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Fryderyk Chopin's Polonaise in Al? Major, op. 53, is widely known as the "Heroic." It's tempting to dismiss this seemingly generic title, which was not Chopin's. But what can notions of a "heroic polonaise," taken from nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century contexts, do for our current understanding of the piece? The appellation evokes a constellation of distinct cultural contexts, such as nostalgia, nationalism, Polish messianism, the medieval revival in the arts, and ideas of the artist as a prophetic hero. Not only do these contexts come together and interact in the then pervasive cultural narrative of Poland's fall and eventual rebirth, but they also color the mythicized reception accorded to Chopin and his music. Taken collectively, these contexts help to shape the amorphous concept of heroicness. So, I deploy topic theory and narratology in a close reading of the piece in order to reconcile these contexts with this polonaise's putative heroic quahties. As a topic, the polonaise takes the form of several types throughout the piece, each with its own affective connotations and temporal associations, and this fluidity of topical references muddles a straightforward apprehension of the piece's heroicness. Combining the topical dimension with an examination of the tonal and formal logic of the piece, I demonstrate how the piece might be re-interpreted in light of the previously mentioned narrative of Poland's fall and resurrection. Moreover, the piece's specificities interact with certain theoretical issues related to musical meaning, such as music's capacity to denote temporalities distinct from its unfolding. That said, my turn to the historical contexts for the piece's heroicness is meant to open up rather than to pin down musical meaning. A comparison between my interpretation and a nineteenth-century one by a Polish musician illustrates how the same interpretative framework yields diverse readings, while a survey of a few works of art that draw on op. 53, each with their own framing contexts, shows how op. 53's heroicness has been understood anew across time and cultures. Keywords: Fryderyk Chopin, polonaise, heroic, topic theory, narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1860, with the Civil War looming, David and Elizabeth Frazier (a free Black couple), petitioned for a legal exemption to an 1806 statute demanding that any newly-freed African Americans emigrate from the Commonwealth within a year of their emancipation. Their petition capped a decade-long struggle to gain their freedom and keep their family intact, during which the Fraziers campaigned on fronts spanning from the courtroom to the slave market. Through a microhistory of the Fraziers' battle for the right to remain in the Commonwealth, this essay explores the ways in which a slave state used emigration policies to safeguard the institution of slavery. It also reveals the ferocity with which Black Virginians defended their families and communities, and, by examining the Fraziers' twin deployment of the law and of relationships built through a decade of work amid the horrors of the domestic slave trade, reveals how free people of color seized the scarce options available to them. Between the law of white supremacy and the maw of slave capitalism, the Fraziers carved out a modicum of liberty for themselves and their children, escaping forced migration in their bondage and forced emigration in their freedom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The surviving witnesses to Lack of Steadfastness, conventionally included among Chaucer's lyrics, raise a number of textual and contextual problems mostly overlooked in discussion of Chaucer's short poems. This article explores the evidence for authorship and attribution, the instability of the forms in which the poem survives, and its tendency to disintegration into shorter units or to amalgamation in longer runs of undifferentiated poems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An extensive collection of graffiti survives on the north wall of the Deanery entrance hall at Durham, formerly part of the thirteenth-century chapel in the prior’s lodging of Durham Cathedral Priory. The execution of the graffiti can be dated by their location, stratified between two schemes of wall-painting: one fragmentary scheme of the thirteenth century and one artistically highly accomplished scheme of c. 1475–80, showing part of a cycle of the Joys of the Virgin. In conjunction with the extensive documentation relating to the medieval priory, the graffiti afford an unrivalled opportunity to explore the multiple functions of the prior’s chapel, and the people who have left their mark in this way. This paper explores this hitherto unpublished body of material in a preliminary examination of the context and content of the graffiti, identifying some of the incised names and heraldry, and the links between these people and their roles in relation to the prior’s household and chapel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the history of letterings on buildings, memorials, and coins in Rome, Greece, and other cities. It cites that before the availability of typographic letterforms in every lettering style from every historical period, buildings in the said countries have shown carved capital letters. It mentions that the Roman capital has no rival in carving letters that were simple, geometrically based characters of even line weight that displays variations in stroke weights and serifs in the first century A.D. It states that the development of moveable type in fifteenth-century has changed the Western alphabet as scribes now give way to the engraver shaping steel punches of individual steel letters based on script forms that were struck in copper for casting.

This article focuses on the attitude of poet Wallace Stevens about the reading of his poetry in light of modernist practice. The impact of the poet's view of language and its auditory effects on verse recitation and his own reading style is also discussed. According to Stevens, public reading of poetry is not a natural activity.

Thomas Sharp was a prominent figure in planning in the UK in the middle part of the twentieth century, both as a writer on planning issues and as a producer of plans. He tends to be remembered as something of an outsider from the main body of the planning profession, for being an early and prominent critic of garden city principles, from the early 1930s, and for his sensitive townscape analyses in his 1940s reconstruction plans. The main argument of this paper is that these were important contributions to planning debate and practice; they should be viewed as part of an alternative schema of planning; and that Sharp was advocating a modern urbanist approach to urban form which stood distinct from the dominant paradigms of the garden city movement and Corbusian modernism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents fifteenth-century accounts of the Churchwardens of the City of London, England. Throughout the singing of the Gloria the story-teller attempts to see that reflected light with someone else's eyes. In falling on the grey heads in the pews in front of us it turns the grey into silver and the oak seat of the pew itself it strikes obliquely becoming a richer a more ecclesiastical purple than that which it has left behind in the window. The green coat of the lady immediately before the storyteller becomes partly enamelled in blue and her old face turns from a brown pigmented parchment into a ghostly hue seen mainly on the risen dead in Horror Movies.

In ethical decision making, emotion can be superior to reason, although historically emotion has been generally considered inferior to reason. A single concept serves as the principle for emotional development and decision making--empathy. For journalists, legal questions are often easy, ethical questions hard. "Newsworthiness" gives journalists a broad defense against privacy suits. Photographs have caused much controversy. As this article shows, usually journalists win suits involving photographs. Still, ethical questions persist. In the heat of time pressure, emotivism provides a fairly simple and accurate method of deciding whether to use photographs, and this article provides steps for applying emotivism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigates the issue regarding social coherence and new towns. Constant acquaintance of people with themselves as one cause of social unrest; Over-acquaintance with oneself breeding self-disgust, which can become hatred and cruelty turned upon oneself; People as continuous pressure on each would-be individual.