Ist Das Research Articles

Entindividualisierung und Ich-Fixierung

Abstract »Leistung« (achievement) and »Leistungsgesellschaft« (achievement-oriented society) have, in recent years, become much-discussed topics in public and media discourse, in academic research and in literature, meeting with a great deal of critical appraisal from researchers and authors.On the basis of an analysis and interpretation of the storyNach oben ist das Leben offen (›Life Opens Upwards‹) by Philipp Schonthaler and a cursory look at additional literary texts, this study will, on the one hand, identify the parallels between academic and literary discourse. On the other hand, it will demonstrate that literature performs a specification: for here, what is diagnosed as the actual problem of our present society, is a precarious relationship of the subject with him/herself and his/her fellow human beings; the identity of human beings, which is a part or consequence of contemporary achievement-oriented society and its functioning mechanisms, can be rendered by the terms de-individualisation and ego-...

'A WONDERFULL MONSTER BORNE IN GERMANY': HAIRY GIRLS IN MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN GERMAN BOOK, COURT AND PERFORMANCE CULTURE.

Human hirsuteness, or pathological hair growth, can be symptomatic of various conditions, including genetic mutation or inheritance, and some cancers and hormonal disturbances. Modern investigations into hirsuteness were initiated by nineteenth-century German physicians. Most early modern European cases of hypertrichosis (genetically determined all-over body and facial hair) involve German-speaking parentage or patronage, and are documented in German print culture. Through the Wild Man tradition, modern historians routinely link early modern reception of historical hypertrichosis cases to issues of ethnicity without, however, recognising early modern awareness of links between temporary hirsuteness and the pathological nexus of starvation and anorexia. Here, four cases of hirsute females are reconsidered with reference to this medical perspective, and to texts and images uncovered by my current research at the Herzog August Library and German archives. One concerns an Italian girl taken to Prague in 1355 by the Holy Roman Empress, Anna von Schweidnitz. Another focuses on Madeleine and Antonietta Gonzalez, daughters of the ‘Wild Man’ of Tenerife, documented at German courts in the 1580s. The third and fourth cases consider the medieval bearded Sankt Kümmernis (also known as St Wilgefortis or St Uncumber), and the seventeenth-century Bavarian fairground performer Barbara Urslerin.Krankhafter menschlicher Hirsutismus kann aufgrund unterschiedlicher Ursachen auftreten, zu denen u.a. genetische Veränderungen und Vererbung, verschiedene Krebserkrankungen und hormonelle Störungen gehören. Die moderne Hirsutismus-Forschung ist im 19. Jh. von deutschen Forschern initiiert worden. Die meisten europäischen frühneuzeitlichen Erscheinungen von Hypertrichose (dem genetisch bedingten Haarwuchs am gesamten Körper und im Gesicht) gehen auf deutschsprachige Eltern oder Förderer zurück und sind in Deutschland in den Druck gelangt. Bei Untersuchungen des Motivs des Wilden Mannes zieht die aktuelle geschichtswissenschaftliche Forschung in der Regel Verbindungslinien zwischen der frühneuzeitlichen Wahrnehmung von Hypertrichose-Fällen und Fragen der Ethnizität, ohne jedoch zu beachten, dass in der Frühen Neuzeit die Verbindung zwischen temporärem Hirsutismus und der krankhaften Verknüpfung von Unterernährung und Anorexie bekannt war. Im vorliegenden Beitrag werden vier Fälle von an Hirsutismus erkrankten Frauen neu analysiert, unter Einbezug dieser medizinischen Perspektive und unter Beachtung von Texten und Abbildungen, die meine jüngsten Forschungen in der Herzog August Bibliothek und an deutschen Archiven ans Licht gefördert haben. Die hier betrachteten Fälle betreffen ein italienisches Mädchen, das 1355 von Anna von Schweidnitz, Kaiserin des Hl. Römischen Reichs, nach Prag gebracht wurde; Madeleine und Antonietta Gonzalez, die Töchter des ‘Wilden Manns’ von Teneriffa, die in den 1580er Jahren an deutschen Höfen bezeugt sind; die bärtige Sankt Kümmernis (Wilgefortis), und die bayerische Jahrmarktkünstlerin Barbara Urslerin.

On-line Processing of German Number-marked Relative Clauses in the Visual-world Paradigm

Healthy adults ▷ 11 participants (1 male, age: mean=58.9 years, range=48–75 years) ID Age Sex Years post-onset Etiology, location Aphasic syndrome, severity P01 42 F 15 Ischemic, A. cerebri left Anomic, mild P02 51 M 14 Ischemic, A. cerebri left Anomic, mild P03 61 M 12 Ischemic, A. cerebri left Anomic, mild P04 46 F 2 Ischemic, A. cerebri left Broca, moderate P05 74 M 18 Ischemic, A. cerebri left Broca, moderate Experimental design

Design and Synthesis of Cyclic ADP‐4‐Thioribose as a Stable Equivalent of Cyclic ADP‐Ribose, a Calcium Ion‐Mobilizing Second Messenger

Design and Synthesis of Cyclic ADP‐4‐Thioribose as a Stable Equivalent of Cyclic ADP‐Ribose, a Calcium Ion‐Mobilizing Second Messenger

Generation of a Dynamic System of Three‐Dimensional Tetrahedral Polycatenanes

Generation of a Dynamic System of Three‐Dimensional Tetrahedral Polycatenanes

Highly Active Dinuclear Copper Catalysts for Homogeneous Azide–Alkyne Cycloadditions

AbstractThe main feature of the herein presented class of molecularly defined catalysts for the copper‐catalyzed azide–alkyne cycloaddition reaction is the presence of two copper centres in one catalyst molecule. We report the facile three‐step synthesis of two representative bis‐NHC‐dicopper complexes as well as their catalytic performance in the azide–alkyne cycloaddition. A screening with one of these complexes has proved its wide applicability and excellent performance as homogeneous catalyst in various organic solvents and with different alkyne and azide substrates.

Die Paronomasie als werbestilistisches Element – Zur gefühlten Inflation einer rhetorischen Figur

Paronomasias are as rhetorical figures of repetition intentional combinations of at least similar, at best, equal, semantically and/or etymology but different words, the similarity in sound and/or writing is justified. Given the inflation of "Wau, ist das günstig", "MyTaxi holt dich app", "Hörvorragende Angebote"… questioned the contribution the spoken power of this particular figure of advertisement speech. Basis is the theory that advertising language is as comprehensive "semiosis of linguistic, paralinguistic and extra-linguistic" (Fix 1996) interpreted. Differentiated by primary (homonymous, homophonic, homographic) and secondary (paronymous) Paronomasias, he then examines the primary as a semiotic unintended inventory based on a reductionist body, which leads to the extraction of structural usage patterns and checks the validity of two general schemes.

‘Metamathematics’ in Transition

In this paper, we trace the conceptual history of the term ‘metamathematics’ in the nineteenth century. It is well known that Hilbert introduced the term for his proof-theoretic enterprise in about 1922. But he was verifiably inspired by an earlier usage of the phrase in the 1870s. After outlining Hilbert's understanding of the term, we will explore the lines of inducement and elucidate the different meanings of ‘metamathematics’ in the final decades of the nineteenth century. Finally, we will investigate the earlier occurrences and come to the conclusion that the conceptual prehistory of the Hilbertian notion of metamathematics dates back to 1870, whereas the history of the word starts in 1799 at the latest. What is this: metamathematics? It is something amazing everybody, […] since it makes the mind dizzy and withdraws thinking its sole fulcrum.1 1 Brunner 1898, p. 832: ‘Was ist das: Metamathematik? Es ist etwas, was einen Jeden in das äusserste Staunen versetzt, […] was das Gehirn schwindlig macht und dem Denken seinen einzigen Stütz- und Angelpunkt zu entziehen droht’.

Vantage Theory and linguistic relativity

Rob MacLaury’s Vantage Theory, VT, models the way in which a cognizer constructs, recalls, uses, and modifies a category in terms of point of view or vantage. Alongside of VT, there is place for the kind of semantic specification found in the lexicon. VT2 [Allan, Keith, 2002. Vantage theory, VT2, and number. Language Sciences 24(5–6), 679–703 (special edn on Vantage Theory ed. by Robert E. MacLaury)] was proposed to preserve a quasi-traditional, comparatively formal semantics while accommodating the importance of viewpoint to meaning. In MacLaury’s VT an object or event is categorized relative to the perspective of a cognizer such that VT is a theory of points of view which give rise to categories. VT2 captures the conceptualizations that lie behind the various elements in the cognizer’s categorization such that it is a theory of points of view embodied in conceptualizations. In this paper I adopt Adam Głaz’s useful concept, Extended Vantage Theory (EVT), to encompass both VT and VT2. There is an underlying assumption in EVT that categorization reflects human needs and motives, which obviously intersects with linguistic relativity. Humboldt was the originator of the linguistic relativity hypothesis: “Die Sprache ist das bildende Organ des Gedanken” (p. LXVI from Humboldt, 1863. Einleitung. Über die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluss auf die geistige Entwickelung des Menschengeschlechts, in Über die Kawi-Sprache auf der Insel Java, Erster Band, Druckerei der Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin). Humboldt judged that because language and thought are intimately connected, the grammatical differences between languages are manifestations of different ways of thinking and perceiving. The structure of language affects perceptual processes and also the thought processes of speakers. This view passed via Steinthal to Whitney and hence to Boas, who initiated the furore over Eskimo words for snow being incommensurate with English words for snow; but the disparity can be explained as the adoption of alternative vantages. However, the linguistic relativity hypothesis seems to have language determining vantage instead of it being the language-user who does so – which is contrary to MacLaury’s view. I argue that the weak version of linguistic relativity preferred by Whorf allows that while language shapes cognizers to adopt a certain point of view it does not prevent them from adopting a different one, particularly if they become aware of different vantages: this is the route by which languages become mutually intelligible. I conclude that EVT and linguistic relativity are mutually compatible and mutually enlightening.

Geld und Magie: Eine ökonomische Deutung von Goethes Faust (review)

Hans Christoph Binswanger, Geld und Magie: Eine okonomische von Goethes Faust. Hamburg: Murmann Verlag, 2005. 166 pp. The first thing that must be said about this book is that, despite the claim that it is a vollstandig uberarbeitete Ausgabe, this is simply not the case. Although the subtitle may have changed (originally Deutung und Kritik modernen Wirtschaft anhand von Goethes Faust'), the story it tells twenty years later remains in effect the same. I shall return to the significance of this for those of us interested in Goethe Age economics, but first I will address Binswanger's argument, the additions made to the second edition, and the value of this type of economic commentary on Goethe and Faust. One need not read far to determine that Binswanger places a great deal of emphasis on alchemy in his interpretation of Faust. Goethe, we learn in the first paragraph, erklart die Wirtschaft als einen alchemistischen Prozess (13). Binswanger proceeds to argue that the alchemical attempt to create gold was transformed into the economically successful creation of value as exemplified in the creation of paper money. With respect to economic theory of the Goethezeit, he maintains that Goethe's economic insight extended beyond the classical labor theory of value proposed by Adam Smith and forecast the potential of the modern economy to create value ex nihilo. For Binswanger, the creation of surplus value is equivalent to magic (24). Rather than exploring further the question of value in Faust and/or economic value theories of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Binswanger returns to his alchemical analysis, one apparently influenced by the work of the psychoanalyst Carl G.Jung, who described Faust as ein alchemistisches Drama von Anfang bis Ende (17, note on page 12 9). According to Binswanger's reading, the alchemical process in Faust proceeds in three stages. The first is the creation of paper money, followed by the acquisition of property, and finally the formation of real capital. alchemistische Werk, he concludes, gipfelt schlieslich in dem von Faust geleiteten grosen Unternehmen Kolonisierung __ Das von Faust geplante Unternehmen ist das groste aller alchemistischen Werke (43). In the second part of the book, Binswanger elaborates on Faust's colonial endeavors and presents Philemon and Baucis as impediments to progress, who must be removed at the behest of Faust, der moderne Mensch and the personification of Geldkapital (126, 128-29). Many a reader, I expect, would balk at this description of Faust and the interpretation of the events that unfold in Part 2. In the end, Binswanger's argument fails to convince, largely because he sees alchemy in everything. Mephistopheles, Wagner, and Faust are all described as alchemists. An even great problem with this text is that it defies scholarly convention. Line numbers are not given for Faust quotes, and there are a number of missing citations from Goethe, Schiller, Baudelaire, and others. …

TRACTARIAN SÄTZE, EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHS, AND THE VERY IDEA OF SCRIPT AS PICTURE

Is it possible for a writing system to be based on pictures? In the philosophical literature, the hieroglyphic writing system of the Ancient Egyptians is sometimes taken as the example par excellence of a purely pictorial script. The hieroglyphs are assumed to be signs that do not indicate how they are supposed to be pronounced, as do the signs of the alphabets of, among other, the Indo-European languages; instead, they depict what they mean. Most prominently, Ludwig Wittgenstein draws an analogy between the pictorial semantics of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and the alleged pictorial script of hieroglyphic writing:

Linguistic Vagabondage: The Driving Force in Jacques Poulin's Volkswagen Blues

LINGUISTIC VAGABONDAGE: THE DRIVING FORCE IN JACQUES POULIN’S VOLKSWAGEN BLUES ROBERT SAPP MOVING across the world, the nomad carries his home in his native language . But, if he were to lose his language or if it were replaced, would he sever himself from his home? Drawing on this new language, could he create a new notion of self, and subsequently a new identity? For the exiled, language may bridge “the unhealable rift […] between the self and its true home,” described by Edward Saïd (49). While language can operate as a link to an idyllic personal past and a concrete notion of identity, it risks tying the speaker to a predetermined concept of self. In fact, this view of language does not take into account the heterogeneous blending of language and culture that one encounters on the transcontinental journey depicted in Jacques Poulin’s Volkswagen Blues. Here, Poulin explores the rapport between language and identity that emerges from the collusion of Anglophone and Francophone cultures in North America calling into question the notion of a homogeneous self derived from language. This study explores the ambiguous rapport between language and identity in Volkswagen Blues examining the use of English by otherwise Francophone characters within the context of Jacques Derrida’s conception of the otherness of language developed in Le Monolinguisme de l’autre. Far from innocent, the choice of English is not merely a pragmatic recourse to the langue vehiculaire described by Deleuze and Guattari in Kafka : Pour une littérature mineure (43), but a violent refusal of a past that has become unrecognizable. Derrida explains that while the impossibility of possessing language permits the discourse between belonging and language, it becomes necessary to combat these ideologies in order for language to function properly (121). The transient nature of language described by Derrida reveals 345 the plasticity of cultural identity derived from it. Since no person or collective culture can claim ownership of a language, it cannot be responsible for a single, unified notion of identity nor can it be appropriated as such. While language offers intimate access to previously foreign cultures , it is insufficient as a carte d’identité. That is, although a requirement for citizenship in many countries, knowledge of the native language , even the ability to speak it well,1 is insufficient in terms of belonging to the culture in which it is spoken. While Derrida maintains that language is insufficient as representative of a single unified sense of belonging, it has been suggested that some aspects of identity cannot be changed. As Tzvetan Todorov explains, we are far from the notion, alleged by some Lumières of the 18th century, of perfectibilité which maintains that the human spirit operated as a tabula rasa, capable of distancing itself from its native culture and consequently adopting whatever culture for which it was best suited (22). Certain indelible aspects of identity are linked to our own personal past. However , in a postcolonial context, one in which the gap between self and other has diminished if not disappeared, questions of language and identity inevitably arise. The complex relation between language and identity drives Jacques Poulin’s Volkswagen Blues. The Volkswagen itself is an ambulatory library that has travelled throughout Europe crossing geographic and linguistic borders. Traces of a previous life are found throughout the vehicle. For instance, a citation attributed to Heidegger inscribed in the driver’s side sun visor, an indelible trace of past travels, expresses a particular sentiment with regard to language and identity: Die Sprache ist das Haus des Seins.2 Interestingly this message etched in the Volkswagen , the means of propulsion for the transcultural journey the protagonists undertake, reaffirms the colonial imposition of language as source of identification that Derrida writes against. Indeed, while the transcontinental journey Poulin depicts exposes the instability of cultural identity 346 ROMANCE NOTES 1 In Maryse Condé’s Le Coeur à Rire et à Pleurer, the narrator witnesses firsthand the insufficiency of language as means of belonging when a Parisian waiter fails to recognize her families presumed “Frenchness” despite their command of the French language: “Pourtant nous sommes aussi français qu’eux, soupirait mon père. Plus français, renchérissait ma...

Introduction

Introduction

Heidegger, Quality, Excellence: The Currency of Teaching

Heidegger, Quality, Excellence: The Currency of Teaching

A Critique of Schopenhauer's Metaphysic

AbstractSchopenhauer's metaphysic is not more credible than the systems of his contemporaries Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, all of whom he criticised so severely. But as his writings, unlike theirs, are so lucid, they illustrate very clearly the metaphysician's endeavour to reach knowledge that is immediate and indubitable, not mediated by the sense organs and the brain, as is knowledge of the external world. He argues that ‘das Einzige wirklich und unbedingt Gegebene ist das Selbstbewußtsein’, which alone can yield ‘die letzten und wichtigsten Aufschlüsse über das Wesen der Dinge’. He himself was not religious, but this doctrine has appealed to theologians seeking a basis for their belief that is independent of external (historical) testimony. In this connection, Albert Schweitzer expressly urged a return to the German metaphysical tradition, in particular to Schopenhauer's view of the will as the transcendent reality at the basis of self‐consciousness. The present article argues, in the British empirical tradition, that there is really no reason to distinguish self‐consciousness and experiences attributable to will from other kinds of experience. The practical distinction is that the idea of self depends largely not on the sensations provided by readily observable senses such as sight and hearing, but on muscular, articular and visceral receptors which constitute a less accessible internal sensorium.

Theorizing Theater Antitheatrically: Karl Philipp Moritz's Theatromania

I. Theaterleidenschaft and Theaterfeindschaft Readers of Karl Philipp Moritz's psychological novel chronicling the etiology of an almost pathological passion for the theater have displayed a remarkable lack of puzzlement over the fact that the title is borrowed from the name of one of the most vehement antitheatricalists in the German theater wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: Anton Reiser. In 1681 this Hamburg pastor published a voluminous and verbose tome whose title, AV! Theatromania Oder Die Werke der Finsterniß In denen öffentlichen Schau-Spielen, provides the matrix for the diagnosis of the hero's theatrogenic suffering. This lack of philological puzzlement ranges from Lothar Müller's outright dismissal1 of any connection between Moritz's Enlightenment novel and the unenlightened diatribes of a Pietist cleric to the dutiful mentioning of a nominal connection2 without further investigating [End Page 507] this unholy textual alliance. The sole exception is a rather short and rough article that Wolfgang Martens contributed to the international Fachtagung "Karl Philipp Moritz und das 18. Jahrhundert" and in which he draws on his seminal work on Literatur und Frömmigkeit to suggest (rather than fully develop) the idea that "Moritz' Urteil über Roman- und Dramenlektüre und Theaterlust [...] ist abhängig von frühen, voraufklärerischen Einflüssen und Prägungen, die er erfahren hat, obwohl er als Erwachsener, in seiner von ihm vertretenen Weltanschauung und in seinen Schriften, auch im 'Anton Reiser,' sich davon befreit zu haben scheint. Ich meine Einflüsse und Prägungen durch den Pietismus, durch pietistische Kritik, ja pietistisches Urmißtrauen gegenüber dem Scheinhaften, dem Romanhaften, dem Fiktionalen und Theatralischen."3 But just like most readers of Moritz's oeuvre, Martens is blinded by the simple opposition between his later commitment to Enlightenment ideals and the darker "frühe, voraufklärerische Einflüsse und Prägungen." Moreover, Martens alludes to the reconciliation of this internal contradiction that is generally accepted within Moritz philology: namely that Moritz's contact with Enlightenment thinkers from Gottsched to Mendelssohn enabled him to overcome his religious upbringing. As I have shown elsewhere,4 this assumption of discontinuity does not hold for the history of Enlightenment theater, and more importantly, it naively takes at face value the Enlightenment's myth of a "self-fashioning" that breaks with the past. Certainly the relation between his early religious "Eindrücke" and his later philosophy is a complicated and conflicted one, and it is alluded to by an early diagnostic statement of Anton Reiser's narrator: "Diese ersten Eindrücke sind nie in seinem Leben aus seiner Seele verwischt worden, und haben sie oft zu einem Sammelplatze schwarzer Gedanken gemacht, die er durch keine Philosophie verdrängen [End Page 508] konnte."5 Not only does the narrator suggest here that this religious milieu is to be blamed for the hero's enduring melancholy, but he seems to anticipate Klaus Heinrich's famous bon mot that "Theologie ist das Verdrängte der Philosophie." These first theological impressions can neither be entirely erased, nor can their symptomatic return be repressed. They live on, and the mode of their haunting will be the subject of this investigation of Karl Philipp Moritz's engagement with the theater.6 While a number of studies have traced the connection between pietist introspection and autobiography, and Moritz's "psychologischem Roman" and project of Erfahrungsseelenkunde,7 the possible connections between Anton Reiser's Theaterleidenschaft and pietist Theaterfeindschaft have gone largely unexplored. The following reading is guided by the working assumption that they are not irreconcilable, but complementary. Theaterleidenschaft and Theaterfeindschaft represent two sides of the same coin; they are inextricably linked and condition each other reciprocally. Their confrontation is productive and reciprocal rather than inhibitory and exclusionary, leading to complex interchanges and transpositions. Its enemies combat theater, because they are particularly susceptible to its charms and effects. Their critical analyses are therefore characterized by an unusual sensitivity for its specific mediality...

Two Cheers for Aesthetic Autonomy

Two Cheers for Aesthetic Autonomy Gregory Jusdanis (bio) Ernst ist das Leben, heiter ist die Kunst. (Life is earnest, art is light-hearted.) —Friedrich Schiller, prologue to Wallenstein Perhaps nothing expresses the state of professional disorientation in literary studies more than the appearance in the PMLA of a forum on the significance of literature. Tellingly titled "Why Major in Literature—What Do We Tell Our Students?" it hung out for all to acknowledge a row of dirty linen: waning enrollments of literature majors, declining interest in literature within and outside the academy, loss of authority to cultural studies and pop culture. Most revealing was the public admission of professional self-doubt, namely, that professors of literature are uncertain what to advise students. That the question had to be posed at all, noted Carlos J. Alonso, the editor of the PMLA, "reflects a state of affairs removed from business as usual" (401).1 It is significant that such a crisis of confidence could follow thirty years of theory, during which time critics turned their attention to a host of hitherto neglected issues. Having investigated every conceivable topic, how is it possible that critics are so indecisive about their object of study? Why do they have difficulty in justifying literature to their students, the outside world, themselves? Why are they so defensive about the aesthetic? Why are they uneasy talking about the pleasure of aesthetic contemplation? Are mathematicians, engineers, biologists, or lawyers uncertain about the value of what they teach? Is this reticence related to an anxiety felt by American intellectuals that, although they live in a society worshiping work, they reflect on play and ornamentation? Does this explain the ever-present need to politicize art and intellectual work? [End Page 22] The lack of disciplinary confidence among professors of literature has much to say both about the current state of literary studies and the position of the arts in society. Although a manifestation of the chiliastic crisis mode in the humanities, this self-doubt has serious implications for the teaching of literature and the profession itself. Since we have not articulated an ethics for literary study relevant for today's students, how can we justify support to the humanities or literary study in particular to the university president or the state governor, themselves skeptical about the value of literature in comparison to utilitarian disciplines?2 If we consider the aesthetic an oppressive category, how can we fight measures to terminate funding for the arts in elementary schools? If we believe art has no special value, what arguments can we muster against politicians who attack galleries for displaying controversial works? It is ironic that critics who have disparaged aesthetic disinterestedness in literary criticism are uninterested in questions so vital to their profession. Lurking beneath this crisis is an anti-aesthetic stance adopted by many critics today. The position extends beyond the familiar grumble that "only undergraduates are allowed aesthetic enthusiasm for, say, Shakespeare, Milton, Emerson" (Levine, 3). For a significant number of scholars "the recent theoretical revolution has made the term 'aesthetic' and the cluster of ideas it contains outmoded and irrelevant" (Elliott, Caton, and Rhyme, 9). Winfried Fluck refers to the dismissal of aesthetic concerns today as commonplace in literary and cultural studies (79–80). Those who speak about the literariness of texts or their aesthetic function, Heinz Ickstadt argues, often arouse suspicion and appear reactionary (263). For decades, Elaine Scarry complains, people have "either actively advocated a taboo on beauty or passively omitted it from their vocabulary" (117). It is fair to speak of an anti-aesthetic among writers on the Left, a position that Isobel Armstrong insists has effectively abandoned this realm of human experience to conservative thinkers (5). Often writers demote beauty by elevating the status of the sublime. In her examination of the rejection of beauty in twentieth-century art, Wendy Steiner finds that modernist artists and critics associated beauty with a feminine mode of thinking and the sublime with a masculine Weltanschauung. By treating beauty and the sublime as poles in a binary opposition, they were able to denounce beauty as charm [End Page 23] and ornament while associating the sublime with reason, austerity, and depth...

Analyzing Bach Cantatas (review)

Analyzing Bach Cantatas. By Eric Chafe. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. [xvii, 286 p. ISBN 0-19512099-x. $55 (hbk.); ISBN 0-19516182-3. $29.95 (pbk.).] Music examples, bibliography, index. In Analyzing Bach Cantatas, Eric Chafe continues down the road he began in two of his previous books, Tonal Allegory in the Vocal Works of J. S. Bach (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991) and Monteverdi's Tonal Language (New York: Schirmer Books, 1992). As in Tonal Allegory, the repertory on which he focuses is the vocal works of Bach, and in both previous books the principal lens through which he views the works is tonal structure. The audience Chafe hopes address is as wide a range possible of scholars, professional musicians, students, and Bach lovers whom he hopes to stimulate . . . become deeply involved with the Bach (p. ix). The principal type of involvement the book aims at is hermeneutic, for although the title might suggest otherwise, Chafe does not employ analysis simply a revealer of purely structure, He always employs it in the service of interpretation. Three chapters lay musical and contextual foundations in areas like scriptural hermeneutics, the liturgical year, and the Lutheran metaphysical tradition in music theory. The other six chapters present interpretive analyses of ten cantatas, BWV 2 (Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh' darein, 9 (Es ist das Heil uns kommen hier), 18 (Gleichwie der Regen und Schnee), 21 (Ich hatte viel Bekummernis), 46 (Schauet doch und sehet ob irgen dein Schmerz sei), 60 (O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwart), 77 (Du sollt Gott, deinen Herren, lieben), 109 (Ich glaube, lieber Herr, hilf meinem Unglauben), 121 (Christum wir sollen loben schon), and 153 (Schau, lieber Gott, wie meine, Feind). They range in length from a few pages entire chapters (for 21 and 60) two very substantial chapters (for 77). Except for 21 and 60, Chafe's primary locus is on the modal chorales in these cantatas. His purpose is to reveal the depth of Bach's involvement with the question of modal harmonization and the influence of such chorales on the musical-theological designs of entire and show that a hermeneutic key some of the cantatas is an overall form that derives from parallels between music and theological context in their chorale melodies (p. xiii). Chafe is a thorough researcher and a keen analyst. His knowledge of baroque music theory is comprehensive and he is widely read in Lutheran theology. In other words, he brings a formidable array of knowledge and skill the task of interpreting Bach's cantatas. So it comes no surprise that Analyzing Bach Cantatas has much offer. Chafe's analyses are perceptive, and his interpretations are usually plausible and often convincing. That they will not be universally convincing is be expected. This is particularly true for interpretations based on how one hears-or how one thinks Bach and his audience might have heard-modal harmonies. And since the modal harmonies are central Chafe's interpretations, disagreements and alternative interpretations are inevitable. Beyond disagreement over any given interpretation, there will be some skepticism about Chafe's principal hermeneutic keytonal allegory. At times it seems that Chafe tugs too hard at the tonal allegory strand in the whole interpretive fabric, and when he does so his case becomes less, not mote, convincing. I find him most convincing when, in the chapter on Cantata 21, his hermeneutics are a rich combination of contextual background, explication of the libretto, and wide-ranging attention Bach's vast array of musical-rhetorical tools, including, of course, tonal allegory. It is hard doubt that harmony and tonal structure figure prominently in the musical rhetoric of a composer with Bach's incomparable harmonic imagination and great sensitivity text. Anyone who pays dose attention Bach's recitatives cannot fail recognize the important role harmony plays vis-a-vis the words. …

Erinnerung an Paul Speratus (1484–1551), ein enger Anhänger Luthers in den Anfaängen der Reformation

ABSTRACT The essay reminds us of the effects of Paul Speratus, that early follower of Luther who died 450 years ago and who, probably unjustly, has enjoyed little attention in recent decades. At the beginning of 1522, the former Würzburg cathedral preacher was excommunicated by the theology faculty of the University of Vienna, because of a sermon that he had preached in St. Stephan’s Cathedral in Vienna - one of the first that argued against clerical vows of celibacy. From that time, Speratus aligned himself with the faction of reform-minded critics of scholasticism. Nevertheless, he found a new position as pastor in Iglau (Moravia), from which, however, King Ludwig of Hungary attempted to drive him. The congregation initially banded together in defense of their pastor, but under the pressure of the cross it did not persevere. Speratus had to yield and turned toward Wittenberg. There he gained attention as the translator of three writings of Luther, among others the Formula Missae|. In addition, he wrote the lyrics of the great Reformation hymn, Es ist das Heil uns kommen her|. A later song about the Augsburg Diet of 1530 expressed the problem of resistance. After 1524, Speratus took his final post, as court preacher in the young Duchy of Prussia and evangelical Bishop of Pomerania. His contribution to the history of the Prussian Reformation is deserving of a new evaluation.

The Enigma of Parsifal by Brian Coghlan , Ralph Middenway (review)

236 Reviews ultimately fashioned a novel; in the case of Holderlin, the competing claims of indi? viduality and community lead, on one level, to the death of Empedocles, or, in terms of 'the enterprise of writing', to what Alice Kuzniar calls 'the deferral of closure, the delaying of apocalyptic endings' (p. 205), the failure to complete the work. Although Schutjer reads Kant, Schiller, Goethe, and Holderlin in terms of the 'eighteenth-century project of aesthetic community' (p. 209), another connecting idea employed is the notion of 'intellectual intuition' (cf. pp. 99, 170, 240 n. 16), dismissed as impossible by Kant, but identified by Holderlin with aesthetic experience. The sensation of the sudden transition from pleasure to pain which is described in Goethe's essay on Laocoon (1798) as being 'wie ein elektrischer Schlag' recurs in the image used in the Lehrjahre to depict the effecton the audience of the performance of a troop of acrobats ('wenn man gute, edle, der Menschheit wiirdige Gefuhle ebenso schnell durch einen elektrischen Schlag ausbreiten [...] konnte') and is said to have its counterpart in Holderlin's employment in'Brot und Wein' (1801) of 'an electrical im? age to describe a human connection consistingin pure receptivity' (cited pp. 126,125, 170). (The reliance on Hamburger's translation of 'Wo ist das schnelle? Wo brichts, allgegenwartigen Gliiks voll | Donnernd aus heiterer Luft iiber die Augen herein?' as 'Where is the swift? And full of joy omnipresent, where does it | Flash upon dazzled eyes, thundering fall from clear skies?' perhaps exaggerates the strength of the link.) To put it another way: rather than the various left-wing conceptions of 'community' and 'communitarianism' (in however debased a form: 'it takes a village to raise a child [. . .]'), it is the right-wing fantasy of irrational and ecstatic union which inherits the legacy of the idea of das Ganze, and which explains why, as Schutjer's introduction reminds us, certain aspects of eighteenth-century aesthetics proved so susceptible to abuse by the totalitarianism of the twentieth century. Following the critiques of 'aesthetic ideology' offered by Paul de Man and, more recently, by Marc Redfield, Linda Schulte-Sasse, and others, Karin Schutjer's study offers a salutary reminder ofthe complexity of classical German aesthetics and of contemporary conceptions of social solidarity, at a time when both are showing signs of returning to the intellectual agenda. University of Glasgow Paul Bishop The Enigma ofParsifal. Ed. by Brian Coghlan and Ralph Middenway. Adelaide, South Australia: The Richard Wagner Society of South Australia Inc. 2001. vii + 2i4pp. AS31. ISBN 0-9579159-0-x(pbk). This collection of somewhat disparate essays on Wagner's last work attempts to avoid what Brian Coghlan terms 'over-simplifying popularisation'; but the co-editor also somewhat disarmingly expresses the hope that 'the heavy artillery of academe, musicology and high-octane Musikwissenschaft is well chained up farbehind the frontline' (p. xi). The general approach and the list of contributors to this volume suggest that it was conceived from the start primarily to communicate enthusiasm for Wagner's work; as such, it is an eminently serviceable introduction to what has traditionally been viewed as one of Wagner's more problematic productions. Andrew Riemer confronts the problems openly in his chapter, entitled 'Wagner's Misfortune', where he argues that 'the peculiar circumstances ofthe Bayreuth Festival encouraged Wagner and his associates to allow full scope to certain potentialities within his works [that are] inimical in many ways to the greatness of his art' (p. 193). In an opening chapter, Ralph Middenway introduces novices to the opera, while the next three contributions, by Marian Frost, Heath Lees, and Lewis Wickes, contain musicological analyses. Other chapters concentrate on Wagner's medieval sources, MLR, 98.1, 2003 237 staging and set designs, the religious and moral Problematik, and Wagner's con? nections with the near-contemporary literary trends of Symbolism and fin de siecle decadence. A particularly useful chapter is provided by Peter Russell on thematic links with other works, since it was Wagner's practice not only to conflate a num? ber of characters contained in his sources but also to rework themes found in earlier music-dramas, such as The Flying Dutchman, Tannhauser, and the...