Sebastian Cody explores the challenges of ballet historiography, emphasising the need for rigorous scholarship amidst widespread inaccuracies
By Murray Pittock My book is a study of the Enlightenment in Edinburgh like no other. Using data and models provided by urban innovation and Smart City theory, it pinpoints the distinctive features that made Enlightenment in the Scottish capital possible.…
Singing in a choir recently I was lucky enough to experience some intense moments, and less lucky in my attempts to think (again), about ‘moments’, the topic of my inaugural lecture, published in Volume 13.2 of Modernist Cultures. We were singing…
Wonder is largely absent as a topic of concern to contemporary philosophers. Yet ancient philosophers saw it as the source of what was distinctive in their way of thinking. Plato and Aristotle thought that it was the stirrings of wonder…
By Robert Morrison An extract from Romanticism, Volume 23.3, October 2017 1817 was a remarkable year for British Romanticism John Keats published his first volume of Poems. Thomas Moore produced Lalla Rookh, Percy Shelley Laon and Cythna, Felicia Hemans Modern…
The notion of “sovereignty” has been made central to the debate heading toward Brexit, but what does it mean? Does ‘getting one’s country back’ mean recovering it from immigration, neoliberal capitalism, or both? Does it mean closing one’s borders and…
By Emily Ridge He who travels light is in a fair way to travel happily. But the happy state is not compassed without effort. There must first be wisdom in selecting the absolutely necessary, determination in discarding all else, and…
By Martin Kratz In 1978, Anthony Burgess published several translations of work by the nineteenth-century Roman poet G.G. Belli. Burgess’s longstanding engagement with Belli had culminated the previous year in the publication of ABBA ABBA (1977), a hybrid novel/literary translation.…
By Sarah Wootton Light is recapturing the attention of contemporary writers, critics, and artists. Ann Wroe’s Six Facets of Light (Cape, 2016) is a series of brilliant reflections on the subject. In 2015 Münster’s Museum of Art and Culture staged…
By Catriona M.M. Macdonald Historians frequently address reputations in their work, indeed they are central to some of the most important debates in historiography. They are typically less inclined, however, to address common assumptions regarding the work and legacy of…
The second issue of CounterText, ‘Toward Countertextuality’, is out later this month. CounterText was launched this year with the stated aim of exploring ‘the charged evolutions and radical transformations of the literary today’. It asks questions about perceptions of a…