Literary Depictions Research Articles

“La justicia más rara / del mundo”: Violated Daughter, Inviolable Law in Calderón’s El alcalde de Zalamea

Standing before the military captain who raped his daughter, the mayor of Zalamea sets aside his vara de alcalde and confronts his enemy “como un hombre no más” (v. 1296). The gesture underscores the complexity of the mayor Pedro Crespo’s dual identity as private citizen and public servant. More importantly, the scene demonstrates how Calderón employs a conflicted father-daughter relationship in El alcalde de Zalamea (ca. 1640) as a conduit to a larger discussion on the administration of justice in the dramatist’s historical milieu. Legal records of female victimization cases and a tradition of literary depictions of rape suggest that Calderón’s characterization of the daughter Isabel as blameless victim invariably forces her father to negotiate the demands of his private and public roles. As father, Crespo must avenge his family’s dishonor; as mayor, he is expected to exact justice while staying within the bounds of the law. Crespo ultimately has the captain executed, and his judgment is later rewarded by Philip II himself. However, despite the king’s apparent legitimization of the mayor’s actions, critical literature remains divided when it comes to deeming Crespo’s behavior an abuse of power or the triumph of the spirit of the law. The present study proposes that Crespo equally satisfies both his private and public duties, an outcome made possible by the mercurial distinction between revenge and justice that existed in Spanish law during the early modern period. I also argue that beneath the king’s acceptance of the mayor’s seemingly illegal actions lies a critique of the legal system during the reign of Philip IV, a period of competing jurisdictions and bureaucratic mismanagement that made swift and efficient judicial decisions “la justicia más rara del mundo.” (BB)

Enter the Japanese Imperial Marine: Postwar Comedy and Errol Brathwaite’s An Affair of Men

Studies of Anglophone comedic fiction writing on the Second World War invariably concentrate on literary depictions of the war in Europe. In this article, I recover a neglected New Zealand novel that instead takes the war in the Pacific as its setting. Though it was not marketed as a comedic work, Errol Brathwaite’s An Affair of Men (1961) intentionally crosses boundaries of style and genre in ways that render its principal character, a Japanese Captain in the Imperial Marines, increasingly buffoonish. I argue that Brathwaite’s language, scenarios, and depictions were intended to confirm a perspective on enemy psychology that remained common throughout the Anglophone world well after the cessation of hostilities.

The Voice of Jacob: Entextualization, Contextualization, and Identity

To analyze discursively mediated interpersonal social action we differentiate two kinds of “textual” phenomena. Using an Old Testament example, we delineate an interactional text , “what is (socially) done” in-and-as the events and encounters of everyday life. Such texts are perhaps even consciously conceptualized and represented in strategic subjective agency, in memory of “what happened,” and, to be sure, in literary depictions. We can contrast this with a denotational text , “what is (in effect) said” in-and-by the totality of means for organizing communicated information, in which minutiae of form--the “how” of saying what one says--and the orderliness of its emergence are key. Our task thus becomes to understand how the organized unfolding--the entextualization --of “what is said” in language and its penumbral cultural codes comes to project into its own contextualization , that is, to count as “what is done” in the way of intersubjective socio-cultural coherence and consequentiality for the participants in an interactional encounter. Working out an extended--if banal--example of a dyadic conversation, we show that by invoking the semiotic qualities of the most determinative of such projections, that of full-blown ritual action, a properly analyzed denotational text of even an everyday encounter by degrees dynamically figurates the interactional text that gradually comes into being as the consequence of interpersonal communication, in the instance giving rich and mutually interpretable identities to the participants.

Attending the Dying: Images of Compassion

Reading a novel about a dying person and the people attending the dying, one can not only reflect upon the moral involvement between the literary characters depicted, but also upon the way in which the reader takes the position of a bystander in this scene. In two novels, The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Tolstoy and The Big Ward by the Dutch author Jacoba van Velde, this moral involvement can be interpreted as a form of compassion. Martha Nussbaum’s concept of imagination offers a perspective on the way in which the reader can be involved in this literary depiction of the dying. However, the Aristotelian criteria that Nussbaum proposes for the rational judgement of compassion and her ambitions that literature can raise society’s floor by developing imagination in readers, are difficult to apply to these specific cases. In comparing both novels, it is exactly the differences between them - the historical context and social classes depicted - that bring to light a problematic presupposition in Nussbaum, namely the a-historical universality in the compassionate involvement. A re-interpretation of one of the Aristotelian criteria for compassion leaves room for a imagination not based on a rational judgement but on a sense of shared vulnerability that is precisely evoked by the literary depiction of the dying.

Attending the Dying: Images of Compassion

Reading a novel about a dying person and the people attending the dying, one can not only reflect upon the moral involvement between the literary characters depicted, but also upon the way in which the reader takes the position of a "bystander" in this scene. In two novels, The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Tolstoy and The Big Ward by the Dutch author Jacoba van Velde, this moral involvement can be interpreted as a form of "compassion". Martha Nussbaum’s concept of "compassionate imagination" offers a perspective on the way in which the reader can be involved in this literary depiction of the dying. However, the Aristotelian criteria that Nussbaum proposes for the rational judgement of compassion and her ambitions that literature can "raise society’s floor" by developing "compassionate imagination" in readers, are difficult to apply to these specific cases. In comparing both novels, it is exactly the differences between them - the historical context and social classes depicted - that bring to light a problematic presupposition in Nussbaum, namely the a-historical universality in the compassionate involvement. A re-interpretation of one of the Aristotelian criteria for compassion leaves room for a "compassionate imagination" not based on a rational judgement but on a sense of shared vulnerability that is precisely evoked by the literary depiction of the dying.

Patient and Analyst in Crises: A Mutual Transformation Reflected in a Clinical Narrative and St. Exupery’s “The Little Prince”

In this article I will describe and illustrate how personal crises of patient and analyst, in contrast to the more commonly recognized detrimental effect, can actually facilitate a mutually transformative process. While I was in the throes of my own personal crisis, a very challenging patient arrived for treatment. How that analysis evolved over the course of 12 years to become a mutually transformative and creative process for both the patient and myself is the focus of this article. To augment delineation of this process, I will use St. Exupery’s The Little Prince as a literary depiction of what I believe to be the essential healing elements involved, poignantly illustrated with excerpts from the book.

ALLA TURCA VERSUS THE ROMANTIC EAST: E.T.A. HOFFMANN AND ORIENTAL‐STYLE MUSIC*

ABSTRACTIn the field of German Romantic Orientalism, E.T.A. Hoffmann represents a unique voice. He not only employs oriental imagery in his fiction, but also comments on the cultural production of the Orient within the German states. Following Friedrich Schlegel's assertion that the truly Romantic was to be sought in the East, Hoffmann questions the ways in which the Orient was constructed in German art, assessing its Romantic credentials. One example of this is found in his response to popular alla turca music. As the presentation of the Orient by composers such as Mozart and Gluck influenced literary depictions of the East, Hoffmann examines the means by which such music was produced and shows that attempts to mimic the Orient can be anti‐Romantic. His music reviews and his stories Ritter Gluck (1809) and Das Sanctus (1816) reveal an ambiguous response to alla turca music on the grounds that it did not always satisfy Romantic aesthetics. Looking East is therefore not always a Romantic undertaking. Hoffmann's critical reponse to alla turca is part of an aesthetic guide for modern artists wishing to profit from the Romantic potential of the Orient, and provides a new angle from which to consider Romantic Orientalism.

Introduction: Gulf Souths, Gulf Streams, and their Dispersions

de alma de criollo que cantas con la musica del mar que bailas con el ritmo de las olas Soul of Creole you sing with the music of the sea you dance with the rhythm of the waves --Tona la Negra singing Agustin Lara's Alma de Veracruz In novel that offers perhaps the most memorable literary depiction of the of to North American readers, Kentucky born-and-raised Edna Pontellier faces the from Grand Isle and New Orleans, drawn to it by jealousy coupled with attraction for what lies on the other side--across the expanse of waters. From the novel's opening, readers are told that Robert Lebrun, the Creole spark (along with the itself) of Edna's erotic awakening from her marriage and domestic scripting, was always intending to go to Mexico (4); and he eventually makes the crossing, returning home with tobacco pouch embroidered by generous Vera Cruz girl (101). Soon enough, we realize that Kate Chopin's The Awakening bears witness to an intimately foreign, integral Mexican presence in Creole Louisiana with its tamale-vendors and chocolate servers. Both the novel and Edna are obsessed with Creole Veracruz, and haunted (or called) by a transcendently seductive vision of Mexican girl (103). While on daytrip to one of Louisiana's The Southern Literary Journal volume XLVI, number 2, spring 2014 islands, Edna and Robert find themselves in the same boat as a young barefooted Spanish girl, Mariequita, described as sly, piquant, and saucy (33). Edna perceives Mariequita's body as site of fascination; she looks at Mariequita's feet and notices sand and slime between her brown toes, and notes, too, the shrimps in her bamboo basket ... covered with Spanish moss (33-34). Mariequita, Mexico, and Creole quadroons mark an undercurrent of the text filled with the goods of the Gulf's southern shores: coffee, chocolate, vanilla, liqueurs, cigars--an economy buttressed by the pervasive help of black women, darkies, quadroons, griffes, mulattos in linguistic space where Spanish, French, English, and patois intermix. Drawn to and into this Gulf (35) or genius (genie, genio, djinn), Edna becomes consumed by quest for spirit forms (39), consummated desire, and new combinations of consciousness. From Edna's first dip in the waters with her Creole companions who take to it like element, she starts to move as if some previously lacking power of significant import had been given her to control the working of her body and her soul (27). She awakens to this native element absent from her Presbyterian Kentucky upbringing, and [a]s she swam she seemed to be reaching out for the unlimited in which to lose herself (28). It is easy enough--and necessary--to critique the final suicide scene and the entire novel as whole (for its bourgeois protofeminist narcissism, its immersion in scaffolding of white supremacist privilege, and more), but the novel's final scene ultimately moves beyond realism in its engulfment of sublime awakening. Something about the can be mapped, defined by certain limits and boundaries--even as something else tugs and pulls one under into buzzing vortex, or lacuna--a misty and mysteriously decaying space where there is nevertheless fossil energy source to be tapped. Edna's position as she faces the offers only one of many sites where we might begin to peer into its literary waters. As the essays gathered in this special issue of The Southern Literary Journal show, space--extending from its bays and basin to its deep belly and horizons--occupies at once very specific geography and an extensive imaginative sweep. We began many drafts of this Introduction by trying to choose place to position ourselves in thinking about the of Mexico--a place, like Grand Isle or Veracruz, where we might start to ponder the many geographies of the as they extend into its myriad waterways, sculpted bays, its great river mouths and historic ports, and as they all also extend into memory, performance, and poetics. …

Radical Depictions of Female Sadomasochism in El Hor/El Ha's Literary Sketches

This study examines how the Austrian Expressionist author El Hor/El Ha contributed to the male-dominated discourse surrounding women’s sexuality in fin de siecle Europe. Although research on literary depictions of sadomasochism has expanded in recent years, El Hor/El Ha remains largely unknown. Her literary sketches challenge the common or “essentialized” (Byrne) thinking of her time and illustrate the complexity and vitality of female sexual desire. I provide a close reading of some of her texts that depict violent eroticism and sadomasochistic acts and analyze the implications of these encounters for gendered power relations and women’s position in society. While El Hor/El Ha’s fictional literature provides a space in which women may explore female sadomasochistic desire, I argue that she implicitly warns readers about enacting such fantasies in real life, as they may ultimately result in disempowerment.

"Home to Harlem, away from Harlem": transnational subtexts in Nella Larsen's Quicksand and Claude McKay's Home to Harlem

Heeding Brent Hayes Edwards 2003 call to re-examine African American writings of the early twentieth century within the context of emergent transnational sentiments, this article explores the literary depictions of transmigrant characters in Nella Larsen’s Quicksand (1928) and Claude McKay’s Home to Harlem (1928). Written and set during the volatile interwar years, Quicksand and Home to Harlem complicate and expand upon Randolph Bourne’s “Trans-National America” (1916) and Alain Locke’s “Harlem” (1925) by exploring how the transnational experience of moving away from, into, and between communities transforms existing identity concepts and creates spaces for the generation of self-definitions that are not bound by traditional notions of national and racial belonging.

Drawing the line: the father reimagined in Faulkner, Wright, O'Connor, and Morrison

In an original contribution to the psychoanalytic approach to literature, Doreen Fowler focuses on the fiction of four major American writers--William Faulkner, Richard Wright, Flannery O'Connor, and Toni Morrison--to examine the father's function as a border figure. Although the father has most commonly been interpreted as the figure who introduces opposition and exclusion to the child, Fowler finds in these literary depictions fathers who instead support the construction of a social identity by mediating between cultural oppositions. The new theoretical model that Fowler develops for the father's mediating role in initiating gender, race, and other social differences shows not only how psychoanalytic theory can be used to interpret fiction and cultural history but also how literature and history can reshape theory.

Magnetism and Masculinity in E. T. A. Hoffmann's Der Magnetiseur

A frequently occurring trope in Romantic literature, somnambulism, or sleepwalking, was understood around 1800 to be a condition of women. As a result, modern gender studies approaches to this motif have frequently focused on the role that somnambulism plays in constructing femininity. Literary depictions of male somnambulism, on the other hand, have generally been interpreted in one of two ways: either as indicative of a feminized male subject or as a metaphor for larger political and social issues. The following article examines the effect of male somnambulism in constructing masculinity in E. T. A. Hoffmann's Der Magnetiseur. I argue that the magnetism of a man by a man constructs a marginalized masculinity, one in which the male body is revealed as frail, penetrable, and weak. The experience of the male somnambulist is not synonymous with his female counterpart, however, and thus constitutes a break in the model of binary genders.

Ovid in the Age of Cervantes

Ovid in the Age of Cervantes

The Battle of Kulikovo Field (1380) in History and Historical Memory

Andrei Olegovich Amel'kin and Iurii Vasil'evich Seleznev, Kulikovskaia bitva v svidetel 'stvakh sovremennikov i pamiati potomkov (The Battle of Kulikovo in the Testimonies of Contemporaries and Memory of Posterity). 384 pp., illus. Moscow: Kvadriga, 2011. ISBN-13 978-5917910741. Sergei Nikolaevich Azbelev, Kulikovskaia pobeda v narodnoi pamiati: Literaturnye pamiatniki kulikovskogo tsikla i fol 'klornaia traditsiia (The Victory of Kulikovo in Popular Memory: Literary Works of the Kulikovo Cycle and the Folklore Tradition). 312 pp., illus. St. Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 2011. ISBN-13 978-5860076679. In 1380, a Russian army led by Grand Prince Dmitrii Ivanovich of Moscow crossed the Oka River and rode into the steppe to meet the army of Emir Mamai of the Jochid ulus in battle on Kulikovo Field (Kulikovo pole). (1) The Russians won the battle but suffered extremely high casualties. Mamai regrouped, but his second army deserted to Khan Tokhtamysh, then client of the Central Asian warlord Timur (Tamerlane). After defeating Mamai, Tokhtamysh sacked Moscow in 1382. The battle of Kulikovo has received enormous attention in modern Russian scholarship for two reasons. First, it was the first time a Russian army had ridden into the steppe to fight the Tatars. Second, uniquely among battles in medieval Rus'/Russia, (2) it was the subject of a trilogy of literary works: the epic Zadonshchina, notorious for its crucial role in determining the authenticity of Slovo o polku Igoreve (The Tale of the Host of Igor'); the so-called Letopis 'naia povest' (Chronicle Tale) found within the corpus of Russian chronicles; and Skazanie o Mamaevom poboishche (The Narration of the Battle with Mamai, hereafter the Narration). Evaluating the battle devolves into two related but distinct questions: what were the consequences of the battle for Russian--Tatar relations, and how reliable are the narrative details about the battle found in the monuments of the Kulikovo cycle? On the first question opinions differ. Historians in Russia going back at least to Sergei M. Solov'ev considered Kulikovo as Russia's liberation from the Yoke and minimized the importance of Tokhtamysh's restitution of Tatar rule until 1480. Kulikovo was a major turning point in Russian-Tatar relations because it proved that the Tatars could be defeated. Recent Western historians and a rare Russian historian, Anton Anatol'evich Gorskii, have dissented, arguing that Kulikovo did not materially change Russian-Tatar relations. Donskoi's Pyrrhic victory left him unable to oppose Tokhtamysh effectively. The real victor at Kulikovo was Tokhtamysh. (3) Kulikovo symbolizes that Moscow had risen to a point of preeminence in northeastern Russia before 1380, not the overthrow of Tatar rule after 1380. On the second question, historians who agree on the significance or insignificance of the battle disagree in evaluating the literary depictions of the narrative. The majority accept many if not most facts even when they contradict one another, and a minority takes a much more skeptical view. (4) I know of only one Tatar historian who has written about Kulikovo, Rustam Nabi (Nabiev). His Pravda o Kulikovskoi bitve (The Truth about the Battle of Kulikovo) concludes that there was no battle at Kulikovo. (5) The Kulikovo cycle deliberately misrepresented Russian military assistance to Tokhtamysh in a battle on the Dnieper River against Mamai as a Muscovite victory over Mamai on the Don River in which Tokhtamysh played no role. Nabi's views are taken seriously, if at all, only in Tatarstan. The two books reviewed here address the history and the historical memory of the battle of Kulikovo from different disciplinary perspectives: Andrei Amel'kin and Iurii Seleznev are historians, whereas Sergei Azbelev is a folklorist. Amel'kin and his protege Seleznev from Voronezh State University previously collaborated on two books, on Batu's invasion of Rus' and on Kulikovo in history and historical memory, respectively. …

Cinematic Cities: A ‘Film and History’ Overview for South Africa's Major Metropolises from the 1890s to the 1950s*

This article provides a thematic and chronological overview of ideas about South African cities, parts of cities or urbanity in general contained in films from the 1890s to the 1950s. These ideas – whether in feature films, travelogues, newsreels, documentaries or docudramas – reflected the attitudes not only of the film makers, but often also of many others in the places and periods in which they were made. City films could also transmit ideas, and thereby convey or help maintain attitudes towards the urban. Yet there is still a paucity of studies on cinematic portrayals of African cities. The article is drawn from a larger project that looks at the perceptions and experiences of South African cities from the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth century, and the consequences of those perceptions and experiences. Hence it is an exercise in both film as historical evidence and the role of film in history. The article argues that depictions of South African urbanity on film contained both utopian and dystopian imagery, as was usual with cinematic depictions of cities in many other parts of the world. For South Africa, depictions of cities in film during the 1920s and 1930s were largely utopian, the product in part of the rise of place-selling initiatives. But after the Second World War the likes of Cry, the Beloved Country and Civilization on Trial in South Africa provided decidedly dystopian visions of South African ‘slums’. The article explains how and why this happened, and why such representations were part of more general post-war domestic and international debate on the nature of South African urban problems and possibilities, not least over the conditions and experiences of urban Africans. It also suggests ways in which this debate, and therefore visual and literary depictions of cities, evolved in the course of the 1950s, resulting in more complex cinematic representations that argued that even South African ‘slums’ were places of creativity as well as hardship.

Orientalism and identity in Latin America: fashioning self and other from the (post)colonial margin

Building on the pioneering work of Edward Said in fresh and useful ways, contributors to this volume consider both historical contacts and literary influences in the formation of Latin American constructs of the Orient and the Self from colonial times to the present. In the process, they unveil wide-ranging manifestations of Orientalism. Contributors scrutinize the other great encounter, not with Europeans but with Arabic, Chinese, and Japanese cultures, as they marked Latin American societies from Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean to Peru, Argentina, and Brazil. The perspectives, experiences, and theories presented in these examples offer a comprehensive framework for understanding wide-ranging manifestations of Orientalism in Latin and elsewhere in the developing world.Orientalism and Identity in Latin America expands current theoretical frameworks, juxtaposing historical, biographical, and literary depictions of Middle Eastern and Asian migrations, both of people and cultural elements, as they have been received, perceived, refashioned, and integrated into Latin American discourses of identity and difference. Underlying this intercultural dialogue is the hypothesis that the discourse of Orientalism and the process of Orientalization apply equally to Near Eastern and Far Eastern subjects as well as to immigrants, regardless of provenance and indeed to any individual or group who might be construed as Other by a particular dominant culture.

Sandalwood and Carrion: Smell in Indian Religion and Culture by James McHugh (review)

Reviewed by: Sandalwood and Carrion: Smell in Indian Religion and Culture by James McHugh C. Pierce Salguero James McHugh. Sandalwood and Carrion: Smell in Indian Religion and Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. xix + 322 pp. $35.00 (978-0-19-991632-0). Historian of South Asian religion James McHugh has written a detailed exploration of smells, aromatics, and perfumes in ancient and medieval India that deserves our attention. The author refers to his book as a “primer and a reference book” (p. 7); however, the reader who spends some time with it is sure to discover that he has produced something much more. Creative and well written, the work explores a huge selection of literature (including the Vedas, epics, philosophical works, Buddhist and Jain writings, perfumery treatises, lexicons, medical texts, and more). Each chapter opens up multiple facets of the physiology, aesthetics, [End Page 282] social function, and economics of smell, while the introduction outlines how this research connects with recent trends in the history of the body, the senses, and material culture. Because of the richness of his sources and the breadth of his scope, historians of religion, literature, transnational exchange, technology, and medicine will equally benefit from reading McHugh. The historian of medicine who wishes to take the author at his word and treat the book as a reference work will readily find many useful nuggets here. One can, for instance, read an introduction to the Indian understanding of the mechanics of olfaction on pages 25 to 29. Pages 72 to 81 discuss and partially translate sections from the Carakasaṃhitā (third century BCE to fifth century CE) and Suśrutasaṃhitā (ca. 500 CE) on the role of smell in the prognosis of death and in the diagnosis of demonic pediatric disease. Also relevant is the chapter on sandalwood, where McHugh explores the literary references to, the properties of, and the uses of a range of substances known as candana (pp. 182–89). And one can consult the index for more information about individual aromatic medicines that appear ubiquitously throughout the book. The author’s characterization of his own work notwithstanding, however, it is not as a reference volume that Sandalwood and Carrion will be most useful to scholars in our field, and it is not by flipping to specific pages that we will most enjoy it as readers. Pardon the expression, but this book simply begs us to stop and smell the roses as we make our way through it. Whatever your entry point might be, you cannot read more than a page or two before you find yourself immersed in a fascinating, textured description of an alternative universe in which medicine is intimately intertwined with religion, trade, aesthetics, and sensual experience. For example, you may have come to chapter 7 because you were interested in looking up a synonym for a commonly traded aromatic medicine (pp. 173–74). But on the surrounding pages you will read about the pervasive ethnic and geographic stereotypes that shrouded aromatics in an exotic mystique (pp. 171–77), narratives of lavish tribute missions from the Mahābhārata and other sources (pp. 166–71), and literary depictions of the merchants and perfumers of an idealized medieval city (pp. 162–66). Read on, and in the next chapter you will learn how aromatics were evaluated by merchants (pp. 189–95) as well as how they were faked (pp. 195–98). As you continue still further, do not be surprised if you learn how that same aromatic substance was used in temple construction or in adorning the gods in Hindu ritual, how it was spoken of in the Kāmasūtra or in a pun or a riddle, or what role it played in the formula for the famous perfumes “Moon Juice” and “Uproar.” Though you may initially have been interested in simply finding a synonym, soon you realize you have happily lost yourself in McHugh’s guided tour of the vivid Indian “smellscape.” Will some historians of medicine complain that the book overly prioritizes religious perspectives? That it spends too little time on the medical matters that concern us most? Perhaps. For this reviewer, however, the appeal of the...

Personality and Place in Russian Culture—or Not

Simon Dixon, ed., Personality and Place in Russian Culture: Essays in Memory of Lindsey Hughes. 435 pp., illus. London: Modern Humanities Research Association for University College London School of Slavonic and East European Studies, 2010. ISBN-13 978-1907322037. $20.00. This collection of articles is a tribute to memory and rich intellectual legacy of late Lindsey Hughes (1949-2007), professor of Russian history at London University's School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies (SSEES, now part of University College London [UCL]). Hughes is probably best known for her pioneering biographies Sophia, Regent of Russia, 1657-1704 and monumental Peter Great: A Biography, as well as for her interest in material as a primary historical source--particularly architecture but also art, clothing, fashion, icons, and ritual. (1) As Robin Miller-Guilland writes, In her many shorter articles, we find a tireless enthusiast for generally disregarded corners of history ..., multivalent, disparate strands that make up texture of human culture (22). These have been cleverly distilled by editor of volume under review, Simon Dixon, Hughes's colleague at SSEES and a leading scholar of Catherinean Russia, as a focus on personality and place, reflecting Hughes's interests in kaleidoscopic variety of individual motivations and shifting meanings attributable to particular settings (13). Dixon's characterization of Hughes's scholarship as a self-denying empiricism and concept-driven (5) may also be applied to works in Personality and Place, which do not attempt large-scale statements about Russian or forefront theoretical or methodological problems but focus on the shifting meanings attributable to particular settings and on specific materials under consideration. That said, it is not easy to identify major themes or issues that tie together collection of articles by 17 authors on a variety of subjects and periods; volume also includes an article by Hughes on Cathedral of SS Peter and Paul and a bibliography of her main works. To some extent, Personality and Place may be taken as a cross-section of contemporary scholarship in English on Russia before Soviet period, with most attention given to 18th century. The book also appeared as a special issue of The Slavonic and East European Review, and it retains look and vestigial traces of a journal (e.g., reference to this journal, 14). (2) Indeed, majority of readers will most likely refer to individual contributions in volume rather than read it in linear fashion. To a greater or lesser extent, all entries deal with personality and/or place but with no common understanding of what exactly these mean. That said, we may tentatively break subject matter down into topics concerning material and print culture, historical sites, expeditions and geography, examinations of discourse in historical context, biographical studies, literary depictions of self, and tributes to Hughes's life and work. I will say a few words about each contribution, by group. Dixon's introduction to collection offers a beautiful evocation of social and cultural world in which Hughes grew up and describes her intellectual formation in postwar Britain. James Cracraft continues with a personal memoir of Hughes, centering on her work on Peter I; Hughes's exhaustive research in archives, libraries, museums, and architectural sites, in his words, yielded an unprecedentedly detailed, complex, and often dark portrayal of great tsar.... Her book leaves its readers, at Peter's death, with a Russia that is exhausted, confused, and fearful--not unlike immediately post-Soviet Russia in which she conducted much of her research (17). Following Hughes's lead, Sergei Bogatyrev and Simon Franklin take up what we may classify as problems in material and print in order to explore images of Russian rulers. …

Perfect wedding, penniless life: Ali and Fatima in a Sri Lankan Malay text

Literary depictions of central figures in Muslim history offer telling glimpses of gender roles and expectations, however ideal. Fatima, the Prophet Muhammad's daughter, and her pious and courageous husband and fourth Caliph Ali are among the most beloved and venerated of such figures across time and place. The Hikayat Siti Fatima, an 1865 Malay manuscript from Sri Lanka that depicts their heavenly marriage and earthly hardships, serves as the focus of a comparative analysis, offering insight into the circulation of gender images in Muslim South and Southeast Asia.

Extraordinary Weapons, Heroic Ethics, and Royal Justice in Early Irish Literature

ABSTRACT The synthesis of pagan and Christian cosmologies that informs medieval Irish letters incorporates prestigious and extraordinary weapons, and other such objects into an all-compassing Nature, in which they are preferentially associated with the themes of heroic ethics, legitimate and just royal rule, and the removal of errant rulers through a cosmic deployment of the “instruments of their fate.” Yet only rhetorical effects of literary depiction raise such weapons to a status approximating the preternatural.