fear in the Land highlights numerous areas of potential inquiry, one of which centers on the participation of Africans in the conquest.Overall, the book illustrates the importance of reevaluating histories once thought settled. Written in accessible and engaging prose, Strike Fear in the Land is essential reading for specialists, undergraduate and graduate students, and those interested in better understanding the complexities of Spanish colonization.

Tallis Kerry McCarthy.

The Tudor composer Thomas Tallis holds particular fascination for how closely his musical career and creativity were intertwined with the English Reformation. He began his career in monastic establishments that were closed in the first phase of the Reformation and then famously served in the Chapel Royal under four different monarchs. He responded to the introduction of the English Book of Common Prayer, the reimposition and subsequent reversal of Catholicism, the rise of metrical psalmody, and the early phases of English music publishing. Tallis is seen as central to the development of the new styles and genres required for these sweeping liturgical and devotional changes, and known for a stylistic range that spanned pared-back miniatures like If ye Love me to the monumental forty-part Spem in alium. Despite the attractions of Tallis’s reputation and his relationship with such a colourful period of English political, religious, and musical history, however, biographies of Tallis were slow to emerge. For nearly fifty years Paul Doe’s slim introduction to Tallis’s works was the only book dedicated to the composer (at least in his own period). McCarthy’s Tallis is now the second biography of the composer to be published within five years, but it is a very welcome addition. Not only is the book a highly engaging account of Tallis’s life and music founded on impressive scholarship, but McCarthy also takes a distinctive approach to the writing of this biography that offers a new perspective on this widely known composer.

The Scientific Method: An Evolution of Thinking from Darwin to Dewey

The Scientific Method: An Evolution of Thinking from Darwin to Dewey

Blood Libel: On the Trail of an Antisemitic Myth by Magda Teter

Reviewed by: Blood Libel: On the Trail of an Antisemitic Myth by Magda Teter Edward Berenson Blood Libel: On the Trail of an Antisemitic Myth. By Magda Teter. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2020. 539 pages. $39.95 (cloth). Although there is a great deal of research on the history of the blood libel, much of it recent, Magda Teter's book is one of the rare works to focus extensively on the early modern period (1450–1790s). She does so with impressive erudition, working in multiple languages and in the archives of eight countries. The product is a dazzling intellectual history, a foray into hundreds of well-known and little-known sources that, examined together, provide a comprehensive picture of the creation, dissemination, and reception of this stubbornly persistent antisemitic myth. Medievalists such as Gavin I. Langmuir, John M. McCulloh, and Israel Yuval have examined the infamous early cases—William of Norwich, Hugh of Lincoln, and the Fulda blood libel of [End Page 196] 1235—while historians of modern European antisemitism have homed in on the explosion of ritual murder accusations in the long nineteenth century, especially those between 1880 and the Great War. But there has been less attention given to the early modern stories save for the widely-known tale of Simon of Trent (1475). It is these stories, however, and the extensive commentary they generated that have informed medievalists about the earlier cases and provided the backdrop and context for the modern ones. The pre-modern cases have perhaps received less attention than their medieval and modern counterparts because few historians possess Teter's linguistic firepower, capable as she is of working with sources in Latin, Italian, German, Polish, French, Russian, Hebrew, Yiddish, and Spanish. In arguing for the centrality of the early modern tales of ritual murder, Teter shows that the medieval stories had a mostly local resonance and affected Western culture much less than historians have thought. The case of William of Norwich (1144), generally considered the founding instance of the ritual murder accusation, "survived only in a few mentions in monastic chronicles" (7). The now-famous narrative of William's death, Thomas of Monmouth's The Life and Passion of William of Norwich (volumes issued between 1150 and 1172), "lay forgotten until the nineteenth century, when it was rediscovered and printed" (7). The limited resonance of this affair stemmed in part from the lack of judicial proceedings—the supposed Jewish culprits never stood trial—which kept it from generating much of a paper trail. A narrative by John of Tynemouth published in English and Latin in 1516 was the first full account of William's tale to become somewhat widely known. The death of Hugh of Lincoln in 1255, the first English case to result in the execution of Jews, resonated further, but that was mainly because it entered the English literary canon nearly a century and a half later as the basis of Geoffrey Chaucer's story "The Prioress's Tale." Several continental cases achieved greater notoriety largely because they produced reactions from the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II and Pope Innocent IV who both condemned the notion that Jews consume human blood, which in the [End Page 197] thirteenth century became the core of the accusation against Jews. In December 1235, 34 Jewish men and women were brutally killed in Fulda (central Germany) following accusations that they killed five young boys and collected their blood. In an imperial decree of 1236, Frederick pronounced "the Jews absolved of the grave crime" and forbade his subjects to issue accusations like the one at Fulda (34). Eleven years later, several Jews in Valréas, France were tortured and burned at the stake following the death of a Christian girl. Pope Innocent IV responded by issuing a similar, if more strongly worded, injunction against the blood accusation. In his Sicut Iudaeis, the Pope forbade Catholics to "accuse [Jews] of using human blood in their religious rites since in the Old Testament they are instructed not to use blood of any kind, let alone human blood" (35). Innocent IV diluted this apparently strong statement by adding, however, that "only those be fortified by this our protection who...

Soul Liberty: The Evolution of Black Religious Politics in Postempancipation Virginia by Nicole Myers Turner

Reviewed by: Soul Liberty: The Evolution of Black Religious Politics in Postempancipation Virginia by Nicole Myers Turner Emily Suzanne Clark (bio) Soul Liberty: The Evolution of Black Religious Politics in Postempancipation Virginia. By Nicole Myers Turner. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020. Pp. 232. Cloth, $90.00; paper, $29.95.) Nicole Myers Turner’s Soul Liberty is impressive scholarship that reveals how black churches mediated political engagement and enabled [End Page 137] community organizing. While the book’s subtitle reflects Turner’s focus on Virginia, her deep look at the dynamics between the religious and the political demonstrates larger trends and answers some long-standing questions about black religious history at the pivotal moment of postemancipation. Rather than “presuppose political power” of black churches (147), Turner narrates this period in fresh ways to emphasize how black churches built on their existing political acumen. This approach puts the focus on the process by which churches became “vehicles for participation and self-determination” (143). Turner reveals a fascinating negotiation between the religious and the political; black church structures and networks shaped black political participation. Her use of the term “soul liberty” reflects this dynamic, as black Christians saw the intersections of “religious freedom, righteousness, equity, and justice” (2). The first chapter sets up the reader to see how some elements of life changed and others did not with the end of the Civil War. Black religious life had long been a space of communal gathering and resistance to white supremacy, as churches were “powerful bases for independence” (30). One thread begun in chapter 1 and continued throughout the book is an understanding of how black social community building transitioned into black political community organizing. In this chapter and in chapter 2, which specifically examines the creation of independent black church conventions, Turner vividly shows readers how the religious was inherently political. The church networks created and sustained by the conventions fostered powerful connections to propel black political interests. Additionally, by demonstrating their autonomy and ability to work with white church communities, black religious organizations made powerful arguments for their self-determination in matters both religious and political. As Turner explains, “The formation of independent black Baptist associations shows how black people organized themselves, developed their identities, and articulated their place within the new American freedom” (34). This dynamic is further developed in chapter 3, where Turner attends to the ways in which “a minister-centered leadership framework” developed in process and collaboration with community engagement (76). Education becomes a significant part of this conversation in chapter 4 in ways that reflect black political savvy. “Debates within the African American community about inspired versus educated ministerial leadership,” Turner explains, “often came out of concerns about how black people were perceived” (86). Access to seminary education often required interaction with white churchmen, but black political power allowed black churches to guard their autonomy even in collaboration. [End Page 138] Chapter 5, entitled “Politics of Engagement,” is where Turner’s analysis is at its strongest, in part owing to the developing themes and trends she expertly unpacks in earlier chapters. Because readers have followed the ongoing negotiation between black church networks and larger political movements, it comes as no surprise that even when they were a county minority, black church networks empowered black communities beyond their numbers. These church networks also strengthened “a race consciousness and a sense of communal power” that shaped black engagement with the patronage process (117). In exchange for their political support, black church networks negotiated for political positions for church members and leaders through the patronage system. Not only does this interaction help explain black voting trends, but it also shows the forward-thinking ways in which black churches advocated for their communities and goals. It is in chapter 5 that Turner’s use of ArcGIS and maps persuasively supports her interpretation of the historical data. Politicians could access these long-standing church networks to their advantage or ignore them to their deficit. The Pennsylvania State University recently created the Center for Black Digital Research, co-led by Gabrielle Foreman, one of the founders of the Colored Conventions Project. The center reflects increasing interest in digital humanities and...

Kärkkäinen's spirit and salvation: A female pentecostal appraisal

AbstractSpirit and Salvation is the fourth volume of a constructive theology series by Professor Veli‐Matti Kärkkäinen. It is a continuation of Kärkkäinen's impressive scholarship in Pneumatology and offers a fine example of his inclusive methodology. Especially important and informative is the section regarding spiritual powers and cosmology, which provides for an ecumenical audience a healthy understanding of demonic powers. Experience is one epistemological factor in Kärkkäinen's work, which is observed through methodology. An alternative way to approach theological method, from the female pentecostal perspective, which regards experience as important, is offered as an option or a continuation to Kärkkäinen's scholarship.

The Ruler's House: Contesting Power and Privacy in Julio-Claudian Rome by Harriet Fertik

BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 177 the self-reflexive way Pliny minutely adapts (and inverts, sometimes polemically) parts of Institutio 10. The usual suspects (Cicero, Seneca the Elder, and Tacitus) are also present in the discussion. Chapters Nine, “Docendo discitur” (323–352), and Ten, “Reflections of an Author” (353–406), focus on ethical rather than rhetorical matters and perfectly display how Pliny’s imitation of the Institutio contributes to his autobiography. Chapter Nine, which examines Ep. 6.11, 6.29, 9.36, and 9.40, a cycle of letters related to Fuscus and Quadratus , offers interesting metaliterary readings and confirms the significant place of the Institutio in Pliny’s Epistles. Chapter Ten (dealing with Ep. 2.9, 8.4, 5.16, 3.1, 3.5, and 9.3) goes a step further in tackling Pliny’s systematic incorporation of the Institutio as part of his compositional plan. Chapter Eleven, “Quintilian, Pliny, Tacitus” (407–472), includes a useful syncrisis between Epistles 1–9 and the intertextual modes of Epistles 10 and the Panegyricus, as well as scrupulous investigation of Tacitus’ place in the broader project of Pliny’s imitation of Quintilian, while the epilogic Chapter Twelve, “Beginnings ” (473–494), analyses the introductory letters 1.1–2 and 9.1–2 and examines another triangulation, that between Pliny, Quintilian, and Cicero. The book concludes with an extensive list of “References” (495–530) and multiple indices (531–557). Whitton fulfils his aims with great success: he adroitly reveals the subtleties of Pliny’s imitation and highlights beyond any doubt the importance of the Institutio to the Epistles. At the same time, he opens new horizons in the interpretation of Latin prose intertextuality in general. He proves that the latter can work even with just one word, and a common one at that, so long as certain other prerequisites are met, putting special emphasis on the relevance of the ideas found in the engaged texts. Furthermore, Whitton demonstrates a keen interest in a multitude of details which he utilizes most effectively, such as the sound of the words and the aural echoes, the alliteration, the rhythm, the syntactical structure, and the number of the syllables in corresponding words or phrases, or even the number of the syllables proceeding or following. Despite the fact that some of Whitton’s claims could, at first glance, be considered rather bold, and some of the similarities he cites could be ascribed to mere coincidence, as one proceeds with the study of each chapter and the bigger picture becomes clearer, it is easy to put any reservations aside and allow oneself to be convinced that it is indeed possible to interpret the Epistles as “miniaturist readings” of the Institutio. This is an insightful, well-argued, and well-organized book, written in a fascinating style and tone and with impressive erudition. It is documented by abundant (and often lengthy) footnotes, which nonetheless do not detract from the pleasant reading of the work. Transitions from one chapter to another are smooth, while frequent crossreferences reinforce the book’s cohesion, further facilitated by some necessary or inevitable repetitions. No doubt this book will become a reference work, not only for the study of Pliny but also for that of Latin prose imitation. University of Cyprus Spyridon Tzounakas The Ruler's House: Contesting Power and Privacy in Julio-Claudian Rome. By Harriet Fertik. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 2019. Pp. x, 241. The titles of books can be used either to inform or to tantalize, and the first service a reviewer of this book can perform for possible readers is to tell them straight away that its 178 PHOENIX tantalizing title might, for a moment, mislead them. The argument of the first chapter finds us far from any royal palace, with Caesar at Ilerda and with Pompey in Egypt; no historical ruler’s house is properly discussed until the third of six chapters; and the historical rulers’ actual houses that are discussed in any detail can be counted on the fingers of one hand. The subtitle, however, is a better guide to the book and to the purpose of the author, who also makes no bones about her method and intentions as soon as...

From Anti-Judaism to Anti-Semitism: Ancient and Medieval Christian Constructions of Jewish History by Robert Chazan (review)

Reviewed by: From Anti-Judaism to Anti-Semitism: Ancient and Medieval Christian Constructions of Jewish History by Robert Chazan David Berger Robert Chazan. From Anti-Judaism to Anti-Semitism: Ancient and Medieval Christian Constructions of Jewish History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. xvi + 253 pp. doi:10.1017/S036400941900062X This book aims to assess the views of significant Christian authors on the trajectory of Jewish history, or, in an alternative phrase that almost serves as a refrain, the Jewish past, present, and future. It is divided into two sections, each of which contains four chapters. The first section addresses the Synoptic Gospels, Paul, Eusebius, and Augustine. The second analyzes the stances of Peter the Venerable (and, as a foil, Bernard of Clairvaux), Raymond Martini, Alphonso de Espina, and Martin Luther. The study is marked by Robert Chazan's signature qualities of erudition, insight, clarity, and balanced judgment. At the same time, the central theme of the book is beset by what strikes me as an element of artificiality. Thus, when one would normally say that someone was hostile to Jews, it becomes necessary to substitute or to add, at least periodically, that he had a negative assessment of the Jewish present. Moreover, the very classification of past and present is not entirely stable. One the one hand, there is a genuine Christian categorization distinguishing pre-Crucifixion Jews (who can be classified as the past) from post-Crucifixion Jews (who can be seen as the extended present), as well as a vision of an eschatological future where Jews will become (re)united with Christendom and hence saved. Chazan limns the contours of varying approaches to these transitions with great skill. However, his line between past and present sometimes adheres to this standard categorization and sometimes it does not. Thus, the Jewish past can refer not to pre-Crucifixion Jews but simply to a period like that of the Talmud, substantially earlier than that of the figure under discussion (130, 138–39). In a trivial sense, this shift reflects an ineluctable reality. When a medieval Christian figure writes about the Talmud, he is writing about the Jewish past. [End Page 454] But since he himself does not classify the Talmud as the product of an earlier era in a conceptual sense, it becomes problematic to compare his attitude to the Talmud or its authors to the approaches of Eusebius and Augustine to the Jews before the time of Jesus. As we examine the content of the book, its impressive qualities will emerge along with some challenges posed by its structure. The overall characterization of the Gospels is subtle and largely convincing. It contains little that deals directly with the trajectory of Jewish history, but it is necessary to set the stage. Similarly, the discussion of Paul has relatively little to say about the book's theme, but a critical component does. Here Chazan introduces Paul's expectation that at the end of days all Israel will be saved, which will play a central role in every subsequent examination of expectations regarding Israel's future. The analysis of Eusebius's approach presents a striking point about the Jewish past that was not characteristic, certainly not in its vigorous formulation, of most Christian writers through the ages. After the revelation at Sinai, Jews, he maintains, became the key civilizing force in the world. But once their punishment for the Crucifixion culminates in their exclusion from Jerusalem, Eusebius, unlike many Christian thinkers, loses interest in them. This is a refreshing and convincing presentation of an atypical approach, at least in tone, to the Jewish past. As to Augustine, Chazan formulates his theology in the language of the book's framework: the Jews had a great but increasingly flawed past, a present "flawed but rich with promise," and a future that is unambiguously positive (102). When we enter the Middle Ages, Chazan engages with three figures who are much less familiar to nonspecialists but whose work and environment he approaches with a command formed by years of impressive scholarship. Peter the Venerable's hostility to Jews is well known, as is the protection extended to Second Crusade–era Jews by his contemporary Bernard of Clairvaux. Chazan...

Islam and Nationhood in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Surviving Empires by Bougarel Xavier (review)

REVIEWS 787 Hollywood productions, which maintained their influence throughout and, despite the banning of imports in 1943, up to the Nazi invasion of March 1944. Frey’sbookisanindustrial-politicalhistoryratherthananaestheticone(here one has to return to Nemeskürty), although there are perceptive discussions of theme and subject matter. Its great strength lies in the extraordinary amount of original research conducted in archives in Budapest, Berlin and elsewhere and the ways in which often disparate material has been assembled into a compelling narrative and precise argument. While its contribution to the history of the production and distribution of European sound cinema breaks significant new ground, its study of the political and ideological cross currents within Hungarian society in the post-Trianon context takes it beyond the traditional confines of film scholarship. Its contribution to both cinema and political history is both original and invaluable. Staffordshire University Peter Hames Bougarel, Xavier. Islam and Nationhood in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Surviving Empires. Translated by Christopher Mobley. Bloomsbury Academic, London and New York, 2018. xii + 280 pp. Acronyms. Maps. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £85.00. While it may not be the last word on the subject, Bougarel’s book is the most authoritative and comprehensive work to date on the political history of the Bosniaks/Muslims of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Bloomsbury Academic is thus to be praised for making available this seminal work (translated from the 2015 French original by Christopher Mobley) to an English-language audience. With a profound knowledge of its subject and impressive erudition, Bougarel normalizes what he calls the haphazard, uncertain nature of Bosniak/Muslim nation-building,extricatingitfromitsnarrowSouthSlavcontexttothatofpostimperial national- and state-building, and theoretical notions of loyalty and political allegiance. Against the dominant trope of Bosnian Muslims’ belated nation-building and the divergence to models proposed by key nationalism scholars, Bougarel instead explores the notion of national indifference, or nondetermination , addressing the place of religion in South Slav nation-building, as well as connections between national and religious identity in general. In particular, he tackles its interplay with currents of Islamist thought. Bougarel’s claim is that Bosniak/Muslim identity was decisively influenced by the attitudes of Muslim elites in Bosnia and Herzegovina which, from the end of the Ottoman era to the end of Yugoslavia, expressed a constant loyalty to the central authority as a way of safeguarding their privileged position. After the Austro-Hungarian occupation, according to Bougarel, Muslim political SEER, 97, 4, OCTOBER 2019 788 elites’ reliance on imperial centres of power was reducing Bosnian Muslims to a non-sovereign religious minority and few if any efforts were made to build a national identity. This loyalty to the Empire was accompanied by demands for the autonomy of religious institutions, which led Muslims to national nondetermination , enclosing them within their religious community and giving them a safety net. Muslim elites continued to apply this strategy in the period between the two World Wars, similarly promoting Yugoslavism as loyalty to the state, while seeking autonomy for the Islamic Community and territorial integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina in return, but not building a separate ethnic identity. Highlighting imperial legacies in forming and maintaining communities based on religious boundaries (and conflicts over these boundaries) versus the dominant paradigm of modern-day nationalism as the cause of all the trouble in Bosnia might be Bougarel’s greatest contribution in this dense volume full of revelations. Bougarel thus reinterprets the period of Austro-Hungary’s rule and some of the long-held assumptions established by the American historian Robert Donya. Similarly, he is critical of Marko Hoare’s interpretation of the Bosnian Muslims’ Second World War political choices, and the nature of Alija Izetbegović’s Islamic Declaration argued by Noel Malcolm. There was nothing linear in the process, as many Bosniak nationalists would like to present it, and many foreign observers trying to make sense of it would accept as an easy explanation. Similarly, frequently shifting national allegiances by Bosniak/Muslim leaders, according to Bougarel, did not occur out of opportunism but can be explained within his framework of national indifference and religious identity. Similarly, demands for the autonomy of Bosnia and Herzegovina were not testament to proto-nationalism but a search for a direct...

The Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (1818) and Russia’s Proposal for a Treaty of Guarantee

Despite the impressive scholarship devoted to the peacemaking that followed the defeat of Napoleon, significant aspects of European politics remain understudied. These include the intellectual apparatus articulated in diplomatic communications and the relationship of diplomacy to national or local political cultures. This article focuses on Russian diplomacy, itself a relatively understudied topic, by exploring the ideas and concepts that defined Alexander i’s foreign policy and the Russian understanding of European order. The article addresses these matters by focusing on Russia’s proposal for a treaty of guarantee which was presented to the allies at the 1818 Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle.

In Memoriam: Roberto Fernández Retamar (1930–2019)

In MemoriamRoberto Fernández Retamar (1930–2019) Elzbieta Sklodowska Roberto Fernández Retamar (1930–2019) was a prolific poet, renowned essayist, and a controversial public figure whose creative and intellectual life was inextricably intertwined with the history of the Cuban Revolution. He was committed to the revolutionary cause to the point of embracing an austere lifestyle and an ongoing militant stance, but, in his writings and public statements, he was also thought-provoking to the point of provocation. At the core of Fernández Retamar’s contribution to the Latin American decolonization project was a nostalgia for and perhaps even an undying belief in a utopian ideal, something very few of us would dare to profess in the wake of the horrors and terrors of the long twentieth century. At no point did disillusionment seem to creep into his public persona, even when the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s plunged revolutionary Cuba into the deepest socio-economic crisis of its history, known as the Special Period in the Times of Peace, and later, during the hardly restrained protocapitalism of the “transition” that followed. A true believer rather than a turncoat, always marching in step with the Cuban Revolution—which, in its 60 years and counting, has had its own share of grave and seldom rectified missteps—Fernández Retamar could not evade the fiery darts of criticism hurled at him from every possible direction. Alongside the heartfelt lamentations that he had squandered his impressive erudition and significant poetic talent in the service of ideology, and a vast array of thoughtfully polemical papers, theses, lectures, and blogs, a few of Fernández Retamar’s detractors did not hesitate to descend into openly ad hominem strikes. Regrettably, and perhaps ironically, some of the most unforgiving attacks surfaced in the guise of obituaries after his passing in the summer of 2019 at the age of 89. In Calibán (1971), the signature essay for which he is both widely celebrated and mercilessly vilified, Fernández Retamar unshackled the fury of antiimperialist rhetoric and conjured the figure of Calibán to single-handedly defy (post)colonial epistemologies. Born in the heart of the Caribbean in response to a political crisis with far-reaching ramifications (the Padilla Case), this tempestuous manifesto resonated with a long legacy of Latin Americanist thought from writers as revered as José Martí, [End Page 817] José Enrique Rodó, Alfonso Reyes, and José Carlos Mariátegui. The grip of political urgency versus the utopian lure of an overarching continental poetics, the near-hubristic self-confidence of the frantic prose versus the wisdom of self-questioning, the torrent of eclectic ideas interspersed with nuggets of lyrical insight, all describe and obscure Calibán as much as they capture and mask the contradictions of the man, Fernández Retamar. Wrought with tensions between opposing forces, which the author refused to resolve in later translations, re-editions, and revisions, Calibán entered the bloodstream of Latin Americanism and has never ceased to ignite debates across the full range of discursive and ideological registers. Fernández Retamar’s enduring legacy as a literary critic and theorist extends beyond Calibán, of course, and encompasses authoritative studies on major Latin American writers (José Martí, Rubén Darío, Ernesto Cardenal) along with sweeping panoramas of Cuban poetry and Spanish American literary theory (La poesía contemporánea en Cuba 1927–1953; Para una teoría de la literatura hispanoamericana, to name just a few). Tireless in fulfilling his myriad roles, assignments, titles, and capacities, Fernández Retamar should be recognized as the co-founder of the journal Unión (1962), as well as the founder—and director until 1986—of Centro de Estudios Martianos and its journal, Anuario. But first and foremost, he will be remembered for his long leadership at the helm of Casa de las Américas (1986–2019), Cuba’s flagship cultural institution of hemispheric reach, whose eponymous journal he began editing in 1965. Under his guidance, Casa de las Américas was not only instrumental in encouraging Latin American(ist) artistic and intellectual endeavors through an impressive array of publications and prizes, but also helped promote Havana...

Leipzig after Bach: Church & Concert Life in a German City by Jeffrey S. Sposato

Reviewed by: Leipzig after Bach: Church & Concert Life in a German City by Jeffrey S. Sposato R. Larry Todd (bio) Jeffrey S. Sposato. Leipzig after Bach: Church & Concert Life in a German City (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018). xix, 313 pp. The iconic image of J. S. Bach as the very epitome of musical Lutheranism has long been a fixture in music histories. But, as Jeffrey Sposato reminds us with impressive erudition in his new monograph, the strain of Lutheranism that Bach practiced during his tenure in Leipzig did not completely accord with how the new faith was practiced in other Reformation centers that had taken root in German realms in the sixteenth century. For in large part, Leipzig remained a "beacon of conservative Lutheran thought" that retained "all aspects of Catholic liturgy and tradition" not "in direct conflict with Reformation theology" (12–13). Though the Enlightenment and its rationalist philosophies would influence Protestant Germany writ large in the eighteenth century, in Leipzig the Hauptgottesdienst essentially remained unchanged since its establishment in the city's churches on Pentecost Sunday in 1539. Paradoxically, if Dresden, capital of Saxony, was the seat of the region's political power, where Saxon electors and kings professed the Catholic faith, Leipzig, which lacked a court presence and instead projected its influence as a major mercantile center through its trade fairs, adhered to Lutheranism. Thus, the principle of cuius regio, eius religio (whose region, his religion) established by the Peace of Augsburg (1555) did not obtain throughout Saxony, where Leipzig became a center of Lutheranism while Dresden remained Catholic. But in order for this "compromise" to work, Leipzig by and large continued to observe a Lutheran orthodoxy that at once retained several ties to Catholic liturgy and resisted newer, heterodox Protestant directions that tested that orthodoxy. Chief among these were pietism and the outbreak of Enlightenment thought. As Sposato argues, pietism, notwithstanding its stimulation of hymn composition and Bible study, did not have a significant impact on Leipzig church services; similarly, Enlightenment rationalism, as propounded by Johann Christoph Gottsched, who taught at the University, did not affect the course of church worship until later in the eighteenth century. So despite the tectonic spiritual disruptions caused by the Reformation, Leipzig maintained ties to the reigning Catholicism practiced in Dresden only some seventy-five miles to the southeast. What these political realities had meant for Luther was that "despite his significant theological differences with the Roman church, when it came to constructing a [End Page 308] liturgy, he attacked the Catholic Ordo Missae with a scalpel rather than a sledgehammer" (61). And Leipzig, in part because of its proximity to Dresden, remained a bulwark of orthodox Lutheranism that kept "the most visible Catholic traditions intact," altering "only those aspects of the mass that directly contradict[ed] Lutheran precepts" (62). As well trodden as this history has been by generations of scholars, much of their research has centered, understandably enough, on the career of Bach, and in particular on his Leipzig years as Thomaskantor (1723–1750). Considerably less attention has been focused on the musical life of the city in the century after Bach, leading up to Mendelssohn's celebrated tenure as the civic music director (1835–1847). In three probing, extended chapters that make up the bulk of the volume, Sposato treats three relationships, centered on the positions of Thomaskantor and city Kapellmeister, that document the musical life of the city, but have largely evaded a thorough accounting: Johann Friedrich Doles and Johann Adam Hiller, Hiller and Johann Gottfried Schicht, and Moritz Hauptmann and Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. One of the author's signal accomplishments in this volume is to weave a rich narrative history of this period, and to explicate the traditions of the musical culture that connected Bach's legacy to Mendelssohn. And another, equally significant contribution is to trace the symbiotic relationship between musical life in the church and concert hall, and to show how Seneca the Younger's maxim chosen by Hiller for the Gewandhaus Concerts in 1781—"res severa est gaudium verum" ("a serious matter is a true joy," Epistulae morales ad Lucilium, 23)—continued to inform Leipzig musical life down through the...

Beyond Freedom: Disrupting the History of Emancipation ed. by David W. Blight and Jim Downs

Reviewed by: Beyond Freedom: Disrupting the History of Emancipation ed. by David W. Blight and Jim Downs Brian Kelly (bio) Beyond Freedom: Disrupting the History of Emancipation. Edited by David W. Blight and Jim Downs. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2017. Pp. 208. Cloth $79.95; paper, $24.95.) The problem at the core of this collection—the contested and multiple meanings of freedom after the American Civil War—enters the [End Page 168] historiography of emancipation from two distinct vantage points. First, the differing perspectives of the main protagonists—planters, freedpeople, deliverers—figure prominently in a complicated historical narrative. They brought varying, often irreconcilable understandings of freedom to bear in the protracted confrontation opened up by emancipation. W. E. B. DuBois noted more than eighty years ago in Black Reconstruction in America that these "contending and antagonistic groups spoke different and unknown tongues," shouting past one another while attempting to advance their particular visions. There is a second path by which differing conceptions of freedom enter the literature: interpretive differences among historians aiming to reconstruct the past have shaped understanding no less than the documentary record itself. Malicious assumptions about black inferiority permeated scholarship associated with the Dunning school well into the twentieth century. Subjected to withering assault by DuBois in 1935, it was ultimately dislodged after a revisionist surge driven by the postwar black freedom struggle. This new framework found full expression in the publication of Eric Foner's Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 in 1988. Foner acknowledges his debt to DuBois, and like others attempting to bring the archive to bear on the interpretive framework animating Black Reconstruction in America, his work reflects not merely the rejection of Dunning's crude racism but a positive embrace of DuBois's attention to political economy. Much of the impressive scholarship generated in the immediate post–civil rights era attributes substantial responsibility for the gap between freedpeople's expansive vision and Redemption's dismal reality to the outworkings of Republican free labor ideology. Leading scholars focused closely on new challenges facing the "emancipated worker," locating freedom's shortcomings not only in the malevolence of the usual suspects—the Klan, embittered ex-Confederates, former masters—but in the cramped variant of freedom on offer from the slaves' ostensible liberators. This collection, drawing together eleven essays by leading historians of emancipation, aims to move beyond the "freedom paradigm"—a framework that, the editors suggest, meets with growing ambivalence (3). The volume includes thoughtful, impressive stand-alone essays that explore the dynamics shaping events between the antebellum period and the late nineteenth century. Yet read end to end, it is the book's gaps and omissions that are striking. Though the editors deny any intent "to advance an argument or to upset a particular way of thinking" (x), together with the absence of any but a fleeting mention of conflict over land or labor, the [End Page 169] volume's neglect of political economy marks a clear departure from the historiographical legacy outlined above. Beyond Freedom opens with four essays exploring emancipation's prehistory and concludes with a set of extended, sometimes intimate reflections on sources and methodology. In between are three essays grouped under "The Politics of Freedom," just one of which focuses on the poste-mancipation South. James Oakes's illumination of the Republicans' bedrock commitment to antislavery takes the reader into some familiar terrain, but neither of the others is especially concerned with politics, even in its broadest sense. The editors note at the outset that contributions are not intended as case studies grounded in archival research, though Justin Behrend's study of violence in Reconstruction Mississippi and Brenda E. Stevenson's essay on the ritualization of slave marriages come close. While Beyond Freedom's temporal and thematic breadth offers something for everyone, the same qualities render it difficult to identify common threads. Richard Newman begins the first section, "From Slavery to Freedom," with an essay on antiabolitionists' penchant for conjuring the alleged failures of Atlantic emancipation to deflect attacks on southern slavery. Susan O'Donovan challenges the depiction of slaves as inert and apolitical, suggesting instead that the roads and waterways traversing the Cotton South doubled as...