Comic Incongruity in Medieval French Enfances

This article compares the use of nudity in the Carolingian romances Enrique Fi de Oliva and Carlos Maynes, which are both structured around the tale of a falsely accused woman. In Carlos Maynes, the protagonist Empress Sevilla is disrobed several times in her adventures and, at the end, strips of her own accord, along with her son Loui and their supporters, to reconcile with her husband Carlos Maynes. Enrique Fi de Oliva contains more scenes of nudity than Carlos Maynes does. In it, Pepino is reconciled with his sister Oliva, her son Enrique, and their supporters after they have disrobed multiple times. Both romances are about old, ineffective rulers who have perverse advisers. Only the innocence of the heroes and heroines, expressed through their nudity, can overcome the power of the aging leaders' evil allies. If, at the symbolic level, these scenes are about the political rebirth of the monarchy through generational change and new alliances, at the visual level they are quite risqué and often comic episodes that must have had great popular appeal. It is not surprising that Enrique Fi de Oliva, the more explicit of the two works in terms of nudity and humor, was praised by Miguel de Cervantes who, in Don Quixote de la Mancha, expressed admiration for the "exactness" with which it describes everything.     

Geogeaphical notes

EUROPE.

Danish Life in Town and Country. By Jessie Bröchner. London : George Newnes, Limited. 3s. 6d. net.

AFRICA.

The Portuguese Expedition to Abyssinia in 1541–1543 as narrated by Castanhoso. Translated and edited by R. S. Whitewat, B.C.S. London : Printed for the Hakluyt Society, 1902. Pp. 296.

The Advance of our West African Empire. By C. Braithwaite Wallis, of the Cameronians. Late Acting District Commissioner Sierra Leone Protectorate. London : T. Fisher Unwin, 1903. Pp. 318. Price 21s.

AMERICA

Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada. By Clarence King. London : T. Fisher Unwin, 1903.

The Discoveries of the Norsemen in America, with Special Relation to their Early Cartographical Representation. By Joseph Fischer, S.J. Translated from the German by Basil H. Soulsby, B.A. London : Henry Stevens, Son, and Stiles, 1903.

GENERAL.

Johann Keppler, der Gesetzgeber der neueren Astronomie. Ein Lebensbild. Von Adolf Müller, S.J. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder'sche Verlagshandlung, 1903. Pp. ii + 181.

The British Empire Year Booh, 1903. An annual statistical volume of reference compiled with the assistance of H.M. Imperial and Colonial Governments. By Edgar G. Wall, Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society. London: Edward Stanford. Price £1, 1s.

Physician and Friend: Alexander Grant, F.R.C.S. Edited by George Smith, C.I.E., LL.D. London : John Murray, 1902. Price 10s. 6d.     

Books received

EUROPE.

By the Roman Wall: Notes on a Summer Holiday. By Maria A. Hoyer. With Illustrations from Sketches and Photographs by the Author. London: David Nutt, 1908. Price 2s. 6d. net.

ASIA.

Selections from the Travels and Journals preserved in the Bombay Secretariat. Edited by George W. Forrest, C.I.E., Ex‐Director of Records, Government of India. Bombay, 1906. Price Rs. 7 or 10s. 6d.

The Marches of the Mantze. By J. H. Edgar, China Inland Mission. London, Philadelphia, Toronto, Melbourne, and Shanghai: Morgan and Scott, Limited.

AUSTRALASIA.

New Zealand at Home. By the Hon. R. A. Loughnan, M.L.C. London : George Newnes, Limited. 5s. net.

GENERAL.

Leitfaden der Kartenentwurfslehre für Studierende der Erdkunde und deren Lehrer. Bearbeitet von Prof. Dr. Karl Zöppritz. In zweiter neubearbeiteter und erweiterter Auflage herausgegeben von Dr. Alois Bludau. Zweiter Teil: Kartographie und Kartometrie. Leipzig: Druck und Verlag von B. G. Teubner, 1908. Pp. 109. Price M. 3.60 ; cloth M. 4.40.     

“The true principles of government”: William Henry Harrison and the Whig counter-revolution

Beyond his military exploits on the frontier, William Henry Harrison is best remembered as the president who died a month after taking office. Discussions of his presidency frequently focus on the ephemeral, such as the fatal illness he contracted while delivering his inaugural address – the longest ever – in the bitter cold. The address itself, one of the most unusual state papers in U.S. history, has largely escaped the serious notice of historians, political scientists, and legal scholars. Harrison proposed nothing short of a constitutional revolution that would have reduced the chief executive to a mere figurehead. This paper explores the many peculiarities of Harrison's address, including the Whig theory of the presidency, a radical and overlooked innovation that aimed to fundamentally alter the role of the chief executive in the constitutional order. A close reading of Harrison's inaugural and brief tenure as president also reveals a number of factual errors and interpretative missteps made by leading scholars of the period.