Master Of Ceremonies Research Articles

F.J. Gall and the Phrenological Movement

The doctrine of phrenology was at least as influential in the first half of the 19th century as psychoanalysis was in the first half of the 20th (1). The movement started with Franz Joseph Gall (1758–1828), a German-born physician, anatomist, and physiologist who lived in Paris. Phrenology had a major influence on science and society, and it pervaded various areas of culture (1). The doctrine’s rapid dissemination, its popularization, and its use in specialized phrenologists’ offices quickly caused it to be regarded as a typical example of pseudoscience and its practice as a form of charlatanism (2). However, Gall’s work proved important for the biological study of the mind in three ways. First, it was the origin of modern brain localization (3). Second, it established psychology as a biological science (4). Many contemporary psychiatrists used the doctrine even though they did not completely accept it, much in the way that many people today accept Freudian ideas and terminology without totally embracing psychoanalysis (5). And third, on a more general level, Gall’s work favored the emergence of a naturalistic approach to the study of man and played an important part in the development of evolutionist theories, anthropology, and sociology (4). It would not be much of an exaggeration to say that today no one remembers Gall the sage and neuroanatomist, but everyone knows him as a master of ceremonies and a phrenologist.

The Surrogate War between the Savoys and the Medici: Sovereignty and Precedence in Early Modern Italy

promotion of the Medici from a banking family to a princely dynasty during the sixteenth century was one of the political success stories of early modern Italy.1 On 27 August 1569, Pope Pius V Ghislieri signed the bull Pontifex Maximus in which he declared his intention to recognize Cosimo I de Medici, duke of Florence, as grand duke of Tuscany, out of gratitude for his services to the church and the defence of the Catholic faith, not least in supporting the struggle against heresy in France.2 In February 1570, after formally receiving the bull the previous December, Cosimo travelled to the papal court for his coronation. The pope's master of ceremonies recorded the splendour of Cosimo Fs entry and reception, as did the anonymous Roman avvisi. Having been met on the outskirts of the city by a series of papal representatives, Cosimo entered it at the head of a reported 122 carriages, to the amazement of the watching crowds. The Florentine community of Rome organized games at the Diocletian Baths at which Cosimo's second son, Cardinal Ferdinand de Medici, awarded the prizes to the victors.3 The ceremonies climaxed on Laetare Sunday (5 March), in the sala regia of the Vatican palace, when Cosimo was crowned by the pope. A triumphant moment in his eventful life, it also marked an upturn in his family's fortunes.4 As recently as 1527, the Medici had been exiled from Florence, during the short-lived republic, and the family's ducal title, which dated to 1532, was less than forty years

Clarissa's Narrators, and: Autonomous Voices: An Exploration of Polyphony in the Novels of Samuel Richardson (review)

Reviewed by: Clarissa’s Narrators, and: Autonomous Voices: An Exploration of Polyphony in the Novels of Samuel Richardson John A. Dussinger (bio) Victor J. Lams. Clarissa’s Narrators. American University Studies, Series 4, English Language and Literature, vol. 194. New York: Peter Lang, 2001. x+172pp. US$47.95. ISBN 0-8204-5162-2. Alex Townsend. Autonomous Voices: An Exploration of Polyphony in the Novels of Samuel Richardson. Bern: Peter Lang, 2003. 236pp. US$50.95. ISBN 3-906769-80-1. Victor Lams gives convincing analysis of the narrative/dramatic structure of Clarissa by focusing on how the correspondence itself rather than events in the story is the central action of the novel and by contrasting the self-reflective narratives of Clarissa and Lovelace to the other-reflective narrative of Belford, who acts like a tragic chorus on the action. Lams's emphasis on narrative time as opposed to the "actual" time of the events described helps us to understand the brilliance of Richardson's technique of "writing-to-the-moment": "The time of Clarissa on the narrative stage is the psychological experience of a three-fold 'now,' one which brings together the now of the just-past offstage action that is recaptured in the dramatic scenes, the now of the hoped-for or dreaded future which is imagined, and the now in which the character's mental states are enacted into social reality by his or her letters" (7). Lams sees the whole novel as comprising five segments or movements in accordance with Aristotle's theory of tragedy, alluded to in Richardson's postscript to this novel: the first three playing out in Clarissa's and Lovelace's self-reflective narratives (Harlowe Place, Mrs Sinclair's house, and Mrs Moore's house), the final two (the Smiths' house and her father's house) in Belford's other-reflective account. Narrative time in the latter two segments includes Clarissa's postdated letters. The quantitative proportioning of epistolary narrative reflects ironically the status of each protagonist in this power play. Thus in the beginning of the novel Clarissa's narrative dominates during the first two volumes, while all the time Lovelace secretly manipulates events like a puppeteer. Even in the third volume Clarissa still has a two-to-one advantage in narrative space while rendering her ordeal at Mrs Sinclair's house. But early in the fourth volume Lovelace becomes the master of ceremonies. In the fifth volume, Lams estimates, Lovelace has 97 per cent of the narrative, a portion almost equal to that of Clarissa while at Harlowe Place. By the sixth volume Belford emerges in the narrative as a fundamental bridge from the self-directed to the other-directed point of view. Particularly interesting is Lams's insight into how, by the final volume of this novel, no one character retains control of the story. In the final movement, moreover, Clarissa is posthumously "present" as a character speaking from clockless eternity as opposed to the earthlings left behind and still bound to everyday time. Narrative time is crucial to rendering the conversions that each of the four principal characters undergoes. Lovelace's final discovery of his spiritual [End Page 390] emptiness and Belford's relatively more tame avoidance of old habits are the more obvious changes. Anna Howe's Hobbesian view of the world, where everything is a struggle for dominance, stands in sharp contrast to Clarissa's Aristotelian ideal of virtue as rational and disinterested. Lams traces Clarissa's movement from initially being a Pelagian social activist to becoming a more profoundly inward, evangelical follower of the Cross in the aftermath of her trauma. Perhaps the most agonizing moment in Clarissa's sufferings is her bewailing of God's evident wrath against her despite her good intentions throughout those trying months in her family's house. While contemplating the rich ore of her spiritual resources in writing those fragments after the rape, Lams alights on John Norris's poem The Aspiration as a key text in the Neoplatonic language of her self-appraisal. Unfortunately, Lams ignores Derek Taylor's germinal article on this very connection ("Clarissa Harlowe, Mary Astell, and Elizabeth Carter: John Norris of Bemerton's Female...

Democracy, Polygamy, and Women in Post-Reformasi Indonesia

In July 2003, a lavish award ceremony was held at a five-star hotel in Jakarta. At the Polygamy Awards, as it was called, the financial sponsor and master of ceremonies, a wealthy entrepreneur named Puspo Wardoyo, handed out awards to several dozen Indonesian men who, in the view of the selection committee, had upheld the high moral and religious standards needed to be a successful polygamist. The idea of the ceremony was to bring polygamy and its practitioners out of the closet, so to speak, and to celebrate polygamy’s virtue as a respected Islamic tradition that should be a source of pride rather than shame for both men and women. Puspo Wardoyo, the jovial president of the Indonesian Polygamy Society (Masyarakat Poligami Indonesia), had embarked upon a highly publicized crusade to popularize polygamy. Although legal with some restrictions for Muslim men in Indonesia, polygamy had a social taint to it that Puspo and others like him wanted to see erased. “A man who can afford it financially and who is of good character has the duty to have more than one wife. Polygamy is the most praiseworthy of actions … I want to spread the polygamy virus,” he commented in a magazine interview.

Building a New Public Idea about Language

110 It was a fancy California wedding party at a big Bay Area hotel. The groom’s family spoke Urdu, and the bride’s spoke Gujarati and Urdu. Both were practicing Muslims, but she was from southern California, sometimes regarded by northerners as too laid-back. The groom was attended by his two best friends from high school, one of Mexican-Jewish-Anglo parentage and the other of Chinese and Japanese descent via Hawai‘i and Sacramento. The groom’s younger sister was master of ceremonies. During a long program of toasts and tributes, English was the lingua franca, with a few departures for jokes or tears (it was the fathers who wept). Two poets performed. One, an elder known for his verbal skill and love of literature, recited a long celebratory poem in Urdu that deeply moved many of the adults. The other was a friend of the newlyweds, a young man of Syrian and Anglo-American parents. He performed in English a long lively poem, also composed for the occasion and rooted in contemporary hip-hop. The Mexican-Jewish-Anglo best man brought down the house with a bilingual Urdu-English joke a youngster had told him. I marveled yet again at the gorgeous, strenuous creativity of our transculturated young. At the same time I mourned the fact that the younger poet, a lover of literature who taught English at a community college, would probably never have a chance to study the elder’s poetic tradition or that of his own Syrian parent.

Brownfields 2002: The National Brownfields Conference

From November 13 through 15, 2002, the seventh annual national brownfields confer ence — Brownfields 2002 — was held at the Charlotte Convention Center in Charlotte, North Carolina. This year's event was the largest (3,287 registrants) and perhaps most inspiring national brownfields conference to date, showcasing a wide range of potential new directions for the national brownfields program made possible by the new federal brownfields legislation that was signed into law by President George W. Bush on January 11, 2002. The conference began with an opening plenary session where Marianne Horinko, the Assistant Administrator for the Solid Waste and Emergency Response Office of the USEPA (United States Environmental Protection Agency), acted as master of ceremonies.

Euthanasia and the Changing Ethics of the Deathbed

During the course of the nineteenth century, a dramatic change took place in the way Americans die. The deathbed, formerly governed predominantly by religious tradition, gradually was being shaped by medical ethics and state law. By the end of the nineteenth century, not only had the physician replaced the priest as master of ceremonies at the deathbed, but the state, in the form of positive law, had begun to express an interest in regulating the treatment of the dying patient. This interest first emerged in the context of the late nineteenth-century public debate over the legitimacy of medical euthanasia, an issue passionately disputed to this day in America and other Western societies. The history of the deathbed in nineteenth-century America suggests that the intervention of the state in the regulation of dying is a relatively new phenomenon. This paper examines this history, thereby enabling us to explore a world in which the legal regulation of dying was still unthinkable and inviting us to contemplate the historical significance of this development. The paper traces the changes that occurred during the nineteenth century in deathbed ethics, concluding with proposals for regulating dying legally through euthanasia. It focuses on the most significant moments in the history of the nineteenth-century deathbed, outlining a three-stage transformation in deathbed ethics--from the realm of religion, to the jurisdiction of medical ethics, to positive law regulation--a movement that reflects a change not only in specific rules of deathbed conduct, but also a more decisive alteration of the entire normative system governing the deathbed and the entire experience of dying. The insight to the modus operandi of regulatory law that emerges in the paper can lead to a deeper understanding of the conditions of its possibility. Regulation is only possible if the phenomenon to be regulated undergoes a transformation through which it severs its connections with anything that cannot be regulated. Thus, the paper shows how a radical transformation in the way people die was necessary for regulation by state law to emerge.

Gonzo marketing: winning through worst practices

On heels of Cluetrain Manifesto, Christopher Locke delivers an astonishing and outrageous array of ideas that will tear down barriers between companies and their customers. }Ladies and gentlemen, please return your tray tables to fully upright and locked position, suspend your disbelief and put on your tinfoil pyramid hats. We are now entering [cue lights, cue music] Brand Dimension!Gonzo Marketing is a knuckle-whitening ride to place where social criticism, biting satire, and serious commerce meetand where outdated ideals of mass marketing and broadcast media are being left in dust. As master of ceremonies at wake for traditional one-size-fits-all marketing, Locke has assembled a unique guest list, from Geoffrey Chaucer to Hunter S. Thompson, to guide us through revolution that is rocking business today, as people connect on Web to form powerful micromarkets. These networked communities, based on candor, trust, passion, and a general disdain for anything that smacks of corporate smugness, reflect much deeper trends in our culture, which Locke illuminates with his characteristic wit.Just as gonzo journalism arose in response to objective news standards that claimed to foster fairness but in practice discouraged writers from speaking their minds in their own voices, so too does gonzo marketing call for a similar response to assumptions about consumer behavior that no longer relate to how people actually live their lives. Gonzo Marketing is not yet-another nostrum for hoodwinking unwary. It's about market advocacy. It describes how the artist formerly known as advertising must do a 180. It's about transforming marketing message from we want your money to we share your interests. It's about tapping into, listening to, and even forming alliances with emerging on-line markets, who probably know more about your company than you do. It's a hip-hop cover of boring old best practices played backwards. The paradox is that companies that support and promote these communities can have everything they've always wanted: greater market share, customer loyalty, brand equity. Irreverent, penetrating, profoundly simple, and on-the-money, Gonzo Marketing is raucous wake-up that no one interested in any aspect of twenty-first century business-from trading floor right up to boardroom-can afford to ignore. }

The Noisy Mix of Hip Hop Pedagogies

The Noisy Mix of Hip Hop Pedagogies

Social Responsibility

The 2nd Annual AMSS-UK Conference, “Social Responsibility:Challenges for the Future,” took place October 21-22 at the University ofWestminster, London. Scholars from the United Kingdom, Ireland,Malaysia, the United States, Western Europe, and Turkey presented fortytwopapers. Over one hundred participants attended the two-day event. TheConference featured scholars such Malik Badri, Kamal Hassan, MuradHofmann, Abdelwahab El-Affendi, in addition to emerging intellectualssuch as Mashood A. Baderin and Fauzi Ahmad. The vital participation ofgraduate students and junior faculty at the AMSS-UK and the AMSS-USconference in Washington, DC, the prior weekend indicates the growingpresence of Muslims in western academia.Asad Ahmad was master of ceremonies and Yusuf El-Khoie from theKhoie Foundation gave the opening remarks. The keynote address inauguratedthe conference and was followed by a plenary session. Paper sessionscomprised the rest of the event with a “book Iaunch” and final plenary sessionconcluding the program Sunday afternoon.Paper sessions were organized around various subthemes directly relatedto social responsibility and the future. Presenters reflected upon social welfare,the state, social policy and community development, law, health andsocial care, grassroots action, globalization and the media, education, andmethodologies and gender. The direct link between the Conference themeand paper sessions encouraged a lucid and fertile ground for intense discussion,paving the way for an emerging discourse on social responsibilityin Islam.The keynote address was delivered by Kamal Hassan, rector,International Islamic University, Malaysia, and established the importanceof scholars and academics in promoting social responsibility. He reflectedupon the role of universities in promoting social responsibility under globalization.At present, universities are reacting to globalization by adoptinga “corporatization of curriculum” and a “market driving” approach to ...

The Scholar-Scribe Amenwahsu and his Family

Owner of Theban Tomb-chapel 111, Amenwahsu fulfilled three functions during his main career in Thebes. (1) He became a learned scribe and copyist in the House of Life [scriptorium for religious texts] of the Karnak Temple of Amun; (2) as a wa ' b-priest of Sekhmet, he was probably responsible for the purity of meats included in the sacred offerings; (3) he also exercised priestly duties (i) in the cult of Re at Karnak (the roof-chapel), and (ii) as master of ceremonies (festival-leader) for some Theban festivals. By two (probably successive) wives, he had several children and grand-children. A son and grandson followed him in his scribal office, and the latter also in the cult of Re. Amenwahsu's second wife belonged to a Memphite family, whose men bore very unusual titles; a related, equally rare title of Amenwahsu may indicate that Amenwahsu served for a time in Memphis when he married Iuy (III). We have four generations of both families. Amenwahsu seemingly wrote personally one text in his tomb.

Die Sessionsordnung und die Verfassungsstruktur in den frühneuzeitlichen deutschen Reichstagen: Die Stellung des Reichserbmarschalls

SUMMARY In this essay Akira Shibutani makes a study of how the order of precedence was legislated or institutionalized in the early-modern German imperial diet. For this purpose he intends to establish the position of the Reichserbmarschall (the master of ceremonies), who supervised the order of precedence. The count of Pappenheim, who held the office of the Reichserbmarschall, led all the ceremonies of the imperial diet; nonetheless, he had neither seat nor vote in the imperial diet. However, he put the question according to the the order of precedence in the princely section to compensate for it. When we consider the order of precedence as the political procedure in the imperial diet, it becomes clear in the princely section, where there were about hundred seats, how the order of precedence was used. As the Reichserbmarschall had neither seat nor vote in the imperial diet, unlike the general estates of the Holy Roman Empire, he could, remain neutral among the estates. Because of his neutrality the Reichserbmarschall could advise the estates to observe the order of precedence, which both fixed the ranks of estates and made the unanimity of estates the principle of the diet. The office of the Reichserbmarschall legislated or institutionalized the order of precedence, so to speak, as the parliamentary law of the imperial diet.

"Change the Joke[r] and Slip the Yoke": Boal's "Joker" System in Ntozake Shange's for colored girls ... and spell #7

This paper examines the reinvention of Augusto Baal's “‘Joker' system," in which a central character acts as a master of ceremonies by inviting the audience to join in the action, in Ntozake Shange's for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf and spell #7. In these two plays and others, Shange creates unique dramatic forms that convey her activism and creative vision — a vision which receives much of its vigor from her reclamation of African-American and other indigenous ritual traditions. She brings to these traditions a New World sense of hybridity as she situates herself within the world that Africans and Native peoples in the Americas made. But for Shange, the hybridity, as reflected in her work, is not simply a careful sampling of the work of other artists of color in the Americas. When Shange "change[s] the joke[r] and slip[s] the yoke," to borrow Ralph Ellison's phrase, she speaks to her recognition of difference in the work of other artists of color, even as she posits a desire for community among them in the Americas. Shange's reinvention of Argentinian theorist Augusto Boal's "Joker" system, moreover, underscores the intertextuality inherent in any work by people of color.

Prayer for a Sleeping Child: Iconography of the Funeral Ritual of Little Angels in Mexico

The ritual of little angels, known by this name in almost all Hispanic America, refers to the rite of the transit to life beyond this world of children baptized while still alive. According to the Catholic dogma, children die without mortal sin, and go directly to Heaven where they become angels, without having to pass through Purgatory. Consequently, the death of a little angel, in spite of the pain it inflicts on parents, is a happy event. This ancient ritual arrived in this side of the Atlantic as part of the Spanish culture, and rooted perfectly in Mexico through the Prehispanic celebration that the narrator and evangelizer Friar Diego Duran defined as the 'Miccaihuiltontli,' which is a diminutive noun, and means the festivity of dead children, and I understood that it is a celebration for deceased innocent children. As in the case of other cultural elements, when the indigenous people came to realize that the only way to continue celebrating their ritual was assimilating it to that which came from Spain, they readily did so. Similarly, the tenth month of the year, devoted by the mexicas to the adult dead, fused with November 2, Deads' Day of the Catholic tradition, while the Miccaihuiltontli, previously held during the ninth month of the year, was celebrated under a new fashion each November 1 st. Thus, funeral rituals have a prominent place in Mexican popular culture, but they also reflect an undeniable demographic reality. Death was a frequent event, especially among children, and it continued displaying extremely high levels well into the twentieth century. During the government of Porfirio Diaz, life expectation was around 30 years of age, and infant mortality reached 30%. When the provision of medical and educational services was extended to small locations, mortality declined to 22% in 1920, and represented 13% in 1940. In this paper we will indicate the possible origins of this popular Mexican ritual, and inquire about the specific changes it has undergone, based on iconographic representations and, particularly, the incorporation of photography, which is still practicedthough to a lesser extent-to this day. Thus, we will delve into the particular relationship that is established within the popular recreation of the little angels' ritual, between tradition-symbolic forms of the rite-and modernity, characterized by an almost immediate incorporation of the image, and other elements by the photographer who acts as a new master of ceremonies. The Ritual Background and parallelism Foster defines children's funeral rituals as a popular form of Spanish catholicism. Well into the late nineteenth century, when a child died in Spain-along the Mediterranean coastline from Castellon to Murcia, in Extremadura and the Canary Islands, although it had existed since the turn of the century in most of the southern and central regions of the peninsula-the dance of little angels was performed. Friends and relatives of the dead child sang and danced all through the night to the sound of guitars and castanets. While transformed, dance, music and games are also included in the Mexican ritual. This author points out, among other similarities between both versions of the ritual, that of dressing the child in white (a symbol of pureness), and placing a palm leaf on the coffin (to denote virginity). He also transcribes the description of a child's funeral that the French traveler Charles Davillier witnessed in Valencia around 1870. In his account, Davillier told that the little deceased girl-5 or 6 years old-was laid on a table, and a taper was lit on each corner; she was dressed as for a party and wore a crown of orange blossoms around her head. Details about the garment are important since they are the most prominent of the Mexican ritual. However, while the transference-like that of all other European cultural assets and elements-arrived in America from Spain-which is evident in the dissemination of the ritual throughout the whole Ibero American continent and its presence in communities of both indigenous and African origin-there are portraits of death children of the Renaissance and the Baroque period in Italy, England, Holland, France and colonial North America, that could be suggesting the presence of a special ritual. …

In The Sign of the Feminine: Reading Diana

In The Sign of the Feminine: Reading Diana Rosi Braidotti (bio) Political mythology in the making: Diana and Tony Even the more notoriously skeptical journalists in the United Kingdom had to give in to the evidence: the public’s reaction to the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, was as momentous a watershed as the British are capable of, considering they historic aversion to actual revolutions. Alternatively labelled—depending on one’s politics—as “a phenomenon of mass hysteria,” or as “the floral revolution”—analogous to the Eastern Europeans’ “velvet revolution”—the events round Diana’s death have already entered the realm of political mythology. As Suzanna Moore put it in The Daily Mail on September 2 “the effect that this uneducated woman has had on our national psyche is only just beginning to be gauged.” What is most extraordinary about the com/passionate reaction of the British public is the fact that it consisted to an overwhelming majority of young women, gays and people of color. The excluded or marginal social subjects, those whom Thatcherism had forgotten or swept aside, bounced back onto the political arena with a vengeance. It was the return of the repressed, not with a bang but a whimper. It was also an uncannily suitable complement to the landslide that had brought “New Labor” to power a few months before. Elaine Showalter greeted it as “a moment of pure republican spirit,” in The Guardian of September 6, all the more noteworthy in a country where obsequious respect for the monarchy is the norm. It was also, however, a gesture of civil disobedience: the public outpour of grief is also a sort of ‘emotional Gandhism’, which expresses the need for in-depth and structural reforms not only of the British political system but also of the Constitution. And yet, paradoxically, the semi-mystical aura and the deep passion surrounding Diana owe everything to the mystique of Royalty. Many commentators noted the potency of the myth of the good unhappy princess, which Diana incarnated to the point of apotheosis. More on this later. Diana is both the symptom and the emblem of this unique set of historical circumstances, just as Tony Blair is its official spokesman, or rather: both the statesman and the master of ceremony in the spectacle of the decline and fall of the British monarchy. Political analysts immediately stressed the link between Diana and the young Prime Minister: a bond made of common generational concerns, but also of similar sensibility and the desire for and commitment to change. Diana and Blair represent the “real” country, that particular vision of England that emerged from the 60’s fully aware that the personal is indeed the political and that multiculturalism is the everyday reality for millions of people. This is the country that the House of Windsor is so clearly out of touch with, that one wonders indeed whether the distance between them can ever be bridged. In some ways, Diana’s death has been the defining moment of Blair’s Premiership. An unsurpassed strategist and a man of morals, Blair tuned into the public emotion with amazing ease and authenticity (although one suspects that Peter Mandelsson was never too far away). In those dramatic days when millions of people all over the globalized world hanged in front of the television, sharing in the great cathodic Mass, Tony Blair emerged as the chief choreographer of the social imaginary. Eminently presidential—also in his public relationship to his remarkable wife Cherie—Tony Blair’s performance during those critical days was historic, in that it set the tone and it laid the foundations for much more than the dignified burial of Diana. The Constitutional reform was ever around the corner, concretized in the referenda in Scotland and Wales, both of which his “New Labor” party ended up winning. The authoritative paper The Guardian, in a comment about the “floral revolution” on September 10th, stresses the “feminine” aspect of New Labor politics. This can be seen on the one hand in the empirical presence of women in the present government as well as in the commitment of New Labor to the empowerment of women. More important, however, is the...

Le sénéchal Keu ou la fonction cosmique du rire

The seneschal Keu or the cosmic function of laughter. The role of the over-confident seneschal Keu in Chretien de Troyes’ romances is compared to that of Bricriu, the evil-tongued and master of ceremonies ; of Conan, the impulsive warrior ; and of the ill-natured Norse god Loki, provider and trickster. The conflit and laughter they create are the expression of their ambiguous character and the very signs of their functions as mediators of sovereignty (either royal or heroic) and cosmic order (the birth of a new time or a new era), initiators of a quest or of a tale. Keu’s function does not differ from that of the Welsh Cei who, through his action or inaction in Culwch and Olwen, contributes to the honour and glory of Arthur.

The Importance of Beau Nash

Richard "Beau" Nash, Grey wash drawing mounted in Bull's Album of Drawings , p. 89 Artist unknown, date c. 1740. Courtesy of the Print Collection, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University The Importance of Beau Nash PETER M. BRIGGS "No man is truly himself, but in the idea which others entertain of him."-William Hazlitt1 XTe certainly was important, though many of his contemporaries found it difficult to explain to themselves and others exactly why, and more than a few found him slight, presumptuous, or scandalous to the point of being contemptible. But most observers could at least agree that Richard Nash (1674-1761), known to thousands of his countrymen as "Beau," was —well, "remarkable." Born the son of a small-time glass manufacturer , partially trained first in the military, then in the law, Nash rose by virtue of his quick wits, social ease, personal audacity, and a hunger for notoriety to become Master of Ceremonies, rule-maker, and arbiter elegantiae at Bath, then England's most fashionable watering spot. He subsequently sustained himself as the figurative "king" of Bath for more than four decades, from 1705 to around 1750: he was the official greeter for the endless stream of new and sometimes distinguished visitors to the city; he presided energetically and colorfully over the gaming-tables and the assembly-rooms; he introduced people to one another on the promenades and promoted polite conversation while guests sipped the muchtouted waters in the often crowded pump-room. Nash was an unapologetic civic booster, a tireless fundraiser for various charities, and a well-known eccentric. Interest in this noteworthy man did not end even 209 210 / BRIGGS with his death in 1761, as he subsequently lived on in bon-mots circulated by friends, in the pages of various novels and jestbooks, and in an excellent biography written by Oliver Goldsmith and published in 1762. The purposes of this essay are several: certainly, to recommend Goldsmith 's biography to a broader audience than it currently enjoys; further, to explore some of the more theatrical aspects of Nash's career as a public character; and beyond that, to use the celebrity of Nash as a window opening out upon some of the social, cultural, and imaginative contexts in which he assumed importance then and some in which he continues to claim notice. In his heyday, Beau Nash was a vain, selfassertive , and well-publicized man, someone not likely to underestimate his own importance, and yet he cut a figure more significant than he knew. Without quite meaning to do so, Nash fashioned himself into a social phenomenon, an aesthetic object, and a focus of cultural energies, the implications of which radiated well beyond the limits of Bath and well beyond his own times. 1 From the beginning Nash had strong theatrical inclinations. As a young man he first drew public notice staging entertainments for King William III at the Inns of Court, and he later sought to preside over the fashionable amusements of Bath more or less as a stage director would, asserting his own dramatic presence, of course, but also minding the entrances and exits of distinguished visitors, along with all the small details of costuming, setting, timing, the daily social pageantry of assembly-room and concert-hall. And even seventy years after his death there was still sufficient theatrical life in the figure of Nash to attract the attention of a popular dramatist. Douglas Jerrold's Comedy of Beau Nash, King of Bath, which opened to generally good reviews at the Haymarket Theatre on 16 July 1834, portrayed its title character as embodying the very stuff of which legends are made, a social upstart who lived up to all of his audacious pretensions and aspirations. In Jerrold's presentation the sometime soldier, lawyer, and gamester had eventually triumphed as a self-created celebrity and a man of considerable, though ironically qualified, consequence: 'Tis certain, our monarch started in life in a red coat; changed for a templar's suit of black; played and elbowed his way up the back stairs of fashion; came to our city [Bath] — championed the virtue of the wells against the malice of a physician; drove the doctor from...

Child psychiatry and the law

It is a great privilege to be asked to give this memorial lecture. There must be few in this audience who do not know the name of Jack Kahn, if only from his classic writings on school refusal. To many of us, however, he was a dear friend as well as a rather special colleague. I seem always to have known Jack, although in fact I probably first met him in the middle ‘60s at just such a residential conference as we are having now, on that occasion in Harrogate. This was in the days of the RMPA. Jack was chairman of the Child Psychiatry Section and the guiding spirit behind the organisation of that particular conference. I recall particularly the concluding session on the Saturday morning when to our surprise (although we would be less surprised to-day) the presentation was not by one of our members or distinguished guests but by a local dramatic society who presented us with one scene from a play which Jack, as master of ceremonies with his customary skill and flair, used as the catalyst for an exciting large group discussion.

Ceremonies of Charles I: The Note Books of John Finet, Master of Ceremonies, 1628–1641

Ceremonies of Charles I: The Note Books of John Finet, Master of Ceremonies, 1628–1641

The Double Plot of T'ao-Hua Shan

K'UNG SHANG-JEN CL() ff (1648-1718) revitalized an effective technique of classical poetics in his renowned vernacular play, T'ao-hua shan Wit(L . The interaction of two major motifs in a single composition, ever since Ch'u Yuan's iS J# Li sao MR, creates a process that allows each to illuminate the other in an incremental manner. Politics and love are entwined, imagistically, throughout the plot of Ch'u Yuan's poignant song. The thematic intent of one motif contributes to identifying what the other purports to mean. No student of classical poetry would understand Li sao correctly without constantly checking the two motifs in reciprocity or, better, reading the one against the other as backdrop, and vice versa. In the prelude to his play, K'ung Shang-jen has the old Master of Ceremonies, who seems to impersonate the dramatist himself, define the method of T'ao-hua shan as follows: