Fallout from the thunder: poetry and politics in Seamus Heaney's District and Circle

This article examines Heaney's preoccupation in District and Circle (2006) with international political events during this ‘new age of anxiety’, and how he initially approaches these circuitously through a return to originary, boyhood experiences. Such momentous acts as the attacks of 9/ll, the ‘War on Terror’ and the London bombings are filtered through, juxtaposed with and illuminated by episodes both from the ancient past and Heaney's family history. In attendance, as always, throughout the latest volume is the poet's diverse literary ancestry, a reminder of how his work exemplifies core claims made in ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ (1919), where Eliot argues that ‘what makes the writer most acutely conscious of his own place in time’ is ‘the historical sense’, ‘a feeling for the whole of literature’ from Homer onwards. Thus, alongside its detailed address to politics and such crucial literary matters as structure, form and metaphor, the essay repeatedly returns to the intertextual ‘presences’ which haunt and animate Heaney's continuing creative project.     

A psycho-historical source: the Memoirs of Abbot Guibert of Nogent

Medievalists turn to Guibert of Nogent's Memoirs (1116) for the account of the Laon uprising they contain. And yet this account is poor history. It is didactic and self-righteous in tone; one senses that the writer consistently sacrificed historical truth to the moral point he was trying to make. Scratch this twelfth- century ‘historian’ and you will find underneath a guilt-ridden cleric, haunted by vivid sexual reminiscences of his mother and by the terrible chastening reality of the Virgin Mary. A sensitive reading of the confessional sections of the Memoirs may yield up crucial unconscious impulses in a medieval man's psyche: his ‘masculine’ ambitions for glory, his need to prove his manhood, and yet also his ‘feminine’ desire for selfless submission to God, and his need to achieve a kind of passive holiness and innocence. These opposing impulses may account for the ‘demon’ that tortured Guibert of Nogent.After isolating certain psychological themes in the Memoirs it is possible to relate these themes to various nuances in the psychological ‘milieu’ of twelfth-century France. It is also possible to relate some of these themes to a ‘milieu’ not altogether different from that of twelfth-century France — twentieth-century southern Italy. For in southern Italy, we find that the psychological relationship between masculinity and femininity and (perhaps as a result of this relationship) the prominence of the Virgin Mary in the lives of the people corresponds closely to the situation in twelfth- century France. But this cross-cultural analysis is meant only to illuminate some of the possibilities of psychohistory. At the very least, a psychohistorical consideration of a text such as Guibert of Nogent's Memoirs should reveal some useful correlations between the single psychological current and the larger tides of cultural history.     

Visions of Statesmanship Across The Atlantic: Presidential Masculinity and the American Response to Benito Mussolini

This article explores how hegemonic masculinity forged discourses of modern statesmanship in the United States and Italy in the first three decades of the twentieth century. It unpacks the ‘presidential masculinity’ of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson and compares these gendered performances of political leadership in the United States to Benito Mussolini's Fascist rule in Italy during the 1920s. In doing so, this article contends that the manliness of these three modern leaders rested on a contrasting of pairs: if Roosevelt embodied the hegemonic ideal of the ‘frontiersman-as-president’, Wilson personified its ‘unmanly’, bourgeois-liberal countertype and thereby engendered the initially hospitable view of Mussolini's Fascist masculinity in the United States during the Jazz Age. The article covers the publications in The Atlantic Monthly to reveal how the American disillusion with Wilson's liberal internationalism transformed the Duce into a Fascist surrogate for Roosevelt. In a decade of political, economic and social upheaval, the transatlantic ‘public relations state’ in both the United States and Italy discursively positioned Mussolini as the personification of the masculine ideals of acumen, willpower and virility for the American public; a ‘Doctor-Dictator’ who, akin to Roosevelt, became a symbol of modern manliness that signified stability, progress and reform. In the process, the Duce's Fascist manhood shaped hegemonic ideals of statesmanship across the Atlantic while hinting at the paltry support for the liberal democracies of the West.     

The international political thought of Martin Wight

The different responses in Great Britain and the United States to Martin Wight as a thinker of international relations reveal something about the contrasting academic cultures of the two countries. Wight was pre‐eminently an ‘arts’ man, regarding history and philosophy as essential prerequisites for understanding the world. Above all he was concerned with the moral dimension in politics, whether domestic or international. His pacifism in the Second World War, curiously linked to his profound sense of realism, reflected deep religious convictions; indeed theology, and particularly eschatology, underlay much of his thinking. His career centres upon first Chatham House and Nuffield College, Oxford, then the London School of Economics and Political Science, and finally the University of Sussex. His lectures at the LSE on international theory achieved legendary fame, but he did not publish much in his lifetime. The appearance since 1977 of four notable posthumous works has enhanced his already high reputation, as has the increasing scholarly interest in the ‘English School’, of which he is now seen as a founding father. Ian Hall's book is a brilliant piece of analysis in which Wight's theological world view—which was not obtrusive in his teaching and writing—is investigated with a sureness that is probably rare among scholars in the international relations field.     

Radicals,Tories or Monomaniacs? The Birmingham Currency Reformers in the House of Commons, 1832–67*

Benjamin Disraeli described Thomas Attwood as a ‘provincial banker labouring under a financial monomania’. The leader of the Birmingham Political Union, Attwood's Warwickshire accent and support for a paper currency were widely derided at Westminster. However, the themes of Attwood's brief parliamentary career were shared by the other men who represented Birmingham in the early‐ and mid‐Victorian period. None of these MPs were good party men, and this article illuminates the nature of party labels in the period. Furthermore, it adds a new dimension to the historical understanding of debates on monetary policy and shows how local political identities and traditions interacted with broader party identities. With the exception of Richard Spooner, who was a strong tory on religious and political matters, the currency men are best described as popular radicals, who consistently championed radical political reform and were among the few parliamentary supporters of the ‘People's Charter’. They opposed the new poor law and endorsed factory regulation, a progressive income tax, and religious liberty. Although hostile to the corn laws they believed that free trade without currency reform would depress prices, wages and employment. George Frederick Muntz's death in 1857 and his replacement by John Bright marked a watershed and the end of the influence of the ‘Birmingham school’. Bright appropriated Birmingham's radical tradition as he used the town as a base for his campaign for parliamentary reform. He emphasized Birmingham's contribution to the passing of the 1832 Reform Act but ignored the currency reformers' views on other matters, which had often been at loggerheads with the ‘Manchester school’ and economic liberalism.     

‘A Stronger Man and a More Virile Character’: Australian Prime Ministers,Embodied Manhood and Political Authority in the Early Twentieth Century

In 1907 Andrew Fisher was evaluated as a ‘stronger man … and more virile character’ and therefore a better Australian Labor Party leader than Chris Watson. A key aspect of this assessment was his embodiment of respectable working-class manliness. One particularly overlooked aspect in the process of making men visible as men in Australian political history has been the male bodies of political leaders. This article offers the first systematic examination of the bodily practices and strategies of Alfred Deakin, George Reid and Andrew Fisher, three key players in the early formation of a two-party system in the decade following Federation. I seek to alter our understanding of political authority in the early federal period by examining how political contests played out using manhood – specifically, embodied manhood – as a key marker of political legitimacy.     

Fragments of the Modern City: Material Culture and the Rhythms of Everyday Life in Victorian London

This essay analyses the influence of Charles Baudelaire's and Théophile Gautier's fetishist poetics on the early works of Algernon Charles Swinburne. If the crucial role played by the Victorian poet as a cultural ‘passeur’ between France and England has often been highlighted in recent criticism, his aesthetic delight in certain forms of sexual deviance such as podophilia has rarely been explored in relation to the verse of his French mentors. Swinburne, Gautier, and Baudelaire may have indeed shared this erotic fascination with feet: this is a fascination that was partly grounded in these poets' common interest in antique literary models, in particular in Sappho's poetry. Rather than extolling the Hellenic ‘sweetness and light’ which some of his contemporaries set so high, Swinburne indulged in dangerously eroticised Dionysian aesthetics which were perceived as both ‘too Hellenic’ and ‘too French’. I argue that the fetishism of the poetic foot may be read as one of the keys to the Victorian poet's subversive shift away from the serenity often associated with Victorian neoclassicism in favour of a Dionysian energy that anticipates Friedrich Nietzsche's works.     

‘The Epitheatrical Cartoonist’: Matthew Somerville Morgan and the World of Theatre,Art and Journalism in Victorian London

This article examines the vibrant cultural milieu inhabited by one of Victorian Britain's most famous cartoonists, Matthew Somerville Morgan. Morgan is well-known as the cartoonist who attacked Queen Victoria's withdrawal from public life (and her associations with John Brown), and the lifestyle of Albert, Prince of Wales, in the short-lived rival to Punch: the Tomahawk. Likewise, his post-1870 career in New York as cartoonist of the ‘Caricature War’ over the 1872 Presidential elections, and involvement with ‘Buffalo’ Bill Cody have been well-studied. However, his involvement with the world of the 1860s Victorian stage – and the social circles in which he moved – have not been given close attention. This broader social, cultural, and economic context is essential to understanding Morgan's role as a cartoonist-critic of politics, class, gender and art in Victorian Britain. Special attention is given to the ways in which Morgan's work as a theatrical scene-painter informed his other pursuits, including his political cartoons for Fun, the Comic News and the Tomahawk. So central was the theatre to Morgan's life story that he may be appropriately described as an ‘epitheatrical’ figure. Indeed he is one of the most spectacular exemplars of the interconnected worlds of journalism, high art and theatre in Victorian London. The theatre provided him with the artistic and journalistic connections needed to raise himself above his lower-class origins; to move in ‘clubland’ and fashionable bohemian society; and to win an influential place in the key political and cultural debates of his age.     

HERBERT BUTTERFIELD AND THE ETHICS OF HISTORIOGRAPHY

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‘Discipline and Interference’: Ruskin's Political Economy,Natural Law,and the Moral Disorder of Victorian England

When Ruskin turned from art and architectural studies towards political economy in the late 1850s works such as Unto This Last, Munera Pulveris and Time and Tide met with negative critical reactions. In these works he attempted to restore to the language of Victorian political economy the moral content which, he argued, had been lost since the time of Adam Smith, under a cloak of misleading scientific terminology associated with utilitarian ‘orthodox political economy’. In doing so, he resorted to pre-Enlightenment sources of political and economic practice. His study of classical, Biblical, medieval and selected renaissance texts led him to gradually embrace older natural law arguments which contrasted sharply with the assumptions of post-Enlightenment positivist forms of natural law and science. These older and more organic natural law based understandings informed the principles by which he established his ideas on economics as well as his late social experiment, the Guild of St George. The charter and oath of the Guild illustrates how Ruskin's early upbringing in the Protestant Evangelical tradition was replaced by a more comprehensive natural law tradition of ethics.     

Notes on Contributors

The author contends that Leonardo Sciascia's L’affaire Moro is not a work of non-fiction, as Sciascia proposed, but of historical fiction, and that Sciascia's Moro is a literary character, more a spokesperson for Sciascia's political views than a reflection of the historical figure. Sciascia's Moro embodies the same qualities as many of Sciascia's other protagonists, such as a radical individualism and willingness to sacrifice all in order to protect their dignity and liberty. What emanates from the text is a ‘postmodern’ blend that interprets and imposes a narrative hierarchy on events, and conveys a mental reality that need not necessarily coincide with what can be proven with evidence. In fact, Sciascia combines factual information and his own ‘conjectural knowledge’ to convince his reader of the ‘moral truth’ of his argument. Sciascia's is indeed a strong narrative in that it succeeded in shaping how the Italian public views to this day a critical juncture in its recent history.     

Notes on Contributors

By the end of the century, and under pressure from new scientific theories of minds and emotions, the languages in which the Victorians understood the relationship between inner feeling and moral action came under great pressure. At the same time, the established association between aesthetic and moral value was being challenged by aestheticism's espousal of ‘art for art's sake’. This essay examines one very distinctive response to these issues: Vernon Lee's development of the concept of ‘empathy’. Lee offers empathy as a scientifically verifiable process which explains why beauty matters to us. She also seeks to use it to mediate a new position capable of acknowledging the power of aestheticism's critique of Victorian moralism, while re-establishing moral action as central to aesthetic experience.     

Charles the bold and the crusade: politics and propaganda

The pressures on Charles the Bold (duke of Burgundy from 1467 to his death in 1477) to lead, or lend his support to, a crusade were many. His Italian allies and the papacy all pleaded for his help and participation; and these appeals were augmented by the exhortation contained in much of the literature popular at the Burgundian court and by the presence there of refugees from the East.Charles's response was mixed. Political and moral pressures made it impossible for him to ignore the question of the crusade, but, even if his attitude should be characterized as cautious rather than as indifferent, he never did go on crusade. Equally, however, he repeatedly justified his comparative inaction and, at the same time, made propaganda against his enemies by suggesting that their hostility alone prevented him from embarking on an expedition to drive back the infidel.This response, since it was not untypical of the princes of his generation, helps explain the West's failure to unite against the Turks. From the point of view of Burgundian history, Charles's cautious attitude towards the crusade tends to support the revisionists who argue that he was far less ‘rash’ than the traditional historical view allows.     

柳诒徵论中国传统史学的治史原则与方法

柳诒徵作为中国现代文化保守主义史学大师结合西方新史学思想,对中国传统史学做了大量阐述。他对中国传统治史原则和方法的阐述尤为丰富和精深,主要包括五方面:一、"治史之必本于德"的原则;二、国史书写的道德评判准则;三、史识与史德、史法的关系和治史重在求取史识;四、注重史事普遍联系的史学记载和表述;五、正确看待考据在治史中的地位和作用。这些史学思想体现了柳诒徵史学通贯古今和兼融中西的基本特征。     

Jesus and the Ideal of the Manly Man in New Zealand after World War One

This article investigates attempts to portray Jesus as a “manly Man” for “manly men” in the wake of World War One. The Jesus that emerged as a result of this enterprise was a heroic personality formed through interplay between ideals about soldiers and Christ. Whilst only some military virtues were valued — and only in particular forms — even these proved problematic in certain respects. In particular, attempts to integrate soldierly and moral manliness, especially through resurgent use of notions like chivalry and crusade, failed to connect with soldiers’ actual experiences. Nonetheless, the manly Jesus represented an important religious response to World War One. It illuminated much about New Zealand religion and religious interaction with visions of ideal manhood. In particular, visions of a manly Jesus highlighted that ideals of moral and domestic manhood and more assertive ones coexisted in a state of tension.     

Silas Marner,Catalepsy, and Mid-Victorian Medicine: George Eliot's Ethics of Care

‘Silas Marner, Catalepsy, and Mid-Victorian Medicine’ reads Eliot's novel Silas Marner through the history of medicine, and particularly in the context of Marner's strange cataleptic trances which embody his alienation and suffering. Eliot, I argue, employs catalepsy in order to investigate ideas of illness and care, especially as that relates to professional medicine and to ideas of community. Focusing on cataleptic case histories and on Eliot's personal health concerns I show how issues of care become philosophical questions about ethical responsibility. It is through Silas Marner and his catalepsy, I conclude, that Victorian scholars can come to understand more about what that means within Eliot's canon and, more widely, in the mid-Victorian period. Overall, the article provides a unique reading of Silas Marner, drawing on significant new archival research on catalepsy and in Eliot's writing of illness narratives.     

Gender and Translation: Writing as Resistance in Primo Levi's Se questo è un uomo

This essay argues that translation in Se questo è un uomo (If This is a Man) (1947), as well as in related pieces, functions for Primo Levi as a key means for claiming and potentially repairing manhood. In its capacity to reposition meaning, translation functions as a powerful vehicle for affirming agency, particularly gendered agency. What emerges in Levi's writings, particularly in Se questo's “Canto of Ulysses” chapter, is the figure of the translator as resistance fighter: the man who uses his intellect, his love of languages and other men, and his desire to communicate in order to combat the assault on humanity perpetrated by Nazism and sustained by its legacy. In this Levi's writing exists on a continuum with the cultural work of the founding members of Giustizia e Libertà and, accordingly, complicates Italy's postwar understanding of partisan activity. Throughout Se questo è un uomo and related works, translation proves a vital if imperfect means for reclaiming manhood and for asserting the possibility of friendship across cultural, regional, ethnic, and gender boundaries.     

‘The Stupidest Tea-Party in All My Life’: Lewis Carroll and Victorian Psychiatric Practice

An analysis of the numerous connections of Lewis Carroll to the Victorian psychiatric profession reveals their influence on the portrayal of insanity in Carroll’s fiction. Through examining his relationship with his uncle Robert Wilfred Skeffington Lutwidge, a Commissioner in Lunacy, and collating Carroll’s personal recollections from diaries and letters with correspondences of the Lunacy Commission, this article offers a comprehensive picture of Carroll’s intellectual engagement with Victorian psychiatry. Combining these insights with his literary writings illuminates the psychiatric origins of the ‘Mad Tea-Party’ and characters such as the Hatter in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in the organization and methods of mid-Victorian pauper lunatic asylums and their treatment of impoverished workers. Likewise, the illustrations of Carroll’s works stood in dialogue with popular imagery of insanity as well as ideas of physiognomy and their diagnostic application in asylum photography by Hugh Welch Diamond. This piece will argue that the framework of Victorian psychiatry provided Carroll with imagery he utilizes to satirize aspects of Victorian moral values. It thus aims to highlight the benefits of re-framing the works of Lewis Carroll beyond the genre children’s literature, and considering them as part of the wider Victorian discourse of the sciences of the mind.     

‘To Make a New Tongue’: Natural and Manufactured Language in the Late Fiction of William Morris

The paper considers William Morris's belief that modern language was ‘degraded’, and explores how his late fiction tried to resist this degradation. Morris was influenced by the romantic philology of the mid-Victorian period which depicted languages as living organisms. Philologists such as Max Müller claimed that modern civilization had arrested this growth, mechanizing language into conventional signs; and Morris adapted the idea into a critique of industrial capitalism. He conceptualized modern English as manufactured external forms, sundered from organic history. His late prose fictions trace the ‘natural’ meanings of words which he imagined feudalism and capitalism had suppressed. However, this narrative of organic origins existed in tension with Morris's socialist ideals, which sought an objective language above local or national perspectives. The older Morris was writing at a time when romantic philology was coming under attack from a new generation of scholars. These proto-linguists regarded meaning as conventional and narratives of organic ‘roots’ in the distant past as mere mythology. Morris's struggles to reconcile the contradictions in his philosophy of language reflect wider tensions in romantic philology. His imaginary worlds in which everyone spoke the same relied upon myths of original linguistic unity and stasis which new research and theories were undermining. Ironically, Morris's attempts to re-organicize English inadvertently demonstrated the conventionality and perspectivism of language, relying upon common cultural frames of reference.