Persuasive discourse and language planning in Ireland

Colonial language discourse typically consists of evaluations concerning the respective merits of two or more languages, and the cultures they represent. This can serve as a warrant for imposing a ‘superior’ language. Although such discourse tends to be associated with the conquest of the New World and subsequent European expansion, there is evidence that in the case of Ireland – England’s first overseas colony – an adversarial relation between English and Irish languages existed even before the Elizabethan period. Referring to English legislation, chronicles and other documents, this paper examines the norms, arguments and rhetorical strategies that were used to exert the dominance of English language in Ireland during late-medieval and early-modern times. In the latter half of the paper, the focus will shift to attempts to create, especially from the seventeenth-century onwards, a ‘pro-Irish reversal’ that used similar arguments and rhetoric to reclaim this denigrated language. Our suggestion is that these pro- and anti-colonial language discourses anticipate those that were used later on in colonial and postcolonial environments

"Sion's Songs": Milton, the Psalms, and Counter-Tradition

In her concept of counter-tradition, Sheila Delany articulates a tradition of opposition that affirms the place of critical dissent within a broader cultural heritage spanning historical periods and encompassing diverse cultures, nations, and religions. While Delany includes Milton's Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce as a representative text, Milton's Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes present further models of counter-tradition. In both poems, the Psalms provide a tradition of literary excellence and critical resistance for heroic figures confronting oppression. Structural, dialectical, and typological features of the Psalms illustrate counter-tradition as a dynamic association of memory, history, experience, and education in the development of individual readers. Thus, counter-tradition is a concept of enduring critical and pedagogical value

The Reformation and the Idea of the North

Both scholarly and popular perceptions have identified a profound cultural and political realignment of Europe with the Reformation of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: a largely Protestant North confronting a predominantly Catholic South. This replaced a medieval conceptual geography of East-West, in which the North (on the basis of scriptural passages) was a zone of sinfulness and danger. This chapter argues that the emergence of a North-South cultural-religious dichotomy was more fraught and uncertain than often supposed. Late medieval North European humanists countered negative perceptions with patriotic accounts of national origins. In the era of the Counter-Reformation, British and Scandinavian Catholic exiles emphasised the intrinsic virtue and orthodoxy of northerners, and the potential for reclaiming their homelands from heresy. Protestants were often ambivalent about the North, not least since northern parts of England, Scotland, Ireland and Denmark-Norway were often associated with Catholic resistance, as well as with magic and superstition. The propaganda of the British Civil Wars reinforced both positive and negative stereotypes. While a cultural association of Protestantism with the North eventually took root, this was a contingent process, and should be seen more as a consequence than a cause of the stabilization of Europe’s confessional borders

The Witchcraft Trial against Anders Poulsen, Vads 1692: Critical Perspectives

In this chapter, I will analyse a historical source that has attracted considerable attention during the last two decades, namely the court records of the trial of Anders Poulsen, 1692.1 The trial took place in the town of Vadsø in Finnmark, which is the northernmost district of Northern Norway. The reasons for this attention are multiple, and a few will be mentioned

Independent women rendered sick, supple, and submissive: Charlotte Lennox and Jane Austen critique the gendering of sensibility ; and, Melville’s Bartleby: a perfectly-crafted anomaly

Arabella of Charlotte Lennox's The Female Quixote and Marianne Dashwood of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility are headstrong, independent female characters who are unwilling to submit to the husbands that their families have chosen for them. These women pose a threat to the patriarchal order of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries by rejecting their appropriate social roles as physically weak and intellectually inferior females in need of male protection and guidance, gender distinctions propagated by a culture of sensibility through medical, philosophical, and literary discourse. Utilizing reformation narratives common in domestic novels, Lennox and Austen divest Arabella and Marianne of their autonomous lifestyles and quickly place them into marriages authorized by their families. However, the restrained tones of these marital conclusions, in which Arabella and Marianne are objectified and stripped of their vibrant personalities, subvert the convention of reforming insubordinate women and placing them under male control. Therefore, the hurried and disappointing denouements of the novels indicate Austen's and Lennox's critiques of this gendering of sensibility. GRUBBS, ELIZABETH MARIE, M.A. Melville's Bartleby: A Perfectly-Crafted Anomaly. Herman Melville's short story "Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street" has puzzled readers for years and provoked hundreds of scholars to explain Bartleby's strange behavior in a multitude of ways using a variety of critical methodologies. An examination of scholars' compulsion and frustration with classifying this odd character along with a close analysis of the narrator's obsession with understanding Bartleby reveals society's determination to reduce humans into known identity types. Thus by creating a personification of ambiguity through the character of Bartleby that resists simplification, Melville critiques the social drive to classify people using these normalized identity roles. In particular, Melville reveals the limitations and paradoxes existing within the appropriate role of the mid-nineteenth-century male through a representation of the problematic aspects of capitalism and Jacksonian freedom in antebellum America

Herniation Pits in Human Mummies: A CT Investigation in the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Sicily

Herniation pits (HPs) of the femoral neck were first described in a radiological publication in 1982 as round to oval radiolucencies in the proximal superior quadrant of the femoral neck on anteroposterior radiographs of adults. In following early clinical publications, HPs were generally recognized as an incidental finding. In contrast, in current clinical literature they are mentioned in the context of femoroacetabular impingement (FAI) of the hip joint, which is known to cause osteoarthritis (OA). The significance of HPs in chronic skeletal disorders such as OA is still unclear, but they are discussed as a possible radiological indicator for FAI in a large part of clinical studies

Bedlam in mind: seeing and reading historical images of madness

In this article I explore mythical Bedlam of popular imaginings. London's Bethlem Hospital was for centuries a unique institution caring for the insane and its alter ego 'Bedlam' influenced popular stereotypes of insanity. For instance, while the type of vagrant beggar known as a 'Tom of Bedlam' was said to have disappeared from English society with the Restoration, the figure of Mad Tom retained a visual and vocal presence within popular musical culture from the seventeenth century up to the present era. Using the ballad 'Mad Tom o' Bedlam' as a case study, I illustrate how an early modern stereotype of madness has maintained continuity within a popular song tradition whilst undergoing cultural change