"Don't fence me in": connecting irony to power in the scholarship of Charles E. Rosenberg

Irony and contingency are central to Charles E. Rosenberg's scholarship and theoretical stance. Irony is a a way to speak through history both to power and to those who would contest power. The question becomes, What kind of politics is it? The limitations of Rosenberg's ironic trope and its world weariness that can provide critique but no way to change is analyzed.     

Alfred Rosenberg. Nazi theoriest of the holocaust

The centuries-long evolution of the iconography of Niccolò Machiavelli is itself a chapter in the history of Machiavelli’s reputation. As intuited by one of his foremost biographers, Oreste Tommasini, portraits of the Florentine are probably best considered as visual expressions of philosophical and literary anti-Machiavellism, which exercised, in their own way, a negative influence on the reception and interpretations of his writings. The Machiavelli who we have seen represented over the course of history in paintings, prints, and engravings may be nothing more, therefore, than a Machiavellian persona: the visual translation of a conventional and stereotypical interpretation, which considers the author of The Prince to be the champion of a politics based on duplicity, cunning, deceit, and guile. This essay examines the origins and dissemination over the centuries of ‘La Testina’, one of the most celebrated and widely publicized portraits of Machiavelli. The conclusion, after comparing all of the extant variants of this portrait, is that it is an unfaithful and invented graphic representation of Machiavelli, whose fortunes in publishing and in the collective imagination have kept pace with the spread of a demonizing interpretation of Machiavelli, the master of evil, well-rooted even today in mass popular culture.     

Charles Eliot Norton,E.L. Godkin,and the Liberal Republicans of 1872

The Liberal Republican Party of 1872 combined ‘genteel’ intellectuals such as Charles Eliot Norton and E.L. Godkin with hardened politicos like Horace Greeley. It serves therefore as a window on the political thought of Norton and Godkin at a moment when their ideas were tested by exposure to the real world of practical politics. The two men's revulsion at the nomination of Greeley and the debasing of the reform cause exposed their underlying conservatism during this time.     

Professor Andrew Charles O'Dell,M.Sc., F.R.S.E.

Regional

The Economic Geography of France. By J. N. Tuppen. 22 × 14, 383pp. 66 tables, 40 figures, bibliography, index. Croom Helm, Beckenham, 1983. £16.95.

Urban France. Ian Scargill, 22 × 14, 186pp. Croom Helm, Beckenham, 1983. £14.95.

Transport Geography

Transport Geography. By H. P. White &; M. L. Senior. 28 × 15.5, 224pp., figures, tables, bibliography, index. Longman, Harlow, 1983. £6.95.

Transport for Recreation. Ed. D. A. Halsall. 22 × 14, 231pp. Inst. Brit. Geogrs., 1983.

Mobile Services in Rural Areas. By M. J. Moseley and J. Packman. 225pp. University of East Anglia, 1983. £8.

Educational

The Fabric of Geography. By W. Farleigh Rice. 24 × 18.5, 288pp. plus worksheets. Longman Harlow, 1983, £4.95.     

Island Networks and Missionary Methods: Locating Charles E. Fox and Frederick G. Bowie in the History of Pacific Archaeology

ABSTRACT

‘Missionary’ and ‘archaeology’ may appear incongruous partners within contemporary archaeological practice, but archival, museum and oral sources reveal historical connections. This paper explores two missionaries, active in the western Pacific from 1896 to 1973. Reverends Charles Elliot Fox (Melanesian Mission, Solomon Islands) and Frederick Gatherer Bowie (Free Church of Scotland Mission, Vanuatu) both conducted studies related to the prehistory and migration of Pacific people. Both produced material assemblages, as well as textual and visual documents, and formed ideas influenced by their own networks and self identities. The paper examines their data collection methods and relationships with others, considering particularly how their relationships with Pacific Islanders and with psychologist and ethnologist W.H.R. Rivers influenced the missionary research process. By understanding these aspects of their work, Fox and Bowie can be placed within a broader genealogy of Anglophone missionary archaeology dating back to the late 18th century.