Goldsmiths, University of London: Journals Online
Not a member yet
1742 research outputs found
Sort by
Terra Incognita: On First Reading ‘L’Invitation au Voyage’
Get PDFAutumn term, 1962, a South London (Boys’) Grammar School: the Cuban Missile Crisis had just come to an end, but Planet Earth had not, which meant that I would, after all, be taking my A-levels in English, German, and French. C’est la vie.
French O-level had been taught – or rather, enforced – by an elderly irascible Scot, who kept a cane in his drawer, and never gave the slightest hint that French words could be combined to make French poems, which could in their turn be delicious, haunting – or even seductive. Grammar, dictation, and repetition were all.
Whereas Mr. B – our A-level master, much younger but nevertheless somewhat meticulous, and a little desiccated and ascetic in manner (he would have made a credible monk), revelled in his sonorous readings of Verlaine and Baudelaire – ‘de la musique avant toute chose’
Siege Famine in Northern England during the British Civil Wars, 1644–1649
Get PDFDuring the 1640s, several Royalist fortresses in Northern England were subject to length sieges, particularly after the defeat of the major Northern Royalist field army at Marston Moor in 1644. The difficulty of directly assaulting these strongholds lead to starvation becoming the Parliamentarian and Covenanter besiegers’ main weapon. This article analyses the methods used by the Royalist garrisons to try and alleviate siege famine, including raiding, rationing and ersatz foodstuffs, and their consequent collapse owing to hunger-induced popular unrest or the effects of famine diseases such as scurvy, starvation and dehydration on the soldiers themselves
Lord Kitchener’s Appointment as Secretary of State for War in 1914
Get PDFLord Kitchener was a popular choice as Britain’s Secretary for War in 1914, but many facts about his selection are contested, including why he was recalled to London and who did most to urge the appointment. While some have argued that the decision was forced on the Liberal government by the Conservative opposition and the Press, this interpretation was dismissed as a ‘silly figment’ by the Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith. This article provides a detailed consideration of the appointment, considers possible reasons for Asquith’s action, seeks to resolve ambiguities in the evidence, but also raises doubts about widely-accepted details
Ellora Bennett, Guido M. Berndt, Stefan Esders and Laury Sarty (eds.), Early Medieval Militarisation
Get PDFWasted Youth and Reunion in Death: Imperial Decline and Decadent Aesthetics in Fin-de-Siècle Ottoman Culture
Get PDFThe decadence question in the Ottoman Empire became a common ground for intellectual debates about language, translation, and authenticity at the turn of the century. It was part of the manifold translational processes among French, high Ottoman, and the rising Ottoman vernacular, as well as the unexpected circulations of literary movements and genres in the Ottoman literary field. The decadents and the conservative modernizers – who were all cosmopolitan author-translators – negotiated and transformed Eurocentric norms of literariness and, by using local forms, introduced new genres and styles into the emergent field of modern Ottoman-Turkish literature. This study discusses decadent aesthetics in relation to the burgeoning performance scene in Istanbul at the turn of the century. It analyses two domestic family dramas written by prominent authors of the time, Recaizade Mahmud Ekrem’s Vuslat (1874) and Muallim Naci’s Heder (1909), by recontextualizing them within the literary history of fin-de-siècle pessimism and decadent aesthetics. It revisits Ottoman literary historiography, which typically follows conservative views on decadence as degeneration and over-westernization, by discussing aesthetic decadence in Ottoman Turkish literature. It reorients Naci’s work within innovative currents and offers a uniquely nuanced reading of both Ekrem\u27s and Naci’s plays. Finally, this study introduces decadent performance of the late Ottoman Empire to global decadence studies, underlying its inner social, political and aesthetic dynamics
Symbolism, Empire, and the Dance: On Sarojini Naidu’s ‘Eastern Dancers’ and Arthur Symons’s ‘Javanese Dancers’
Get PDFBorn and raised in Hyderabad, Sarojini Naidu (1879–1949) is largely known for her role in the Indian independence movement and her tenure as the President of the Indian National Congress in 1925. Yet, in her lifetime, she also developed a rich literary career and published multiple Anglophone poetry collections. She began writing in her childhood, composing ‘1300-line poems when she had barely entered her teens’. It was when her father arranged for her to study abroad at Cambridge and London in 1896, however, that Naidu encountered Arthur Symons and the British decadent community for the first time through Edmund Gosse, one of her teachers at Cambridge
Carnal Acts: Decadence in Theatre, Performance and Live Art
Get PDFAn introduction to the issue from the Guest Editor.
The writing of this Introduction – and the editing of this issue as a whole – was made possible thanks to funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AH/T006994/1)
Intermediality and decadent performance in Anita Berber and Sebastian Droste’s Die Tänze des Lasters, des Grauens und der Ekstase (1923)
Get PDFFew artists embodied the popular definition of decadence as much as Anita Berber in the 1920s cabaret scene of Berlin. Already notorious during her lifetime, Berber was mostly known for her dance performances themed around death, desire and decay, often scandalizing and enticing her audience in equal measure. One series of morbid choreographies, which she performed with husband and dance partner Sebastian Droste, was followed by a book publication of the same name in 1923 titled Die Tänze des Lasters, des Grauens und der Ekstase [Dances of Vice, Horror and Ecstasy]. The book constitutes a collection of expressionist poems resuming the titles of the choreographies, photographed images of dance poses, set and costume designs, drawings by Berber, and critical essays by Droste. In reviewing the relationship between French decadence and German expressionism, this article examines decadence in Berber’s performance with an emphasis on her work’s intermediality. The decadent element of her appeal lies less in her performances in the nude, and more in the choreographies’ interplay with literature, the fine arts, puppetry and photography. This bleeding of one art into the other conditions Berber’s and Droste’s performances aimed at interrupting genre boundaries and social certainties. Ultimately, I argue that the intermediality of decadent performance displaces the performing body from a theatrical stage to a series of referential networks drawn from other media. Decadent performance thus comes to life in the in-between space of medial translation
Transformation: training in the pandemic, an emerging art psychotherapist’s perspective
Get PDFCovid-19 has changed every aspect of society (Unicef, 2020; Wellcome, 2020). In this essay, I hope to describe what it has been like for me to enter Art Psychotherapy training during the pandemic. I will highlight how the profession and the training providers have shifted to meet the needs of emerging Art Psychotherapists when everyone is faced with the challenges that this period brings. As a first year student at the University of South Wales, I explore some of the obstacles and benefits of training during this exceptional time. Is it possible to feel hopeful, experience transformation, and enjoy the changes in education at a time of great social upheaval?