In this innovative study, Professor Narahara offers a multi-disciplinary description of the Japanese copula, revealing it to be at the interface of morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. Most striking is her discovery of the copula's function to express the speaker's knowledge or ignorance about the proposition of the sentence. She provides a new morphological feature analysis to derive this modal function and further proposes a series of unified accounts for a wide range of discourse phenomena.

Piers Gray was one of the most brilliant literary writers of his generation. These essays ranging from Oscar Wilde to Levin, from Shakespeare to pulp fiction, use the full resources of literary and linguistic analysis to produce a reading of European culture and society in the twentieth century. In his final posthumous essay On Linearity , Gray summons all his reading and knowledge to deliver his final judgement on life and death.

This volume disputes the assumption that Rossetti was a follower of Keble and Pusey, and shows how her dissatisfaction with the male-dominated call to celibacy led her to reject their notions of worldliness, and to form a closer bond with the physical world and the body.

Fragments of Union , a new approach to comparative literary studies, is about forms of connections: between nations, literatures, individuals, words. It asks how, and why, connections get severed, and about the nature of the pieces that remain. Interdisciplinary readings of writings by Scots and Americans re-draw the literary map of both countries during the Enlightenment and Romantic periods. Political, philosophical, cultural and grammatical dimensions give its analysis sharp relevance to the new conditions presented by devolved government in Britain.

This textbook introduces readers to the academic scholarship on the history of childhood and youth in sub-Saharan Africa, with a particular focus on the colonial and postcolonial eras. In a series of seven chapters, it addresses key themes in the historical scholarship, arguing that age serves as a useful category for historical analysis in African history. Just as race, class, and gender can be used to understand how African societies have been structured over time, so too age is a powerful tool for thinking about how power, youth, and seniority intersect and change over time. This is, then, a work of synthesis rather than of new research based on primary sources. This book will therefore introduce mainstream scholars of the history of childhood and youth to the literature on Africa, and scholars of youth in Africa to debates within the wider field of the history of children and youth.

On Whit Monday 1828 a strange youth, barely able to speak and hardly able to walk appeared in Nuremberg. This new case of a 'wild man' excited widespread curiosity, and many prominent figures wanted to test their pedagogical and medical theories on such a promising subject. Who was he? Was he, as many claimed, the rightful heir to the Grand Duchy of Baden, or was he simply an ingenious fraud? This book examines the many ramifications of this fascinating case, and offers many insights into the social, political and intellectual life of Biedermeier Germany.

Maps make the world visible, but they also obscure, distort, idealize. This wide-ranging study traces the impact of cartography on the changing cultural meanings of space, offering a fresh analysis of the mental and material mapping of early modern England and Ireland. Combining cartographic history with critical cultural studies and literary analysis, it examines the construction of social and political space in maps, in cosmography and geography, in historical and political writing, and in the literary works of Marlowe, Shakespeare, Spenser and Drayton.

This volume is a study of human entanglements with Nature as seen through the mode of haunting. As an interruption of the present by the past, haunting can express contemporary anxieties concerning our involvement in the transformation of natural environments and their ecosystems, and our complicity in their collapse. It can also express a much-needed sense of continuity and relationality. The complexity of the question-who and what gets to be called human with respect to the nonhuman-is reflected in these collected chapters, which, in their analysis of cinematic and literary representations of sentient Nature within the traditional gothic trope of haunting, bring together history, race, postcolonialism, and feminism with ecocriticism and media studies. Given the growing demand for narratives expressing our troubled relationship with Nature, it is imperative to analyze this contested ground. "Chapter 6" is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

The James Baldwin Review (JBR) is an annual journal that brings together a wide array of peer-reviewed critical and creative work on the life, writings, and legacy of James Baldwin. In addition to these cutting-edge contributions, each issue contains a review of recent Baldwin scholarship and an award-winning graduate student essay. The James Baldwin Review publishes essays that invigorate scholarship on James Baldwin; catalyze explorations of the literary, political, and cultural influence of Baldwin's writing and political activism; and deepen our understanding and appreciation of this complex and luminary figure. It is the aim of the James Baldwin Review to provide a vibrant and multidisciplinary forum for the international community of Baldwin scholars, students, and enthusiasts. -- .

These essays cover topics as radically diverse as Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Vaclav Havel, The Magic Flute and Viz magazine. All have been published before, and many have already proved controversial. The author, a leading Oakeshott scholar, contributes frequently to the TLS . Witty, moving and erudite, his prose is also conspicuously graceful and clear. This collection is addressed as much to the educated general reader as to the academic specialist. It includes an otherwise almost unobtainable exchange with Sir Isaiah Berlin.

Does interpretation have anything to do with truth? This new theory of interpretation denies this, yet it argues that some interpretations are false and some are just. These theses are justified through a pragmatic model of interpretation as a language-game involving five participants: an author, a text, a reader, a language, and an encyclopedia. The model claims to provide an account of both literary interpretation and face-to-face dialogue. The central intuition is that authorial intention is radically separated from textual meaning and that consequently, the reader's role is one of necessary imposture.

Maatian Ethics in a Communication Context explores the ethical principle of Maat: the guiding principle of harmony and order that permeated classical African political and civil life. The book provides a rigorous, communication-focused account of the ethical wisdom ancient Africans cultivated and is evidenced in the form of recovered written texts, mythology, stelae, prescriptions for just speech, and the hieroglyphic system of writing itself. Moving beyond colonial stereotypes of ancient Africans, the book offers insight into the African value systems that positioned humans as inextricably embedded in nature, and communication theory that anchors good communication in careful listening habits as the foundational moral virtue. Expanding on the work of Maulana Karenga, Molefi Kete Asante and other groundbreaking scholars, the book presents a picture of civilizations with a shared lust for life, a spiritual connection to scientific speech, and the veneration of ancestors as deeply connected to the pursuit of wisdom. Offering an examination of Maat from a specifically communication ethics perspective, this book will be of great interest to scholars and students of Communication Ethics, African philosophy, Rhetorical theory, Africana Studies and Ancient History.

One of the cruelest abuses of slavery in America was that slaves were forbidden to read and write. Consigned to illiteracy, they left no records of their thoughts and feelings apart from the few exceptional narratives of Frederick Douglass and others who escaped to the North-or so we have long believed. But as Christopher Hager reveals, a few enslaved African Americans managed to become literate in spite of all prohibitions, and during the halting years of emancipation thousands more seized the chance to learn. The letters and diaries of these novice writers, unpolished and hesitant yet rich with voice, show ordinary black men and women across the South using pen and paper to make sense of their experiences. Through an unprecedented gathering of these forgotten writings-from letters by individuals sold away from their families, to petitions from freedmen in the army to their new leaders, to a New Orleans man's transcription of the Constitution-Word by Word rewrites the history of emancipation. The idiosyncrasies of these untutored authors, Hager argues, reveal the enormous difficulty of straddling the border between slave and free. These unusual texts, composed by people with a unique perspective on the written word, force us to rethink the relationship between literacy and freedom. For African Americans at the end of slavery, learning to write could be liberating and empowering, but putting their hard-won skill to use often proved arduous and daunting-a portent of the tenuousness of the freedom to come.

The essays collected here all take issue with the claim that the Victorian period is the antithesis of our own. They show how characteristic postmodern anxieties and celebrations concerning truth, certainty and identity informed Victorian culture at all levels. Covering everything from attitudes to drink to the poetry of Browning, from the Great Exhibition to the Elephant Man, this volume shows not only how the Victorians coped with these challenges but also what lessons they have for us today.

Walter Hallstein was among the great European visionaries. This is the first book length study of one of the key shapers of the European Community in its early years. The range of contributors include those who worked with Hallstein and have personal recollections of him, and younger historians drawing upon documents only recently available. The book contains sections on his contribution as State Secretary to post-war German foreign policy, his seminal role as the first President of the Commission of the EEC and the legacy of his work and ideas and later years as President of the European Movement.

What kind of connotation does the word 'father' have in everyday language? How have states and governments defined and manipulated the paternal role? What is a 'father-figure'? What can literature tell us about absent or overbearing fathers? How far is the cultural construct of fatherhood linked to biological paternity, and what is biological paternity? These are some of the questions explored through the chapters in this book, which together offer a fascinatingly complex view of fatherhood across the centuries.

Essays collected in this book discuss textual and discursive formulations of dominance and resistance. The authors analyze how they are narrated and re-narrated, framed and reframed in different social, political and language communities and realities, through different media and means, and translated into different contexts and languages. As the ways we name, rename, or label events, people and places have implications in the real world, the essays are also meant to investigate the ways in which we partake in negotiating its construction, its changing meanings and senses through the stories we tell and the practices we live by.

This book takes a postcritical perspective on Joseph Conrad's central texts, including Heart of Darkness, The Secret Agent, Under Western Eyes, and Lord Jim. Whereas critique is a form of reading that prioritizes suspicion, unmasking, and demystifying, postcritique ascribes positive value to the knowledge, affect, ethics, and politics that emerge from literature. The essays in this collection recognize the dark elements in Conrad's fiction-deceit, vanity, avarice, lust, cynicism, and cruelty-yet they perceive hopefulness as well. Conrad's skepticism unveils the dark heart of politics, and his critical heritage can feed our fear that humanity is incapable of improving. This Conrad is a well-known figure, but there is another, neglected Conrad that this book aims to bring to light, one who delves into the politics of hope as well as the politics of fear. Chapters 1 and 2 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com

The book relates to the study of spirit and spirituality; mind, intelligence, consciousness and epistemology; literature and theatre. From a basis in recorded experience it rethinks the nature of spirit and relates spirit to the human mind, and it questions the unprovable assumptions underlying contemporary objectivist and scientific approaches to intelligence, language and knowledge. It develops a model of the mind and extended states of consciousness and uses this to explore the rhythmical structures fundamental to literature and theatre.

The complete memoirs of a man of many talents and faces -- the late, great Spike Milligan -- affectionately recounted by his close friend and agent for 35 years, Norma Farnes. 'What's he really like?' Wherever I went and was introduced as Spike Milligan's manager I waited for the inevitable question. In not far short of thirty-six years it never altered. It wasn't one that could be answered in a few words so I generally made do with 'Interesting' or 'don't ask'... After chancing on an advertisement for a secretarial position, Norma Farnes found herself initiated into the world of Number Nine Orme Court where Spike and some of post-war's other greatest comedy writers like Eric Sykes, Johnny Speight, Ray Galton and Alan Simpson had formed a writers' cooperative. Soon promoted to be his manager, Norma was working for a man with a reputation for being brilliant and difficult in equal measure.;In this affectionate yet true account, Norma Farnes looks at the whole of Spike's life from his childhood and extraordinary family in India, his ongoing battle with his restless mind, his numerous affairs and his heartening struggles with many varied causes. She gives a mass of wonderful anecdotes and revealing insights into Spike and his circle, including, of course, his often fraught but deep friendship with Peter Sellers. In Spike, Norma Farnes has written a moving portrait of her greatest friend. Above all, Spike's fascinating, very human character is brought to life on every page.

Even though he was once one of Britain's most popular writers, the reputation of the poet and memoirist W.H. Davies has, in recent decades, gone into decline. Davies's colourful early life as a hobo and a tramp - captured by his most famous work The Autobiography of a Super Tramp - and his apparently 'innocent' poems about nature, tales about the seamier sides of life, his experiences on the road and verse portraits of those characters he met there - has led to the Welsh poet being placed under the cosy heading 'Georgian'. It has been a tag which does serious disservice to the tone, nature and ambition of Davies's lyrics. As poet and critic Michael Cullup shows in this brief but insightful exploration of the entirety of Davies's output - the memoirs, the short stories as well as the poems - there was a more complex personality than the one suggested by his public persona. True, he was a figure at home with the Georgian literary world - Edward Thomas and Hilaire Belloc were close friends - yet he was also capable of impressing more avant-garde talents like Ezra Pound and Jacob Epstein. In this bracing reappraisal Cullup judiciously undermines preconceived notions of Davies the writer to reveal a poetic imagination richer, more insightful, more thoughtful than that for which he is generally given credit. Included in this critical biography is a generous and illustrative selection of Davies's verse.

The Literature of Nationalism concerns literature in its broadest sense and the manner in which, in belles lettres, the oral tradition and journalism, language and literature create national/nationalist myths. It treats East European culture from Finland to 'Yugoslavia', from Bohemia to Romania, from the nineteenth century to today. One third of the book concerns women and ethnic identity, and the rest covers subjects as varied as Bulgarian Fascism and the impact of political change on language in Hungary and ex-Yugoslavia.

Reluctant Witnesses: Jews and the Christian Imagination is an analysis of the ancient Christian myth that casts Jews as a 'witness-people', and this myth's presence in contemporary religious discourse. It treats diverse products of the Christian imagination, including systematic theology, works of fiction, and popular writings on biblical prophecy. The book demonstrates that the witness-people myth, which was first articulated by Augustine and which determined official attitudes towards Jews in medieval Christendom, remains a powerful force in the Christian imagination.