C. C. Barfoot

Richard Todd

The Low Countries as a Cultural Crossroads in the Renaissance and the Eighteenth Century

The Great Emporium

Considers the use and abuse of period terms in literary history and criticism, investigating whether the terms "Romanticism" and "Victorian" have any useful literary historical and literary critical value. Chapters consider Keats or Carlyle independently or together, or focus on contemporaries of one of them or of both, and explore the effect of their literary and ideological relationships. Some topics are the emergence of class identity within a poetry of transition, Romantic and Victorian perspectives on the fiction of James Hogg, and Carlyle's "Burns." Barfoot teaches English at Leiden University. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR

The Fusions and Confusions of Literary Periods

Victorian Keats and Romantic Carlyle

Paul Gerardus Hoftijzer

The Myth and Making of William and Mary

Fabrics and Fabrications

Cobi Bordewijk

Forms, Functions, Correspondences

Theatre Intercontinental

Most of the essays in this volume developed from a series of lectures on the forms and functions of theatre in different cultures, and correspondences between them, organized by the Leiden University Department of Theatre and Film Studies. Some contributions to this volume discuss origins, forms and functions of theatre in the Far and in the Middle East, as well as how in some cases the contemporary theatre in these cultures have managed to incorporate Western theatrical elements into their local traditions. Other articles consider how such twentieth-century Western dramatists as Yeats, Brecht and Beckett have been inspired by Asian theatre forms; how Western theatre-goers have misunderstood the true nature of Russian drama; how the inspiration of the best known of those Russian playwrights has manifested itself in the work of an American film-maker; and how African dance has helped to reshape North Atlantic modern and post-modern choreography. Thus this collection is arranged to take the reader on a journey of discovery, or possibly recovery, from China to Japan, from India to Africa, from Iran to Turkey, to Russia and finally from Moscow to Manhattan. Theatre Intercontinental will be of value to scholars, teachers and students with an interest in how theatre manifests itself in various cultures, how it originated, what needs it fulfils and how it is affected by cross-cultural influences. It provides a few tentative conclusions, some thought provoking questions and, we hope, the stimulus to compare the issues raised here with theatrical cultures not covered by this book.

Dominic Baker-Smith

Essays on Utopia and Dystopia

Between Dream and Nature

Although the title of this volume is Aldous Huxley between East and West, the order of the articles found within goes from West to East, which naturally imitates Huxley's own progress, especially since he went to the trouble of stepping out as far West as possible before starting for the East. Indeed one could argue that he was already on his way there before he left for California, a continuous journey, perhaps, since from the Californian shores of the Pacific the East is the further West. After the Introduction which places Huxley between East and West, the book starts with a consideration of Huxley's family connections, then goes onto his earliest fictions, his interest in science and the issue of modernity, and his experiments with drama and their inherent philosophical concerns. The poetry with which he began his writing career is then viewed as a link between his earlier Western self and his later Oriental interests, suggesting that the latter was always inherent in the former. A number of considerations of the Utopian themes in Huxley's middle and later fiction leads the volume to a climax with four articles surveying the foibles and the wisdom of Huxley's encounter with Eastern religious thought and philosophy, his misunderstandings, as well as ours, of what actually he had learned and wished to pass on to the Western world.

Aldous Huxley Between East and West

Theo d'. Haen

Writers' Reaction to Real and Imagined Revolutions 1789-1989

Tropes of Revolution

Theo d' Haen

Both John Keats and Thomas Carlyle were born in 1795, but one rarely thinks of them together. When one does, curious speculations result. It is difficult to think of Carlyle as a young Romantic or of Keats as a Victorian Sage, but had Carlyle died prematurely and had Keats lived to a ripe old age, we might now be considering a Romantic Carlyle and a Victorian Keats. Such a juxtaposition leads one to consider the use and abuse, the fusions and confusions, of period terms in literary history and in criticism. Does Carlyle represent Romanticism as typically as Keats? Does Keats's work give us any cause to believe that he might have developed into a Victorian poet? Do the terms Romanticism and Victorian have any useful literary historical and literary critical value? What are the marks of the transition from one to the other? Or is the existence of such a transition an illusion? In this volume, some essays consider aspects of Keats or of Carlyle independently, or together, or focus on contemporaries of one or other or of both and explore the effect of their literary and ideological relationships, and the often indefinable sense that we all have of different styles, manners and periods, as well as the awareness that we might all be equally deceived about such distinctive boundaries and definitions.

In Black and Gold indicates that opposed styles of poetry reveal subterranean correspondences that occasionally meet and run together. Austerity or tomfoolery are two of the many valid responses to the human condition that create the contiguous traditions that cannot help touching and reacting to each other. The poetry discussed in this book deals with the relation of individuals to strange or to familiar landscapes, and what this means to their own sense of displacement or rootedness; with the use of history as an escape from or as a challenge to an apparently failing present; and with the role of nationalism either as a refuge for angry frustration, or as a weapon against the affronting world, or as an ambivalent loyalty that needs to be scoured, or as all three. Here we find poetry as a means of discovering true or false allegiances and valid or invalid public and private identities; poetry as a medium for exploring the uses of the demotic in confronting the breakdowns and injustices of modern democracy; poetry as play in the midst of private and public woe; poetry as a spiritual quest, as a spiritual scourging, as a wrestling with spiritual absences; and poetry as an intermittent and sporadic commemoration of the triumphs and delights of epiphanic encounters with the physical world.

Contiguous Traditions in Post-war British and Irish Poetry

In Black and Gold

International Association for the Study of Anglo-Irish Literature. International Congress

International Association for the Study of Anglo-Irish Literature. Conference

By showing that the meaning of the word politics can be interpreted in various ways, the scope of the articles inTumult of Images: Essays on W.B. Yeats and Politics is extensive. Rather than explicitly analysing W.B. Yeats's political views and opinions about social order, several of the authors demonstrate how these ideas have determined the textual strategy behind Yeats's works. Thus we find, for instance, how Yeats's politics of myth subsume the myth of politics, or how his playThe Player Queen is an expression of sexual and textual politics. Other essays revaluate Yeats's role in Ireland's Literary Renaissance or argue that his recruitment of Homer throughout his work was politically motivated. The volume also offers an ero-political reading of Yeats's ballads next to an analysis of the strategy behind that apocalyptic idea of gyring history.Tumult of Images also deals with the politics of reception of Yeats's works by showing how the Irish poet has influenced South African poetry of the period of Apartheid, or by presenting the various ways in which the Japanese and the Dutch have become acquainted with the work of Yeats. The title of this volume thus reflects not only the many-sidedness of the discussions offered here but also their common contribution to an analysis of a fascinating aspect of Yeats's life and work.

Essays on W.B. Yeats and Politics

Tumult of Images

“And Never Know the Joy” : Sex and the Erotic in English Poetry promises the reader much to enjoy and to reflect on: riddles and sex games; the grammar of relationships; the cunning psychology of bodily fantasies; sexuality as the ambiguous performance of words; the allure of music and its instruments; the erotics of death and remembrance, are just a few of the initial themes that emerge from the twenty-five articles to be found in this volume, with many an invitation “to seize the day”. Reproduction, pregnancy, and fear; discredited and degraded libertines; the ventriloquism of sexual objects; the ease with which men are reduced to impotence by the carnality of women; orgasm and melancholy; erotic mysticism and religious sexuality; the potency and dangers of fruit and flowers; the delights of the recumbent male body and of dancing girls; the fertile ritual use of poetic texts; striptease and revolution; silent women reclaimed as active vessels, are amongst the many engaging topics that emerge out of the ongoing and entertaining scholarly discussion of sex and eroticism in English poetry.

Sex and the Erotic in English Poetry

And Never Know the Joy

C. C. Barfoot

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