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An evocative exploration of the impact of the Mediterranean on British culture, ranging from the mid-eighteenth century to today Ever since the age of the Grand Tour in the eighteenth century, the Mediterranean has had a significant pull for Britons—including many painters and poets—who sought from it the inspiration, beauty, and fulfillment that evaded them at home. Referred to as “Magick Land” by one traveler, dreams about the Mediterranean, and responses to it, went on to shape the culture of a nation. Written by one of the world's leading historians of the Mediterranean, this book charts how a new sensibility arose from British engagement with the Mediterranean, ancient and modern. Ranging from Byron's poetry to Damien Hirst's installations, Robert Holland shows that while idealized visions and aspirations often met with disillusionment and frustration, the Mediterranean also offered a notably insular society the chance to enrich itself through an imagined world of color, carnival, and sensual self-discovery.

The cultural milieu in the “Age of Goethe” of eighteenth-century Germany is given fresh context in this art historical study of the noted writers'patroness: Anna Amalia, Duchess of Weimar-Sachsen-Eisenach. An important noblewoman and patron of the arts, Anna Amalia transformed her court into one of the most intellectually and culturally brilliant in Europe; this book reveals the full scope of her impact on the history of art of this time and place. More than just biography or a patronage study, this book closely examines the art produced by German-speaking artists and the figure of Anna Amalia herself. Her portraits demonstrate the importance of social networks that enabled her to construct scholarly, intellectual identities not only for herself, but for the region she represented. By investigating ways in which the duchess navigated within male-dominated institutions as a means of advancing her own self-cultivation – or Bildung – this book demonstrates the role accorded to women in the public sphere, cultural politics, and historical memory. Cumulatively, Christina K. Lindeman traces how Anna Amalia, a woman from a small German principality, was represented as an active participant in enlightened discourses. The author presents a novel and original argument concerned with how a powerful woman used art to shape her identity, how that identity changed over time, and how people around her shaped it – an approach that elucidates the power of portraiture in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Europe.

Die Gründungen der Weimarer Republik in Deutschland sowie der Ersten Republik in Österreich 1918 waren von kontroversen Auseinandersetzungen um Staat und Demokratie begleitet. Ihr spektakuläres Scheitern im Nationalsozialismus lenkt die Aufmerksamkeit auf die angebliche Schwäche beider Staaten. Die Beiträge dieses Bandes werfen Schlaglichter auf bis dato wenig erforschte Dimensionen der zeitgenössischen Bearbeitung von Staatlichkeit in politischer Theorie, Literatur, Film, Theater und politischer Praxis. Der Fokus der Beiträge liegt dabei auf Thematisierungen von Ordnung/Unordnung der Geschlechter, die zugleich staatliche Stabilität/Instabilität problematisieren.

During the same period in which Derek Walcott was pouring immense physical, emotional, and logistical resources into the foundation of a viable first-rate West Indian theatre company and continuing to write his inimitable poetry, he was also busy writing newspaper reviews, chiefly for the Trinidad Guardian. His prodigious reviewing activity extended far beyond those areas with which one might most readily associate his interests and convictions. As Gordon Rohlehr once presciently observed, “If one wants to see a quotidian workaday Walcott, one should go back to [his] well over five hundred articles, essays and reviews on painting, cinema, calypso, carnival, drama and literature,” articles which “reveal a rich, various, witty and scrupulous intelligence in which generous humour counterpoints acerbity.” These articles capture the vitality of Caribbean culture and shed additional light on the aesthetic preoccupations expressed in Walcott's essays published in journals. The editors have examined the corpus of Walcott's journalistic activity from its beginnings in 1950 to its peak in the early 1970s, and have made a generous selection of material from the Guardian, along with occasional pieces from such sources as Public Opinion (Kingston) and The Voice of St. Lucia (Castries). The articles in Volume 1 are organized as follows: Caribbean society, culture, and the arts generally; literature and society; periodicals; anglophone poetry, prose fiction, and non-fiction; African and other literatures; and the visual arts (Caribbean and beyond). The volume closes with a selection of Walcott's mis-cellaneous satirical essays. The volume editor Gordon Collier has written a searching introductory essay on a central theme – here, a critical, comparative analysis of Walcott's development as journalist against the historical background of press activity in the Caribbean, coupled with an illustrative discussion (drawing on Walcott's newspaper articles) of his attitudes towards prose fiction and poetry.

Keine Epoche hat die Entwicklung der Geistesgeschichte so nachhaltig beeinflusst wie die Antike. Seit der Renaissance wurde die Inanspruchnahme des Altertums zum Gegenstand politischer Auseinandersetzungen um die nationalen Werte der Kunst und der Literatur. Dies geschah nicht nur im Sinne der Verteidigung eines überzeitlichen Vorbildes, sondern auch als Moment der Abstoßung, des Widerstreits und der Konkurrenz, wie die Querelle des anciens et des modernes eindrücklich zeigt. Welchen ideologischen Konstruktionen unterliegt der Blick auf die Antike? Welches Interesse verbirgt sich hinter dem Studium antiker Kunst? Der Band vereint eine Reihe von exemplarischen Einzelanalysen, die von der Spätantike bis ins 20. Jahrhundert reichen und sich mit ausgewählten Ereignissen der Funktionalisierung und Instrumentalisierung des Antikebegriffs beschäftigen. Die klassische Auffassung der Antike als Katalysator moderner Entwicklungen erweist hier ihr kritisches Potential.

Die Studie erschließt aus umfangreichem Quellenmaterial des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts bibelwissenschaftliche und künstlerische Interpretationen des Juditbuches im historischen und kulturellen Umfeld Wiens. Sie klärt unter anderem den Zusammenhang der besonderen Beliebtheit des Juditbuches mit den zahlreichen kriegs- und seuchenbedingten Notsituationen der Stadt. Ebenso wird die Verbindung zwischen der einseitig tugendhaften Stilisierung Judits und der Thronbesteigung Maria Theresias verdeutlicht. Die Veröffentlichung dreier bislang ungedruckter Oratorienlibretti rundet den Band ab.

Hosting the Monster responds to the call of the monstrous with, not rejection, but invitation. Positing the monster as that which defies classification, the essays in this collection are an ongoing engagement with that which lies outside of established boundaries. With chapters ranging from the monstrous mother or the deformed child to subjectivity in transition, this volume is not only of interest to film and gender scholars and literary and cultural theorists but also students of popular culture or horror. Its wide appeal stems from its invitation both to entertain the monster and to widen the call to and the listening for the monsters that have not yet, and perhaps must not yet, come calling back. This sense of hospitality and non-hostility is one guiding principle of this collection, suggesting that the ability to survey and research the otherwise may reveal more about the subjectivity of the self through the wisdom of the other, however monstrous the manifestation.