Improvisation and Hybrid Genres: Reading Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

ABSTRACT

In the first section I ask two questions: what sort of a poem is Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, and what is the immediate experience of reading it in sequence? These two questions are the practical equivalents of the main terms of my title. I try to answer them by reconstructing a first reading of the poem in the light of my own experience and the imagined one of the first readers of the poem. I suggest that two terms—accretion and elimination—are helpful here and that, in some ways, the structure and sequential experiencing of the poem resemble the structures of extended nineteenth-century musical forms. In the second section, I reverse perspective and take a position at the end of the poem. From such a point, it is easier to find what the poem has included and eliminated and this, in turn, suggests the kind of poem that it is. In the third section I tackle the terms “improvisation” and “hybrid genres” directly, link them with my earlier arguments, and engage with some theorists, especially Bakhtin. In particular, I argue against the view that Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage dissolves genre but argue that genres are nevertheless “open categories.” My conclusion is less definite. I confess to difficulties that still bother me.     

Algae from Early and Middle Devonian limestones,tamworth belt,New South Wales,Australia

Eighteen genera of cosmopolitan marine algae are reported from Emsian and Eifelian limestones of New South Wales. Couvinianella, Paralitanaia, Perrierella, Pseudopalaeoporella and Renalcis are the most abundant taxa. Three distinctive floras are recognized: a prolific dasycladale-coccoid assemblage; a diverse udoteacean assemblage; and an undiversified udoteacean assemblage. None of these floras has a precise stratigraphic significance, although they indicate a latest Silurian-Middle Devonian age. Maslovina australense sp. nov. is described.     

Consistent and Transparent? The Problem of Longitudinal Poverty Records

The World Bank and leading donors have emphasized the importance of evidence‐based policy making in addressing entrenched poverty. Adoption of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers has also required establishing and updating poverty baselines, typically through Living Standards Measurement Surveys. Although the conceptual basis of these surveys has been questioned, little attention has been paid to whether frequent revisions to the longitudinal record have undermined their value. This article argues that changes to the poverty record have been sufficiently frequent and often sufficiently large to compromise the creation of a sound longitudinal poverty record. The lack of transparency also weakens national debate and ownership and undermines the construction of evidence‐based policy.     

Social policy and inequality: A case study of problems in a planned society

Richard W. Casteel and George I. Quimby, eds. Maritime Adaptations of the Pacific. The Hague and Paris: Mouton Publishers, 1975. Distributed in North America by Aldine Publishing Company, x + 319 pp. Tables, figures, biographical notes, and index. $28.50.