Gilbert & Sullivan

Die hier vorliegende Diplomarbeit befasst sich inhaltlich mit dem Leben, Werk und Wirken zweier bedeutender (Theater-) Persönlichkeiten des 19. Jahrhunderts: Gilbert & Sullivan. Sowohl der Librettist William S. Gilbert als auch der Komponist Arthur S. Sullivan waren auf ihren jeweiligen Gebieten bereits renommiert und erfolgreich, doch ohne den ambitionierten Impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte wäre es nie zu der künstlerisch wertvollen und lukrativen Zusammenarbeit und vor allem den vierzehn gemeinsam geschaffenen Savoy Operas gekommen. Die Savoy Operas gelten seitdem als die Vertreter der English comic opera, einem damals völlig neuartigem Genre, das in der englischen Landessprache geschrieben und mit universell rezipierbarer Musik versehen war. Ferner wurden typisch britische Institutionen und deren Repräsentanten sowie Persönlichkeiten des öffentlichen Lebens karikiert und satirisch dargestellt. Doch Gilbert und Sullivan sollten nicht nur auf der Bühne für frischen Wind sorgen; auch vor und hinter der Bühne wurde umgestaltet, erneuert oder reformiert. Das viktorianische Theater wurde dank Gilberts Streben nach absoluter Authentizität, bei aller Komik ernstem Darstellungsstil und strengen moralischen Prinzipien respektabel und als seriöse Form der Unterhaltung gesellschaftlich anerkannt. Weiters waren sie für die Entwicklung eines Ensemblestils und einer bedeutenden Form der Proben- und Regiearbeit verantwortlich. D'Oyly Carte errichtete speziell für die Aufführung der Werke von Gilbert & Sullivan ein Theater, dessen Auditorium und Bühne als das erste vollständig mit elektrischem Licht illuminierte Gebäude Londons gilt. Besonders beeindruckend ist allerdings ihr fortwährender Einfluss und ihre noch immer spürbare Bedeutung für das englisch/amerikanische Musiktheater und den englischen Sprachraum. So gingen viele Textzeilen in den heute gängigen englischen Sprachgebrauch ein bzw. wurden zu geflügelten Worten. Darüber hinaus manifestiert sich ihre Bekanntheit und Beliebtheit noch heute durch die Präsenz zahlreicher Anspielungen, Referenzen oder musikalisch/sprachlicher Zitate in der aktuellen Literatur, dem Film und den populären TV-Serien im englisch/amerikanischen Kultur- und Sprachraum. Zu guter Letzt wird die Schwierigkeit bei der Übersetzung ihrer Werke in Bezug auf Sprache, Musik, Humor und karikierten Sujets untersucht und einige Empfehlungen für eine möglicherweise erfolgreiche Adaption gegeben

Astrology and truth: a context in contemporary epistemology

This thesis discusses and gives philosophical context to claims regarding the truth-status of astrology – specifically, horoscopic astrology. These truth-claims, and reasons for them, are sourced from advocates and critics of astrology and are taken from extant literature and interviews recorded for the thesis. The three major theories of truth from contemporary Western epistemology are the primary structure used to establish philosophical context. These are: the correspondence, coherence, and pragmatic theories. Some alternatives are discussed in the process of evaluating the adequacy of the three theories. No estimation of astrology’s truth-status was found which could not be articulated by reference to the three. From this follows the working assumption that the three theories of truth suffice as a system of analysis with which to define and elucidate the issues that have arisen when astrology’s truth-status has been considered. A feature of recent discourse regarding astrology has been the argument that it should be considered a form of divination rather than as a potential science. The two accounts that embody these approaches – astrology-as-divination, and astrology-as-science – are central throughout the thesis. William James’s philosophy is discussed as a congenial context for astrology-as-divination. This includes his understanding of the pragmatic theory of truth and other elements, such as radical empiricism, which comprise his pluralist pantheistic philosophy. Compelling reasons from numerous commentators are presented according to which astrology should be judged not true. These generally presuppose that contemporary scientific modes of analysis suffice for such an evaluation. A case could be built upon James’s philosophy under which the individual would have a right to believe in astrology as a source of truth – albeit, this would not be the intersubjective or scientifically-validated truth which critics typically insist upon

Nekrolog jako gatunek tekstu : analiza wydania internetowego The New York Times

The thesis presents an analysis of the death notice as a genre, which has been conducted by applying the research models of genre analysis designed by John Swales and Vijay K. Bhatia, and taxonomy of Polish death notices by Jacek Kolbuszewski. This in-depth structural analysis is based on a large corpus of texts (1843 texts consisting of 210,021 words), containing all death notices published in the online edition of The New York Times in a threemonth period (October 1st, 2012 – December 31st, 2012), and downloaded from Legacy.com (the leading global provider of online obituaries and death notices). The analysis involves identifying subgenres of the death notice and their communicative purposes, applying the Move and Steps analytical model to investigate the macrostructure of each subgenre of the death notice and its variants, and carrying out a register analysis, based on lexical and syntactic study with the aim of discovering patterns and lexemes characteristic of each move and/or step. Contrary to the well-researched staff-edited obituary, the genre of American death notice, written by non-professional authors (e.g. relatives, friends, employers or colleagues of the deceased) has not been thoroughly investigated; therefore, it is believed that the thesis will not only make a valuable contribution to the understanding of the genre in question, but it can be used as a reference manual helping prospective writers create a death notice in accordance with the American traditions and rules of the genre. The thesis consists of a theoretical part (Chapters One to Four) and a research part (Chapters Five to Eight). Chapter One revolves around the concepts of discourse, text and genre, and presents an overview of their theories. Chapter Two investigates the American discourse of death; it concentrates on the issue of death as a language taboo and various ways of coping with it, and provides a historical overview of numerous genres commemorating the dead. Chapter Three focuses on the both genres in question; it outlines their origin and evolution in the early British press, and summarizes contemporary research into them. Chapter Four introduces the research part as it discusses the corpus and principles of its division into subcorpora, the research model and applied methodology, and presents the discourse community and communicative purposes. Each of the four chapters constituting the research part deals with the Move and Step analysis of one of four subgenres of the death notice: informative (Chapter Five), farewell (Chapter Six), condolence (Chapter Seven), and anniversary (Chapter Eight); their lexico-structural analysis is illustrated with numerous excerpts from the respective sub-corpora. The Conclusion summarizes the research, and provides implications for future projects. The research has shown that the death notice is a highly conventionalized genre, deeply rooted in American culture and funeral tradition. While presenting biographies of the deceased (always in a positive way, according to the classical rule de mortuis nihil nisi bene), the American death notice emphasizes those specific periods and aspects of their lives (education, professional, political or military career, private life), accomplishments and traits that are valued and respected, and should be imitated by other members of the community. A notice usually contains a lengthy hierarchical list of relatives, both the predeceased and survivors. Each subgenre can be characterized by a specific set of communicative purposes, which are accomplished by a sequence of moves and steps. The commonest subgenre, the informative notice, continues the oldest traditions of the genre by informing the community about a person’s death (optionally its circumstances) and the date and place of the funeral and other services. The style and content of the farewell notice and the condolence notice depend on authorship: highly conventionalized formal institutional notices contrast with more original and intimate private ones. Their authors, whether representatives of an institution or relatives, friends, colleagues, etc., express their loss and grief, praise lives and deeds of the deceased, emphasize their importance for the authors or institution, and, in the case of the condolence notice, they offer their sympathy. The anniversary notice, the rarest subgenre, commemorates the anniversary of decedent’s birth or death, and frequently reminds the community about never-ending love and remembrance of its authors. A significant number of farewell and anniversary notices are addressed to the deceased themselves, the ‘virtual readers,’ which affects their structure and style. The register analysis displays a high level of intertextuality: non-professional obituarists tend to use conventional and stereotypical lexicon, phrases and structures, or even templates (they may copy or imitate other texts and study models provided in obituary manuals). There is no substantial evidence that the Internet has affected the genre: only few texts include hyperlinks that direct to the memorial sites at Legacy.com, where particular groups of the dead are commemorated (e.g. war veterans, university graduates, breast cancer victims)

Bibliographie der Filmmusik

In die folgende Bibliographie sind Hinweise von Claudia Bullerjahn, Michael Hergt, Ludger Kaczmarek, Ingo Lehmann und Mirkko Stehn eingegangen. Die namentlich gekennzeichneten Annotationen sind uns freundlicherweise vom Projekt „Bibliographie für die Musikwissenschaft“, hrsg. v. Staatlichen Institut für Musikforschung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin, überlassen worden (online: http://www.sim.spk-berlin.de/start.php). Wir danken Herrn Carsten Schmidt für seine Kooperationsbereitschaft

Claiming Valhalla: Archaeology, National Identity, and the German-Danish Borderland, 1830-1950

This dissertation traces the emergence of an academic community of archaeologists in the contested German-Danish borderland of Schleswig-Holstein from 1830 to 1950 in order to explore the uses of the distant past for creating modern national identities. The study considers the role of professional scholars in claiming and contesting shared heritages for diverging nationalist ends and explains how scholars handled the paradox of participating in nation-building projects while maintaining their commitments as members of a transnational scholarly community. The study begins in the 1830s with the founding of the Kiel Museum of Antiquities, which was the product of collaboration between German and Danish antiquarians. It then follows the work of antiquarian scholars in the period of the German-Danish Wars from 1848 to 1864, when prehistory became a focal point of claims to territory and led antiquarians to contest the ownership of artifacts such as the Nydam Boat and the Flensburg Collection. In the wake of the wars, the work of scholars such as Johanna Mestorf and Sophus Müller led to a renewal of cross-border collaboration, which resulted in the discovery of the lost Viking trading town of Haithabu and aided the development of a scientific model for the practice of archaeology. The success of research in both countries fostered the production of narratives of prehistory based on scientific methods but tied to national histories. Archaeologists such as Gustaf Kossinna envisioned the borderland as the site of the earliest Germanic peoples and the starting point of Germanic prehistory. The result was a "Nordic paradigm" for prehistoric development with strong racial and imperialist overtones that coexisted with traditional scientific approaches. The dissertation traces the transformation of such thinking in Schleswig-Holstein during the early twentieth century and considers its political implications in the Nazi Era, when the transnational context played a key role in the engagement of borderland scholars with the Third Reich. The study concludes with an appraisal of the fate of nationalist orientations for German and Danish archaeology and the impact of borderland archaeologists on their discipline and their respective national communities

The Young Turk aftermath : making sense of transnational contentious politics at the end of the Ottoman Empire, 1918-1922

Immediately following the armistice that ended the World War I in the Middle East, a small group of “Young Turk” leaders, who had led the war-time ruling party of the Committee of Union and Progress in the Ottoman Empire, fled into a self-imposed exile in Germany. Although they were wanted internationally as war-criminals and they were practically stateless statesmen without any material resources, they managed to remain all the more relevant for their political exile as rogue revolutionaries. The partition of the Ottoman Empire and the colonial occupation of the Muslim lands caused revolts and protest throughout the Muslim world. After secret meetings in Berlin, they founded in Moscow the Union of Muslim Revolutionary Societies (İslam İhtilal Cemiyetleri İttihadı). The aim of this self-proclaimed “Islamic International” was to mobilize and unite Muslim-nationalist insurgencies against European colonialism. The dissertation tells the story of the rise and fall of the Union of Muslim Revolutionary Societies during the aftermath of World War I, 1918–1922. The dissertation makes three interlinked arguments. First, as a transnational political history, the dissertation argues that this political movement needs to be embedded within the global moments of anticolonialism, internationalism, and revanchism of the immediate postwar years. In a fascinating network, the fugitive Young Turk leaders aligned with German revanchists, Russian Bolsheviks, Turkish Kemalists, the Afghan Emirate, Arab and Egyptian nationalists, and Indian and Irish revolutionaries as well as the League of Oppressed Peoples in Rome. Second, by critically drawing attention to the organizational incapacity of this movement, the dissertation argues that dialectic processes of sense-making, including rumors and conspiracy theories, helped this movement to appear as an elusive force in international politics with more conspiratorial capacities than it actually possessed. Third, in explaining the dynamics of transnational contentious politics in international relations, the dissertation argues that the Young Turk leaders, as revolutionary non-state actors, were increasingly isolated and persecuted by revolutionary state actors. Towards the settlement of international relations in 1922, they had lost their available space of action. Based on a vast collection of published and unpublished private papers of the Young Turk leaders as well as memoirs, diaries, newspapers, and state documents from various German, Swiss, French, British, Russian, and Turkish archives, the dissertation illustrates an important episode of the aftermath of World War I that shows the intricacies of transnational contentious politics and the epistemological ruptures that followed the end of the Ottoman Empire

Uncovering Pacific Pasts

Objects have many stories to tell. The stories of their makers and their uses. Stories of exchange, acquisition, display and interpretation. This book is a collection of essays highlighting some of the collections, and their object biographies, that were displayed in the Uncovering Pacific Pasts: Histories of Archaeology in Oceania (UPP) exhibition. The exhibition, which opened on 1 March 2020, sought to bring together both notable and relatively unknown Pacific material culture and archival collections from around the globe, displaying them simultaneously in their home institutions and linked online at www.uncoveringpacificpasts.org. Thirty‑eight collecting institutions participated in UPP, including major collecting institutions in the United Kingdom, continental Europe and the Americas, as well as collecting institutions from across the Pacific