Literary Aspects Research Articles

The Hernando de Soto Expedition: History, Historiography, and "Discovery" in the Southeast.

This collection of trenchant essays raises the level of debate about Soto, his route, and his effects on Native Americans to new heights of sophistication by critically examining the literary sources and a host of methodological and contextual issues largely ignored in other works.-Paul E. Hoffman, author of A New Andalucia and a Way to the Orient: The American Southeast during the Sixteenth Century. This volume will be a magnificent contribution to de Soto studies. It establishes a modern historiographical foundation from which all future studies must proceed.-Jeffrey P. Brain, author of Winterville: Late Prehistoric Culture Contact in the Lower Mississippi Valley. Hernando de Soto and several hundred armed men cut a path of destruction and disease across the Southeast from Florida to the Mississippi River (1539-1542). The result was the social and demographic collapse or radical transformation of many Native American societies, and the gradual opening of the Southeast to European colonization. Traditionally, studies of the Soto expedition have concentrated on reconstructing its route. While not neglecting this issue, the eighteen contributors to this volume-themselves leading historians, archaeologists, literary critics, anthropologists, and ethnohistorians-investigate broader cultural and literary aspects of the sources themselves. The texts are also used to discuss microhistorical aspects of the expedition (including its daily routine, logistics, and health), and to evaluate their contribution to a better understanding of colonialism and southeastern Native American ethnohistory. Patricia Galloway is Special Projects Officer with the Mississippi Department of Archives andHistory. She is the author of Choctaw Genesis 1500-1700 (Nebraska 1995) and the editor of The Southeastern Ceremonial Complex: Artifacts and Analysis (Nebraska 1989).

מכתב חדש אשר עַדֶן בימינו לא היה: המאסף

The author examines the phenomena related to the publication of the first modern Hebrew journal, Hameasef (1783-1811), in early Haskalah in Germany. While attaching importance to the earlier appearance of Kohelet Musar, edited by Moses Mendelssohn in the 1750's, the article argues for the primary historical and literary place of importance of Hameasef . In Hameasef , one notices significant trends related to the new and modern conceptualization of Judaism offered by Hebrew Haskalah. The journal manifested a newer, wider view of Jewish communities of Europe, and presented a re-interpretation of Jewish heritage. This journal, unlike the ephemeral Kohelet Musar , established a center of Hebrew literature, fostering the creative efforts of Hebrew writers and poets, transcending its boundaries and its time. The development of the European literary periodicals in the eighteenth century and the changes in cultural scene in Europe, especially the emerging middle classes, the setting up of readers' societies and public libraries, are cited as general backdrop for the launching of the Hebrew monthly. The article reviews the early literary periodicals in Germany, and concentrates on the Berlinische Monatsschrift , which started publication half a year before the Hebrew journal, and thus was said to have influenced the latter. By examining the introductions to both the German and Hebrew monthlies and the contents of their respective issues, the author concludes that while there are certain similarities between the two, their orientation was essentially different. There were certain similarities in format, size, and printing practices. However, other German periodicals, examined as well, shared these similarities. A comparison of the literary aspects of the two journals and their use of prevalent literary genres indicates general trends of 18th-century European literature, and does show that the Hebrew journal concentrated on its own unique Hebraic heritage, promoting the publication of original literary works. The ostensible affinity between the two is explained as an adherence to Enlightenment tenets, to literary conventions and to journalistic practice that the two had in common. The author goes on to review some of the other important German journals, such as the Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek (started in 1765), Magazin für die Deutsche Sprache (1782), Der Deutsche Merkur (1783), and Deutsches Museum (1776), in order to show the prevailing journalistic trends of the time. The Hebrew journal's affinity to the German periodicals in general is marked by its attempt to preserve a unique Judaic and Hebraic character for which there was no precedent except in the general literary tradition of Hebrew letters. Finally, there is an attempt to classify Hameasef in accordance with various definitions of Enlightenment periodicals, as suggested by such critics as W. Graham, R. Bond, and J. Wilke. The Hebrew journal is classified as an interdisciplinary periodical, dedicated to both creative work and thought, yet also as a journal desirous of disseminating knowledge and promoting the Hebrew Enlightenment.

Inquisition Confessions and Lazarillo de Tormes

Mer q)wl HE sixteenth-century Spanish literary landscape is peopled with various forms of autobiography: discoverers', soldiers' or conquistadors' memoirs,' administrative reports,2 travelers' reports,3 confessional narrations,4 and-in a realm less pretentious of objective truthpicaresque novels. Though all of these exhibit some literary aspects, all of these various narrations were first and foremost reports; that is, as Gonz ilez-Echevarria emphasizes

服部仁著, 『曲亭馬琴の文学域』, 一九九七年一一月, 若草書房刊, 四二五頁, 一二〇〇〇円

服部仁著, 『曲亭馬琴の文学域』, 一九九七年一一月, 若草書房刊, 四二五頁, 一二〇〇〇円

Micah 2–3: Literary Artistry, Ethical Message, and Some Considerations about the Image of Yahweh and Micah

Current Micah studies focus on the questions of the book's coherence and its ethical message. But little attention has been given to the book's literary aspects that impact on its ethical message. This article focuses on Micah 2–3, and looks at how the literary character Micah uses various literary forms and techniques not only to evoke a response from both intended and unintended readers but also to provoke their moral conscience. Consideration is given to how the text portrays Yahweh and the related questions and that arise from such a characterization. The article suggests that an interplay exists between literary form, technique, and the ethical message of Micah 2–3.

Die <i>literêr-historiese</i> lees van 'n teks

The discussion on methodology in the South African exegetical and hermeneutical debate has not been completed yet. Several contributions during the past six years have kept this debate alive. Nevertheless, the duration of the discussion has brought growth and more understanding for different viewpoints and approaches. The aim of this article is to argue that both literary and historical aspects in the reading of any Old Testament text are important. Although it is not the only text approach, it proposes the literary-historical reading of texts is a comprehensive way to expose and understand Biblical texts.

Axularren eta haren obraren harreraz (Iritziak, ikerketak eta beste)

The object of this article is to present a historical vision on the acceptance that Axular and his book have had over these three long centuries ( Gero , 1643). The article also includes some news on what has been analysed and established in the case of Axular by contemporary research. In this sense, in addition to the opinion that society as a whole has shown on the urdazubiarra throughout history, the article also includes the testimony of various Basque writers. Special mention is also made of the areas in which research has been made over these last few years. In this way, in this work we can find, together with contributions to the biography of Axular, the principal circumstances analysed by researchers on his work, from his religious position to linguistic and literary aspects of his work. And, as is demanded by the nature and renown of Gero , preferential attention is devoted to the results of the research on the originality of the book and its prose.

Drama and Ideology in Modern Israel by Glenda Abramson

424Comparative Drama Glenda Abramson. Drama and Ideology in Modern Israel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. ix + 263 + 12 ill. $64.95. Glenda Abramson is right in her main argument, that modern Israeli drama is a form of art that continues to intensely and often aggressively participate in the country's political and ideological controversies . Her survey of the interrelationships between drama and ideology offers a comprehensive analysis of representative Israeli plays of the last fifty years. Her summaries of the plays and her discussion of their socio-historical background contend less explicitly that Israeli drama is not only political but also documentary in its genre, and moralistic in its tendency. The ten chapters are structured along partially overlapping historical, thematic, and personal parameters. Adhering to a roughly diachronic axis, the themes of Zionism, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Holocaust, and the issue of religion are treated from a socio-dramatic perspective. The author's approach is dramatic rather than theatrical, and deals with texts, not productions, but nonetheless offers occasional observations related to performance and reception. The introduction is a historical review of Zionism, the pre-State years, and some of the major events that shaped Israel, interspersed with notes on the development of the Hebrew theater that "began to play a fundamental role in acculturating the new immigrants" (6). Since the book is intended for non-Israeli readers, I feel it is lacking a note on several important socio-artistic characteristics of Israeli theater: Israel is a tiny country with much theatrical activity, and Israelis, per capita, are among the most dedicated theater-goers in the world. Most of the playwrights, directors, critics and theater scholars know one another. The inevitable familiarity has bred a unique environment—artistic, social , economic, and certainly political. The statement that "drama in Hebrew was almost unknown until the foundation of the State of Israel" (6) is somewhat misleading. Plays were written in Hebrew already in the seventeenth-century but not performed . Dozens were written and read during the Enlightenment in the nineteenth-century; and hundreds were written and sometimes performed in kibbutzim in the pre-State years, though rarely on professional stages. Since the establishment ofthe State, drama has served the performative rather than the literary aspects. In this context the statement referring to "a group of playwrights, whose influence was disproportionate to their number" (8) is unclear. Was Shakespeare's influence proportionate to his number? Abramson discusses "the relationship between Israeli drama and its society," (13) but in reality, only theater practitioners, teachers, and students read plays nowadays. The Israeli audience at large is exposed to drama mostly in performance, and it is through the live performances that the social, political, and ideological impact of Israeli drama is felt. The first chapter, The Enterprise, and its account of the drama of the 1950s offers a balanced reading of the three most influential and Reviews425 politically engaged plays by Mossinson, Shaham, and Shamir, versus Yoram Matmor's self-referential and anti-heroic A Regular Play. The author concludes that "audiences saw themselves on the stage in a positive , self-reinforced light, as a group possessing a refined moral conscience , dismayed by events in the country but not impelled to probe them too deeply" (35). An important characteristic of the 1948 plays, not mentioned in the book, is their dramatic space, often located in trenches and bunkers, and reflecting a typical "Israeli Siege Consciousness" (Chaim Shoham's phrase in his ha-Histadrut ve-"Ohel, " 1989). Whereas analysis of the dialogue may indeed lead Abramson to certain textual observations, a close reading of the stage instructions as well would have refined her conclusions regarding overall political message and contexts of Israeli plays. Only three years after the Holocaust, Israelis expressed personal and national anxieties not only in the texts, but through their choice of a besieged location as the dramatic space. This, for example, holds true for A.B. Yehoshua's A Night in May (1969) which uses a semi-subterranean room, an internalized siege. Abramson's comment that "there are no battles or sieges" in this play, contradicts her own argument regarding the "absence of metaphor in much original Israeli drama" (84). Furthermore...

SGML documents: Where does quality go?

Quality control in electronic publications should be one of the major concerns of everyone who is managing a project. Big projects, like digital libraries, try to gather information from a series of different sources: libraries, museums, universities, and other scientific or cultural organizations. Collecting and treating information from several different sources raises very interesting problems, one being the assurance of quality. Quality in electronic publications can be reflected in several forms, from the visual aspects of the interface, to linguistic and literary aspects, to the correctness of data. With SGML we can solve part of the problem, structural/syntactic correctness. SGML provides a nice way to specify the structure of documents keeping a complete separation between structure (syntax) and typesetting. Today there are lots of editors and environments that can assist the user producing well-formed and valid SGML documents (validating their structure). However, current software still gives the user too much freedom. The user has full control of the data being introduced, creating a margin for errors. In this context there are situations where pre-conditions over the information being introduced should be enforced in order to prevent the user from introducing erroneous data; we shall call this process data semantics validation. The idea is to constrain the values of some structural elements of a document according to its final purpose. This way the user (who writes the documents according to that DTD) will not have full control of his data; he will be forced to obey certain domain range limitations or certain information relationships. SGML does not have the necessary constructs to implement this extra validation task. In this paper we will present and discuss ways of associating a constraint language with the SGML model. We will present the steps towards the implementation of that language. In the end, we present a new SGML authoring and processing model which has an extra validation task: semantic validation. Along the paper we will show some case studies that could have their quality improved with this new working scheme.

Linda Hutcheon and Michael Hutcheon. Opera: Desire, Disease, Death. Texts and Contexts, vol. 17. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996. xvi, 294 pp. ISBN 0-8032-2367-6 (hardcover)

Linda Hutcheon and Michael Hutcheon. Opera: Desire, Disease, Death. Texts and Contexts, vol. 17. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996. xvi, 294 pp. ISBN 0-8032-2367-6 (hardcover). Un article de la revue Canadian University Music Review / Revue de musique des universités canadiennes (Volume 18, numéro 2, 1998, p. 1-134) diffusée par la plateforme Érudit.

The Verbal System of Classical Hebrew in the Joseph Story: An Approach From Discourse Analysis (review)

Hebrew Studies 39 (1998) 216 Reviews and Joseph materials by adding to them the Abraham and Isaac materials. Although the new materials are carefully built around the older texts in order to redirect them. the two sets of ancestral materials have fundamentally different concerns (p. 309). This chapter also touches upon literary aspects of reading fractures. Carr maintains that reading for fractures, using diachronic, synchronic or other methods, "holds the text open for new readings" even as it fits the text into an historical framework (pp. 333ff.); and he identifies insights this perspective offers. He also acknowledges that reading for fractures is an addition to, not a displacement of, other approaches to the text. Because of Carr's organizational procedure, initially providing a summary of his approach and later developing his exploration of these ideas, the book can be repetitious. This demurral aside, this review cannot begin to suggest the depth of scholarship and intellectual acumen in this wellwritten book. It is not light reading, but it is rewarding. Lillian R. Klein Bethesda. MD 20817 abenklein@aol.com THE VERBAL SYSTEM OF CLASSICAL HEBREW IN THE JOSEPH STORY: AN APPROACH FROM DISCOURSE ANALYSIS. By Yoshinobu Endo. Studia Semitica Neerlandica. Pp. xiii + 351. Assen: Van Gorcum, 1996. Paper. This is a curious volume, and I have pondered it somewhat at length and fmd myself still uncertain of its significance. It purports to be an approach from discourse analysis but as a matter of fact makes little use of that discipline 's insights. Only narrative discourse is admitted, although the author frequently cites examples that are obviously of a different discourse type than narrative. Furthermore, he comes even to narrative discourse quite late in the volume (pp. 232ff.). In chapter 6 (pp. 19lff.) he writes of "Syntactic Relationship in Volitive Clauses" without positing hortatory discourse from which most of his examples in that chapter seem to be taken. He devotes five chapters in the first half of the volume to a slow progress from one-clause utterances to two-clause utterances to three-clause utterances to multiple-clause utterances in an effort to work into the chapter Syntactic Relationship in Narration (chapter 7) in a manner that essentially works apart from discourse insights and instead involves what seems to me to be a traditional consideration of tense sequence from clause to clause. Hebrew Studies 39 (1998) 217 Reviews Some readers may find this material profitable-I profited occasionally from the study of particular examples-but it is not what we usually consider to be discourse analysis, which is interested more in threads of continuity characterizing discourses vertically than in atomistic ties between particular clauses. Endo's attempt to take sequentiality as basic rather than foregrounding initially impressed me as a mere tenninological squabble. After all, foregrounded clauses in narrative are sequential. Foregrounding is a general tenn which is extendible to other discourse types (e.g., expository or descriptive ) where sequentiality is not a concern. But Endo's argument tries to separate the conjunction waw from the verb fonn and say that the sequentiality is due to the latter not the fonner. Thus, on page 67 he insists that "The conjunction looks back to the preceding clause, while the sequential verb fonn looks forward to the next clause." This really is quite futile. It is precisely the combination of the waw and the following form that is distinctive in establishing a consecutive fonn; it is pointless to try to separate the two--except in such an extremely rare case (Ps 18:17-21) where we have clause-initial yqtl fonns that pattern either as old surviving preterits or historical presents. But the latter are entirely beyond the scope of this study and may involve intentional archaism in poetry. The data base of this paper is prose and is primarily based on the Joseph story. If the yqtl fonn is taken as sequential without the characteristic waw that has historically fused with it, then this would contradict Endo's treatment of yqtl in its more usual force in prose, where it is non-sequential. Admittedly, examples occur of waw conjunctive with both the imperfect and the perfect, but these are also non-sequential. So...

Music in the English Courtly Masque, 1604-1640

Those privileged enough to attend performances of masques at court in the early seventeenth century invariably commented on the sumptuousness of the music (and often had little to say about the literary aspects of the entertainments). Yet our view of the masque has been dominated by the texts, and indeed, the modern scholarship has tended to treat the masque first and foremost as a literary genre. This book is the first complete study of the multi-faceted view of its subject, piecing together a picture of what the music was actually like from musical score, documentary evidence, and the dramatic texts. Vocal music and dance in the Jacobean masque are treated separately - a division that reflects the way in which the music was originally composed, with one group of composers writing songs while violinist/dancing masters prepared dances. There are chapters offering a reconsideration of the musical and documentary evidence for the William Lawes masques, on Inigo Jones's musical priorities, and an investigation of French influence in the Caroline masques. The book also describes the departures from court norms in masques which took place away from Whitehall.

Literary Aspects of Urban Culture in Rouen, c.1500-c.1640

Literary Aspects of Urban Culture in Rouen, c.1500-c.1640

"Mit entgegenwirkenden Stromungen": The Discourse of Brecht's Der Jasager

To analyze Bertolt Brecht's Der Jasager [He Who Says Yes] and Der Neinsager [He Who Says No], didactic school operas written for performance by students, critics often use similar approaches. First, they examine the texts that form the history of the plot: Arthur Waley's translation of a Japanese No play; Brecht's two versions of Der Jasager, and his third version of the story, Der Neinsager. They then judge each of Brecht's versions using formalist criteria such as unity and internal logic. A representative of this approach is Ronald Speirs. He compares Brecht's plays with Waley's translation in order to demonstrate what he calls Brecht's increasingly shallow manipulations of the Japanese (177) and concludes that Brecht's final versions of the drama are unsuccessful because they sacrifice complexity for rationalism. Wolfgang Pasche uses a similar approach, but reaches a different conclusion. He asserts that Brecht's final versions are more successful because, in them, Brecht has transformed a drama originally based on superstitious ritual into a drama based on reason (147). These readings, though useful, are not wholly adequate for a proper understanding of Brecht's achievement. One reason is that they do not trace the development of the story fully through all its versions. Without such a full consideration, one cannot appreciate how many of the elements of Brecht's drama, including unresolved tensions, are actually traces of the earlier dramas. Another reason is that a formalist attempt to judge Brecht's drama as a unified, self-contained artifact risks missing the unique dynamic of Brechtian composition, a dynamic based on dialectic more than artistic unity. My reading of Der Jasager in this essay will trace the history of the plot not to determine the comparative worth of each text, but to identify the various voices present in each version. Such a reading will not only offer a more complete historical picture, but will perhaps also provide a model of readership for Brecht's dramas, one that is congenial to the author's own ideas of reading and writing literature. The story that eventually became Der Jasager had its origins in a Japanese No drama entitled Taniko. This work, variously attributed to Seami or Zenchiku, tells the story of a boy who accompanies a group of yamabushi (mountain ascetics) on a pilgrimage in order to pray for his ill mother. However, the boy himself falls ill on the journey and, according to an ancient custom, is thrown into the valley and killed. The pilgrims pray that his life may be restored, and because of his filial piety, the gods answer the prayer (Tyler 318-30). In this original version, the motivations are complex and contradictory. The love of the boy for his mother causes his death and his return to life. The pilgrims mourn the boy's fate at the very moment they hurl him into the valley. These tensions are more or less relieved, however, by the final appearance of the god who resurrects the boy. The god functions as a deus ex machina in the strictest sense; he is a method to resolve tensions that would otherwise be incapable of resolution. In the next step of the play's progress, the drama was read by Arthur Waley and translated into English. Even the act of translation, sometimes assumed to be a more or less neutral process, changes the dynamic of the play. The play loses some of its aesthetic qualities. One reason is that Waley greatly abridges the drama; over half the original version is omitted from the translation. The sections omitted are mostly belletristic passages, descriptions of natural scenery and poetic laments about life. Even the passages that remain assume a different literary aspect. As Waley himself admits, the Japanese text is very formal, replete with honorifics and long strings of weighty auxilaries (33). Waley's translation transforms the baroque complexity of the Japanese text into an austere formality. But even more significant than these changes is Waley's omission of the ending of the drama. …

Literary aspects of Greek Byzantine hagiography a bibliographical survey

Literary aspects of Greek Byzantine hagiography a bibliographical survey

Who Used Whom? The Relationship of Ephesians and Colossians

The much greater similarity of Colossians and Ephesians to each other than of either to any other Pauline letter has been recognized since the beginning of the historical critical movement, and been seen to require explanation. In this paper we shall be concerned to examine only the purely literary aspect of the problem of their relationship leaving aside their theological similarities and dissimilarities; nor shall we attempt to draw theological conclusions from our discussion of individual phrases or verses. To do this would require setting them in their context in Ephesians and vastly increase the length of the paper.

Making a Drama Out of a Crisis: Livy on the Bacchanalia

Livy's celebrated account of the Bacchanalia has long been a magnet for students of Roman politics, social life, religion, and private law. Two recent surveys document this extensive range of scholarship. J-M. Pailler, the wellknown French archaeologist, has published a massive monograph of 850 pages, admirably documented and containing a chapter of sixty pages reviewing the bibliography of the past hundred years. Erich Gruen, in his collected papers entitledStudies in Greek Culture and Roman Policy, has contributed a long essay on the political aspects, again with a full bibliography. This paper has the more modest aim of reviewing Livy's account primarily from the literary aspect, concentrating in particular on the opening chapters which describe how the allegedconiuratiowas detected.

Literary Aspects of Courtly Culture: Selected papers from the Seventh Triennial Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA, 27 July-I August 1992

This collection contains 34 papers from the 1992 Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society. They cover all aspects of medieval European courtly literature (including Latin), from representations of sexuality in early texts to the influence of literature on historiography.

Commercial Publishing in Late Imperial China: The Zou and Ma Family Businesses of Sibao, Fujian

Commercial Publishing in Late Imperial China: The Zou and Ma Family Businesses of Sibao, Fujian* Cynthia J. Brokaw (bio) The history of the book and the impact of print culture are relatively new subjects in scholarship on late imperial China. While some work has already been done on the literary aspects of these subjects—on questions of authorship and genre, on literacy and reading audiences, on the transmission of values and beliefs through print, and so forth—less attention has been paid to the economic and social organization of the publishing industry. The present study focuses on just this subject: the economic and social organization of the family publishing firms of the Zou and Ma descent groups that flourished in Sibao, western Fujian, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. 1 Sibao, to be sure, never achieved fame or even much in the way of recognition as a publishing center; nor are the Zou and Ma names at all well-known among Chinese bibliophiles. There are very few references to the [End Page 49] Zou and Ma publishing industries in either contemporary sources—gazetteers, local biji, and literary collections—or modern secondary scholarship on the history of publishing in China. 2 Reasons for this obscurity are easy enough to find: The isolation of Sibao, located in a mountainous, not-easily-accessible area of western Fujian, far distant from the capital, meant that it was unlikely to come to literati or official notice. Since the Zou and Ma publishers did not specialize in fine, expensive editions, neither Qing collectors nor modern bibliophiles have been drawn to the study of Sibao imprints. Moreover, by far the greatest number of surviving imprints are relatively recent products, dating from the high or late Qing, thus not qualifying as rare editions deserving the attention of modern book scholars. Nonetheless, there is some evidence that Sibao was, despite its apparent obscurity, a publishing center of some importance in south China through most of the Qing dynasty. Signs of past prosperity can be found in Sibao itself in the great mansions built by the wealthier publishers in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; it is still possible to visit the small, stall-like rooms within these houses that were used as printing workshops (and now as pigsties or storerooms) and to see outside them the large stone tubs used in the past to hold the printing ink. Moreover, the Zou and Ma genealogies and other family documents allude relatively frequently to the families’ publishing histories. More reliably, surviving woodblocks and Sibao imprints reveal that the Zou and Ma produced a long list of titles in a wide range of different subject categories. The Classics, particularly editions of the Four Books, and children’s educational texts like the Three Character Classic (Sanzi jing), the Hundred Family Names (Baijia xing), and the Treasury of Knowledge for Children (Youxue gushi qionglin) were the staples of their collection, presumably because, given the importance of the examination system, they could count on a steady demand for such texts. But the Zou and Ma produced histories, poetry and essay collections, vernacular fiction, household encyclopedias, guides to everyday etiquette and family ritual, collections of rhymed couplets, medical [End Page 50] and prescription handbooks, morality books, almanacs, and manuals of geomancy as well—in short, the whole range of texts associated with the varied demands of the increasingly literate population of Qing China. 3 While these facts do not necessarily validate Zheng Zhenduo’s claim that Sibao was, with Beijing, Nanjing, and Xuwan (Jiangxi), “one of the four great bases of woodblock printing” in the Qing, 4 they do suggest that the Zou and Ma publishers are worthy of study as commercial publishers of the late imperial era. Research on the commercial publishing houses of Sibao has just begun; it will be years before a comprehensive picture of the scope of the Zou and Ma businesses and the cultural significance of their publications can be drawn. This introductory essay describes and analyzes the organization and operation of the Zou and Ma businesses; in particular, I am interested in the ways in which the family nature of the businesses shaped and possibly encouraged their success as publishing...

Donald Maddox and Sara Sturm-Maddox, eds., Literary Aspects of Courtly Culture. Selected papers from the Seventh Triennial Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA, 27 July–1 August 1992. Woodbridge, Suffolk; and Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell and Brewer, 1994. Pp. viii, 360; 7 black-and-white plates. $69.

Donald Maddox and Sara Sturm-Maddox, eds., Literary Aspects of Courtly Culture. Selected papers from the Seventh Triennial Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA, 27 July–1 August 1992. Woodbridge, Suffolk; and Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell and Brewer, 1994. Pp. viii, 360; 7 black-and-white plates. $69.