Goldsmiths, University of London: Journals Online
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Letter to the Editors: That Doggone Baudelaire
Get PDFIn the special Baudelaire ‘Appreciations’ section of the summer 2021 issue of Volupté I recounted my experience teaching ‘Une Charogne’, first published in 1857. The fact that the poem escaped the attention of the censors who banned six poems from the first edition of Les Fleurs du mal perhaps argues in favour of certain obscurities (the censors could not ban things they could not understand), such as the one that I focused on in my appreciation, namely, the animal identity of the carrion creature whose lively decay Baudelaire describes. I am convinced that ‘une charogne’ must be ‘un chien’ or another ‘chienne’ (a female dog feeds on the carcass), but strictly speaking, I cannot offer hard evidence in support of the interpretation. As near as I can figure, only five dogs wander through Les Fleurs du mal
Preface
Get PDFThis is our fourth pandemical issue, and Omicron (the disease not the trouble-shooting doctor in Trollope unfortunately) moves about the world causing misery and uncertainty. It’s difficult to be upbeat about the state of things at the moment, but we hope that this special issue of Volupté reassures our readers that even in periods of cultural and political decline there is a pleasure to reading and constant invention. It was the original ambition of this journal to expand the field of decadence studies and to be a space for new voices, material, and interpretations. While it is true, as Adam Alston reminds us, that ‘the field’s interdisciplinary ambitions are yet to reach their full potential’, this issue consolidates the ‘diffusionist model’ of decadence studies that was celebrated in the summer issue of 2021 and marks another exciting moment
Baudelaire’s Swan
Get PDFTo read T. S. Eliot’s 1930 essay ‘Baudelaire’, that introduces a translation of Intimate Journals, is to be thrown back into a very different literary era, especially now when the whole idea of introductions seems to have fallen out of favour with major publishers. (Some notion perhaps that they interfere with the pure and unmediated response of readers?) Beyond that, what’s striking is the assured, authoritative tone and the poet’s depth of knowledge of a foreign language and culture. It was written the year Eliot published ‘Ash Wednesday’, and is the work of a poet in full and confident maturity, after a long and searching familiarity with an œuvre that had signally influenced his own development
Commemoration in the midst of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict
Get PDFSince the onset of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in 2014, new memory actors in Ukraine (veterans, families of the fallen soldiers, and other activists) seek to commemorate those Ukrainians who lost their lives on the frontline. By examining the construction of memorials in the Poltava oblast (Central Ukraine), the article demonstrates that in the context of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict the commemorative activity of ordinary people is impacted by the continued human losses, ordinary people’s perception of the future (grounded in their present-day experiences), and their desire to ensure that their memories are preserved for future generations
‘Game on!’ A research project on the Prussian Kriegsspiel
Get PDFThe Prussian Kriegsspiel was the very first professional wargame and was originally introduced in the Prussian army in 1824 but has so far seen very little systematic research. This research project has compiled a corpus from all the rulesets currently extant, which was then made subject to formal and linguistic analysis. This yielded results in three important areas: First, by comparing them with a collection of contemporary texts on military theory it was possible to identify Kriegsspiel rulesets as distinctive text types. Second, comparing the rulesets gave valuable insights into the developmental history of the Kriegsspiel. And finally, it was possible to distinguish three distinctive phases in the development of the Kriegsspiel
John Spencer, Wilson’s War: Sir Henry Wilson’s Influence on British Military Policy in the Great War and its Aftermath
Get PDFUnited Kingdom Submarine Nuclear Propulsion
Get PDFJune 2019 saw the fiftieth anniversary of the first Royal Navy ‘Continuous at sea Deterrent’ patrol which was carried out by a nuclear-powered submarine equipped with the Polaris missile. This article looks at how the UK undertook the development and deployment of the nuclear propulsion plant for such submarines
The Employment of War Dogs in the Medieval and Early Modern West
Get PDFThis article explores the military use of dogs in the west, principally from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century. It is argued that the use of ‘war dogs’ was a recurrent but essentially ad hoc, sporadic and localized practice, quite distinct from the regular dog handling units that were established in the late nineteenth century. However, from the earliest phases of European colonization in the fifteenth century, another tradition, which employed dogs as weapons and instruments of torture, developed in the context of racialized warfare. The legacy of this infamous practice would be felt again in the twentieth century.  
Bushman or Boer – Australian Identity in a ‘White Man’s War’, 1899–1902
Get PDFThis article considers Australian articulations of identity and representations of Boer soldiers in the South African War. Examining accounts from Australian war correspondents and military personnel, we make three observations. First, that widespread expressions of British Empire loyalty shaped rather than excluded expressions of nascent Australian nationalism. Second, that emergent Australian nationalism, particularly the notion of the ‘bushman’, was central to positive and negative comparisons to Boer soldiers. Finally, that transnational discourses of settler colonialism and whiteness enabled such comparisons, which simultaneously facilitated claims about Australian martial superiority and deceptive Boer indolence, despite noted similarities between bushman and Boer
What’s in a name? Identifying military engagements in Egypt and the Levant, 1915-1918
Get PDFThis article examines the official names listed in the \u27Egypt and Palestine\u27 section of the 1922 report by the British Army’s Battles Nomenclature Committee and compares them with descriptions of military engagements in the Official History to establish if they clearly identify the events. The Committee’s application of their own definitions and guidelines during the process of naming these conflicts is evaluated together with examples of more recent usages in selected secondary sources. The articles concludes that the Committee’s failure to accurately identify the events of this campaign have had a negative impacted on subsequent historiography