Goldsmiths, University of London: Journals Online
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‘Not a Hero Story’: Challenging Concepts of ‘Heroes’ and ‘Villains’ in Historical Conflicts through Video Games
Full text linkHistory has been a popular subject for video games for many years, however engagement has largely overlooked the perspectives of groups characterised as ‘villains’ in the historical narrative. This article explores significant factors for this under-representation in historical games and examines the interactions of two games – Battlefield V (2018) and The Great War: Western Front (2023) – with historical groups characterised by popular history as ‘villains’. By contextualising each game within the respective media historiographies of the two World Wars, this article illustrates the challenges faced by video games attempting to engage with history outside of traditional ‘heroic’ narratives
What the Sea Remembers; What the Films of Midway Forget
Full text linkThis article investigates how three films about the 1942 Battle of Midway (mis)represent the environmental impact of industrial warfare. It exposes a long history in the American war film genre of practices that obscure the relationship between warfare and the environments in which it is waged and argues that by doing so, the films themselves enact a form of structural violence upon these spaces and their inhabitants, other-than-huma). As conflict and climate change converge, it calls for a more critical interrogation of the representational strategies of past conflicts, so that we might recognise and challenge those of current and future wars. 
‘The clouds are grand pianos’: Derek Mahon’s The Yellow Book and Neo-Victorian Decadence
Full text linkTwentieth- and twenty-first-century poets writing in English seem to have dedicated very scant attention to the Yellow Book’s literary theory, poetical practice, and textual politics. However, between the 1960s and 2020, an important Irish poet nourished and literarized a strong and competent interest in the so-called ‘Decadent Dilemma’. His name was Derek Mahon (1941-2020) and his poetical re-readings of the ‘Decadent Dilemma’ materialized, above all, in two noteworthy and, in a way, diachronically and semiotically complementary poetical works:
a) the early poem ‘Dowson and Company’, n. 3 in the poetry collection Night-crossing (1968) and n. 2 in his Poems 1962-1978 (1979) with no textual changes, and the more inclusive and encyclopaedic microtitle The Poets of the Nineties;
b) the later organic and panoramic poetry sequence The Yellow Book, published autonomously in 1997 and significantly revised in 2021 to be included in his posthumous and testamentary Poems 1961-2020 with the unmistakable macrotitle Decadence.
Mahon’s competent articulation of neo-Victorian decadence in Yellow Book is definitively personalized and authenticated by how he poeticizes some textualizations of intersemiosis. What is unusually coherent, organic, and programmatic in the contextural counterpoint of its macrotext and microtexts is the creatively intensive adoption of musico-literary intersemioticity, i.e. that between literary systems and musical systems
Preface
Full text linkThis issue appears later than planned, so apologies to our readers. One of the reasons for the delayed publication is that important material and ideas emerged from the online, interdisciplinary conference Global Decadence, Race, and the Futures of Decadence Studies (31 March-1 April 2023), and we chose to take stock and incorporate some of them in this issue
The Irish soldier in the British army during the Napoleonic Wars, 1808-1815
Full text linkConsideration by historians of Irish soldiers’ service in the regular British army during the Napoleonic Wars has been primarily through the perspective of the Irish regiments and the Irish enlisted man. This note presents new perspectives by demonstrating that Irish service was more widespread due to the presence of Irish officers and enlisted men across all regiments of the regular army. Important aspects of Irish service such as promotion, discipline, and the presence of Irish families are highlighted with the intention of facilitating a new perspective on the relationship between the regular British army and Irish society
Hitler’s Willing Soldiers: Austrian Mountain Troops at Narvik 1940
Full text linkThe Austrian post-war narrative of service in the Wehrmacht was that Austrian troops were either unwilling participants in German aggression or were motivated by a sense of anti-Bolshevism. This article, drawing on a number of German language accounts of the Narvik land campaign, suggests that Austrian officers and soldiers absorbed into the Wehrmacht were enthusiastic, efficient and dependable members of the German armed forces. The article concludes that, at least for the early German campaigns in Poland and the West, the Austrian post-war rationalisation of participation in German military aggression was false
Otherscapes
Full text linkThis series of photographs explores the idea of the beautiful young woman dropped like a Monopoly house into a location at odds with her perfect appearance. It takes inspiration from Pre-Raphaelite artworks, where the sitters recline gracefully amid artfully gathered gowns, passively awaiting a tragedy only hinted at by a slight pout of the lips. Even when fully submerged in rivers on their way to an untimely demise, every limb and lock of hair is perfectly positioned to give the viewer the best window onto their beauty. No allowance is given for the discomfort of the pose, the impossible neckline which would cause the dress to fall to the floor if the sitter stood, the cold water seeping through the rich fabric. All consideration is for the viewer
Review: Alphonse Mucha, Le Pater. Le Grand Œuvre d’Alphonse Mucha, ed. by Tomoko Sato (Paris: Éditions RMN, 2023)
No full textFirst published in a limited edition of 510 copies in December 1899, the Symbolist masterpiece of Czech artist Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939), Le Pater [The Our Father] has just seen a re-edition from Les Éditions de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux and the Mucha Foundation in collaboration with an interactive exhibition of his work currently taking place at the Grand Palais Immersif in Paris
