This study of the problems which, in the light of developing literary theory, still confront the critic of poetry, concentrates on the lyric. Its close relationship to music throughout its evolution leads to an analysis—with examples—of the way in which sound and thought patterns combine both in the making of the poem and in its effects on the reader. In this context I indicate possibilities for future studies in the nature of reader reception and suggest that benefit might be derived from interdisciplinary research involving cognitive scientists. Throughout, I stress the obligation for the critic to take into account the holistic nature of the poem.

This is an account of the jurisprudence expounded by the Swedes Axel Hägerström, Wilhelm Lundstedt, Karl Olivecrona and the Dane Alf Ross. The characteristic features of this school of legal science are the firm rejection of idealism and conceptualism and a sociological approach to legal phenomena. Severe criticism has been directed against the way in which, particularly, Swedish Social Democrats made use of the tenets of Realism in justifying legislative measures in certain areas.

The 500th anniversary of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain was marked on 31 March 1992 by a solemn ceremony in a Madrid synagogue at which the King of Spain welcomed Sephardic Jews back to their own country. This article examines the many benefits conferred on medieval Spain by its highly cultured Jewish population, the political background to the decree of expulsion and the gradual stages by which Sephardic Jews came to be welcomed back to their ancestral land, Sefarad.

Is the end of the 20th century comparable with the end of the 19th century, the so-called fin de siècle? To what extent are the cultural characterizations of that decade—for fin de siècle is first and foremost a cultural concept—applicable to our days? The answer to this question is not easy to give because there are similarities as well as dissimilarities. The central preoccupation of the fin de siècle however was the feeling of decadence, the idea that European civilization was past its prime and on to the end. This notion is not a characteristic of the present day's cultural climate and therefore there exists a fundamental difference between the two periods.

Jacques Derrida's remark, ‘What is proper to a culture is to not be identical to itself,’ serves as a point of departure for a discussion of artistic and ethnic identities in late-19th and late 20th century literatures. The first part of this paper studies the images of the European and the colonized ‘Other’ in Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness and J. M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians. The second part examines notions of artistic and ethnic identity in the culture of fin de siècle Vienna. The ‘crisis of liberalism’, which plays a pivotal role in Carl Schorske's study of that culture, gains new and urgent meaning through the ethnic conflicts that arose in the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet empire. Studying artistic identity today, we must distinguish between notions of diffuse identity in post-modern culture and the ethnic identity that writers not infrequently assume in Middle-and Eastern Europe.

The Salome legend developed as John the Baptist became the object of increased veneration. It was profoundly modified in the medieval and Renaissance periods. Well suited to Schopenhauerian misogyny and to the burgeoning interest in Freudian psychoanalysis, it became central to the fin de siècle in Western Europe. An instrument of self-reflection as well as of parody, the Salome legend has shown itself, in both the 19th and the 20th centuries, to be capable of ironic criticism and fertile pastiche, as well as of enigmatic mystery and deep psychological exploration.

This paper examines the nationality problem in the Habsburg monarchy at the end of the 19th century and looks at the ways in which it has been treated by historians. It analyses present-day Europe and concludes, perhaps ominously, that European Union is in danger of becoming a second Habsburg Empire.