There are two different questions that might be asked about contemporary democracy: how did we get here?  And where else might we have tried to get? A great deal of the ‘history of democracy’’ is written in the former mode, with the classical world and subsequent periods being identified as steps in a path towards a modern democratic world in which the people elect their governments and hold them accountable to greater or lesser extents. In Britain, the normal staging posts identified are the Levellers, the 1790s, the Great Reform Act, and the suffragist movement. In America they are the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the Federal Constitution of 1788, Jacksonian Democracy in the 1830s, the Civil War, and the Voting Rights act of 1965. In France, the French Revolution, 1830, 1848, 1871, 1836, and 1944. Ireland has far fewer dates!

This sort of history is in effect being written backwards; it is a history of the present and how we got to it, not a history of the past, and what we might have fought for. One mark of this approach is that relatively little attention is given to the language people actually used; if we think their aspirations were democratic then it is assumed that we can describe their goal as democracy, even if they didn’t use the word. Moreover, since we link democracy to elections, we assume that the history of democratic aspiration was primarily a story of struggle over the suffrage. But much of this does violence to the evidence.

If we ask what people who wanted to put more power in the hands of ordinary men (or more rarely, women) thought that they were doing, and how they conceptualised their objectives and behaviour, we find that democracy came on to the scene as a popular term rather belatedly. Throughout the eighteenth century, it was a literate term, referring to ancient Greece and Rome, though also used by educated commentators to refer to small, faction-ridden, tumultuous states, prone to collapse under the influence of demagogues into despotism. Though they could imagine that modern states might, like Britain, have a relatively democratic component, few of those who knew the term thought that ‘democracy’ had any relevance to the growing commercial empires of late eighteenth-century Europe.

Yet, within a hundred years, democracy had become established as part of the political lexicon across the populations of America, France, Britain and Ireland. It was still widely condemned by many, who saw it as a force that threatened the social, economic and political order; but by 1848 it had established advocates, and more inspiring connotations. Even those who spoke of it with some trepidation saw it as a modern phenomenon, often as ineluctable, and as something to which the political order needed to adapt. Not only had the word acquired new significance and connotations, but also in different countries different meanings and institutions had come to be associated with it. In France, for instance, it had become identified with formal and to some extent real social levelling that political institutions had somehow to contain, whereas in Britain it was associated with active political struggles for more effective popular control of the House of Commons. In Ireland it was associated with mass mobilisations, designed to affect political agendas more than political institutions. In this process of re-imagining democracy many came to associate it with innovation, with new ideas, experiences and experiments, and saw new possibilities opened for them.  This is not a story of steady progress towards a determined goal: it remained uncertain how and even whether the people’s wish to share in the exercise of power could be given stable institutional form. Nor was it a story of steady progress towards any goal — the French Revolution did much to rendered the term anathema across Europe for more than twenty years. It is, however, an often surprising story. These four countries shared a classical inheritance and understandings of ‘democracy’ derived from that, but in responding to local experiences and conflicts, they developed sometimes strikingly different understandings and practices, and they differed too in what they arrayed under the banner of democracy as that came to be unfurled.

If we read the past wholly in the light of the present, then we also will read our futures in that way.  But if we recognise the foreignness of the past, and the very different ways in which people in different political settings responded to the pressures of social change and the emergence of more popular forms of politics at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, we may find ourselves able to ask questions of our present — and of our futures — that would not otherwise be asked.

Mark Philp and Joanna Innes are co-editors of Re-imagining Democracy in the Age of Revolutions: America, France, Britain, Ireland 1750-1850 (OUP, 2013). Mark Philp has taught political theory in Oxford University for thirty years and has worked extensively on the political thinking and social movements of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in Britain, and on methodological approaches to the study of political ideas. Joanna Innes was educated in Britain and the United States. She has taught and researched at Oxford University for thirty years. Her interest in this subject grows out of her interest in government and political culture in Britain and elsewhere, especially during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only politics articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Image credit:  To speak up for democracy, read up on democracy poster [Fair Use] via Library of Congress.

The post Finding the future of democracy in the past appeared first on OUPblog.

I like Superman—as a character, as a superhero, as an embodiment of (certain) values. I looked forward to seeing Man of Steel this summer. Although I was disappointed, I’ll start with its strengths. Warning: Spoilers ahead.

The importance of point-of-view in defining “good” versus “evil” is nicely portrayed. According to my typology of supervillains classification scheme, this incarnation of Zod is a heroic villain. His actions are motivated by—what is to him—an altruistic cause (saving Krypton/Kryptonians). This is made explicit at the beginning of the film, when Zod says to Jor-El (Superman’s father) that he’s taken up the sword against his own people for a greater good. Jor-El, too, could be considered a heroic villain in that he’s done something against Kryptonian law, but is doing so for what he believes is a greater good. It’s not a “black and white” morality tale.

The film (accurately) portrayed the social challenge of being gifted (i.e., “super”). Like many superheroes, gifted children sometimes hide their talents and abilities from others for fear of social ostracism or harassment. In Clark Kent’s case, though, it was because the government might want to “take” him. The young Clark views his budding powers as burdens to be hidden, yet Clark’s father explains that one day he’ll view his abilities as gifts, not burdens.

Amy Adams’ Lois Lane is the best screen version thus far. She’s smart and spunky but not high strung or temperamental. It’s easy to see why Clark would like her (which isn’t true in the other films). She’s an admirable character. Way to go!

The aspects of the film that I didn’t like were, unfortunately, numerous. One fundamental flaw rests on the reason for Jor-El and Lara trying to conceive “naturally” on Krypton: To bring a child into the world that wasn’t pre-conceived or pre-programmed with a destiny. (On this version of Krypton, it seems that children’s DNA is genetically engineered to fill society’s niches—soldier, scientist, etc.—and fetuses are externally incubated.) Yet the young adult Clark discovers a holographic-type projection of his long-dead father, who tells Clark what his destiny is—why he was sent to Earth. He’s “supposed to guide humans, to be a force for good. You will help them to accomplish wonders.” This hypocritical stance about destiny versus free choice is a major plot flaw.

Another plot contradiction is the alien-among-us fear, which drives much of story of Clark’s childhood, but is carelessly thrown off by the end of the film. After downtown Metropolis has been practically laid waste by aliens, no humans seem worried about Superman being an alien, or even that there was an alien battle on Earth.

Finally, the wanton destruction, the endless fight scenes, explosions, buildings collapsing became boring. I couldn’t help but notice that the Daily Planet building took its share of damage, yet by the end of the film, the Planet’s office looks fine. There no sense of the trauma that Metropolis’s citizens experienced since their city was a center ring in which aliens fought. The city is magically clean and rebuilt by the end. We have to suspend disbelief in most superhero films (perhaps Christopher Nolan’s Batman films being the exception), but not this much.

The film was called Man of Steel, but too little of the film was actually about Superman. It was really about Jor-El versus Zod, with Superman acting as proxy for Jor-El. I wanted to see more character development about the adult Clark/Superman. In a film over two hours long, it seemed that his screen time—when he wasn’t in a fight scene—was too brief and his “character development” superficial.

This film contrasts dramatically with the Nolan Batman films, which is ironic because the script was written by the same folks who wrote Batman Begins: Jonathan Nolan and David Goyer. Whereas Batman Begins provides wonderful and psychologically insightful character development, Man of Steel does not.

Robin S. Rosenberg, PhD, ABPP is a clinical psychologist in private practice in San Francisco and Menlo Park, Calif. She often writes about the psychology of superheroes. Her latest books are What Is a Superhero? and Our Superheroes, Ourselves.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only television and film articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

Image credit: Man of Steel movie poster TM & © 2013 WARNER BROS. ENTERTAINMENT INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. TM & © DC COMICS (From DC Entertainment), via manofsteel.warnerbros.com, used for the purposes of illustration.

The post Forging Man of Steel appeared first on OUPblog.

The front cover of Lady Ann Fanshawe’s manuscript recipe book (Wellcome MS 7113). Creative Commons by permission of Wellcome Images.

Early modern Britons even kept on hand instructions to make medicines to heal diseases like smallpox and the plague. They thought that householders should have knowledge of how to deal with all eventualities, even life-threatening ailments. In this era the most important site of healing was the home. When you fell ill, you would almost invariably begin your search for recovery at home, and even if you graduated to paying for outside medical care, healers would usually come to your home. The home therefore played an essential role in care, nursing, recovery, and in the end death.

We can get a vivid idea of the range of health problems people thought they might need to face at home from a unique and fascinating type of historical document, the manuscript recipe book. Many people who weren’t in any medical occupation nonetheless traded and collected recipes instructing them in how to make medicines at home. Some then gathered their recipes into handwritten volumes like the one pictured above, which belonged to the Lady Ann Fanshawe, wife of the Royalist, MP, diplomat, and writer Sir Richard Fanshawe. Lady Ann was herself a memoirist. Much like her, most collectors took down medical and cookery recipes as well as those for household supplies like ink, cosmetics, perfumes, and more. Hundreds of manuscript collections survive, though of course they were only compiled by those like Lady Ann with enough wealth to undertake such a project.

There was also a healthy trade in printed recipe collections. Here is the frontispiece and title page to one from 1655, Natura Exenterata. Creative Commons by permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

A woman does the difficult work of distillation. From The accomplished ladies rich closet of rarities (1691). Creative Commons by permission of Wellcome Images.

Medical recipes in these manuscripts run the gamut from simple, single-substance medicines (like one using just sheep’s skin) to complex concoctions with exotic and expensive ingredients. For example, another asks for unicorn horn and bezoar stone (a stone found in the digestive systems of animals and reputed to be a powerful poison antidote). Recipes could also be highly complex to follow. For instance, many involve distillation, an art requiring specialized training and equipment.

These collections were filled with directions for making medicines to use in the home, and they therefore tell us what compilers thought they might need to heal there. Domestic healers collected recipes for a broad array of ailments, including life-threatening ones. Clearly, they thought they might have to manage severe illnesses and injuries at home. Let’s look at a few examples.

Recipes for plague preventatives and cures are very common, both in print and manuscript collections. The title of this one from a collection owned by Mrs Anne Brumwich and Rhoda Hussey (wife of Baron Ferdinando Fairfax), claims that it was used to “help 600 in York,” and that “in one house where 8 were infected 2 of them drunk of it and lived, the others would not and died.” The recipe instructs readers in concocting a tisane from rue, marigold, featherfew, burnet, sorrel, and dragon root. These were all ingredients easily available from gardens or growing in the wild. Then sugar and a poison antidote (mithridate) are added. Both of these were available in apothecaries’ shops. This was an easy recipe to follow, and it promised a powerful cure for one of the diseases that most terrified people. It’s easy to see why someone might have added it to their collection.

“An excellent recipe for the plague.” From Anne Brumwich and others, Booke of Receipts, Wellcome MS 160, fol. 58r. Creative Commons by permission of the Wellcome Library.

Rickets is another disease frequently addressed in manuscript recipe collections. We know rickets as a deficiency disease that remains a scourge of children in developing nations, but seventeenth-century people had no knowledge of vitamins or other modern nutritional concepts. They did, however, see rickets as a debilitating, indeed deadly, disease. The London Bills of Mortality, which listed causes of death in the capital, indicate particular prevalence in the seventeenth century. They record hundreds of deaths from the disease. Recipe collections show great fear of it; many contain multiple, often highly complex directions for treating rickets in children.

A rickets medicine. From the Lady Ann Fanshaw’s collection, Wellcome MS 7113, fol. 111r. Creative Commons by permission of the Wellcome Library.

This recipe from Lady Ann Fanshawe’s collection, attributed to Mrs Price, gives instructions for making a topical medicine and applying it to a child’s body. It’s another simple recipe, one we can easily imagine making in a seventeenth-century home. It asks for calves’ (“neats”) feet, some common plants, and wine, all prepared with some simple cooking procedures. It then tells us how to apply the medicine by rubbing it upwards on the child’s back from the backside to the lower torso, on the back of the thighs and calves, and on the wrists. Finally, you swathe the child’s wrists and ankles. Again, we can imagine why this would have appealed to a collector. Rickets was another terrifying disease, and this recipe offered parents a cheap and easy cure, guiding them through the entire process of preparation and application. The certainty of such a recipe, with the endorsement that came with its attribution, must have been comforting.

From our point of view it’s unlikely that these medicines could have done much for the ill. Indeed, it can be quite distressing to imagine what our own prospects and experiences would have been, long before (for instance) reliable anaesthetics or knowledge of antibiotics. Early modern people did not take a resigned attitude towards the dangers of their world, however. Nor were they entirely dependant on medical practitioners. They stockpiled directions for homemade cures for the full range of injuries and illnesses, right up to the deadliest and most dangerous.

DISCLAIMER: This post discusses medicines strictly in a historical context. It does not endorse the use of these medicines in any way. It should not be used as healthcare advice.

Seth Stein LeJacq is a PhD candidate in the Department of the History of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University. His dissertation research deals with the history of the Royal Navy during the Age of Sail. His essay “The Bounds of Domestic Healing: Medical Recipes, Storytelling and Surgery in Early Modern England” in the Social History of Medicine won the Roy Porter Student Prize Essay 2013.

Social History of Medicine is concerned with all aspects of health, illness, and medical treatment in the past. It is committed to publishing work on the social history of medicine from a variety of disciplines. The journal offers its readers substantive and lively articles on a variety of themes, critical assessments of archives and sources, conference reports, up-to-date information on research in progress, a discussion point on topics of current controversy and concern, review articles, and wide-ranging book reviews.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only British history articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only health and medicine articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

The post Prepare for the worst appeared first on OUPblog.

18 June 1815

The following is a brief extract from The History of the World: Sixth Edition by J.M. Roberts and O.A. Westad.

In the end, though the dynasty Napoleon hoped to found and the empire he set up both proved ephemeral, his work was of great importance. He unlocked reserves of energy in other countries just as the Revolution had unlocked them in France, and afterwards they could never be quite shut up again. He ensured the legacy of the Revolution its maximum effect, and this was his greatest achievement, whether he desired it or not.

Napoleonic Europe (c) Helicon Publishing Ltd

His unconditional abdication in 1814 was not quite the end of the story. Just under a year later the emperor returned to France from Elba, where he had lived in a pensioned exile, and the restored Bourbon regime crumbled at a touch. The allies none the less determined to overthrow him, for he had frightened them too much in the past. Napoleon’s attempt to anticipate the gathering of overwhelming forces against him came to an end at Waterloo, on 18 June 1815, when the threat of a revived French empire was destroyed by the Anglo-Belgian and Prussian armies. This time the victors sent him to St Helena, thousands of miles away in the South Atlantic, where he died in 1821. The fright that he had given them strengthened their determination to make a peace that would avoid any danger of a repetition of the quarter century of almost continuous war which Europe had undergone in the wake of the Revolution. Thus Napoleon still shaped the map of Europe, not only by the changes he had made in it, but also by the fear France had inspired under his leadership.

Reprinted from THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD: Sixth Edition by J.M. Roberts and O.A. Westad with permission from Oxford University Press, Inc. Copyright © 2013 by O.A. Westad.

J. M. Roberts CBE died in 2003. He was Warden at Merton College, Oxford University, until his retirement and is widely considered one of the leading historians of his era. He is also renowned as the author and presenter of the BBC TV series ‘The Triumph of the West’ (1985). Odd Arne Westad edited the sixth edition of The History of the World. He is Professor of International History at the London School of Economics. He has published fifteen books on modern and contemporary international history, among them ‘The Global Cold War,’ which won the Bancroft Prize.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only history articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

The post The History of the World: Napoleon defeated at Waterloo appeared first on OUPblog.

Writing about the perceptions and contexts for music from the Haná region in Moravia in the most recent volume of Early Music got me thinking more broadly about the subject of ‘folk music’ or rustic music of various types, and the emphasis and value frequently placed upon it in the context of art music. In particular, I started to think again about Bedřich Smetana (1824–84). The very concept of ‘folk music’ owes its origins to late enlightenment thinkers, especially Johann Gottfried Herder’s use of ‘Volkslied’ in 1771. Even then, Herder accompanied his discussion with a grovelling apology to the reader for even having addressed the topic of peasant music at all. In recent years, Dave Harker and Matthew Gelbert, among others, have argued that the concept of ‘folk music’ is essentially a bourgeois one (an observation of peasant music made by the educated classes).

Whatever name we would like to give to peasant music (which frequently carries a similar social connotation as ‘folk music’), the recreational music-making of ordinary Europeans found its way, by one means or another, into much art music of the past 500 years or more. Why do musicians find so much value in peasant music? How and why did this happen? In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the art of performing included being able to create something new from older materials. Examples include Diego Ortiz’s Tratado de glosas (1565), the English school of playing ‘divisions’ upon popular airs or basses, the elaborated Lutheran hymn tunes in Bach’s chorale preludes, and the tradition of variation pieces. The reason for their popularity is pretty straightforward, given the appeal of combining both the familiar and the new; but where this becomes even more mysterious is the role of the (perceived) national origins of these melodies in both perpetuating and understanding the desire to find belonging (usually one’s own ‘people’) in the context of music.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The quest to identify ‘national’ traits in music has been little short of an obsession for historians of various sorts since the early nineteenth century, and in some ways before. Why is this so important? For many historians, finding local or national traditional music in the context of art music is similar to looking upon an ancient monument in a town or city square—it inscribes the past onto the present and ties those who identify the melody as ‘theirs’ to both a physical place and a continuing place in history. This is a very different phenomenon to the performance-based music I mentioned earlier, which were part of a musical narrative, rather than a regional or national one.

Historians tend to point to Smetana as the godfather of modern Czech music, but he represents a fundamental but overlooked transformation in how peasant music (or rather an evocation of peasant music) appears in art music. Typically seventeenth and eighteenth century rural musicians, steeped in Italian repertoire and genres, brought their experience to courts in provincial towns as well as major cities, including Prague, Vienna, Paris, London, and Dresden. Of course those rural musical experiences became part of their sound world, albeit unconsciously; that is, the sounds of village life were deliberately avoided by musicians who, in Geoff Chew’s words, sought to be ‘ersatz Italians’ at court. When the Moravian composer and musician Gottfried Finger (c.1655–1730) arrived in London in the 1680s he was amazed to find that ‘the Italian style is but lately naturaliz’d in England’—it had long been the mainstay of most musicians in central Europe. Musicians in the Czech lands also followed this rural-to-urban pattern. However, by the age of Smetana, the situation had reversed; now it was urban composers going to the countryside in search of authentic ‘Czechness’. Smetana, raised in a bourgeois environment, only learned Czech as an adult and had to turn to the countryside to imbue his music with ‘Czechness’.

Seventeenth and eighteenth-century evocations of peasant life followed two basic paths: to be evoked at court as an object of ridicule or humour (Biber’s Battalia is a good example of this, composed for Salzburg Carnival in 1673), or slightly more sympathetic readings by travelling priests, empathising with the sufferings of peasantry more generally. Smetana’s peasants in The Bartered Bride (Prodaná nevěsta), for example, never encounter their social betters (there are no Habsburg administrators or lords in the opera) or any signs of the toils of rural life, but live in a post-Enlightenment world of rural idyll, where they are to be admired for their rustic earnestness and simplicity. Even in eighteenth-century Czech theatrical works, which admitted the reality of Habsburg political rule, there was at least a nod to the difficulties of peasant life.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Nevertheless, Smetana is rather careful in how he integrates folk elements into the score of The Bartered Bride. They generally work along the ‘monument’ model I mentioned above: while folk dances are not part of the opera’s main musical vocabulary, they serve as a monument upon which the peasant characters see their history written (see the furiant dance in The Bartered Bride). The presence of folk elements in this context serves the characters in the opera as well as some of the audience, so that both characters and Czech audiences could identify and experience a sense of belonging. It is a clever device of the composer to portray several kinds of unity simultaneously, and it is critical to note that folk elements were incorporated into all ensemble pieces. Finally, it may seen curious that Smetana’s opera does not challenge the social or political situations of its central characters (a little surprising given Smetana’s political activism in the 1848 Prague uprising), but perhaps the composer aimed to redeem their circumstances through the beauty of a modern, cosmopolitan, and sophisticated musical language. Take, for instance, the moment when Jeník has just agreed to barter his future bride and confesses his unwavering love for her (sung here by the magnificent Slovak tenor Peter Dvorsky).

Click here to view the embedded video.

Even though the revolution of 1848 had failed to liberate the Czech lands from Austria, Smetana could offer a kind of remedy—a fairy-tale picture of idealised unity and freedom—on the stage of Prague’s Provisional Theatre. This interpretation also helps account for the total absence of the Austrian Empire in the story.

Dr Robert G. Rawson is Senior Lecturer and Director of Early Music Ensemble in the Department of Music and Performing Arts at Canterbury Christ Church University. He is the author of “Courtly contexts for Moravian Hanák music in the 17th and 18th centuries” in the latest issue of Early Music, which is available to read for free for a limited time.

Early Music is a stimulating and richly illustrated journal, and is unrivalled in its field. Founded in 1973, it remains the journal for anyone interested in early music and how it is being interpreted today. Contributions from scholars and performers on international standing explore every aspect of earlier musical repertoires, present vital new evidence for our understanding of the music of the past, and tackle controversial issues of performance practice.

The post The search for ‘folk music’ in art music appeared first on OUPblog.

Each summer, Oxford University Press USA and Bryant Park in New York City partner for their summer reading series Word for Word Book Club. The Bryant Park Reading Room offers free copies of book club selections while supply lasts, compliments of Oxford University Press, and guest speakers lead the group in discussion. On Tuesday 18 June 2013, author Domenica Ruta leads a discussion on The Turn of the Screw by Henry James.

What was your inspiration for this book?

The book I chose for the book club? Simple – I wanted fun but stimulating summer reading. A ghost story novella by James met the criteria perfectly.

Domenica Ruta. Photo by Meredith Zinner.

For my book? A lifetime of beauty and pain only makes sense to me after it has been distilled into sentences. I had to write this book in order to move on and write other things, like my novel.

Where do you do your best writing?

Honestly…in bed. I know it’s bad for every single muscle and joint in my body. I am going to make some osteopath a very rich man.

Which author do you wish had been your 7th grade English teacher?

My seventh grade English teacher was execrable. Almost anyone with basic literacy could have improved upon her so-called lessons. I like to imagine Joseph Campbell coming in to do guest lectures on mythology. Seventh graders are perfectly located in intellectual time to be transformed by something like that – one foot still in childhood, where magical stories still have power, and one foot in the complicated world of adulthood, where metaphors can be analyzed for greater meaning.

What is your secret talent?

I am pretty good at guessing what mix of breeds make up a mutt dog.

What is your favorite book?

I cannot, will not, answer that question. I love too many too much.

Who reads your first draft?

NO ONE! My first drafts are hideous, putrid, bloody, mangled beasts. It is immoral to expose anyone to something so ugly. My seventh or eight drafts go to my best friend and best reader, novelist/screenwriter Brian McGreevy.

Do you prefer writing on a computer or longhand?

I do both. Different energy fuels each process, and so there are times when longhand makes the most sense, and times when I need to type.

What book are you currently reading? (Old school or e-Reader?)

I am just finishing a brilliant little monograph by Marie-Louise Von Franz, a disciple of Jung, called The Cat, about this wonderful Romanian folk tale. Also reading Daniel Berrigan’s Ezekiel – a brilliant and disquieting alchemy of poetry, politics, biblical exegesis, rant, and rally. I’m also reading a forthcoming memoir by Nicole Kear called Now I See You. And of course re-reading Turn of the Screw.

What word or punctuation mark are you most guilty of overusing?

I refuse to limit myself in any way when I write. (Remember what I said about horrible first drafts?) I use any color on the palette I want. If it turns out ugly, I just delete it. Guilt is a waste of time.

If you weren’t a writer, what would you be?

A figure skater. A veterinarian. A radical eco-activist. Ideally, all three.

Did you have an “a-ha!” moment that made you want to be a writer?

Read chapter four of my memoir for the answer to that.

Do you read your books after they’ve been published?

I just recently published my first book and I’m in no hurry to reread it.

Domenica Ruta was born and raised in Danvers, Massachusetts. She is a graduate of Oberlin College and holds an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin. She was a finalist for the Keene Prize for Literature and has been awarded residencies at Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, the Blue Mountain Center, Jentel, and Hedgebrook. Her memoir With or Without You was published by Spiegel & Grau, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, in February.

Read previous interviews with Word for Word Book Club guest speakers.

For over 100 years Oxford World’s Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford’s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. You can follow Oxford World’s Classics onTwitter and Facebook.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only literature articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

The post 10 Questions for Domenica Ruta appeared first on OUPblog.

We might have grown skeptical about our cultural legacy, but it is quite natural for us to assume that our own cognitive theories are the latest word when compared with those of our predecessors. Yet in some areas, the questions we are now asking are not too different from those posed some two-three centuries ago, if not earlier.

One of the most topical questions in today’s cognitive science is the precise role of language in the brain and in human perception. Further disciplines, such as anthropology and evolutionary biology, are concerned with the emergence of language: How is it that homo sapiens is the only species possessing such a complex syntactic and sematic tool as human language? What is the relationship between human language and animal communication? Could there be any bridge between them, or are they of categorically different orders, as seems to be suggested by Noam Chomsky’s views?

Such questions stood at the very centre of a fascinating debate in eighteenth-century Europe. From Riga to Glasgow and from Berlin down to Naples, Enlightenment authors asked themselves how language could have evolved among initially animal-like human beings. Some of them suggested some continuities between bestial and human communication, though most thinkers pointed to a strict barrier separating human language from vocal and gestural exchange among animals. In broad lines, this period witnessed a transition from an earlier theory of language, which saw our words as mirroring self-standing ideas, to the modern notion that signs are precisely what enables us to form our ideas in the first place. Such signs had, however, to be artificially crafted by human beings themselves; after all, natural sounds and gestures are also used by animals.

According to various eighteenth-century thinkers, this transition from natural communication to artificial or arbitrary signs was the prerequisite for the creation of complex human interrelations and mutual commitments — in short, the basis for the creation of human society as we know it, with its political structures, economic relations, and artistic endeavours. In this sense, the language debates in eighteenth-century Europe highlighted a crucial problem in Enlightenment thought: how to think of the transition from a natural form of life (frequently conceptualized as a ‘state of nature’) to an artificial or man-made social condition (usually referred to as ‘civil society’). Language was a much more significant topic in Enlightenment thought than hitherto suggested.

Furthermore, the idea that all distinctive forms of human life are based on artificial signs has been regarded as a main tenet of the Counter-Enlightenment, a relativistic and largely conservative movement which Isaiah Berlin contrasted to a universalistic French Enlightenment. By contrast, that awareness of the historicity and linguistic rootedness of life was a mainstream Enlightenment notion.

This last point means that even if the eighteenth-century discussions of language and mind were quite similar to ours, particular nuances and approaches were moulded by contemporary concerns and contexts. The open and malleable character of the eighteenth-century Republic of Letters is found in a wide variety of authors: Leibniz, Wolff, Condillac, Rousseau, Michaelis, and Herder, among others. The language debates demonstrate that German theories of culture and language were not merely a rejection of French ideas. New notions of the genius of language and its role in cognition were constructed through a complex interaction with cross-European currents, especially via the prize contests at the Berlin Academy.

Avi Lifschitz is Lecturer in Early Modern European History at University College London (UCL); in 2012/13 he is Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study (Wissenschaftskolleg) in Berlin. He is the author of Language and Enlightenment: The Berlin Debates of the Eighteenth Century, available in print from Oxford University Press and online from Oxford Scholarship Online, and co-editor of Epicurus in the Enlightenment (2009).

Oxford Scholarship Online (OSO) is a vast and rapidly-expanding research library. Launched in 2003 with four subject modules, Oxford Scholarship Online is now available in 20 subject areas and has grown to be one of the leading academic research resources in the world. Oxford Scholarship Online offers full-text access to academic monographs from key disciplines in the humanities, social sciences, science, medicine, and law, providing quick and easy access to award-winning Oxford University Press scholarship.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only history articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Image credit: Portrait of Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716), German philosopher, circa 1700, by Christoph Bernhard Francke. Herzog-Anton-Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The post The evolution of language and society appeared first on OUPblog.

Too often patients feel like they’re in the passenger seat when entering the hospital. Even in the best of circumstances — such as planned admissions — patients often don’t feel in control of their own care.

Image credit: Photo by Jose Goulao, CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.

1. Let someone know if you are in pain. This may seem obvious, but patients often hesitate to question their doctor. Pain control during your hospital stay is not a luxury, and you need to know you have a right to pain control during your stay. If your doctor or nurse is not answering your questions regarding pain, ask to see pain specialist who will likely address your concerns as well as the concerns of the doctors and nurses taking care of you. Unfortunately when it comes to treating pain, not all doctors are trained equally.
2. Have a family member or good friend to act as your advocate. Have this individual get involved in your medical care and act on your behalf during your hospitalization.
3. Search for the right hospital for your medical condition. People end up at hospitals for a variety of reasons, but which hospital you go to for your care can make all of the difference. There are several websites that rate hospitals including Hospital Compare, HealthGrades, US News & World Report, and Consumer Reports. Many of these sites allow you to compare hospitals on a variety of criteria, including death rates for a variety of conditions — from heart attacks to pneumonia to surgeries. Hospital Compare, a website provided by the Department of Health and Human Services, even allows you to see how patients felt about how their pain was treated during their stay.
4. Ask questions. Many people are afraid to question their nurses and doctors. Don’t be. If a medication looks new or different, ask what it is and what it is for. As long as you are polite and respectful, your request should be met with acceptance. If you don’t understand something, always question about it. Be assertive.
5. Keep a notebook during your hospital stay, and know your medications and allergies. Record your daily progress, pain levels, medication names and dosages, procedures, treatments, and the names and contact information of your medical team. This way you know what is working well for you pain. Also take notes on conversations with doctors and nurses. Carry the most up-to-date list of your allergies with you, along with another list that contains information on all medications you are taking and the dosages.
6. Meet with your doctors and nurses. Ask your loved one to join you during doctors’ rounds so he or she can also make a list and help you go through your checklist. It’s handy to have someone there to ask questions you may have forgotten. Have your notebook handy. Prepare questions ahead of time about your diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis. Show appreciation to your primary nurse. The more good will you express to this professional, the more attention you will receive. More attention translates to the probability of fewer errors.
7. Avoid medical errors. In 1999, the Institute of Medicine estimated that between 44,000 and 98,000 Americans die each year in hospitals due to medical errors. Medication errors are among the most common medical errors, harming at least 1.5 million people every year. Write down your medications and dosages. List what the medication looks like, the shape and color of any pills, and the names on the labels of bottles or IV bags. Holidays, weekends, and nights have higher likelihood of medical errors, so ask your advocate to be with you as much as possible during these times to help avoid medical errors.
8. Once recovered, leave the hospital as soon as medically possible. While a hospital is the ideal place when you need lifesaving care, it can also create the perfect storm of risks to your health. Hospital-acquired infections, deadly blood clots, falls, and many other “complications” can result from your hospital stay. Every day that you stay in the hospital unnecessarily exposes you to these risks. Ask every person who comes in contact with you, including the physicians and nurses, to wash their hands or put on a fresh pair of disposable gloves before touching you.

Dr. Anita Gupta is a Board Certified Anesthesiologist, Pain Specialist, Pharmacist & Editor. She is an awarding winning physician and is currently an Associate Professor and Medical Director at Drexel College of Medicine in the Division of Pain Medicine in the Department of Anesthesiology in Philadelphia, PA. She has completed the Wharton Total Leadership Program, an active member of the World Health Organization, founder of Women in Medicine, and has been featured on NBC for health topics related to treating pain. She has been a continuous recipient of the National Patients and Compassionate Physician Choice Award from 2010 to 2012, and author of top selling textbooks, Interventional Pain Medicine and Pharmacology in Anesthesia Practice.  She also completed the competitive media and medical advocacy fellowship with the Mayday Foundation in Washington DC.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only health and medicine articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

The post How can you reduce pain during a hospital stay? appeared first on OUPblog.

Targeted killing by drones (using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) or Unmanned Combat Aircraft Systems (UCAS) as weapon platforms) has become an increasingly debated subject. Criticism is not only directed against its overall legality and legitimacy, but also its negative impact on the theatre state as a sovereign state in cases of extraterritorial strikes, a potential lack of efficiency, and a growing uneasiness with its morality. It seems there has been a change in how targeted killing is viewed. Apart from a growing discomfort with civilian ‘collateral’ casualties, there is growing concern about its effectiveness and the acceptance of targeted killing as a new form of warfare. Ben Emmerson, the newly appointed UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counterterrorism, has called for more transparency and accountability when employing this form of warfare.

Drones protest at General Atomics in San Diego by Steve Rhodes,CC BY 2.0, via Flickr.

Targeted killing has direct implications for the morality of armed conflict and combat. Evolving drone technology arguably removes the soldier from the actual battlefield and with it the intimacy of war. UAV technology has created a mechanical and moral distance between the operator and his ‘target’. Targeted killings may have removed any remnants of the ‘humanity of combat’. Such a dehumanizing distance between the protagonists of this new form of armed conflict, asymmetric in terms of weapon technologies and capabilities, has led to a growing criticism of the Obama Administration’s use of drones. Keith Shurtleff, the US Army Chaplain and military ethics teacher, aptly summarized this concern “that as war becomes safer and easier, as soldiers are removed from the horrors of war and see the enemy not as humans but as blips on a screen, there is very real danger of losing the deterrent that such horrors provide.”

Linked to these emerging morality concerns is a growing debate in regard to targeting efficiency: whether target elimination is indeed as efficient as has been claimed, and whether the rising numbers of civilian ‘collateral’ casualties during combat, among the affected civilian populations in Pakistan has a negative impact on antiterrorism and counterinsurgency campaigns. The number of American drone strikes in Pakistan has significantly increased under Obama, since he took office in 2009: “Estimates state that while there were 52 such strikes during George W Bush’s time, this number has risen to 282 over the past three and a half years.” While the Obama Administration maintains that its drone program was largely successful in terms of efficiency rates and low civilian ‘collateral’ casualties, new reports show the opposite. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) reported “that from June 2004 through mid-September 2012, available data indicate that drone strikes killed 2,562-3,325 people in Pakistan, of whom 474-881 were civilians, including 176 children. TBIJ reports that these strikes also injured additional 1,228 – 1,362 individuals,” which would amount to a ‘collateral’ rate of 20 percent.

Whether such a figure alone constitutes violations of the principles of distinction and proportionality of the Law of Armed Conflict, and therefore constitutes possible war crimes, has yet to be seen. A critical high profile joint report by Stanford /NYU report, Living Under Drones, which was released last autumn, alleges that there was a lack of effectiveness when targeting leaders and commanders of Taliban and other affiliated forces. The report calls for a careful re-evaluation of the current use of US targeted killing and drone strikes. These findings contradict any policy announcement by the US government. The casualty figures from the above TBIJ report have already found their way into global public debate. Together with another report by Columbia University, which investigated the human cost of drone strikes, and the UN’s decision to embark on an official inquiry into the use of drones, the official US policy announcement that drone strikes constituted “a surgically precise and effective tool that makes the U.S. safer” is in serious doubt. Moreover, this critique already takes into account that the US has a right to defend itself against Al Qaeda, and therefore the United States is in an armed conflict with a non-state actor. How much harder would it be to justify such ineffective strikes under the alternative non-combat paradigm of law enforcement?

The repercussions of the increasing reliance on drones for executing enemies abroad has led an increase in anti-US hostility, possibly swelled the numbers of the Taliban and other affiliated groups in the region, and led to open criticism by its ally in the region, Pakistan. The Obama Administration has not been taken Such ‘collateral damage’ in the wider sense seriously enough. As the main protagonist of this form of warfare, an omission might turn out to question the success of the ‘War on Terror’ in general and Operation Enduring Freedom in particular. It remains to be seen whether Obama’s recent announcement to impose tighter oversight and targeting rules on drone strikes will be enough to change anything.

Sascha-Dominik Bachmann is a Reader in International Law (University of Lincoln); State Exam  in Law (Ludwig-Maximilians Universität, Munich), Assessor Jur, LL.M (Stellenbosch), LL.D (Johannesburg); Sascha-Dominik is a Lieutenant Colonel in the German Army Reserves and had multiple deployments in peacekeeping missions in operational and advisory roles as part of NATO/KFOR from 2002 to 2006. During that time he was also an exchange officer to the 23^rd US Marine Regiment. He wants to thank Noach Bachmann for his input. This blog post draws from Sascha’s article “Targeted Killings: Contemporary Challenges, Risks and Opportunities” in the Journal of Conflict Security Law and available to read for free for a limited time.

The Journal of Conflict & Security Law is a refereed journal aimed at academics, government officials, military lawyers and lawyers working in the area, as well as individuals interested in the areas of arms control law, the law of armed conflict and collective security law. The journal aims to further understanding of each of the specific areas covered, but also aims to promote the study of the interfaces and relations between them.

Oxford University Press is a leading publisher in Public International Law, including the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law, latest titles from thought leaders in the field, and a wide range of law journals and online products. We publish original works across key areas of study, from humanitarian to international economic to environmental law, developing outstanding resources to support students, scholars, and practitioners worldwide.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only law articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

The post Drone killings appeared first on OUPblog.

I once gave a general talk about ancient Mesopotamian gardens, and was astonished, when I prepared for it, to find that there was really no hard evidence for the Hanging Garden at Babylon, although all the other wonders of the ancient world certainly did exist. A member of the audience stood up and said how disappointed she was that I had not mentioned it. All the stories of the garden were written by Greek writers many centuries after the garden was supposedly built, so some scholars thought the accounts were fairy-tale fiction. That meant that the Hanging Garden didn’t fit the category of marvellous places you could visit. I could see that my audience was disappointed, and the problem lingered irritatingly in the back of my mind.

Some years later I was working on an inscription of the Assyrian king Sennacherib who ruled around 700 BC, at Nineveh not Babylon. It was edited in the 1920s, and one passage made nonsense in the translation.

With a further 70 years of scholarly work now available, including vastly better dictionaries, I have been able to show that the passage relates how Sennacherib cast screws in bronze for watering his terraced garden, some centuries before the time of Archimedes whose name is usually quoted as the inventor. The castings were huge. Sennacherib’s own inscriptions show that he was personally proud of his technical achievements in metal-casting, water management, and collecting exotic foreign plants. Sennacherib called his work a wonder for all peoples.

Because this was all so unusual and unexpected, I re-read the Greek accounts of the Hanging Garden. Strabo mentioned the use of the screw, and must have known that Archimedes lived long after the garden was supposedly made. Herodotus described Babylon, but did not mention the garden. Only one author, Josephus, actually named Nebuchadnezzar as the builder. Another wrote that an Assyrian king built it. Could it be that there were so many confusions, especially Nebuchadnezzar for Sennacherib, Babylon for Nineveh?

In the British Museum a panel of sculpture found at Nineveh had long been understood as a likely prototype for the Hanging Garden at Babylon. It was carved in the reign of Sennacherib’s grandson, and was thought to show Sennacherib’s garden when it had matured. It shows an aqueduct supplying water just as the Greek accounts said. The British Museum also has a 19th century drawing of a sculpture from Nineveh, now lost, which matched the most original detail in the Greek texts: there was a pillared walkway on the top terrace of the garden, thickly roofed, and trees were planted on top of that roof.

The aqueduct shown in the British Museum’s sculpture could not be traced by archaeologists at Nineveh, but could be traced further away in a watercourse that stretched back 80km into the mountains. Wonderful rock-cut panels with huge sculptures of the king Sennacherib and the gods of Assyria, as well as an inscription, revealed that the palace garden at Nineveh was only the end result of a staggering work of water engineering.

More than 300 years later, when Alexander the Great was preparing for the battle of Gaugamela in which he defeated the Persian king, he camped in the vicinity of a central part of Sennacherib’s watercourse where over two million dressed stones were used in an aqueduct crossing a valley. His scouts would have seen inscriptions and sculptures, and heard about the garden. Later Greek writers extracted their accounts of the Hanging Garden from Alexander’s companions whose writings no longer survive.

There may be much confusion surrounding the Hanging Garden, but it is clear that amazing technology created a magnificent garden and justifies its place among the original seven wonders of the world.

Stephanie Dalley is an Honorary Research Fellow at Somerville College, Oxford, and a member of the Oriental Institute at Wolfson College, Oxford. With degrees in Assyriology from the Universities of Cambridge and London, her academic career has specialized in the study of ancient cuneiform texts and she has worked on archaeological excavations in Iraq, Turkey, Syria, and Jordan. Her most recent book, The Mystery of the Hanging Garden of Babylon, was published by OUP in 2013.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only classics and archaeology articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

The post The mystery of the Hanging Garden of Babylon appeared first on OUPblog.

On Father’s Day, we rarely celebrate presidents, though we could. All but a handful of our presidents were fathers, and our first president, George Washington, is commonly regarded as the Father of our country. While of course nothing about being president necessarily makes anyone a better parent, many presidents have in fact had their legacies largely shaped by their relationships with their fathers and children. Only a few of these relationships have been examined at great length, especially those between John Adams and George H.W. Bush and their two sons, who each became president in their own right. While most others have been forgotten, remembering at least some of them would enrich our understanding of not only other presidencies but also the human dimensions of the presidency.

Consider just three examples. First, William Henry Harrison is known only as the first president to die in office. He is widely dismissed having been a non-entity as president since he died merely 31 days after his inauguration. Yet, Harrison came by his interest in politics honestly. He was the son of a distinguished politician, Benjamin Harrison V, who had been, among other things, a delegate to the Continental Congress, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and a Governor of Virginia. Before becoming president, William Henry Harrison had enjoyed a career in public service that rivaled his father and had 11 children, including one whom he named after his father. Another one of his sons, John, had 10 children himself, including one whom he named Benjamin. Benjamin was eight years old when his grandfather became president. When Benjamin became president in 1888, he was determined not to fade into obscurity as his grandfather had done. He accomplished a surprising amount in his one term in office, including making four Supreme Court appointments (the fourth most by a president in a single term) and signing several landmark pieces of legislation, including the Sherman Antitrust Act. However when his wife died in the midst of his reelection campaign, he lost whatever desire he had left for public service. He subsequently married his deceased wife’s niece and former secretary, and lived out his remaining days estranged from his other children but active as both a distinguished lawyer and father to their young child.

Franklin Pierce was a president who was heavily influenced by his son. Most historians dismiss Pierce as a weak, ineffective president. Yet Pierce’s presidency cannot be understood without recognizing the tragedy before it. As he, his wife, and young son traveled to Washington for his inauguration, the railcar in which they were riding came off the tracks and Pierce and his wife watched helplessly as the train rolled down an embankment, their son crushed to death. Pierce’s wife Jane never recovered. She spent most of her time in the White House shunning her husband and blaming him for the death of their son. The effect on Pierce himself was hard. He opened his inaugural address by asking the American people to give him strength. Throughout his presidency, he looked for solace in religion and in the company of a very few people whom he liked and trusted. Among these was Jefferson Davis, who wielded enormous influence over Pierce as his Secretary of War. Davis, along with Senator Stephen Douglas, persuaded Pierce to abandon his campaign pledge to maintain the Missouri Compromise (which barred slavery in certain federal territories) and instead to sign into law a bill that allowed the new States of Kansas and Nebraska the sovereignty to decide for themselves on whether to allow or bar slavery. Pierce’s decision to side with the pro-slavery forces in Kansas, supported by Davis, among others, provoked civil war in Kansas. After failing to be re-nominated for president by his own party (the last sitting president to have failed to have done so), he blamed abolitionists for the Civil War and looked for solace in alcohol, which eventually killed him.

William Howard Taft, like William Henry Harrison, came from Ohio and a political family. Taft’s father served as both Secretary of War and Attorney General in Grant’s administration, and he instilled within his son William a strong passion for public service. By the time he became president, William Howard Taft had assembled one of the most distinguished records of public service of any president, including service as Secretary of War and federal court of appeals judge. Unlike Harrison, Taft made it through one term, though he did not enjoy it. He wanted instead to become Chief Justice of the United States, a position he achieved almost a decade after losing reelection in 1916. Taft had three children, including one son, Robert, whom he named after the first Taft to settle in this country. Robert’s son, Robert Jr., became an influential senator from Ohio and strong contender for the presidency in the 1950s. Bob Taft, Jr., shared his grandfather’s staunch conservatism and became a model for conservative senators throughout the remainder of the 20th century.

One of the conservatives whom William Howard Taft strongly influenced was Calvin Coolidge. Coolidge was a little known Governor of Massachusetts when he became Warren Harding’s running mate and Vice-President. After Harding died, Coolidge won Americans’ confidence when he helped to oversee the investigation into the corruption in Harding’s — and his own — administration. When he nominated the Attorney General he had brought in to clean up the Justice Department, Harland Fiske Stone, to the Supreme Court, Stone made history himself as the first Supreme Court nominee to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee. By 1924, Coolidge was so popular that he easily won election to the presidency in his own right. Unfortunately, by then, he had lost his interest in the job. Just before the election, his beloved son, Cal, died from a freak accident he had suffered while playing tennis bare foot on the White House tennis court. Coolidge became eager to leave the presidency and did little to help his Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover, in his presidential bid in 1928. When Coolidge died shortly before Franklin Roosevelt’s inauguration, most Americans had either forgotten him or dismissed him as a relic of the past.

These other presidents, who both influenced and were influenced by their children, are reminders that in the end presidents are people too. They are not just powerful leaders but also, sometimes more importantly, fathers; and the pride and pain they felt as fathers were at least as important to them as anything they did in office.

Michael Gerhardt is Samuel Ashe Distinguished Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. A nationally recognized authority on constitutional conflicts, he has testified in several Supreme Court confirmation hearings, and has published several books, including The Forgotten Presidents: Their Untold Constitutional Legacy. Read his previous blog post “The presidents that time forgot.”

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only American history articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

The post Presidential fathers appeared first on OUPblog.

The night I saw The Avengers for the first time, I took the train back to my apartment and immediately dashed off the following email to a friend of mine:

“The Avengers was amazing, I can’t even describe it. Feeling strangely fearless about life, and my head is filled with too many intellectual thoughts about superheroes.”

A bit hyperbolic, perhaps, driven by excessive euphoria and a distinct lack of sleep, but all’s fair in the world of comics and “POW BAM KABLAM.” In some ways, that email is the most succinct explanation of my relationship with superheroes that I’ve ever offered to anyone.

Perhaps because I became a fan of comic-book superheroes relatively late in the game (I didn’t so much as pick up a graphic novel until my freshman year of college), my fascination with superheroes has always been a healthy mix of unadulterated love and academic curiosity. Anyone who’s spent more than five minutes with me knows I can rave for hours about the beauty of Matt Fraction’s new Hawkeye series. Anyone who spends more than ten minutes with me knows that I’ve also presented at an academic conference about Hawkeye and depictions of disability in comics—and about the importance of looking at popular culture through a critical as well as enthusiastic lens.

When I started as an editorial assistant at Oxford University Press ten months ago, two of the first titles I began work on were Our Superheroes, Ourselves, edited by Robin Rosenberg, and What is a Superhero?, edited by Robin Rosenberg and Peter Coogan. They’ve been a learning experience in more ways than one. It’s been a fantastic opportunity to work on a project whose topic was so close to my heart. The books operate at a unique and brilliant intersection between enthusiastic love and academic inquiry—celebrating superheroes even as they ask why they remain such compelling and permanent fixtures in our cultural landscape. In preparing the manuscripts for production, corresponding with the volume editors, and reaching out to academics and comic-book writers alike for endorsements, I’ve had ample opportunity to reflect on the nature of superheroes and their meaning to fans and creators.

From my own personal perspective, there has always been something particularly joyous about not only being a fan of superheroes but also participating in the communities that have sprung up around them, especially when one considers the multitude of angles that people approach comics fandom. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a more passionate group of people than superhero and science fiction fans—people who love these stories so much that they will devote hours of their creative energy into writing, drawing, and putting together costumes of their favorite superheroes. People love superheroes because they mean the world to them, for one reason or another, and to take part in such a collective passion will always be a ridiculously fun experience.

At the same time, I have always been an eager student of American history, and superheroes offer an important reflection not only on our current society but also on our own cultural history. As several contributors to What is a Superhero? point out, it’s no coincidence that the rise of the modern-day superhero occurred in 1930s America, in the depths of the Great Depression and on the eve of the second World War. Our same heroes have proven to be remarkably pliant and adaptable over the years (much like the ever-elastic Mr. Fantastic), molding to fit the country’s political and social climate. It’s quite telling, for example, that it took until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s for Marvel to create its first African-American superhero, the Black Panther, and that one of Ms. Magazine’s first covers was an image of Wonder Woman in 1972, heralding the second-wave feminist movement. More recently, I re-watched the 2008 Iron Man film and was struck by how dated it already is even five years later. It’s extremely attuned to the politics of the late Bush years, and strives to offer commentary on the United States’ wars abroad even as it delivers high-flying adventures with Tony Stark.

No matter what the time period, superheroes will always mean something different to each individual fan, and everyone seems to have a different idea of what makes a superhero—not only that, everyone seems to have a different favorite, and a huge variety of reasons why. Some fans prefer their superheroes to be high above mere mortals, a flawless ideal to aspire to. Some prefer their superheroes to have their own weaknesses and flaws in personality, making for a more human, relatable hero. Luckily the genre has something for everyone—Superman fans will be getting their fill this summer with Man of Steel, while fans of the more flawed superhero cheered on genius billionaire playboy Tony Stark in Iron Man 3.

Personally, the superhero that has made the biggest difference in my life is Bruce Banner, aka The Incredible Hulk, particularly Mark Ruffalo’s rendition of the character in The Avengers last year. Banner’s quiet struggle with his inner demon that becomes the Hulk has resonated with me more than any superhero narrative I’d ever encountered. To see Banner quietly and eloquently work to overcome his demons, to master this worst part of himself and channel it into something heroic—something that could help save the world—meant more to me than I’ll ever be able to express.

Bruce Banner’s journey with the Incredible Hulk was the primary reason I wrote that email a year ago, why I said to my friend I was feeling strangely fearless about life. Superheroes can offer us limitless inspiration, whether it’s in the blatant smashing of the Hulk or in the joyous pursuit of flight seen in Kelly Sue DeConnick’s new Captain Marvel series.Our Superheroes, Ourselves, and What is a Superhero? have provided me with more than a few hours of deep thoughts, and I couldn’t be more excited to help bring them to the world.

Suzanne Walker works as an editorial assistant at OUP. She recently gave a presentation called “Deafening Outcry: Hawkeye, Transformative Works, and the Recreation of Disability,” at Syracuse University’s Disability Studies conference. When not at work she reads and blogs about comics. She tries to channel Bruce Banner more often than she tries to channel the Hulk.

Image credit: Photo by Suzanne Walker. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.

The post A love of superheroes appeared first on OUPblog.

The AMA Manual of Style is a must-have guide for anyone involved in medical and scientific publishing. Users can access the full-text of the print book, plus online only content including monthly quizzes, blog posts and updates. This is the go-to resource for producing articles and research papers that are well organized and authoritative.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only health and medicine articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

The post Ethical and Legal Considerations Quiz appeared first on OUPblog.

The recent revelations concerning widespread US government access to electronic communications data (including the PRISM system apparently run by the National Security Agency) leave many questions unanswered, and new facts are constantly emerging. Thoughtful commentators should be hesitant to make detailed pronouncements before it is clear what is actually going on.

Nevertheless, given the potential of these developments to fundamentally reshape the data protection and privacy landscape, I cannot resist drawing a few high-level, preliminary conclusions, from a European perspective:

Legal protection without political commitment is insufficient to protect privacy. In the regulation of data flows across national borders, trying to resolve conflicts between privacy regulation and government access requirements solely through legal means puts more pressure on the law than it can bear. In addition to strong legal measures, we need greater commitment to privacy protection at the political level, which unfortunately is lacking in many countries.

Government access to personal data is a global issue. International Data Privacy Law recently published a detailed legal analysis last year of systematic government access to private-sector data in nine countries (Australia, Canada, China, Germany, India, Israel, Japan, the UK, and the US), and concluded that a lack of adequate transparency and clear legal standards in this area is a global problem. Revelations about the US programs should not distract attention from issues regarding government access to data in other countries.

There should be more transparency around government data access. Governments have yet to learn one of the main lessons from data breach cases, namely that they need to be dealt with openly and transparently. It would have been preferable if there had been a reasoned public discussion about these law enforcement programs over the last few years, rather than having them explode in the press like a bombshell.

Penalizing discussion of the possibility of government data access is counterproductive. Laws that prohibit discussing the existence of government data access programs should be changed. How can we judge whether access is necessary and legally justified if we can’t even mention the fact that it is occurring? And I can’t believe that many terrorists nowadays are ignorant of the fact that their electronic communications may be subject to government surveillance.

The debate about the legality of these programs so far has been simplistic. Since news of these surveillance programs broke, some commentators have argued that all law enforcement surveillance is illegitimate, while others maintain that it is presumptively permissible as long as it is useful. Such a black-or-white approach is incorrect and unsatisfying. There is a need for a more sophisticated analysis, which could be based on well-established European legal concepts such as whether a particular surveillance program is proportionate, and whether it is necessary in a democratic society.

These revelations will cause embarrassment to European governments as well to the United States. The legal and political fallout will not be limited to the US. It is well-known that the US shares a good deal of intelligence with European countries, and awkward questions are already being raised about the extent to which European intelligence services may have accessed data collected by the US under PRISM and similar programs.

Distinguishing between privacy protection for nationals and foreigners is indefensible. On 7 June, President Obama attempted to reassure the American public by saying that access to Internet and e-mail data “does not apply to U.S. citizens, and it does not apply to people living in the United States”. Such statements will only cause concern among the billions of Internet users outside the US. Having stressed the need for a global system of privacy protection in its February 2012 report on “Consumer Data Privacy in a Networked World”, it is inconsistent for the White House imply that US citizens should be given a higher level of privacy protection than non-citizens.

These developments will have major consequences for data protection and privacy law. The long-term effect of these developments on data protection and privacy law cannot yet be foreseen, but some consequences are already apparent. For instance, the EU General Data Protection Regulation proposed in 2012 by the European Commission, final approval of which has been hampered by political disagreement, may receive new impetus from the recent revelations, while the proposed EU-US Free Trade Agreement may suffer.

The effectiveness of data protection and privacy regulation is ultimately dependent on individuals having confidence in how their data are processed. This confidence has been severely shaken in recent days; it is important for both governments and the private sector to take steps to strengthen it, before it is too late.

Dr. Christopher Kuner is editor-in-chief of the journal International Data Privacy Law. He is author of European Data Protection Law: Corporate Compliance and Regulation, and the new book Transborder Data Flow Regulation and Data Privacy Law in which he elaborates some of the topics discussed here. Dr. Kuner is Senior Of Counsel at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati in Brussels, and an Honorary Fellow of the Centre for European Legal Studies, University of Cambridge.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only law and politics articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

The post Government data surveillance through a European PRISM appeared first on OUPblog.

Late last year, The Chronicle Review published a cover story on Louis Michael Sediman and the Constitution. In his interview with The Chronicle’s Alexander Kafka, Seidman explains that he began questioning the role of Constitution in the early 1970’s while clerking for Thurgood Marshall, and then working for the D.C. public defender, experiences which offered him the opportunity to see Constitutionalism in practice. Seidman asserted that invoking the Constitution in any political argument is “profoundly beside the point” distracting us from what policies would be best in regards to our most contentious issues: health care, gun control, antiterrorism, and so on.

This generated the first of a series of vituperative responses surrounding the publication of On Constitutional Disobedience. Published in February by Oxford as part of the Inalienable Rights series, the book became a lightning rod for many who were offended by Seidman questioning whether the Constitution should still be the centerpiece of our government and legal system. He began receiving the angry emails after the New York Times published an op-ed adapted from the book. “I’ve received over a thousand abusive emails…the vast majority I can only describe as abusive and offensive. Hundreds are anti-Semitic; a few threaten physical violence,” he explained.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The volume grew after an appearance on CBS Sunday Morning and the EconTalk podcast with Russ Roberts. Seidman and his correspondents have generously allowed us to reproduce their exchanges below.

From: Nick Karr
To:Louis Seidman

Mr. Seidman-

I’m writing to say thank you for your recent interview with Russ Roberts on EconTalk. I found it incredibly thought provoking, and has given me a new perspective on the role that The Constitution plays in our society.

To be completely forthcoming, when I first read your piece in the Times, my initial response was one of anger and disdain for your position. I consider myself to be quite conservative, and also a “strict constructionist.” As such, the Constitution is sacrosanct.  Yet at the same time, I also would like to think of myself as being an open minded and critically thinking person. I am realizing, however, that much of what I believe might be more dogma than based on rationally formulated arguments.

I am a huge fan of Mr. Roberts program, in large part based on what I perceive to be his openness to allowing those that he might not entirely agree with to express their opinions. Your interview was much less “threatening” to me, as I already had a certain level of trust with his show. The interview allowed greater opportunity, as I see it, for you to develop your argument in a way that was not possible in the op-ed of a newspaper.

While I still might not agree with your position, primarily in what I can summarize as the “devil you know, devil you don’t know” concern about rewriting or abandoning the constitution, I still can appreciate the idea of at least questioning how much we really currently adhere to the Constitution.

As an orthodox Jew, I accept the Torah as being true.  I am a religious person, and this is a tenet of my belief system. But the Constitution is not a religious document, although I’m sure that there are those who would disagree with me on this. That being the case, blind obedience to a document written by man deserves to be critically analyzed.

Thank you again for your work,

Nick.

From: Louis Seidman
To: Nick Karr

Mike

* * * * * * *

From: Matthew Barton
To: Louis Seidman

I listened with interest to your conversation on Econ Talk…

I think the most significant point which you failed to address is precisely why the constitutional limits on the coercive power of government are important… In this regard, your argument is entirely positivist…

Whether they are precisely correct or not, these constraints permit a spontaneous social order (ie., kosmos) to emerge that, as Hayek so thoughfully articulated in “The Use of Knowledge in Society” incorporates more knowledge than can be known to a single mind…

Yes, structure of government is deliberately organized - that is, it is a taxis – but the power that organizes this structure should be limited to the adminstration of government and not toward directing the affairs of individuals in the service of particular aims… And as was mentioned, there are mechanisms by which the limits to government’s monopoly on power can be altered – and the difficulty with which they are employed ensures that only those changes with which most agree will be enacted…

Respectfully,

Matt Barton

From: Louis Seidman
To: Matthew Barton

Mike Seidman

This correspondence exemplifies the best that can come out of good university press publishing: encouraging smart dialogue that challenges readers, students, and also the author. As Seidman writes to Nick Karr: “one of the great things about writing the book that I’ve just published is that it provides an opportunity to exchange ideas with interesting and thoughtful people like you.”

Jeremy Wang-Iverson is a senior publicist at Oxford University Press.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only law and politics articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

The post Criticize the Constitution? Blasphemy! appeared first on OUPblog.

Curated from the pages of Assimilate: A Critical History of Industrial Music, this playlist spans over 30 years, offering a chronological tour of industrial music. From its politically charged beginnings in noisy performance art and process-based tape meddling, it moved into 1980s flirtations with rock to its more recent aggressive, synth-driven goth-tinged dance stylings. Highlights include not only the classic work of Ministry, Front 242, and Skinny Puppy, but also nearly forgotten early work of Die Krupps and the moody latter-day masterpieces by Covenant and Wumpscut.

S. Alexander Reed is Assistant Professor of Music Theory at the University of Florida. He has published and presented research on vocal timbre, embodiment, postpunk music, and the recordings of Nine Inch Nails, Laurie Anderson, Rammstein, and Tori Amos. Reed has released five albums with his own gothic-industrial band, ThouShaltNot. For more Assimilate-inspired playlists like this one, check out author S. Alexander Reed’s website.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only music articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

The post 20 of the most iconic songs in industrial music appeared first on OUPblog.

It’s the summer of the superhero here at Oxford University Press. We’re publishing two essay collections on the real powers superheroes hold — on our imagination and our understanding of the world. Our Superheroes, Ourselves, edited by Robin S. Rosenberg, PhD, and What is a Superhero?, edited by Robin S. Rosenberg, PhD and Peter Coogan, PhD, look at some of our greatest superheroes (and supervillains) and explore what exactly makes them “super”. We immediately think of the superhuman powers that our heroes use to save the day. But then again, superpowers can be used for good or evil…

What do you want for your superpower and why? Just as the powers and abilities of Batman and Superman reveal their personal history, your choice reveals a great deal about yourself. So in the spirit of revealing the truth about our superheroes — and ourselves — we are holding an essay contest to find out exactly what you’re made of. Simply follow the guidelines below on submitting your essay and you could be wearing Oxford lycra before you know it (wearing Oxford lyrca = holding an Oxford book). Entries will be judged by Oxford University Press superhero staff experts (costumes optional; secret identities to be protected and all).

Submission guidelines:

• One entry per person. If multiple entries are submitted, only the first will be considered and you will incur the wrath of your greatest nemesis.
• Entries must be no longer than 500 words. Longer entries will be zapped or kapowed.
• Email your submission to blog[at]oup[dot]com by midnight US Eastern time on 14 July 2013. Entries received after that time will not be considered and swallowed by a time vortex.
• Subject must read “OUP Superhero essay contest-(title)” (e.g., OUP Superhero essay contest-Power of Flight)
• Body of the email must include the title of the essay and your full name and contact information (street address, email, phone)
• The essay must be included in an attached document that does not include your name to facilitate blind judging. Title of the attachment must be the title of your essay.
• Be clear about whether the superpower is for good or evil, or the interpretation will be at the mercy of the judges.
• By entering the competition, you agree to these Terms and Conditions.

What the judges are looking for?

• Proper grammar, spelling, and style. Never forget the Oxford comma!
• The craftsmanship of a hero who has come on a long journey to fully realize their powers.
• Imaginative detail and creativity in your writing utility belt.
• What the entry reveals about the everyday hero behind the mask.

What will you win?

• A free copy of Our Superheroes, Ourselves, What is a Superhero?, and Classics and Comics (one of each).
• Two tickets to 92nd Street Y Tribeca event “What is a Superhero?” on 24 July 2013 (normally $15/ticket).
• The winning essay(s) will be published on the OUPblog on 19 July 2013.
• We reserve the right not to award a prize if we feel the submissions do not meet our criteria.

Go now, Braniacs, Black Widows, and Batmen, and use your creative powers to submit a piece! The fate of the world depends on it.

Robin S. Rosenberg is a clinical psychologist. In addition to running a private practice, she writes about superheroes and the psychological phenomena their stories reveal. She is editor of Psychology of Superheroes, Our Superheroes, Ourselves, and What is a Superhero?.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only arts and leisure articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

Image credit: Hugh Jackman X-Men Origins Wolverine gif, creative commons license via Perez Hilton.

The post Superhero essay competition: tell us your favorite superpower appeared first on OUPblog.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it another Superman-related blogpost to tie in with today’s release of Man of Steel? Hold on to the bulging blue bicep of Oxford University Press and prepare to gaze below in wonder as we take you on a ride over the past 80 years of Superman.

Superorigins

To understand Superman’s beginnings we must, with the help of the American National Biography, fly all the way back to 1930. This was when cartoonist Joe Shuster first met writer Jerry Siegel, while they were both working on the Glenville High School newspaper. Their first collaboration was a parody of superhuman fictional heroes called “Goober the Mighty”, and their first formulation of a character called Superman was for a mimeographed fan magazine they produced starting in 1932 called Science Fiction. At this point Superman was an evil figure bent on world domination.

The pair re-envisioned the character as an alien from another planet who was devoted to truth and justice on earth, who disguised himself as the shy, bespectacled reporter for the Daily Planet, Clark Kent, but who, when trouble threatened, was able to transform himself into Superman: “Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap buildings in a single bound!” After several efforts Shuster was able to realise Siegel’s concept, and Superman gained the physical form that we recognise today: handsome chiselled features, blue skin tight outfit, big red pants, swishy cape, and the large “S” shield across the chest.

Superinfluences

While the concept was original, behind it was a wealth of cultural influences: the mythic figures Samson, Hercules, and Beowulf; romantic fictional characters such as the Three Musketeers and the costumed Scarlet Pimpernel; science fiction texts by Jules Verne, H. G. Wells — and especially Philip Wylie’s novel Gladiator, which featured a superhuman protagonist; adventure characters from the comic strips, such as Tarzan, Buck Rogers, and the sailor with superstrength, Popeye; and the swashbuckling costume films of Douglas Fairbanks.

Supersuccess and superstruggles

After moving to New York and meeting hard times, Shuster and Siegel sold the character in March 1938 to the firm that would become DC Comics for $130. In June, the first Superman comic book appeared, and it was immediately obvious that the young men had made a disastrous mistake. A Superman comic strip began newspaper syndication in January 1939; a separate Superman comic book appeared that summer; a radio show debuted in February 1940; a series of animated films from Fleischer Studios began release in 1941 (see the first episode below); and in the decades to follow he would rarely be off television and cinema screens. Legal battles have ensued ever since over the copyright, but Shuster and Siegel were never able to gain a share of Superman’s earnings in their lifetimes. Siegel worked most of his life as a clerk-typist, Shuster as a messenger.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Superfacts

The phrase “Is it a bird? Is it a plane?” was never actually used in Superman. The Oxford Dictionary of American Quotations reveals that the passage which became famous (before it was misremembered) as the lead-in to the Superman radio show is:

“Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound! Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman!”

Superman’s costume would not have been made from lycra, which wasn’t invented until the 1950s. The word kryptonite does not currently appear in the Oxford English Dictionary, though it does appear in Oxford Dictionaries Online. Without Superman the word brainiac would not exist as we know it. It was first used in a Superman comic strip from Action Comics in July 1958:

“Did the earthlings dare to send a ship to stop me, Brainiac, Master of Super-Scientific Forces? We’ll show them, Koko!”

It was the name of a super-intelligent alien character, apparently coming from a blend of brain and maniac. The OED records that Action Comics discovered that a real Brainiac existed “in the form of an ingenious ‘Brainiac Computer Kit’ invented in 1955 by Edmund C. Berkeley [to build small electronic computing devices]. In deference to his ‘Brainiac’ which pre-dates ours … we are changing the characterization of our ‘Brainiac’ so that the master-villain will henceforth possess a ‘computer personality’.”

Superstage and superscreen

There has been a version of Superman on stage or screen in every decade since his first appearance in print.

1940s: Kirk Alyn was the first man to portray Superman on screen, in two widely distributed Superman serials, the first appearing in 1945.

1950s: A popular television series, The Adventures of Superman, with George Reeves ran for 104 episodes between 1952 and 1958.

1960s: A musical called It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Superman was produced on Broadway in 1966 with Bob Holiday as Superman, but closed in the same year.

1970s and 1980s: Superman returned to the big screen in 1978, starring Christopher Reeve in Richard Donner’s Superman, which was followed by sequels in 1980, 1983, and 1987.

1990s: Another television series, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, began in 1993, which this time placed the main focus on the relationship between Teri Hatcher’s Lois Lane, and Dean Cain’s Clark Kent.

2000s: Smallville, which began in 2001, featured a teenage Clark Kent (Tom Welling) before he donned the blue tights. Then in 2006 came Bryan Singer’s attempted cinema reboot, Superman Returns, starring Brandon Routh. It received generally positive reviews, but the planned sequel was cancelled.

2010s: Man of Steel, directed by Zack Snyder and starring Henry Cavill, is released on June 14th 2013.

So, as we have returned to the present it seems the time has come to set you back down on your balcony and let you brush your hair, you’re looking a bit windswept. OUP of course haven’t got a hair out of place — we applied brylcreem before the flight. You should now be prepared for a trip to see Man of Steel this weekend. Do be gentle with him, he’s been through a lot.

Deborah Sims works in publicity at OUP. She is faster than a stationary bullet, and hopes she is more powerful than a model locomotive, but she has her doubts. You can find more about the Oxford resources mentioned in this article in Oxford Reference, Oxford Index, American National Biography, and Oxford Dictionaries.

Oxford University Press will be holding an essay contest to celebrate our super summer with two upcoming books on superheroes: Our Superheroes, Ourselves edited by Robin S. Rosenberg and What is a Superhero? edited by Robin S. Rosenberg and Peter Coogan. Stay tuned for information on the competition later today!

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only television and film articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

NOTE: Superman is a registered trademark of DC Comics.
Image credit: Man of Steel Movie poster via manofsteel.warnerbros.com used for the purposes of illustration. TM & © 2013 WARNER BROS. ENTERTAINMENT INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. TM & © DC COMICS (From DC Entertainment)

The post An Oxford Companion to Superman appeared first on OUPblog.

By Simon Usherwood

To the casual observer of British politics, we would appear to be heading towards a referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union (EU). The Prime Minister has spoken for it, the clamour in the press and in the lobbies of Westminster continues to grow stronger and there is no good reason to speak against it, or so it would seem.

As with much casual observation, this is not really the case when we look more closely. David Cameron’s speech in January offered only a very minor advance, either of his previous position or even of government policy. Since the passing of the European Union Act in 2011, there has been a requirement for a referendum for any new transfer of power to the Union. The noises off by backbenchers and media commentators are as much driven by frustration as by success. With neither Labour nor the Liberal Democrats willing to match Cameron’s offer to press for a renegotiation and then a referendum, we remain where we have been for some considerable period of time.

Moreover, the entire referendum argument risks obscuring something much more consequential, namely the paucity of public debate about European integration.

To be clear, there is much more of a debate in the UK about ‘Europe’ than in most other member states. The connection elsewhere to a bigger project of political or economic modernisation, or a ‘return to Europe’, tends to take the edge off questions of the value of participating in integration, which is essentially seen as self-evident. The historical British experience of the EU — as something to be caught up with, for lack of a credible alternative — has been rather different, and so has opened a space for questioning that has long raised eyebrows in other capitals.

However, even in this relatively well-developed public debate (consider the number of times one sees an EU-related headline in the news), there is very little substance. For many in the UK, ‘Europe’ means bendy bananas, votes for prisoners (which isn’t even the EU), and not much else. By giving a byword for technocrats in Brussels making thoughtless decisions which they impose on us, we actually lose sight of what really happens. What debate there is all too often rests on little more than some half-formed ideas of what is happening, with some teasing of foreigners thrown in for good measure.

For something that both pro- and anti- sides of the debate would claim is an important part of our lives, this seems rather incredible. Instead of getting a real sense of the context and process by which decisions are made, or an understanding of the issues at hand, there is general hand-waving and appeals to higher values. Thus, any referendum is not about the Union and Britain’s part in it, but about giving the people a voice. It seems odd then that those same advocates do not press for referenda about the reform of the NHS or changes to schooling.

In the (still unlikely) event that there is a referendum, I would doubt that there will be much informed discussion. Instead we will have some headline facts and figures, together with some celebrity endorsements and a couple of half-hearted TV debates, watched by few and cared about by fewer still. Whatever the result, it would not solve any of the long-term questions about Britain’s relationship with the rest of the Continent, nor offer a constructive agenda for the future.

As both a political scientist and as a citizen, that pains me. If democracy is about anything, then it is about participation by the people. Part of that is voting, but that voting should be only one element in a bigger process of engagement, reflection, and discussion. For the EU, just as for any political issue that faces us, we should be at the front of debate, challenging those who offer to lead us to show the true value of their judgments and their abilities. If we do not, then we risk continuing the drift in policy that we served so inadequately of late, and that’s true whatever you think of the European Union.

Simon Usherwood is Senior Lecturer in the School of Politics at the University of Surrey. He is the co-author of The European Union: A Very Short Introduction. He blogs here and tweets from @Usherwood

The Very Short Introductions (VSI) series combines a small format with authoritative analysis and big ideas for hundreds of topic areas. Written by our expert authors, these books can change the way you think about the things that interest you and are the perfect introduction to subjects you previously knew nothing about. Grow your knowledge with OUPblog and the VSI series every Friday and like Very Short Introductions on Facebook.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only VSI articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only politics articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

Image credits: David Cameron, photo by by Remy Steinegger [Creative Commons licence] via Wikimedia Commons; European Union flag, © Johan Ramberg via istockphoto.

The post The European Union: debate or referendum? appeared first on OUPblog.

Suddenly, it seems, meditation is all the rage. Prestigious medical schools (Harvard, Duke, etc.) have whole departments devoted to “Integrative Medicine” in which meditation plays an essential part. Troubled teens are given a healthy dose of mindfulness and their behavior improves. Long-term prisoners in maximum security prisons have gone on ten day meditation retreats, sitting for 12 hours a day in a makeshift gymnasium ashram. There is meditation for alcoholics and heroin addicts and overworked corporate attorneys, for those facing death from untreatable illness and for those nearing the day when, with the grace of God or Nature or Luck, they will give birth. Studies have shown that meditation helps in medical conditions from depression to diabetes, psoriasis to high blood pressure to the side effects of cancer treatments.

How come?

Spiritually, meditation’s efficacy stems from the power of the mind to shape reality. From yoga’s two-thousand-year-old goal of “stilling the movements of the mind” to most any eclectic spiritual teacher of today, we are told that how we think is an essential constituent of the world we inhabit. Familiar examples of this truth are not hard to find. Think that a room full of strangers won’t like you, and you’ll most likely be withdrawn, suspicious, or a tad hostile, provoking a comparable response. Treat co-workers as if they deserve respect and kindness, and there’s a good chance you’ll get that back from them. Live in constant state of stress and you will burn out your immune system.

Even more, our values and beliefs color the entire fabric of existence. After all, if a pickpocket sees a saint all he sees are pockets. People for whom only success or wealth are important become blind to simple beauty, moments of tenderness, the ability to enjoy what they have instead of always wanting more. A glass is half empty or half-full not because of how much liquid is in it, but because of what we believe.

This all relates to meditation because meditation is a kind of yoga of the mind, doing for our consciousness what yoga postures do for our muscles and bones. With meditation we discover not only how much the mind shapes what we see in the world, but how much we ourselves can determine the mind’s contents. We realize that it is both crucially important and malleable. We can detach from it, examine it, decide what part makes sense and what doesn’t and act—or better think—accordingly.

The two main dimensions of meditation are awareness and focus. In the first, which is the core of the widely taught vipassanā or insight meditation that is a major component of integrative medicine, you simply sit comfortably and attend to your breath, allowing thoughts to come and go, learning to witness thought forms, bodily sensations, and emotional patterns. Extended practice of vipassanā can help us answer basic questions: What thoughts keep appearing, no matter what else is going on? How do we define the world for ourselves? How many of our thoughts really make sense and how many are simply unthinking, irrational, even destructive habits?

In my first extended experience of meditation I found myself in near agony sitting in a cross-legged position with strained my hips and aching knees. Being the Type AA personality I am, I kept myself in the position until the session ended. Then, with a blinding flash of insight (which any acquaintance could surely have told me!) I realized how much of my life was defined by setting goals, doing anything to meet them, and ignoring the unpleasant consequences to myself or (as the inevitable fatigue, irritation, or depression resulted) to others.

Perhaps the ultimate gift of simply watching one’s mind is the ability not—or not necessarily—to be moved by what one is thinking. Chronic anxiety, lasting grief, burning rage, even a maddening itch between the shoulder blades—all these can be witnessed, experienced, and understood without driving us to act. The constituent parts of emotions and sensation—where they arise, how long they last, whether they burn or throb, vacillate or stay the same—start to lose their power over us. Instead of doing something because we want a drink, are angry at our mothers, or are nervous about an upcoming test, we simply note the discomfort, study it, and let it pass. The result can be a precious inner calm, one that not only makes our experience a lot more pleasant but has manifold healing effects on our nervous system, glands, and soft tissues.

For most spiritual teachers it is a profound truth that, as Buddha taught: “Whatever harm an enemy may do to an enemy, or a hater to a hater, an ill-directed mind inflicts on oneself a greater harm.” Thus the second form of meditation — common in both religious tradition and contemporary, non-traditional spirituality — is focus: concentrating the mind on a thought or image, a desired virtue (kindness or humility), or a sacred figure (God or some inspiring teacher). Here “What kind of person do I want to be?” becomes for a time the question “What do I want to think about?” And so a Christian might meditate on an image of Jesus—a face of love and perfect forgiveness; or as He was blessing a repentant sinner. A Jew might take one line, or even one word, from a familiar prayer. Someone who finds the divine in nature might concentrate on the grace of a bird in flight, the healing powers of a forest, or the generosity of the web of life. A purely secular person could reflect on someone she particularly respects.

Through mental reflection we seek to absorb the qualities we want to manifest. Equanimity, gratitude, compassion, love—such things are not simply a matter of will, but of practice. And as we practice thinking about them, thinking of them, this practice can help us face disappointment, conflict, and danger in ways that promote a calm, energetic, and connected life.

For ultimately what we do on the meditation mat or the prayer room is of little consequence until it can be made real in work, family, and community. Can I recognize my agitation and respond skillfully when my kids act self-destructively? Can I face the mammogram results with acceptance and gratitude for what I have; or if the news is truly bad, can I accept my fear without trying to escape it? If I am a Christian, can I treat hostile people as Jesus taught me to? If Muslim, can I remember that only Allah is God, not money, fame, or the seductive delights of telling everyone how holy I am? If I am “spiritual but not religious,” can I face a decidedly non-spiritual world with the virtues that attracted me to spiritual life to begin with?

Attending to the mind, focusing on our highest values—we are more likely to answer such questions in the affirmative.

Can there be a single greater gift to our lives?

Professor of Philosophy (WPI) Roger S. Gottlieb’s most recent book is the Nautilus Book Award-winning Spirituality: What it Is and Why it Matters. You can read the Introduction on his website or his previous post on the OUPblog.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only religion articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Image credit: Photo by Robert Bejil. Creative Commons License via Wikimedia Commons.

The post Meditation in action appeared first on OUPblog.

On 12 June, summer officially begins in Chicago when the Grant Park Music Festival, “the nation’s only free, outdoor classical music series of its kind,” opens its 79^th season at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park. I’m a huge fan of summer music festivals in general — what’s not to like about spending a beautiful night in a beautiful place listening to music I love performed by some of the best musicians in the world? — but of Grant Park in particular. Not only did it grant me access to free live music when I was an impoverished graduate student, but it played a key role in American orchestral history, my favorite musicological subject.

The Grant Park Music Festival was the brainchild of James C. Petrillo, the formidable head of the Chicago musician’s union (he would later become head of the nationwide American Federation of Musicians), who wanted to bring free music to the citizens of Depression-era Chicago. The festival was inspired by a series of free brass and wind band concerts Petrillo had organized in the park in 1931 and by a very successful series of performances at the Century of Progress Exposition in 1933-34. But neither of these had the scope and endurance that Petrillo sought.

In 1934, Petrillo was named commissioner of the Chicago Parks District and was finally able to put his full plans into action. In June of 1935, the parks district announced “Free symphony and band concerts every night in Grant park from July 1 through Sept. 2.” The festival was funded by the American Federation of Musicians as a way of giving paychecks to several hundred of their out of work members. Eight Chicago bands and three orchestras — The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Civic Opera Orchestra (a forerunner of today’s Lyric Opera), and the Woman’s Symphony Orchestra of Chicago — performed regularly throughout the summer.

The Woman’s Symphony Orchestra (WSOC) is the only one of these orchestras not well known today. Founded in 1925 by a group of female students at Chicago’s Bush Conservatory seeking professional performance opportunities that were denied them in established orchestras, the WSOC was the best known of dozens of such orchestras performing in cities across the country between the 1870s and the mid-1940s. The orchestra had made a splash at the Century of Progress where one of their performances attracted 12,000 listeners — a record that one reviewer called “the largest audience ever assembled in the name of symphonic art.” (Glenn Dillard Gunn, “Chicago Woman’s Symphony Delights Hearers in Illinois Day concert at A Century of Progress,” Herald and Examiner (Chicago), August 12, 1933)

The WSOC would set new records in the opening season of the Grant Park concerts. Petrillo wanted to close the season with a bang. On 15 and 18 September 1935, 220 musicians from the Chicago Symphony, Civic Opera, and Woman’s Symphony orchestras amassed on the stage of the outdoor bandshell for two finale performances under the leadership of Chicago Symphony conductor Frederick Stock. These performances were notable for several reasons. First, they shattered all previous audience attendance records: 100,000 people attended the performances. Second, it marked the first time a “Big Five” Orchestra had performed with a pervasively gender-integrated ensemble. Third, it introduced members of the women’s orchestra to Frederick Stock, which would prove fruitful not only for the members of the WSOC, but for female orchestral musicians in general.

Three years later, after several more seasons of joint concerts in Grant Park, Stock hired Helen Kotas, the WSOC’s first-chair French horn player, as a substitute for the Chicago Symphony. In 1940, Kotas made national news when she joined the CSO full time as the principal horn. She was the first female member of the CSO and the first woman to hold a principal position in any major orchestra in the country.

In 1944, the festival’s structure was changed. Instead of using local ensembles, it founded its own orchestra, the Grant Park Symphony, the ensemble that still plays in the park today. This orchestra included women among its membership from the very beginning. Many of them had played first with the WSOC.

So to those lucky enough to be attending this week’s performances in Grant Park, remember that the Grant Park Music Festival is not just a beloved civic institution, nor a lovely place to spend a summer evening, although it is both of those things. It is an innovative institution that brought music and musical opportunities to thousands and paved the way for professional orchestral careers for women.

Anna-Lise Santella is the Editor of Grove Music/Oxford Music Online. Her article, “Modeling Music: Early Organizational Structures of American Women’s Orchestras” was recently published in American Orchestras in the Nineteenth Century, edited by John Spitzer (U. Chicago, 2012) and you can also read her recent article on the American women’s orchestra movement on University Press Scholarship Online. When she’s not reading Grove articles or writing about women’s orchestras, you can find her on twitter as @annalisep.

Oxford Music Online is the gateway offering users the ability to access and cross-search multiple music reference resources in one location. With Grove Music Online as its cornerstone, Oxford Music Online also contains The Oxford Companion to Music, The Oxford Dictionary of Music, and The Encyclopedia of Popular Music.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only music articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Image credit: Chicago Tribune, June 3, 1935, page 15.

The post An outdoor overture appeared first on OUPblog.

By David Roberts

You’re a shy boy — inclined to blurt, shuffle and look at the floor — and you can tell from your father’s efforts on your behalf that he’s concerned. That makes things a lot worse.

From an early age, the private tutors crowd in. You’re sent away to study. When you’ve grown up a bit, the old man fixes you up with a grand tour of European capitals, opening doors into an old boys’ network of continental proportions. Reports of your improvement are, you suspect, inconsistently encouraging. You’re just too ill at ease to cope.

Still, with a quiet word here and less gentle persuasion there, he fixes you up with a seat in the Commons. Another lucky break, but it’s agony. When you give your maiden speech the other members can hardly believe it: an MP who can barely summon words for his big occasion. So father tries again, and a succession of German court appointments follows.

All this time, in fact for a period of over 30 years, he is pursuing another tack, desperate for you to attain the eminence of his own career as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Ambassador at The Hague, and His Majesty’s Secretary of State. His weapon? Letters: hundreds of them, full of worldly advice, suggestions about proper language, deportment, manners, diplomacy, politics, reading, society, relationships…

But for all their advice, the letters pray on your sense of inadequacy. He gets reports from friends of your conduct:

In company you were frequently most provokingly inattentive, absent, and distrait…you came into a room and presented yourself very awkwardly…at table you constantly threw down knives, forks, napkins, bread, etc., and…neglected your person and dress, to a degree unpardonable at any age, and much more so at yours.

His elegant comparisons tie you in knots of practical uncertainty:

Were you to converse with a King, you ought to be as easy and unembarrassed as with your own valet-de-chambre; but yet every look, word, and action, should imply the utmost respect.

Not content with an easy manner and confident knowledge, he demands a regime of exercise:

I hope you do not neglect your exercises of riding, fencing and dancing, but particularly the latter.

When he chooses, he can be straightforwardly brutal:

My object is to have you fit to live; which, if you are not, I do not desire that you should live at all.

What makes it all much worse is that you know you will never succeed not because your manner is gauche, your speech inelegant and your habits erratic. No: you are doomed to disappoint your father because of the way he fathered you. You are his son, but your mother is not his wife. Some opportunities are simply closed to you. He refuses to give up, of course. He may express sympathy with the villains of literature — with Turnus in The Aeneid or even Satan in Paradise Lost — but all the connections in Europe cannot unmake the prejudice against you. He is Sisyphus, pushing at the impossible boulder.

You have no choice but to make your own way in the world. Accept his fatherly patronage, his advice, his legion letters, but play your own game. Read his counsel about making a good match — as if the circumstances of your birth allowed — but make your own decisions. Do what he did to make you: fall in love. Find your own bride, regardless of station or convention. Have a family. Whatever you do, don’t tell him. You’re in Europe and he’s in London; he’ll never know.

But when you die young of a fever in Avignon, it turns out you underestimated him. Yes, he is shocked. No, he cannot believe that the son he had nurtured could have deceived him so, or married so far beneath the family dignity. He is alarmed to find he is, twice over, a grandfather. But his fatherly instinct revives. He provides generously for your grieving wife and begins his great project of education all over again with an allowance for your sons. Among all his words of advice, all his homilies to courtly conduct, perhaps the effortlessly civilised mind of Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, keeps returning to the last sentence of the last letter he wrote to you:

God bless, and grant you a speedy recovery.

Professor David Roberts teaches English Literature at Birmingham City University. He has taught at the universities of Bristol, Oxford, Kyoto, Osaka, and Worcester, and in 2008/09 he was the inaugural holder of the John Henry Newman Chair at Newman University College, Birmingham. He has published extensively in the fields of seventeenth and eighteenth century drama and literature, and is the editor of the Oxford World’s Classics edition of Lord Chesterfield’s Letters, as well as Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year. He has previously written about Daniel Defore in London and about disaster writing for OUPblog.

Praised in their day as a complete manual of education, and despised by Samuel Johnson for teaching `the morals of a whore and the manners of a dancing-master’, Lord Chesterfield’s Letters reflect the political craft of a leading statesman and the urbane wit of a man who associated with Pope, Addison, and Swift. The letters reveal Chesterfield’s political cynicism and his belief that his country had `always been goverened by the only two or three people, out of two or three millions, totally incapable of governing’, as well as his views on good breeding. Not originally intended for publication, this entertaining correspondence illuminates fascinating aspects of eighteenth-century life and manners.

For over 100 years Oxford World’s Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford’s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. You can follow Oxford World’s Classics on Twitter and Facebook.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only literature articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Image credit: Portrait of Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, by unknown artist [public domain]. Via Wikimedia Commons.

The post Letters from your father appeared first on OUPblog.

Although a German word, Pumpernickel (which in what follows will not be capitalized) seems to be sufficiently familiar to the English-speaking world not to require a gloss. The origin of the bread (Westphalia, and there perhaps the town of Osnabrücken) has been ascertained, but the etymology of the name remains a puzzle—at least to some extent. It would have been almost impossible to collect the countless publications on this word without an exhaustive survey by Kurt Ranke (1954), an outstanding folklorist and dyed-in-the wool Nazi, a scholar who returned to a university career shortly after the war and was embraced by academia with open arms. Too bad, talented people so often turn out to be scoundrels. Those who know enough about the career of Jan de Vries, a great Dutch Germanist, will agree.

All the earlier attempts to trace pumpernickel to its etymon failed because they assumed that everything had begun with the name of the bread. Ranke showed that this idea was wrong. Carin Gentner, who brought out her investigation on pumpernickel in 1987, two years after Ranke’s death, mentioned her illustrious predecessor in passing, but her material and conclusions contain little that is new. Documents show that pumpernickel has been attested with many senses: “different kinds of bread,” “a short fat man (or child),” part of the phrase connected with the custom of ‘singing Pumpernickel’ (the meaning of the phrase is no longer clear, but the reference is to something unconventional and often obscene; sometimes fisticuffs and the like are at the center), and “the hero of a children’s song about someone called Pumpernickel” (he is often in trouble and becomes everybody’s laughingstock). Westphalia is situated in the north of Germany, but the word pumpernickel and the character bearing this name have been recorded all over the country, including its southernmost regions.

In popular literature, one can read fanciful explanations about how the word pumpernickel came about. Most of them center on some episode in the history of the heavy bread made with coarsely ground rye: either a French soldier expressed his disgust of the food a Westphalian peasant offered him, or a kind-hearted bishop fed his starving flock with it. But, as noted, pumpernickel is not tied to the Osnabrücken region. Besides, the name does not always designate course bread. In Vienna, the well-known Lebkuchen is called this; it resembles gingerbread and is a Christmas treat baked with almonds. The word made its way into several countries outside the German speaking world, including France, and its foreign offspring are neither heavy nor coarse. No mention of pumpernickel in published sources predates the beginning of the seventeenth century. The word also occurs as pompernickel and bombernickel, but both are phonetic variants of pumpernickel and add nothing to our search.

Of real importance is the fact that already in the first third of the seventeenth century Pumpernickel sometimes meant “devil.” The name as applied to Westphalian bread appeared in documents and books some time (though not considerably) later, and perhaps the short chronological gap reflects reality: first the devil (a rather than the devil), then “devilish” bread. Despite the general uncertainty surrounding the derivation of pumpernickel, the origin of the first element poses no difficulties. In the post on bogey, I listed some b-g and p-g words that denote swelling, a noisy explosion, and so forth. Bomb and pomp were among them. Pump, pamper, and even pimp belong there too. A pimp (like the German Pimpf) was a youngster, a weakling unable to produce a big pumpf, that is, fart. Pamper refers to stuffing one with food (hence spoiling). Pumper-, as has been known for a long time, carries the same connotations. Despite the occurrence of the word from Osnabrücken to Vienna, it must have been coined in the north, for otherwise it would have had pf in place of p, at least after m. Whoever Pumpernickel was, he must have been able to produce a lot of noise, probably by breaking wind, though it is not improbable that he, like Bogey, deafened people in some other way.

Pumpernickel emerges as a vulgar clown, a prankster, the hero of drunks and whores, a figure typical of low popular culture, like Til Eulenspiegel, the protagonist of scatological tales, Richard Strauss’s symphony piece, and Charles de Coster’s magnificent prose epic. Less clear is the origin of -nickel. German etymologists are reticent on this point, but most probably we find ourselves in the presence of our friend Old Nick. As Charles P. G. Scott pointed out, in English, Nick is an abbreviation of Nicol. There indeed was a devil bearing this name.

Here the metal nickel provides some help. The history of nickel is known. In 1754 Swedish mineralogist Axel F. von Cronstedt obtained an ore he called Kupfernickel (Kupfer “copper”) and shortened it to nickel because it yielded no ore despite its appearance. The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology calls nickel a dwarf, a mischievous demon. The German etymological dictionary by Kluge-Mitzka clarifies the situation: “The name Nikolaus often became a term of abuse, especially in eastern Germany.” Let us not miss the formulation: “…the name Nikolaus,” not “the name of St. Nikolaus.” (The etymology of the metals cobalt and wolfram is similar to that of nickel.)

The word pumpernickel gained great popularity during the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), which, quite appropriately for our subject, ended after peace treaties were signed in Osnabrücken and Münster. By that time most of Europe lay in ruins. The only good result of the war was the spread of the word pumpernickel, evidently from the “coarse” language of soldiers. They seem to have sworn by Nickel and mentioned him all the time. Just why he rather than somebody else became so prominent (given an abundance of competitors) will hardly ever become known. It could have been Tom, or Harry, or Dick (the last two would have done especially well). The bread soldiers ate in the seventeenth century was indeed heavy and produced more than one “Pumpf,” or great flatulence (to use a polite, sufficiently Latinized word). It deserved being called “fart Nickel.”

And here comes my hypothesis. It did not occur to others because they did not realize that Old Nick was a sibling of Nickel. This is what I meant when I said that etymologists never know enough. I believe that mercenaries and those who accompanied the troops made the petty devil Nickel also famous in England. It cannot be fortuitous that Old Nick and pumpernickel are such close contemporaries in the two countries. I suggest that Nick in Old Nick is a borrowing from German. If my conclusion is right, then Old Nick has no roots in medieval European folklore. St. Nicholas (our Santa Klaus) need not worry about his disreputable namesake (unless someone succeeds in showing that there is a connection between them after all). The Old Germanic crocodile (nicor ~ nihhus) fades out of the picture. Nixes and nickers are one thing, and Old Nick is something quite different.

Anatoly Liberman is the author of Word Origins…And How We Know Them as well as An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology: An Introduction. His column on word origins, The Oxford Etymologist, appears on the OUPblog each Wednesday. Send your etymology question to him care of blog@oup.com; he’ll do his best to avoid responding with “origin unknown.”

Subscribe to Anatoly Liberman’s weekly etymology posts via email or RSS.
Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Image credit: 10 Euro Gedenkmünze 2011 – 500 Jahre Till Eulenspiegel, PP, Bildseite. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The post Multifarious devils, part 3. “Pumpernickel,” “Nickel,” and “Old Nick” appeared first on OUPblog.

The first time I tried to read The Water-Babies I was 7 or 8 years old. I was sitting on a beach near Margate, during a summer when my other reading had mostly been American comics: Spiderman, Superman, and the rest. Then I opened up a strange story about a hidden underwater world, in which a young chimney sweep is transformed into a newt-like baby who swims around the world righting wrongs, and eventually discovers that the most important battles are inside him. He was like a tiny Victorian superhero.

The back of my comics usually carried an advertisement for ‘Sea Monkeys’: little marine creatures that (according to the somewhat fanciful illustration) were as exotic as mermaids and as orderly as the inhabitants of an ant farm. And The Water-Babies was no less confused and confusing; it was a scientific treatise, a fable about self-improvement, and a modern fairy tale, all crammed into less than 200 pages. I was hooked.

This year The Water-Babies is 150 years old, an event marked by a special anniversary edition published by Oxford University Press that will allow a whole new generation to dip into Tom’s strange underwater adventures. Celebrating the man who wrote it is slightly harder. Few writers are as puzzling and eccentric as Charles Kingsley, and trying to pin him down is like putting your thumb on a blob of mercury.

In some ways he was a pillar of the establishment, serving at various times as Cambridge’s Regius Professor of History, chaplain to the royal family, Canon of Westminster Abbey, and private tutor to the Prince of Wales. But he was also a bundle of contradictions. He was a shy extrovert. A no-nonsense sentimentalist. A mesmeric preacher who stammered. An apostle of healthy living who left pipes hidden in the bushes around his home in case the urge to smoke suddenly came on him when he was out walking. In public he fought for the rights of ordinary workers; in private he referred to the Irish as ‘white chimpanzees’. He was an enthusiastic hunter who once befriended a wasp he had saved from drowning.

At the same time, he had some fairly constant obsessions, which rippled away underneath everything else he said and did. He was especially anxious about dirty water, and fought a long campaign for better sanitation. So did many of his contemporaries, of course, but for Kingsley clean water wasn’t just a matter of health or hygiene. Being clean on the outside was the first step to being clean on the inside. Or, as he put it in one of his sermons, ‘If you will only wash your bodies your souls will be all right’.

In 1855 he published Glaucus, a guide to rockpools, named after the fisherman in Ovid’s Metamorphoses who grows a tail and fins and ends up living under the waves. For Kingsley he was something of a role model, because one of his own fantasies, when he stood on the beach, was ‘to walk on and in under the waves … and see it all but for a moment’. In one way his fantasy was bang up to date. That same year – 1855 – a French inventor was showing a diving suit in Paris that included a helmet fitted with portholes and heavy boots that allowed the owner to clump along the seabed at depths of up to 40 metres. But in another way, for Kingsley’s fantasy to come true he didn’t need science. He needed fiction. He needed to construct an underwater world out of paper and ink.

Eight years later, with the publication of The Water-Babies, that’s exactly what he did. When little Tom slips into the river and becomes a water-baby, he also slips into a parallel world of storytelling, where he can leave his dirty body behind, like a snake wriggling out of its skin. It is like a baptism that changes him inside and out. Kingsley had created a hero whose life from now on was to be one long, happy, cold bath.

Given how strange the story is, one might expect that its readership these days would be limited to historians and psychologists. Yet for such a small book it continues to have a surprisingly large cultural presence. There are films, adaptations and abridgements galore, not to mention dozens of modern parallels in novels such as Jacqueline Wilson’s Connie and the Water-Babies. In 1998 there was even a TV advert for Evian that showed some babies performing a complicated dance routine underwater. But why would anyone still want to read the original story?

Click here to view the embedded video.

When I was writing the introduction to OUP’s new edition, this is the question that kept nagging away at me, and the best answer I can offer is closely bound up with my own childhood memories. Kingsley’s great skill as a writer is that he brings together absolute realism and absolute fantasy — two seemingly incompatible strains of thought that children love equally — and switches between them as quickly as someone spinning a coin. He describes the world as it is, and the world as it might look if the imagination was in charge, where if there is ‘sea-rock’ then why shouldn’t there be ‘sea-toffee’?

Above all, he asks us to be surprised by parts of the world we usually take for granted: spider’s webs, fish scales, soot, even children. ‘Look, again, at those sea-slugs’, he writes in one of his early papers on the seashore, and that’s exactly what his own writing does. He looks again at everything, no matter how tiny or ugly or ungainly it is. He finds a kind of awe in the ordinary.

Robert Douglas-Fairhurst is the author of Becoming Dickens (Harvard UP, 2011), winner of the 2011 Duff Cooper Prize, and he has edited editions of Dickens’s Great Expectations, and A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books and Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor for Oxford World’s Classics. He has written the introduction and notes for the recently published The Water-Babies. He also writes regularly for publications including the Daily Telegraph, Guardian, TLS, and New Statesman.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only literature articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

Images in the public domain, taken from The Water-Babies

The post Happy birthday Charles Kingsley appeared first on OUPblog.

In 1934 William Carlos Williams famously published what seems to be a note left on the refrigerator for a spouse to read, only now set typographically to look like a poem. It’s called “This is Just to Say”.

I have eaten
The plums
That were in
The icebox

And which
You were probably
Saving
For breakfast

Forgive me
They were delicious
So sweet
And so cold

Like the ‘found object’ that an artist exhibits in the museum to raise the question “what is art?”, Williams’ ‘found’ poem seems to ask the reader, “is this a poem – and, if so, why?” We are invited to notice what we do when we read something as a poem. Perhaps we scrutinize it for an implied theme (“it’s really about temptation and forgiveness”, for instance); a poem is never “just to say” what it says. The space that Williams has left so abundantly around the words begs to be filled. “Forgive me” acquires a powerful resonance, all alone on the line, especially in connection with the temptation of fruit! Look what happens to the common, unremarkable words “sweet” and “cold” when you put some space around them. Williams invites us to wake up to the poetry of everyday speech.

Is “This is Just to Say” a characteristically modernist poem? Here’s another poem, written a good two thousand years before Williams’ poem, which also claims to be “just to say”. Williams was just saying sorry, and Poem 49 by Roman poet Catullus is just saying thank you.

Sweetest-spoken of Romulus’ descendants,
All that are, or have been, Marcus Tullius,
and all who will yet be in other times–
The greatest of thanks to you from Catullus,
Who’s the worst poet of all the poets,
By as much the worst of all the poets
As you’re the best of all the lawyers.

Or, in the original Latin:

Disertissime Romuli nepotum,
quot sunt quoque fuere, Marce Tulli,
quotque post aliis erunt in annis,
gratias tibi maximas Catullus
agit pessimus omnium poeta,
tanto pessimus omnium poeta,
quanto tu optimus omnium patronus.

All educated Romans had learned the art of rhetoric and eloquence was prized in all kinds of communication. Elaborate compliments and insults were honed, admired, remembered, and passed around. We sometimes speak of compliments, even insults, as being well-turned, as though they had been shaped on a lathe. So, there’s craft involved.

But is it art? Catullus published a number of well-turned insults as poems, and some compliments too, including this one. Why does he publish (and versify) this little thank you note? If we’re looking for an implicit theme, Catullus offers us little that would enable us to say “It’s really about….”. And what Catullus’ poem highlights is not so much significant words as grammatical and rhetorical forms: the superlatives, the amplified repetitions of a statement. Cicero was a great orator, and amplification was the name of the game in Roman oratory, so this might be a compliment to Cicero’s own verbal skill.

But can we be sure that it really is a compliment? In Catullus’ Latin, awkward jingles, bare symmetries, and a restricted and repetitive vocabulary all lend a dutiful sound to the string of superlatives (“most eloquent”, “best”, “worst”, “greatest”). It is as though Catullus wanted to give the impression that he was taking dictation. Even Cicero’s name, Marcus Tullius (Marce Tulli in the vocative case) is made to form a jingle with Catullus’ own name, two lines down in the same position at the end of the line. Such is the baldness and exaggeration of the comparison in the last three lines that an awkward silence seems to descend as the poem ends. Even Cicero, who was not a modest man, must have suspected that there was more to this than meets the eye.

Was Catullus parodying the orotund symmetries of his prose? There is a nice effect in the second and third lines, where each element of the tripartite division between past, present and future is longer than the last. Cicero’s speeches are full of this device, which is called a tricolon crescendo. But Cicero might also have suspected that Catullus was mocking his high opinion of himself. The great orator was notoriously self-important, and he was well aware of this reputation. Was Catullus trying to immortalise him as the sort of person who might swallow flattery this bald? Or were all these speculations paranoid imaginings, and Cicero should accept the compliment graciously? We readers are in much the same situation as Cicero, not sure whether we are in on the joke or not. Like Cicero, we do not want to be dupes, and so we return to the poem again and again, trying to catch a tone of voice. But the poem maintains its deadpan.

What do we learn about poetry from these two poems on the edge? Perhaps a poem is what you read again because it seems to means something other than it says (and vice versa). Williams’ poem, we feel, means more than it seems to say, but Catullus makes us hover over the possibility that his words don’t mean what they say at all. Williams and Catullus may be suggesting that there is a continuity between the care we take with the language of some of our everyday communications and the care with language that makes poetry what it is. But they are also asking us to notice what it is that kicks in when we write and read an utterance as poetry.

 William Fitzgerald is Professor of Latin at King’s College London and has taught at the University of California and Cambridge University. He is the author of several books on ancient literature, most recently How to Read a Latin Poem If You Can’t Read Latin Yet (OUP, 2013).

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only literature articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Image credit: Catullus [public domain] via Wikimedia Commons. 

The post What is a poem? appeared first on OUPblog.