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A WINTER OF HORROR

Marion Elizabeth Rodgers

in Mencken: The American Iconoclast

Sara Haardt Mencken's fragile health continued to fail and she died on May 31, 1935. “When I married Sara,” Mencken mourned, “the doctors said she could live more than three years. Actually, she ... More

Sara Haardt Mencken's fragile health continued to fail and she died on May 31, 1935. “When I married Sara,” Mencken mourned, “the doctors said she could live more than three years. Actually, she lived five, so that I had two more years of happiness than I had any right to expect.” He edited a collection of her short stories (Southern Album) and decided to leave the apartment they shared on Cathedral Street and move back to his family home.Less

The Music of 1878

Roland John Wiley

in Tchaikovsky

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's resumption of composing after his marriage spans February 11–23, 1878. He informed Pyotr Ivanovich Jurgenson that he wanted to compose some children's pieces, perhaps a ... More

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's resumption of composing after his marriage spans February 11–23, 1878. He informed Pyotr Ivanovich Jurgenson that he wanted to compose some children's pieces, perhaps a liturgy. In March, after beginning a piano sonata, he was “succumbing to the lack of desire to work,” but was in fact about to conceive the Violin Concerto, inspired in part by Josef Kotek. Tchaikovsky departed Clarens and arrived at Kamenka, where family matters and illness delayed any further composition until April 23. On this date, he projected into May the Children's Album, songs, violin pieces, some sacred music, and some first thoughts about an opera. In general, the assessment of this music is inextricable from his convalescence.Less

The Music of 1882–1884

Roland John Wiley

in Tchaikovsky

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's works of 1882–1884 echo those of 1878–1881: op. 51, like op. 40, is a set of notated improvisations; the All-Night Vigil came in the wake of Nikolay Rubinstein's death, ... More

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's works of 1882–1884 echo those of 1878–1881: op. 51, like op. 40, is a set of notated improvisations; the All-Night Vigil came in the wake of Nikolay Rubinstein's death, just as the Liturgy came after the events of 1877; the Second Suite, op. 53, is an experimental orchestral work like the 1st; the Children's Songs of op. 54 echo the Children's Album, op. 39, as the Third Suite, op. 55 with its elegy, waltz, and variations, echoes the Serenade for Strings; the Concert Fantasia for Piano and Orchestra, op. 56, returns to the dashing pianism of the Piano Sonata. Mazepa, a historical opera, recalls The Maid of Orleans in that respect. Two short pieces are adjuncts to Tchaikovsky's complex compositions of 1884.Less

Christmas Songs – Sentiments and Subjectivities

Sheila Whiteley

in Christmas, Ideology and Popular Culture

This chapter explains how Elvis Presley's cover of the Rev. Phillips Brooks' carol ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’ in his 1957 Christmas Album took the centrality of the Christian message into a secular ... More

This chapter explains how Elvis Presley's cover of the Rev. Phillips Brooks' carol ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’ in his 1957 Christmas Album took the centrality of the Christian message into a secular context by taking the carol into the popular domain. The album also included ‘White Christmas’ and ‘Santa Bring My Baby Back To Me’. It is evident that songs organised around a romantic discourse can teeter dangerously close to sentimentality which nevertheless comes across as ‘this is what it's all about’. Moving between sentimentality and cynicism, the cultural forms associated with Christmas, not least Christmas songs, provide a particular insight into the problems associated with meaning; they can challenge or maintain existing conventions.Less

Cut and paste

Anna Dahlgren

in Travelling Images: Looking across the borderlands of art, media and visual culture

Chapter 1 considers the mechanisms of breaks and continuities in the history of photocollage with regard to gender, genre and locations of display. Collage is commonly celebrated as a ... More

Chapter 1 considers the mechanisms of breaks and continuities in the history of photocollage with regard to gender, genre and locations of display. Collage is commonly celebrated as a twentieth-century art form invented by Dada artists in the 1910s. Yet there was already a vibrant culture of making photocollages in Victorian Britain. From an art historical perspective this can be interpreted as an expression of typical modernist amnesia. The default stance of the early twentieth century’s avant-garde was to be radically, ground-breakingly new and different from any historical precursors. However, there is, when turning to the illustrated press, also a trajectory of continuity and withholding of traditions in the history of photocollage. This chapter has two parts. The first includes a critical investigation of the writings on the history of photocollage between the 1970s and 2010s, focusing on the arguments and rationales of forgetting and retrieving those nineteenth-century forerunners. It includes examples of amnesia and recognition and revaluation. The second is a close study of a number of images that appear in Victorian albums produced between 1870 and 1900 and their contemporary counterparts in the visual culture of illustrated journals and books.Less

Rewriting the Colonial Past: Spanish Women Intellectuals as Agents of Cross-Cultural Literacy in the Mexican Press

Aurélie Vialette

in Transatlantic Studies: Latin America, Iberia, and Africa

The article examines the creation of a journalistic network between Mexico and Spain by women writers in the second half of the nineteenth-century. I argue that journalistic aesthetics and feminine ... More

The article examines the creation of a journalistic network between Mexico and Spain by women writers in the second half of the nineteenth-century. I argue that journalistic aesthetics and feminine didacticism were shared and stimulated through editorial relationships on both sides of the Atlantic. This editorial dialogue created a presence for Spanish women writers in the Mexican public sphere and opened up a debate regarding the construction of historical discourse. The illustrated feminine journal became a platform for experimentation with cultural categories and questioned the uni-directionality of historical discourse. It raises a debate regarding the compartmentalization of national histories and created a space in which culture was made intelligible for both sides of the Atlantic –a space of cross-cultural literacy. The study of the press is a tool to understand intellectual transatlantic networks and the formation of a transatlantic Republic of Letters.Less

The limits of liberalism in the work of Hanif Kureishi

Ahmed Rehana

in Writing British Muslims: Religion, class and multiculturalism

As well as examining Hanif Kureishi’s explicit representations of Muslims in The Black Album (1995), the short story and screenplay versions of ‘My Son the Fanatic’ (1997) and selected essays, the ... More

As well as examining Hanif Kureishi’s explicit representations of Muslims in The Black Album (1995), the short story and screenplay versions of ‘My Son the Fanatic’ (1997) and selected essays, the chapter explores texts that touch upon Islam elliptically and, the book argues, at times uneasily (Intimacy (1998)My Ear at his Heart: Reading My Father (2004)Something To Tell You (2008) and a range of short stories). The chapter tracks the way in which this writer and cultural spokesperson, well known for his powerful opposition to the sanctioned racism of Thatcherism, has responded to the shift to a neoliberal multiculturalism, and explores the position of Muslims and a Muslim identity within the multiethnic cityscapes peopled by mixed-race subjects that Kureishi creates. It argues that Kureishi’s work has helped to shape British multiculturalism both by legitimising a new, culturally diverse Britishness and, crucially, by articulating limits to this legitimacy. His valorisation of a secularist liberal individualism against religious collectivism leads to the emergence of a series of reductive binaries, at odds with the deconstructive thrust of his work, and problematically delegitimises subaltern minority – in particular Muslim – formations.Less

A City in the Archives: Virginia Woolf and the Statues of London

Diane F. Gillespie

in Woolf and the City

This chapter analyzes Woolf's “ongoing examination and disruption of social hierarchies” as revealed in her observation of London statues. It focuses on two books from the personal library of Leonard ... More

This chapter analyzes Woolf's “ongoing examination and disruption of social hierarchies” as revealed in her observation of London statues. It focuses on two books from the personal library of Leonard and Virginia Woolf: London Revisited (1916) by E. V. Lucas and The People's Album of London Statues (1928), a collaborative effort between writer Osbert Sitwell artist Nina Hamnett. These books on London statues helped create cultural and biographical contexts for references in Virginia's writing. Against a background of reading about statues, observing them herself, and discussing aesthetic controversies with others, she devised sculptural metaphors for her characters, filtered statues through their rapidly shifting thoughts and feelings, and, in the process, explored leveling, hierarchy-disrupting complexities of the human condition.Less

Juana Manso (1819–75): Women in History

in South American Independence: Gender, Politics, Text

Argentina's constitutions of 1819, 1826, and 1853 were modelled after the constitutions of France, Spain, and the United States, all of which attempted to improve the individual's lot ‘sin ningún ... More

Argentina's constitutions of 1819, 1826, and 1853 were modelled after the constitutions of France, Spain, and the United States, all of which attempted to improve the individual's lot ‘sin ningún tipo de diferenciación por raza o color’ but did not account for gender inequalities. This was confirmed by Esteban Echeverría, who sent a letter to Pedro de Angelis explaining his concept of republic in which there is no reference to women. This chapter focuses on Juana Manso (1819–1875), the first feminist intellectual of the River Plate Provinces. Her first novel, Los misterios del Plata (1852), engages with Echeverría's political programme while her second, La familia del Comendador (1854), enters into dialogue with Juan Bautista Alberdi's Bases (1852). The chapter examines her liberal feminism, which tended to minimise the significance of sexual difference, and her Album de señoritas (1854), and also offers a reading of her Los misterios del Plata and La familia del Comendador.Less

Istanbul

Paul Stephenson

in The Serpent Column: A Cultural Biography

Considers the fate of the Serpent Column in Ottoman and modern Istanbul. Studies Mehmed the Conqueror as dragon-slayer, with a final glance at the combat myth, and as antiquarian. Surveys the ... More

Considers the fate of the Serpent Column in Ottoman and modern Istanbul. Studies Mehmed the Conqueror as dragon-slayer, with a final glance at the combat myth, and as antiquarian. Surveys the earliest extant sketches of the Serpent Column by western travelers, notably the artist of the Freshfield Album. Addresses also Ottoman miniatures depicting the Serpent Column, notably the Surname of Murad III. Considers the conflicting tales of how the Serpent Column lost a jaw and then its heads. Turns finally to the modern hippodrome with its new central, symmetrical landscaped garden, created according to the sketches of the French architect Joseph Antoine Bouvard.Less

Streisand’s Recordings

Ethan Mordden

in On Streisand: An Opinionated Guide

This chapter focuses on Barbra Streisand’s music recordings, beginning with The Barbra Streisand Album and The Second Barbra Streisand Album, both in 1963, followed by The Third Album a year later. ... More

This chapter focuses on Barbra Streisand’s music recordings, beginning with The Barbra Streisand Album and The Second Barbra Streisand Album, both in 1963, followed by The Third Album a year later. Streisand’s first recital disc showcased her versatility, theatrics, bravado, humor, and unpredictability, which were evident in her renditions of “Cry Me a River,” “My Honey’s Loving Arms,” “I’ll Tell the Man In the Street,” and “A Taste of Honey.” The chapter also offer a commentary on Streisand’s next two albums as well as other recitals such as People (1964), What About Today? (1969), Stoney End (1971), ButterFly (1974), Lazy Afternoon (1975), Classical Barbra (1976), Guilty (1980), The Broadway Album (1985), Higher Ground (1997), A Love Like Ours (1999), Christmas Memories (2001), Partners (2014), and Encore (2016).Less

Circle-Squarers: Tennyson’s and Browning’s Form-Things

Stefanie Markovits

in The Victorian Verse-Novel: Aspiring to Life

Chapter 3, “Circle-Squarers: Tennyson’s and Browning’s Form-Things,” looks at Tennyson’s Idylls of the King and Browning’s The Ring and the Book, two poems that worry about circling the square: ... More

Chapter 3, “Circle-Squarers: Tennyson’s and Browning’s Form-Things,” looks at Tennyson’s Idylls of the King and Browning’s The Ring and the Book, two poems that worry about circling the square: creating lyric unity out of rectilinear narrative. Both tell of marriage and adultery, combining fractured narrative form with violent plots. And despite a historical remoteness at odds with the verse-novel’s modernity, they show the pervasive influence of the genre. The chapter considers how Tennyson and Browning embed into their poems two types of gem, diamond and pearl, that can be termed form-things: objects through which to express and explore generic affiliation. Finally, it moves from circular forms back to square books, to Browning’s The Inn Album, a verse-novel that consciously modernizes The Ring and the Book even as it embraces its own marginal generic status in an effort to sidestep the intractable geometry of circled squares.Less