Aus dem Inhalt
Aus dem
Inhalt:
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Siegfried Wyler: Colour
Names and Text (abstract)
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A.D. Harvey: English
Gravestones as Cultural History (abstract)
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Hans Osterwalder: Polymorphous
Sexuality Versus the Family: Forms of Living Together in Caryl Churchill’s
Plays (abstract)
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Klaus-Dieter Gross: The
Crucible as
Drama and as Opera (abstract)
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Reingard M. Nischik: The
American Western of the 1960s: Diversification, Specialization, New
Beginnings (abstract)
Miszelle
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Recht – Gesetz –
Literatur
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Dieter
Paul Polloczek. Literature
and Legal Discourse. (Michael Kilian)
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Laura
Hanft Korobkin. Criminal Conversations: Sentimentality and
Nineteenth-Century Legal Stories of Adultery. (Eveline
Kilian)
Buchbesprechungen
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Martin Kuester, Gabriele Christ and Rudolf Beck, eds. New
Worlds: Discovering and Constructing the Unknown in Anglophone Literature. (Rolf Althof)
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New
and Newly Edited Oxford Reference Works: Elizabeth Knowles, ed. The Oxford
Dictionary of Phrase and Fable; Margaret Drabble, ed. The Oxford Companion
to English Literature; Very Short Introductions Series: British Histories. (Barbara
Korte)
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Hilary
Nesi. The Use and Abuse of EFL Dictionaries. (Albrecht Neubert)
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Monika Polifke. Richard Mulcasters Elementaire: Eine kultur- und sprachhistorische Untersuchung. (Fritz
Kemmler)
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Lothar Fietz.
Fragmentarisches Existieren: Wandlungen des Mythos von der verlorenen
Ganzheit in der Geschichte philosophischer, theologischer und literarischer
Menschenbilder. (Annegreth
Horatschek)
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Susanne
Scholz. Body Narratives: Writing the Nation and Fashioning the Subject in
Early Modern England. (Indira
Ghose)
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Ansgar und Vera Nünning.
Englische Literatur des 18. Jahrhunderts. (Monika
Fludernik)
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David
Woolley, ed. The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, D.D. (Gottfried
Graustein)
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Hans Heinrich. Zur Geschichte des ‘Libertin’ in der
englischen Literatur. (Raimund Schäffner)
-
Reinhold Schiffer. Oriental
Panorama: British Travellers in 19th Century Turkey. (Maurus
Reinkowski)
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Sabine Berghahn und
Sigrid Hoch-Baumgarten, eds. Mythos
Diana: Von der Princess of Wales zur Queen of Hearts. (Beate
Neumeier)
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Gisela Ecker, ed. Trauer
tragen – Trauer zeigen: Inszenierungen der Geschlechter. (Gabriele
Rippl)
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Collin
Meissner. Henry James and the Language of Experience. (Ulla Haselstein)
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Adi Wimmer, ed. Australian Nationalism Reconsidered: Maintaining a Monocultural
Tradition in a Multicultural Society. (Franz
Oswald)
Siegfried Wyler: Colour
Names and Text:
The fact that colour names as such lack a clearly definable content makes them
dependent on either an assignment to colorimetrically ascertainable quantities
and orders or, as has been the historical and culturally dependent process, to
objects. The latter all the more so since colour is, basically, object-inherent.
Moreover although colours are perceived with the help of the eye, colour
sensation takes place in the brain. This fact becomes especially relevant where
colour sensations are, or are supposed to be, produced without the intermediary
of the eye as is the case with texts, literary texts in particular. Here the
colour sensation evoked in the reader's mind cannot be indicated precisely, it
can only be suggested by the colour names occurring in the text. Its realisation
differs from that with perceptible colours. Colour sensation evoked by colour
words largely depends on a reader's colour memory and his or her colour
associations. The term "suggestiveness" has therefore been introduced
into the discussion of colour terms in literary texts. Moreover it has to be
noted that colour terms in literary texts fulfill a number of other functions
than denoting or suggesting colours as such.
A.D. Harvey:
English
Gravestones as Cultural History
Traditional interest in
the curiosity-value of their inscriptions has diverted attention from other
aspects of the grave-markers which have been a feature of English burial grounds
since the seventeenth century: their design, their iconology, the geographical
and chronological distribution of different types of marker, and the evidence
they provide both of the growth of commercialization and of changing conventions
of sentiment, especially during the last two hundred years.
Hans Osterwalder:
Polymorphous
Sexuality Versus the Family: Forms of Living Together in Caryl Churchill’s
Plays
This essay analyses Caryl Churchill's dramatic exploration of sexuality and its effects on the family or
other, alternative forms of communal living. As John M. Clum points out in his
reading of Cloud Nine, that play shows how "relationships are
created not to suit the needs of society at large... but the patterns of desire
of the individuals involved." The fundamental question is whether this
liberated, polymorphous, i.e. not exclusively heterosexual sexuality still
allows for stable social units, be they the traditional nuclear family or
alternative forms of communal living. In a playwright like Churchill this issue
is obviously linked with the notion of feminism. One of the central tenets of
feminism is the need for autonomy; a concept which certainly includes the choice
of a particular kind of sexuality and a specific form of living together. So in
broader terms the objective of my investigation is the effect of autonomy, of
women and men, in its original Greek sense of 'self-law', on the traditional
building block of society, the nuclear family. The Churchill plays in which this
clash is particularly obvious are Owners, Traps, Vinegar Tom, Cloud Nine and
Top Girls. In addition the article traces the marginal presence of the
subject of family and sexuality in Churchill’s later work up to Blue Heart.
Predictably Churchill doesn’t plump for easy solutions but presents a balanced
picture of the incompatibility of the nuclear family with liberated sexuality
without pinning the blame squarely on men and their patriarchal mind-set.
Klaus-Dieter Gross:
The
Crucible as Drama and as Opera
In the late seventeenth century puritan leaders fought a lost battle to
re-impose the old order in New England. The Salem witchcraze can be seen in this
social and political context. With a didactic intention, in The
Crucible Arthur Miller analyzes parallels between past and present social,
political, and ideological circumstances. For dramatic effect he imbeds this
into a story of strife, love, and tragedy, i.e. elements which are traditionally
operatic. In their opera based on the play composer Robert Ward and librettist
Bernard Stambler reduce the didacticism of the drama and interpret the plot as
mainly an outgrowth of the everlasting gender conflict. Ward eclectically refers
to a wide range of musical styles, and efficiently even incorporates musical
conflicts within late puritanism.
Reingard M.
Nischik: The
American Western of the 1960s: Diversification, Specialization, New Beginnings
>This essay examines the fate of the Western, the oldest genre in American cinema, during
the 1960s, a turbulent decade of change and revolution. After a boom in the
1950s, the sixties saw a decline in the number of Western productions. At the
same time, under the influence of revisionist criticism of the myth of the
American West, the genre was forced to reconsider and reinvent itself. This led
to the development of four main branches within the genre: the traditional
Western, which continued to glorify white male Western history; the elegiac
Western, which mourned the passing of Western heroism; the anti-idealistic
Western, which presented a new, highly negative view of the West; and the
Western parody, poking fun at traditional Western conventions.
What the Western in the sixties lost in numerical terms, it made up for in
variety, with its new-found diversity pointing in new directions for the future
development of the genre.
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