Consumed by thoughts of a blue flower, Heinrich leaves his cold homeland and travels south until he meets Mathilde, who opens his eyes to the world’s mysteries. Then a tragic event reveals the secret power of poetry …

Heinrich von Ofterdingen, left unfinished at the time of the author’s death, is a masterpiece of philosophical fiction and a classic of German literature. This highly detailed and original interpretation is the most comprehensive and systematic study of the novel ever written. Developing fresh insights into the philosophical ideas of the novel while also attending to its symbolic, literary, and creative qualities, Owen Ware explores how Novalis probes the core problem of modern life – fragmentation, and our sense of alienation from the world. Ultimately, he shows us, this novel is a timeless expression of the Romantics’ idea that only the imagination, guided by love, can bring us back to our spiritual home.

In the late 1960s, Protestants seemed in terminal demographic decline, while the Jewish population stagnated. At the same time, the old Catholic/Protestant divide retained much of its old political significance in Northern Ireland. As the Province descended into violence, the southern minorities were shocked to see how fragile were the achievements of half a century of democratic elections and self-government. The ‘minority question’ had not been answered, or perhaps the traditional response – submission or emigration – was no longer the one Northern nationalists were prepared to offer. This prompts us to consider one final point. As both Jews and Protestants claimed repeatedly throughout the period discussed in this book, what made their history noteworthy was not Ireland’s presumed exceptionalism, but the general significance of their experience as minorities in a democratic nation state. In this, they were basically right. Indeed, while a free society depends on the dignity of dissent, the challenge of how to make diverse democracies work is still with us, has become increasingly global, and has been renewing itself at every generation.

Consumed by thoughts of a blue flower, Heinrich leaves his cold homeland and travels south until he meets Mathilde, who opens his eyes to the world’s mysteries. Then a tragic event reveals the secret power of poetry …

Heinrich von Ofterdingen, left unfinished at the time of the author’s death, is a masterpiece of philosophical fiction and a classic of German literature. This highly detailed and original interpretation is the most comprehensive and systematic study of the novel ever written. Developing fresh insights into the philosophical ideas of the novel while also attending to its symbolic, literary, and creative qualities, Owen Ware explores how Novalis probes the core problem of modern life – fragmentation, and our sense of alienation from the world. Ultimately, he shows us, this novel is a timeless expression of the Romantics’ idea that only the imagination, guided by love, can bring us back to our spiritual home.

The long eighteenth century saw two opposed tendencies in Christian expression in the English-speaking world. On the one hand was the religion of the Enlightenment, which emphasised reason and tolerance, while on the other hand were those sometimes called ‘enthusiasts’, who valued emotion in their relation to the deity. In this chapter texts by major religious writers of the period – Joseph Butler, John Wesley, and George Whitefield – are examined, with a view to determining how their distinctive lexical choices aligned with their theology. All three were at one time members of the Church of England, but their thinking diverged markedly as the century progressed; Wesley and Whitefield are now recognised as leaders in the emergence of Methodism, although they too came to differ about basic matters of belief. The chapter ends with an examination of the ‘language of feeling’ in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, showing how ‘exemplary fiction’ was impacted by the contemporary religious lexicon.

This chapter examines shifts in funeral rituals during the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on Zoom-mediated funerals as sites of negotiation between traditionalization and mediatization. Drawing on anthropological theories of ritual and discourse, the authors use a semiotic lens to analyze how mourners navigated the intersection of cultural expectations, technological affordances, and new media ecologies in the context of death. Drawing on the experiences of participants in US-based funerals conducted on Zoom in 2020, the chapter explores how participants used language and metacommunication to contextualize and reframe rituals in response to the absence of tactile, in-person mourning. Examples presented here illustrate how officiants and family members juxtaposed traditional religious and cultural expectations with the mediated nature of online ceremonies, transforming Zoom into a “sacred space,” even as they debated the technical difficulties of online rituals. Transcripts of recordings of Zoom-mediated funerals and interviews with participants show the process by which mourners forged a relationship between expectations for traditional funerals and an imagined imperative for mediatized responses to contemporary crises. The authors argue that rituals, far from being static or solely symbolic, are dynamic processes that respond to changing social and technological conditions and combine mediatization and traditionalization to co-construct meanings.

Chapter 8 explores two questions: Is there a far right in Colombia? To what extent are far-right ideas present in Colombian politics today, and what are their prospects going forward? Given the internal conflict, a militaristic and anti-guerrilla right has been historically strong and dominant, but it is different from the contemporary Latin American far right. Colombia lacks an organized far-right party, though this should not be taken to mean that far-right ideas are irrelevant to understanding political dynamics. The chapter evaluates the reach of contemporary far-right ideas among key figures in the Colombian political elite, relying on speeches, interviews, social media posts, and legislative output. It focuses on Álvaro Uribe and Rodolfo Hernández, arguing that neither should be understood as an exponent of the contemporary far right, though some far-right ideas can be identified in their discourse at different points, with varying degrees of coherence. The seeds of the contemporary far right are found elsewhere – in subnational politicians, emerging outsiders, and figures within existing parties, most strongly in Senator María Fernanda Cabal. The chapter explores the evolution of Cabal’s public discourse, identifying an inflection point in 2020, when she began emphasizing moral conservatism and became more involved in international far-right networks.

This chapter presents a series of six investor–community case studies in the Asia Pacific region during the pre-2013 period, during which pre-project community engagement and accountability on the part of infrastructure investment banks were relatively less stringent, in order to understand the impact of relatively relaxed community engagement standards on subsequent grievance claims. This set of six cases will be compared with a set of six cases presented in Chapter 6 after heightened diligence standards were introduced after 2013. The cases reviewed in this chapter were either sole financed projects by the World Bank/International Finance Corporation or collaborative projects with the Asian Development Bank and European Investment Bank in the Asia Pacific region. The sectors include investment in transport, the extractive industry and special economic zone development. The key finding of this chapter is that during this pre-2013 discretionary community consultation phase, most cases resulted in either full or partial project cancellation, delay, suspension, compensation for harms or transfer to local courts for resolution. A small portion were dismissed due to insufficient information. In total, of the six cases examined, four were cancelled or stalled, one proceeded to court litigation and one was closed. The cases highlight the risks of insufficient attention to community consultation.