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Drawing from a range of critical perspectives, in particular postcolonial, this book examines the relationship between perceptions of Russia and of Eastern Europe and the making of a 'Western' identity. It explores the ways in which the perception of certain characteristics of Russia and Eastern Europe, whether real or attributed, was shaped by (and used for) the construction of a liberal narrative of the West, which eventually became dominant. The focus of this inquiry is French culture, from the beginning of the debate about Russia among the philosophes (c.1740) to the consolidation of a professional field of Slavic studies (c.1880). A wide range of writing - literature, travel accounts, h...
This volume of essays explores influences from Antiquity onwards that shaped the literary and cultural output of the French seventeenth century and the developments to which this period - the so-called 'classical' period - gave rise in later centuries. The thirteen essays in English and French cover three major areas: the continuation in French seventeenth-century literature and cultural events of themes found in previous centuries; internal changes within the body of writings by French seventeenth-century playwrights; the influence of seventeenth-century French writers on later centuries. The collection celebrates the life and scholarly achievements of the eminent dix-septiémiste Christopher J. Gossip, Emeritus Professor of French, University of New England, Australia.
A revelatory study of how composers and dramatists of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France criticized and trivialized independent women in their portrayals of them in works of theater and opera.
François Couperin's contribution to the literature of baroque keyboard music has long been recognized. François Couperin and 'The Perfection of Music' updates and expands upon David Tunley's valuable 1982 BBC Music Guide to the composer, and examines the whole of Couperin’s output including the organ masses, motets and chamber music, in addition to the well-known works for harpsichord. Taking as its focal point Couperin's concept of the perfection of music through the union of the French and Italian styles, this book takes a more analytical approach to Couperin's work. Early chapters outline the main contrasting features of the two schools in the seventeenth- and early eighteenth-centuries, and it becomes clear that Couperin's expressive power owed much to his fusion of the polarities of the French classical tradition with that of the Italian baroque. The book features a number of appendices, including the prefaces to Couperin's work both in the original French and in English translation, and a glossary of dances of the French baroque.
Max Jacob, central figure of early 20th-century Parisian bohemia along with Picasso and Apollinaire, was active at the emergence of Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism, Dada and Surrealism. But in spite of his close connections with modernism - epitomized by his seminal book of prose poems Le Cornet a des (1916) - Jacob remains a marginal figure. His Breton-Jewish otherness, conversion to Catholicism, and death under the Nazis in 1944 adds to the enigma and shifts the critical focus further still. But Jacobs poetic playfulness - his many-faceted irony, wordplay, narrative heterogeneity, tragi-comedy, self- reflexivity and polyphony - may begin to offer insights into his esprit createur, which, true to the (post)modernist vision, is not to be found in the usual ways. For the aim of Max Jacob, connoisseur of traditional storytelling as well as spearhead of the literary vanguard, is to jolt the unconscious, the energetic kernel of creativity.
Text & Presentation is an annual publication devoted to all aspects of theatre scholarship. This new volume represents a selection of the best research presented at the 34th international, interdisciplinary Comparative Drama Conference held in Los Angeles in 2010. Topics covered include metatheatrical experiments and adaptations of Greek tragedy, early Soviet orientalist plays, the working class on the 1920s Broadway stage, Tennessee Williams's grandfather as character model, psychotherapy on stage, and African American musicals, among other topics. Reviews of eight selected books are also included.
By focusing on Luise Gottsched's extraordinary volume and range of translations, Hilary Brown sheds an entirely new light on Gottsched and her oeuvre. Critics have paid increasing attention to the oeuvre of Luise Gottsched (1713-62), Germany's first prominent woman of letters, but have neglected her lifelong work of translation, which encompassed over fifty volumes and an extraordinary range, from drama and poetry to philosophy, history, archaeology, even theoretical physics. This first comprehensive overview of Gottsched's translations places them in the context of eighteenth-century intellectual, literary, and cultural history, showing that they were part of an ambitious, progressive progr...
The great eighteenth-century French thinker Denis Diderot (1713–84) once compared himself to a weathervane, by which he meant that his mind was in constant motion. In an extraordinarily diverse career he produced novels, plays, art criticism, works of philosophy and poetics, and also reflected on music and opera. Perhaps most famously, he ensured the publication of the Encyclopédie, which has often been credited with hastening the onset of the French Revolution. Known as one of the three greatest philosophes of the Enlightenment, Diderot rejected the Christian ideas in which he had been raised. Instead, he became an atheist and a determinist. His radical questioning of received ideas and established religion led to a brief imprisonment, and for that reason, no doubt, some of his subsequent works were written for posterity. This collection of essays celebrates the life and work of this extraordinary figure as we approach the tercentenary of his birth.
Published on the occasion of his retirement in honour of his outstanding contribution to French Enlightenment studies, this volume explores those areas of research in which David Williams has excelled and continues to excel: literary criticism, particularly Voltaire, the history of ideas, women and Enlightenment, colonial practices and revolutionary politics. It brings together a collection of essays from some of the most prestigious international names in the field and tackles subjects which expose in all their splendid diversity the enterprise - both innovation and undertaking - of the Siècle des Lumières.
Research in the field of keyboard studies, especially when intimately connected with issues of performance, is often concerned with the immediate working environments and practices of musicians of the past. An important pedagogical tool, the keyboard has served as the ’workbench’ of countless musicians over the centuries. In the process it has shaped the ways in which many historical musicians achieved their aspirations and went about meeting creative challenges. In recent decades interest has turned towards a contextualized understanding of creative processes in music, and keyboard studies appears well placed to contribute to the exploration of this wider concern. The nineteen essays co...