López Pinciano's interest in dance was not purely erudite. The sections where he discusses dance are testament to his interest in the practices of his period, whether it be the zarabanda or the danza de aire performed by the volatines. However, while he does reflect on these popular dances under the pretext of defining ancient dithyramb in his Philosophía antigua poética, he never directly discusses contemporaneous court dance. This omission is noteworthy, especially when taking into consideration the multiple connections López Pinciano had to the court, starting with his position as imperial physician.

This chapter takes into account this contradiction in its discussion of the years between Pinciano's 1596 Philosophía antigua poética and the 1620s, when late humanists once again focused on the Poetics to address dance. Yet during this period late humanists were no longer observing the same dances Pinciano discussed in his text. For this reason, this chapter will pay special attention to the profound shifts which affected the regimes of representation and interpretation of dance at court. It will go on to explain the visible mutations in the discourse on dance put forward by the new generation of commentators of Aristotle's treatise.

The working assumption for this chapter is that López Pinciano does not address courtly dance in his Philosophía because, while he was writing his treatise, the dance practised at court did not fall into the spectrum of what Pinciano considered poetics, no matter how broad his understanding of poetics and poetry might have been. For López Pinciano, poetry is either fiction or representation.

Introduction

As bishop of Lincoln, Edward Lee Hicks has attracted some considerable historical attention. This is partly due to the availability of his diaries, of which substantial parts have been published in a Lincoln Record Society volume. His extensive correspondence in the pages of the Lincoln Diocesan Magazine, however, has not generated a significant amount of consideration. One of the bishop's biographers explains that these regular contributions read ‘rather drily today’. The following chapter, not discouraged by this verdict, seeks to examine the bishop's letters to his diocese during the First World War and suggests that these were of some considerable significance at the time of their publication in ensuring his views on matters relating to the war and other issues were widely distributed amongst the diocese's clergy and laity. Some consideration will also be given to the bishop's hopes for the diocese and the country at large following the cessation of hostilities, as expressed in his contributions to the Lincoln Diocesan Magazine. During the period from the outbreak of war in August 1914 until its end in November 1918, the bishop published fifty monthly letters in the Lincoln Diocesan Magazine, with most being of between 750 and 1,000 words in length, comprising just under 50,000 words in total.

Of course, Wagner's cryptic initials were meant for his eyes alone, like furtive diary entries projecting onto Sieglinde's and Siegmund's illicit union the composer's inner turmoil over his liaison with Mathilde Wesendonck. In the nineteenth century initialism also appeared in literature, including the novels of Charles Dickens, who early on became a ‘professional language player’. From a letter of 1833 signed ‘Charles I.B.L.K.Y.N. Dickens’ to a wall inscription at Staple Inn

P

J T

1747

contemplated by Hiram Grewgious in The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870), Dickens indulged in word games. Both examples remain unsolved, though Dickens did offer some options for the second – ‘Perhaps John Thomas’, ‘Pretty Jolly Too’ and ‘Possibly Jabbered Thus’. Elsewhere, he was more forthcoming. For example, early in Pickwick Papers (1837) we encounter ‘P.V.P.M.P.C.’ and ‘G.C.M.P.C.’, identified in the author's footnotes as ‘Perpetual Vice-President – Member Pickwick Club’ and ‘General Chairman – Member Pickwick Club’. Later in the novel, Pickwick encounters Peter Magnus, who proffers his business card: ‘“Curious circumstance about those initials, sir’” … “you will observe – P.M. – post meridian … I sometimes sign myself ‘Afternoon’. It amuses my friends very much, Mr. Pickwick”’.

After elucidating our riddle, we may consider other ways composers conceal messages in their scores. By and large, these techniques parallel well-established devices in other arts, suggesting that even if, as Walter Pater observed in 1877, ‘all art constantly aspires towards the condition of music’, not infrequently music has responded in kind to sibling disciplines. Thus, Webern's attempt to realize the Sator Square as music led him to consider not only palindromes, but also acrostics and anagrams, all supported by literary traditions stretching back to classical antiquity.

Originating possibly with the poet Sotades, active in Alexandria during the fourth century bce, the palindrome (Greek for ‘running back again’) is one example. The Roman epigrammatist Martial turned his mordant wit on sotadic verses: ‘… I don't pride myself on palindromes or read pathic Sotades backwards’. Nevertheless, Roman poets exploited the emordnilap Roma-amor, which infiltrated Pompeian word squares. In the third book of Ars armatoria (The Art of Love) Ovid contrived at the ends of lines 507–10 a telestich spelling ‘amor’ when read vertically, while the last word of line 510 was ‘amor’, or ‘Roma’ spelled backwards, completing the word pair

My case study of the Musenhof courts in the Margraviate of Brandenburg will show how the desire for agrarian improvement and economic reform, scientific interest and research, and polite sociability came together. In this way, Musenhof courts complemented the work of economic and patriotic societies with their study and experimentation. Furthermore, the cultural transfer of landscape aesthetics, and agrarian reformism between England and the Continent, allowed the ideal of the ‘country house ethos’ to be assimilated and reinterpreted as agrarian/economic patriotism. Given the advancements in agricultural management and garden design in eighteenth-century England, it is no surprise that there was a scientific cultural transfer between England and Continental Europe facilitated by transnational scientific societies, the emergence of patriotic-economic societies, and agronomic travel.

A dominant figure in the cultural transfer of progressive agriculture was Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828). Thaer's work on husbandry and soil amelioration made him a desired collaborator, correspondent, and advisor. After his formal training as a medical doctor, Thaer turned his focus on agriculture. He had a model farm in Celle, Lower Saxony. From 1780, when he was appointed by George III of Great Britain to promote progressive agriculture in the Electorate of Hanover, he belonged to the Celler Landwirtschaftsgesellschaft, an economic-patriotic society founded in 1764.2 Whilst he never travelled to England, he nevertheless wrote an influential treatise on English agriculture, Einleitung zur Kenntniss der englischen Landwirthschaft und ihrer neueren practischen und theoretischen Fortschritte (1800).

Gods of gold, silver, and many other substances have appeared in this book. From the material idols of the first recension of Togail Troí to the divine characters who presided over lost Golden Ages in Ovid and Tochmarc Étaíne to the golden ram that rescued Phrixus and Helle in the second recension of Togail Troí, the gods are multiple and multiplicitous. Just like the guests at Belshazzar's Feast, we have seen golden gods speak worldly reason, silver gods take shape through rhetorical art, bronze and iron gods relay their poetic fables and ancient traditions, and even a few risible wooden and stone deities strut upon the page. These represent just a few of the ‘dynamic processes’ through which mythological interpretatio occurred in medieval Ireland and Classical gods were reshaped. But, as any medieval Christian writer and reader knew, above them all sits one God and his gold is to be found in the heavenly city.

This book has argued that Christian salvation history played a crucial role in medieval Irish interpretations of Classical literature and that the types of mythographic interpretatio employed by medieval Irish authors reflected methods of biblical exegesis. Chapter 1 approached the workings of interpretatio in medieval Ireland as it was applied to the names and associations of Olympians, setting out the learned glossarial background to the later adaptations. Irish texts display multiple levels of interpretatio, representing Classical deities in terms of other Greco-Roman gods, as well as in Irish terms, from the earliest glossaries of the seventh century down to the Middle Irish adaptations and beyond.

For about six decades, starting in high school band, the works of Gustav Holst have fascinated me—not as an obsession, perhaps as a passion, but definitely as an appreciation.

It was my original intent to revamp my first book, From Kneller Hall to Hammersmith: The Band Works of Gustav Holst, originally published in 1990 through IGEB (International Gesellschaft zur Erforshung und Förderung zu Blasmusik—International Society for the Research and Promotion of Wind Music) as part of their Alta Musica series for their membership by a publisher that no longer exists. My second book, A Comprehensive Biography of Composer Gustav Holst (2001; original title Gustav Holst: An American Perspective), largely sold to libraries. It unavoidably contained snippets of the same material, but its focus was quite different, being a biography of the composer by an author from the western side of the Atlantic.

Since the time of those publications, I continued my career as a college professor/conductor (and now professor emeritus), expanding my field of research to include articles and books about other composers (Beethoven, Vaughan Williams, Anton Rubinstein, etc.) as well as a book on a major critic (Philip Hale). Still, I never totally veered away from Holst, especially in practice. I would venture to guess that my “home” orchestra, the University of Massachusetts Boston Chamber Orchestra, performed more Holst than any other college orchestra in the country. Away from the university, I recorded many CDs with professional orchestras in Eastern Europe. Among the CDs was Gustav Holst: Composer as Arranger. I’ll never forget the look of astonishment on the producer's face as he heard the warm sounds of the heretofore unrecorded Greeting [H54].

As I have already noted, motherhood in romance is particularly brought into focus in liminal spaces: in the birthing room, poised between life and death; on the thresholds of castles; and in the forest, where mothers attempt to shelter their sons from the machinations of courtly life. This chapter focuses on another liminal space: the sea. Mothers at sea in romance are on the brink of annihilation: they have been cast from their homes and forced to create a new existence for themselves and their children when it is assumed by their persecutors that the ordeal will kill them. These characters are often categorised as calumniated queens, who are (falsely) accused of adultery or defiance against paternal wishes and cast out to the sea with their infants. The sea in Middle English romance is a space that allows female characters’ identities to form and, in some cases, thrive outside the perceived restrictions of courtly society. Moreover, motherhood at sea makes connections beyond families, between people, nations, and territories.

Like many other romance locations, the sea is a space in which the importance of motherhood to medieval social structures can be explored. We have seen romance's representations of motherhood in spaces that have been coded as feminine and private (birthing rooms) and masculine and public (the castle), showing that these binaries are, in fact, more nuanced and intricate than they appear.

The culture and politics of the economically and ethnically diverse area of central Europe into which Arthur Nikisch was born on 12 October 1855 were determined by the long shadow and enduring aftermath of the revolutions of 1848. In Hungary, the land of Nikisch's birth, the Magyar revolt led by Lajos Kossuth (1802-94) had been brutally crushed by the Habsburg armies under the youthful Emperor Franz Joseph with the help of Russian support. The savage reprisals inflicted on the Magyar rebels by the victorious Habsburg forces left a smouldering and long-lasting legacy of resentment against the re-imposition by force of Habsburg rule. Some idea of the fierce passions this could still invoke amongst ethnic Hungarians, even after many years, can be gained from the outburst cited above.

Across German lands a similar post-revolutionary hardening of authoritarian attitudes in the wake of the failed uprisings led to the re-establishment in 1850 of the German Confederation, a loose association of sovereign states dominated by the increasing rivalry between Austria and Prussia that in 1866 erupted in the Austro-Prussian War. Prussia's humiliation of Austria at the Battle of Sadowa (3 July 1866) and the subsequent decline of Austrian influence fractured former allegiances and prompted a gravitational shift northward with the formation in 1867 of the North German Confederation, now under Prussian hegemony. Austria under the Emperor Franz Joseph responded by bringing its eastern territories more firmly under Habsburg rule through the Austro-Hungarian compromise (Ausgleich) of 30 March 1867 and the creation of the dual monarchy.

This chapter discusses the Psalms and their commentaries as material objects that invite physical performance. In exploring Eleanor Hull's early fifteenthcentury commentary on the Penitential Psalms along these lines, this chapter makes the case that Hull provides a practical, ‘performative’ application of the same non-dualistic model of personhood theorised by Thomas Aquinas. After introducing the Penitential Psalms and Eleanor Hull's commentary, I delineate the Thomistic model of personhood as laid out in the Treatise on Human Nature (Summa Theologiae 1a, QQ 75–89) and then bring it into conversation with contemporary discussions in phenomenology and philosophy of mind. The Thomistic model is non-dualistic (i.e. does not subscribe to a mind– body ‘division’) and emphasises the importance of embodied experience, as well as the receptiveness of the soul to external experiences. The person is a potentiality in that it has the capacity of becoming, with the Psalms and their commentaries being the actuality, as I argue below. Using concepts from phenomenology and philosophy of mind, this chapter contends that the Psalms and the commentaries become part of the human person, with implications for the temporality of existence, a temporality that becomes broader in an ongoing interaction between readers and texts.

I do not suggest any direct influence from Aquinas on Hull, but I am rather hoping to demonstrate the usefulness of a reading of Hull through the Thomistic lens as proposed here.

Photography has specific advantages when used as testimonio. Georg Gugelberger outlines in The Real Thing: Testimonial Discourse and Latin America that important discussions within Latin American literature were taking place during the 1980s and the 1990s that focused on testimonio. While a significant amount of those intellectual exchanges centered around whether it was possible to represent marginal classes, what you could learn from their representation and the efforts to help them speak, and film as testimonio (Williams 225–53), photography was not central to the discussion. However, this does not mean that some intellectuals and scholars writing on testimonio did not consider photography, at least to a degree. For example, Margaret Randall included photography in her genre-defining article “¿Qué es y cómo se hace un testimonio?” [“What is and how do you create a testimonio?”]. In this piece, she confirmed with great clarity that photography can be testimonio “la fotografía también puede ser un testimonio/photography can also be testimonio” (41). That article is evidence that photography's suitability for inclusion in the testimonio genre was established years previously. Yet, at the time of writing, the subject of photography as testimonio has only received minimal critical consideration. Engagement up to this point has mostly been limited to photography being accepted within the definitions of testimonio. In that respect, it is useful to consider these definitions to see how interaction with photography has been envisaged. We will then consider a text that uses photography as a case study, focusing on how this medium is able to function as visual testimony.

In 1877, the Catholic educator and publicist Ludwig Auer commenced the publication of the first German periodical devoted to maidservants. Notburga appeared bi-weekly from 1877 until 1941. Quickly becoming the largest publication for maidservants in Germany, its subscribers grew from fifteen thousand in 1883 to ninety thousand in 1910. Each issue consisted of a serial novella and other short stories about maidservants, pastoral letters, prayer requests, poems, and reports about Catholic associations for women and maidservants. The magazine also reported on the Catholic Jungfrauenvereine and Marienvereine, which originated in the nineteenth century. The latter specifically served maidservants, as the Catholic Church was the first institution to show interest in their situation. Notburga also offered its readers some practical advice about housekeeping, health, and personal hygiene, but this was not a major concern. Rather, Notburga's singular focus was on the trope of the exemplary, pious maidservant.

This chapter illuminates how Notburga encouraged and admonished its readers to emulate this ideal of the exemplary maidservant through the embrace of a particular feminine religiosity. In practice, this meant a significant emphasis on the fostering and suppression of specific emotions. This mission seemed so urgent because the reputation of maidservants in Imperial Germany was very poor and their moral improvement became the focus of an intense public debate in which Catholics and Catholic publications like Notburga were vocal participants. The servant question (Dienstbotenfrage), as this debate became known, focused on the twin issues of the acute shortage of maidservants and their purported low quality. In Imperial Germany, the number of job seekers did not keep pace with the rapid growth of middle-class households for whom at least one “maid of all work” (Mädchen für alles) became an indispensable necessity and key status symbol.