This essay interrogates Sergei Eisenstein's critique of D. W. Griffith's montage aesthetic, arguing that, in Griffith's Orphans of the Storm, historical perspective is constituted in opposition to (rather than as a result of) the forward surge of the film's montage. Griffith represents historical consciousness through the narrative figure of trembling, harking back to Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, another text in which the movements of history are registered on the bodies of witnesses who struggle to keep their composure. Both Griffith and Dickens construct a social world driven to extremes by competing ideological forces and imagine historical subjects whose reactions to emergency—witnessing and trembling—hold them apart from it. Ultimately, these gestures of response suggest a tendency in melodramatic texts to construct a normative subjectivity that resists the antithetical underpinnings of melodrama itself.

As the First “Total” War of the Twentieth century, World War I marked a turning point in the understanding of what Goya had called the disasters of war. The years 1914–18 witnessed a difficult struggle to recognize and defend civilian rights in wartime, rights that had primarily been defined as those of soldiers and prisoners of war, under the Taws and Customs of War on Tand, established at The Hague in 1899 and 1907. Wartime conditions that blurred lines between civilian and combatant unleashed violations of civilians' human rights that the conventions had not anticipated. The ensuing debate during the Great War exemplified the growing complexity of disputes about human rights. In particular, it revealed that competing claims of victimization could exacerbate reprisals in the confusion of combat. In a duel of countercharges, states published documentation carrying titles that denounced enemy indifference to the “law of nations,” such as Die volkerrechtswidrige Fuhrung des belgischen Volkskriegs (“The Conduct of the Belgian People's War in Violation of the Taw of Nations” [1915]) and Rapports… en vue de constater les actes commis par l'ennemi en violation du droit des gens (“Reports … to Record Enemy Actions in Violation of the Taw of Nations” [1915]). A “war of words” raged, as well as a war of dumdum bullets that spread on impact, poison gas, and aerial bombardment—all instruments of war that had been explicitly banned by the conventions of the preceding years.

Red Hunters and the Animal People (1904), an early collection of stories for children by Charles Alexander Eastman, a Dako$$ta author, was largely viewed by his critical contemporaries as a politically innocuous analogue to Kipling's Jungle Book Stories. Through consideration of the Dako$$ta oral-historical genre of hituᒋkaᒋkaᒋpi (“long ago stories”) and of Dako$$ta peoplehood more broadly, this article proposes an alternative view of Eastman as a resistance writer who cited a long-circulating Dako$$ta kinship philosophy to criticize the enduring conditions of United States settler colonialism—a criticism that would become more pointed in his later, better-known autobiography, From the Deep Woods to Civilization (1915). In viewing Eastman's animal tales as opposed to United States colonialism, we may see more clearly his innovative translations of Dako$$ta politics into narratives that both appealed to and challenged United States settler society. These challenges were made in relation to Dako$$ta conceptions of peoplehood, power, and gift.

By 1755 English dramatic audiences as well as English dramatic critics were less concerned with faults in the construction of Shakespeare's plays then they had been twenty years earlier. Largely because of Garrick's excellent acting, the focal point of Shakespearian criticism was shifting from consideration of plot structure to consideration of character delineation. But even though advance was being made in the new criticism as well as in the growth of Shakespeare idolatry, such a varied mixture of realistic material, classical mythology, and fairy lore as Shakespeare used in A Midsummer Night's Dream was bound to fail in presentation. Pepys, nearly one hundred years earlier (September 29, 1662), had seen the play and had remarked that it was the most insipid and ridiculous one he had ever witnessed in his life. In 1716 Richard Leveridge presented his Comick Masque of Pyramus and Thisbe at Lincoln's Inn Fields, where it had nine performances (from April 11 of that year until September 9, 1723). As the title suggests, it was a brief handling of Bottom's playing artisans—a mere fragment of Shakespeare's play. On January 21, 1745 an anonymous Mock Opera, Pyramus and Thisbe, appeared at Covent Garden and enjoyed some twenty-two performances until April 13, 1748. The music was composed by John Frederick Lampe, and the play was slightly longer than Leveridge's. No other performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream in any of its parts is recorded until 1755 when Garrick made his first attempt to give his audiences some more of the material of the play. He was wise, as subsequent events proved, not to try to present it at that time in its entirety. Yet he was vitally interested in the whole of the play and joined eight years later with his friend George Colman in an attempt to produce it in its Shakespearian form.

On the evening of September 20, 1709, at about the hour when we are accustomed in our own theatres to see the curtain rising on the first act, an old man dressed in black clothes sat in a chair of state on the stage of the London Haymarket, and whispered for the last time, “The rest is silence.” Within the sound of his beautiful voice the wit and fashion of the capital were congregated, their customary laughter and chatter awed into stillness by the “divinity [that] hung round that man.” He had played the Prince for forty-eight years, and though he was now more than seventy, and occasionally younger men essayed the rôle, the “town” still preferred their old favorite.

Any critic writing on Polyeucle must come to grips with a problem that is specific to this particular play (not merely generic, as the conflict between two kinds of “love-duty”). He must ask himself, “Why did Corneille, the poet of heroic humanism, choose to write about Christian martyrdom?” I do not believe it is an adequate answer to say that he did not write about Christian martyrdom but, once again, about heroic humanism. It must have been obvious to Corneille that on the one hand martyrdom had something in common with heroism and on the other that it provided a new variation on the theme. The question, then, is to identify this new variation, to determine the quiddity of Polyeucte, the special light it throws on the Cornelian glorification of man. If Corneille's theater as a whole is about idealism, its potential and its dangers, then the Christian idealism of the martyr is particular in several ways. It demands the ultimate sacrifice, which is not necessarily demanded of the secular hero. The martyr must not only risk his life, he must give it. At the same time, it promises an ultimate in glory. Thus, both the “danger” and the “potential” are extreme. It is this aspect of martyrdom that enters the dramaturgy of Polyeucte in the conflicts between the heroic Christian idealism of Polyeucte and Néarque and the various forms and levels of religious and secular idealism represented by the other characters (and Polyeucte and Néarque) at different moments of the play. But there is a related yet even more fundamental aspect of martyrdom that is built into the fabric and structure of Polyeucle. As Tertullian wrote (A pologeticus, Ch. i), “The more you mow us down, the more quickly we grow; the blood of Christians is fresh seed.” Grace, working through the example of the martyr, leads others to augment the ranks of the Christians. It is this theme of emulation that is central in Polyeucte and forms the link between the two worlds of heroic humanism and Christian martyrdom. As has often been pointed out, admiration is a key emotion in Corneille's theatre. But it is not solely an emotion the playwright hopes to evoke in the spectator; it is also a basic response of many characters to the noble and courageous actions of other characters and a response they hope to arouse in others by their own actions. Now the term admiration, the act of gazing at with wonder, can (and did at times in the Latin) imply strong approval and desire. Admiration may, as it very often does in Corneille, lead to emulation. I should like to suggest that in this theme the seventeenth-century dramatist discovered a religious analogue to the admiring imitation of a model or an ideal self-image that we find typical of so many of his secular heroes.

None of the deadly weapons of mediaeval legend, not even the darts of Yspadaden Penkawr, is more sinister than Crocea Mors, the sword of Julius Caesar. This Yellow Death, a terrible instrument which inflicted incurable and inevitably fatal wounds, was invented by Geoffrey of Monmouth, who says that Caesar lost it in his first battle with the British when it stuck in the cleft shield of the British prince Nennius and was carried off by him. The episode is symbolic of Caesar's entire association with the British as related by Geoffrey and his followers, for at their hands the great Roman's military reputation suffered even worse than his armory in his encounters with the descendants of Brut.

Pourquoi et dans quelle mesure les pensées de Pascal peuvent-elles paraître à la fois si vivantes et si présentes, mais à certains égards si lointaines? A une époque où la multiplication des formes de la violence nous interdit à la fois de nous évader dans le beau rêve d'une Cité de Dieu et de trouver un sens clair à l'histoire des hommes, et où triomphent plus que jamais, en même temps, le dogmatisme et le sentiment de la futilité, il est intéressant d'examiner les pensées de Pascal précisément parce que Pascal, le plus fortement peut-être de tous les penseurs politiques, nous montre comment et pourquoi la vie politique est en même temps et surtout indissolublement futile et sérieuse; tout l'intérêt du problème—et son caractère tragique—venant précisément du fait qu'il est impossible, selon Pascal, de sortir du cercle vicieux du sérieux et de la futilité. Ce n'est pas parce que vous passerez, nous dit Pascal, d'une monarchie à une République, ou d'une République à une autre République, que les choses passeront du futile au sérieux ou du sérieux au grotesque; vos opinions peut-être changeront, car la concupiscence et l'imagination vous égarent—ou servent vos passions—mais pas la nature, l'essence de la vie politique. Urbi et Orbi, l'homme ne change pas, et la politique vaut ce que vaut l'homme, c'est-à-dire rien, ou peu de chose.

Although one of the most interesting of Middle English romances, the Avowing of Arthur has been singularly neglected. The story is told with the gratifying freshness which marks Gawain and the Green Knight and the other poems of the Northern school. The incidents of which the story is composed are fitted into the general framework with rare skill. Even more striking is the vividness of the characterization. The ordinary romance character is a dummy upon which are hung splendid clothes tagged with catalogues of all the virtues. Dealing with these personages is often like handling the bits of cardboard stamped “sugar,” “tea,” “potatoes,” with which students in commercial colleges play. But in this romance there is sharp distinction between Arthur, genial, brave, a practical joker, and Baldwin, a man of few words, cynical without being bitter, nonchalant, a man of deeds; between Kay, impulsive, always getting into scrapes, inclined to jeer at others, a great boy with a boy's love of adventure, and Gawain, the courteous knight, equally ready to aid beauty in distress and to assist a comrade in time of need. The story is crowded with incidents, and the verse is vigorous and effective.

Unlike some other plays of the Wakefield cycle, the Second Shepherds’ Play reveals a subtle exploitation of dramatic techniques to minimize the distance between secular and sacred experience. Introduction of the shepherds one at a time; Mak’s play-acting, magic spell, dream prophecy, and sheep stealing; the parallel between Mak and the Angel are all arranged to give the audience a sense in theatrical terms of the meaning of the shift through the farce-drama from the opening lyrics of static despair to a new mode of celebration. Although symbolically presented as the devil or Antichrist, Mak functions dramatically as the bridge to the birth of Jesus.

My Purpose in this paper is to understand the allegory of The Faerie Queene more fully by examining the relation between the first two books. It has been commonly observed that these books are parallel in structure. In each, the Knight who represents a particular virtue (Holiness, Temperance) leaves the court of the Faery Queen with a guide (Una, the Palmer), and later defeats two chief antagonists (Sansfoy and Sans-joy, Pyrochles and Cymochles); upon being separated from his guide, he enters a place of temptation (the house of Pride, the cave of Mammon), and later falls. Then being rescued by Arthur and united with his guide, he enters a place of instruction (the house of Holiness, the castle of Alma) and finally fulfills his adventure (killing the Dragon, destroying the Bower of Bliss). Such paralleling has been considered part of Spenser's design expressed in the Letter to Ralegh, to write twelve books in which twelve knights, as patrons of the twelve virtues, undertake parallel adventures assigned by the Faery Queen. That the later books do not follow this repetitive structure has been variously explained as the need to avoid monotony, to modify the design according to the virtue being treated, or simply—all too simply—as a change of plan. It was left to A. S. P. Woodhouse to explain for the first time the basis of the parallel structure of the first two books. He suggests that the two orders of nature and grace which were universally accepted as a frame of reference in the Renaissance are here carefully differentiated: “what touches the Redcross Knight bears primarily upon revealed religion, or belongs to the order of grace; whatever touches Guyon bears upon natural ethics, or belongs to the order of nature” (p. 204). It follows that the parallel structure is designed to bring into relief differences which depend upon these two orders. He finds that this difference leaves its mark chiefly upon the education received by the two knights: the Redcross knight shows the bankruptcy of natural man who must utterly depend upon heavenly grace whereas Guyon shows how natural man realizes the potentialities of his nature by ruling his passions through reason (pp. 205-206). At times, he insists more strongly than does Spenser upon an absolute separation of the two orders: Guyon's reference to “the sacred badge of my Redeemers death” confuses the separation, as does the Palmer's benediction: “God guide thee, Guyon, well to end thy warke.” Even more confusing is Guyon's invocation to Christ for His Mercy at the moment when, like Longinus, he levels his spear against the Cross: “Mercie Sir knight, and mercie Lord, / For mine offence and heedlesse hardiment, / That had almost committed crime abhord” (ii.i.27). However, thanks to Woodhouse's article, there seems no doubt now that the distinction between the two orders of nature and grace provides a necessary frame of reference for understanding the parallel structure of the first two books.

Knights who are at the wars eat their bread in sorrow; their ease is weariness and sweat; they have one good day after many bad; they are vowed to all manner of labour; they are for ever swallowing their fear; they expose themselves to every peril; they give up their bodies to the adventure of life in death.… Great is the honour which knights deserve, and great the favour which kings should shew them, for all the reasons which I have told.… Of what profit is a good knight? I tell you that through good knights is the king and the kingdom honoured, protected, feared and defended.… I tell you that without good knights, the king is like a man who has neither feet nor hands.—Gutierre Díaz de Gámez

This article situates the graphic narrative form within the current politics of protest movements. It argues that the graphic narrative captures the forms of civil disobedience that shape late-twentieth-century and twenty-first-century protest. Protest movements increasingly operate within, or in accordance with, the systems they seek to challenge. The graphic narrative, similarly, combines complicity and critique in its narrative style and structure. The argument draws on two examples from different regional and political contexts—Vishwajyoti Ghosh's graphic narrative about the years of emergency rule in India in the 1970s, Delhi Calm, and Amir Soltani and Khalil's work on Iran's Green movement, Zahra's Paradise—to show how the global graphic narrative acts as an archive of popular protests that inform present-day movements and offers a platform for those movements to perform civic action. It advocates a new formalist approach to the global graphic narrative as a popular protest form.

Grammar Games in the Classroom

It looked like an error of vocabulary. The class was reading a text by the east german author Thomas Brussig, Wasserfarben, and practicing the indirect discourse subjunctive. In the text, an East German school director, Schneider, summons a student to his office to reprimand him on his lack of motivation:

Looking at Walt Whitman's Civil War writings—especially his memoir Memoranda during the War and his letters of consolation—this essay argues that Whitman discovered in the war a way to enlarge the vision of sex and sexual possibility he had initiated in the “Calamus” poems of 1860. Taking as a point of departure the babies named Walt that were born after the war to soldiers for whom Whitman had cared, the essay describes the multiplicity of roles the poet inhabits in the war writing (mother, father, nurse, lover, confidant, scribe) and reads his acts of surrogacy as efforts to restore carnality, in its world-making force, to family and, in particular, to parenthood. Whitman's project of queer generation, the essay argues, usefully complicates recent scholarship on sex, time, and futurity.

One doesn't get too many teaching moments like this: I am standing by the water fountain outside our classroom. One of the students taking a break from the final exam in the course in Dante's Divine Comedy looks up at me from the fountain and says, “When I read this stuff, it's like I'm out of here.”

The seminal novels of the Philippines, José Rizal's Noli me tangere (1887) and El filibusterismo (1891), are written in Spanish, a language that began evaporating in the archipelago when the United States defeated Spain in the Spanish-American War in 1898 and imposed English as a lingua franca. Where does a foundational author like Rizal fit in a discussion of globalized literatures when the Philippines are commonly framed as a historical and cultural hybrid neither quite Asian nor quite Western? In Rizal's El filibusterismo, the Philippines are an inchoate national project imagined not in Asia but amid complex allusive dynamics that emanate from the Americas. Rizal and his novel, like the Philippine nation they inspired, appear in global and postcolonial frameworks as both Asian and American in that epistemes Eastern and Western, subaltern and hegemonic, interact in a ceaseless flow that resists easy categorization.

This essay is about the pressure on the words poetry and marriage to pair off homologously, to behave isomorphically, and about the forms of resistance to that pressure, examples of which I locate under a term, indifference, that in Romanticism is coupled with conjugality to signify not apathy but recalcitrance. Reading Austen, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Schlegel, and Barbauld, I adopt indifference to describe writing that works in fugitive ways outside the forensic boundaries of marriage culture, which constrain marriage writing whether it is epithalamic or anticonjugal. I then argue that Marianne Moore's “Marriage” (1923) and Anne Carson's The Beauty of the Husband (2001) do not write narrowly for or against marriage as, outrageously, freedom's necessary form but, more widely, write against the foundational grain of a pervasive marriage culture that would preempt the subjects and forms of writing, as well as the question of freedom.

The Taking of captives was a common practice in crusade warfare. Although men were more easily ransomed, many women were also taken captive. Women were not combatants on the battlefield, but when the fighting overran crusader camps, women in the camps were likely to be taken. Women were also captured when cities were taken or besieged cities were abandoned by their defenders. Albert of Aachen notes that in 1101 when the crusaders lost the battle at Paphlagonia, they left the undefended women to be captured by their enemies: