Entre 1960 y 1976 surgieron movimientos estudiantiles en diferentes partes del mundo, en contra de las autoridades académicas y en favor de otros movimientos sociales (Barker 2008). Latinoamérica no fue la excepción, y en dicho periodo la severa represión política fue cuestionada y rechazada por grupos de izquierda, quienes se enfrentaron con muertes, violencia institucional y represión por parte de las autoridades (Marsike 2015; 2017). En el caso mexicano, meses antes de las Olimpiadas de 1968 se dieron manifestaciones públicas encabezadas por estudiantes, a las que también se unieron otros profesionistas (Barker 2008). El evento más significativo ocurrió el 2 de octubre de 1968 con la denominada “Masacre de Tlatelolco” (ibid: 75), en la que miembros del ejército y de la seguridad pública hirieron, aprehendieron y mataron a civiles en la plaza de un conjunto urbano de la Ciudad de México. La motivación de esta protesta fue la denuncia de “las desigualdades económicas y el autoritarismo político”1 (Zolov 2004: 188) por parte del gobierno. A diferencia de Elena Garro, que no apoyó el movimiento estudiantil de 1968, Rosario Castellanos formó parte de los intelectuales que levantaron su voz durante este movimiento (Melgar Palacios 2009) y, en esta etapa de su escritura, ahonda en las temáticas del indigenismo y el feminismo. Este momento histórico servirá como punto de partida para analizar cómo, tres años después, en 1971 y hasta 1974, como embajadora de México en Israel, la escritora establece conexiones culturales y políticas entre estos dos últimos países.

Christopher N. Okonkwo, Kindred Spirits: Chinua Achebe & Toni Morrison

Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2022, 297 pp. ISBN: 978-0-8139-4712-9, paperback

Occasionally, a book appears and addresses a subject far from obscure and yet with compelling insights that make the reader wonder why the subject hadn't been addressed before. Christopher N. Okonkwo's simply titled comparative work, Kindred Spirits: Chinua Achebe & Toni Morrison, is that kind of book. Kindred Spirits is a vigorously argued and richly resourced piece of comparative literary analysis that brings together what may be deemed the signature novels of two influential Black writers for a close reading. This is no mean undertaking – the side-by-side and intertwining analysis of the two profoundly impactful writers: Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian novelist considered the progenitor of modern African literature, and Toni Morrison, the first African-American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature on her way to redefining the voice of and the notion of the American novel. Okonkwo does not undertake an analysis of the entire body of works by the two writers; instead, for Achebe, his debut novel Things Fall Apart, No Longer at Ease, and Arrow of God come under consideration. In the case of Morrison, he selects Beloved, Jazz, and Paradise. From the outset, Okonkwo presents the impetus for his study: an attempt to redress what he considers a neglect by scholars to make a connection between two writers who, despite their seemingly different audiences – Africa and the Americas – had been speaking to each other, apparently drawing inspiration from each other for decades before their passing in the early 2000s.

The writings covered in the present chapter all attempt in various ways and extents to come to terms with Lessing and his work as a whole. They extend from 1810 to 1897, from Irish-American author and magazine editor Stephen Cullen Carpenter's (1752–1830) article “The Life of Lessing, Author of Emilia Gallotti [sic]” to a biographical essay in Charles Dudley Warner's (1829–1900) Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern. Though assuming a variety of forms, the great majority of the writings consist of essays and book reviews. Indeed, some 62 percent belong to the latter category, though several of the longest and most revealing more closely resemble essays than notices in the customary sense.

Noteworthy early examples of the essayistic review are the purported discussions of work editions written by former Göttingen students George Bancroft (1800–1891) in 1828 and Joseph G. Cogswell (1786–1871) in 1840, the former a schoolmaster and the latter a magazine editor at the times in question. Prominent among the many post-Civil-War writings was a lengthy “review” that came out in Edward I. Sears's (1819–1876) National Quarterly Review in 1866 which discussed an edition, two biog¬raphies and two literary histories. The wide-ranging review was very likely written by the editor himself, a Manhattan College language professor who reportedly wrote a large part of the journal's contents.

Q. You are a very versatile performer, as a solo recitalist and with the Romero Quartet, in addition to playing chamber music and appearing as a concerto soloist with orchestras. Is there one type of playing that you like the most?

A. I like it all equally because there is so much magnificent music for all the different combinations. So, whatever I am playing, I am in love with it, and I’m having a great time. The feeling of connecting to the music by yourself is totally different from being connected not only to the music but also to other performers. Now, it's hard to explain the difference. I think that the major difference for me has been the actual touring itself. And touring with the quartet has been a lot of fun and very lively. There is always drama, comedy, and interchange. It is like a Rossini opera!

However, I also enjoy the peacefulness of touring by myself. I view everything in its totality. I always felt very lucky that I could do all sorts of different things, as meeting, performing, and touring with great artists is very exciting. To fly to Barcelona to play with Jessye Norman, then fly to Brazil to join my friend Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos to tour Brazil and Argentina with him and the Spanish National Orchestra. It has been a real thrill. Yet, the preparation of the music is pretty much the same. When I prepare a piece by myself, I am thinking of it as a complete and self-contained work. When I prepare a concerto, however, I’m not just thinking about the guitar part but rather the entire score.

The fgure of the virtuoso conductor has an enduring power to fascinate. From the political ambivalence and waywardness of Furtwängler, the tyrannical outbursts of Toscanini, the unpredictability of Klemperer and authoritarianism of Herbert von Karajan, through to twenty-frst-century issues of gender and identity politics as portrayed in the 2023 film Tár, conductors generate their own mythology. They alone, it seems, have the capacity amongst performing musicians, or any other category of performer for that matter, to generate news headlines that are eagerly devoured by many who would otherwise take not a shred of interest in the world of classical music. Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once sought out Herbert von Karajan in his Austrian home not, so it was reported, to discuss music, but to compare notes on the exercise of power and authority. ‘How’, the Iron Lady wanted to know, ‘do you best control an orchestra: is it by force of will or by persuasion? Is a conductor actually necessary’?

Conductors in their pomp stand at the very summit of the musical hierarchy. Yet the solitary figure who stands facing away from the audience, who makes no sound, except possibly for a few expostulatory grunts, and whose sole function is to direct others, is a comparatively recent phenomenon in the long span of music history. The conductor we recognise today emerged as a functionary necessary to coordinate and direct the everlarger orchestral forces employed by composers from the beginning of the nineteenth century onwards. Mendelssohn, in his capacity as Director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus, was amongst the frst to direct performers using a baton; Wagner and Berlioz gave the nascent craft powerful impetus through their writings and practical endeavours.

The impetus for writing this book was the tragic story of Yaguine Koita and Fode Tounkara, two stowaways from the Republic of Guinea, West Africa, in 1999, who froze to death on a Sabena Airlines Airbus flying from Conakry to Brussels, and whose bodies were discovered in the airplane's right wheel bay, after several trips between the two cities. The death of these two young men raises several questions regarding the state of African societies that could apparently justify such risk—the threat to their lives—just to make it to Europe. It also points to the expectation of rewards that migrants hope to achieve in Western societies.

Over the past decade, there has been an upsurge of African migrants trying to reach Europe and North America and the risks they are prepared to take keep escalating at an alarming rate. Images of migrants dying crossing the Sahara Desert and drowning in the Mediterranean Sea have almost become daily occurrences in the media. The plight of these migrants is also depicted in literature, and significantly, the past ten years have seen a rise in literary and critical works dealing with African migration in the diaspora.

Contemporary African diaspora literature suggests that the horrors of crossing the Sahara and the Mediterranean are only the beginning of many barriers to cross, that is, for those migrants who make it alive to Europe and North America. The social and cultural barriers and economic and linguistic hurdles that await them often prove insurmountable. The novels selected for study in this book address the reasons for flight, the struggle upon arrival, and the decision to return to the migrant's homeland.

Romance is a genre of extremes. The highs – often expressed through the convention of the superlative, as the previous chapter has demonstrated – are very high: what about the lows? This chapter will consider some moments of romance failure, which are (also) everywhere; characters experience soaring love and joy, but also an often complimentarily terrible anguish. Read through a lens of failure, romance superlatives could be seen as a reaction to the simple reality of knighthood – the very probable possibility of injury, disability, and basic trauma that a knight would face across his career. In some chivalric texts, knights’ hardships and injuries are used as markers of their Christlike willingness to suffer; Lancelot, in particular, often takes weeks to recover from wounds. But as a rule, the knights of romance are at the peak of their physical fitness until death: a wealth of medical texts dealing with wounds and ongoing battle-related ailments reveals a reality of knightly experience not often the focus of the genre, where wounds are mentioned, but rarely described. Archaeological evidence confirms that many continued to fight with long-term injury and, presumably, substantial pain; the young, strong, ‘perfect’ body was unlikely to last long. And so the fantasy of a physically superlative figure such as Bevis, who fights until his last day, or the numerous protagonists who seem so keen to leave their happy endings to travel, fight, and eventually die in the Holy Land could be seen as the genre's attempt to respond to the reality of the fragile, mortal body, bound by its tolerance and resilience. As Elaine Scarry has argued: ‘what is quite literally at stake in the body in pain is the making and unmaking of the world’.

Worthy Sir,

Since my last of Dec. 16. I have had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Greenwood, & talking with him about your Success in Inoculation in New England, tho’ after the exact & copious account sent over by your self & others, there was indeed little occasion for any farther relation of it. Your account of the Transit of Mercury has been presented to the Royal Society, & I am order’d to make their acknowledgements to you for your constant care in informing them of anything curious that is observ’d in America. But that account being in some degree imperfect, I should be glad of receiving from you the Minutes of the Observations at large, with an account of the Instruments used therein, & the are that was taken of having the true time, &c. It was taken notice of by some Gentlemen at the meeting of the Society, that the duration of the Transit as determin’d by calculation & by actual Observation did not differ a single second: which was through too near an agreement, it being impossible to observe either the beginning or the end of the Transit to so great a nicety.

This created a suspicion that the Observations had been a little wrested to bring them to agree with the computation.

Collective Faith-Based Child Cruelty

Considering that this book exclusively delves into the topic of child witchcraft accusations, it is appropriate to dedicate a chapter to the in-depth exploration of this matter and its interconnected facets. Recognizing the diverse familial backgrounds and socioeconomic contexts from which children facing accusations of witchcraft originate, certain beliefs serve as essential symbols and guardians of societal norms and ethical principles. Similarly, elucidating the process of establishing accusations can aid readers in discerning instances of child accusations. As highlighted in the introductory chapter, many children accused of witchcraft may not be used to being labeled as witches. Instead, they might be informed of their purported possession by evil spirits, perceived as peculiar, or deemed to require spiritual intervention for perceived abnormalities.

Moreover, as will be explained later in chapter 3, within everyday Yoruba community settings, it is not uncommon for many angry parents, primarily mothers, to call their children derogatory names, including elemi buburu (meaning “carrier of bad spirit”). While such words might be considered a one-off uttered during the parent's fit against the child, there are cases where repetitive utterances on the same child deemed unchangeable by repetitive misbehavior or wrongdoings might eventually confirm that the child is indeed possessed.

Medieval Biblical Exegesis in the Twelfth-Century Cathedral Schools

Friedrich Stegmüller's Repertorium Biblicum Medii Aevi catalogues numerous medieval manuscripts transmitting biblical commentaries tentatively attributed to the renowned cathedral schoolmaster, Anselm of Laon. Positioned between the Carolingian educational reforms and the early university transformations, Anselm emerges as a pivotal figure in the landscape of Latin biblical scholarship. Despite the medieval attribution of dozens of commentaries to Anselm, modern scholars acknowledge only a select few as authentic. Even his substantial legacy, notably the twelfth-century biblical gloss project known as the Glossa ordinaria, exhibits rather loose connections to Anselm and his school. None the less, recent scholarship over the past three decades has increasingly affirmed his central role in standardising the study of the Bible within the European cathedral schools of northern France, laying the groundwork for the theology faculties of later universities in Paris, Oxford, and Cambridge.

No one has done more in the last hundred years than Beryl Smalley to establish the contours of how Latin biblical scholarship developed across the Middle Ages. Her monumental writings, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (1941) and The Gospels in the Schools, C. 1100–C. 1280 (1985), have encouraged many historians to study the medieval Latin Bible through renewed surveys of long-forgotten but important manuscript evidence.

In an article published in 1913 in the British newspaper, the Saturday Review, music critic John F. Runciman described Percy Grainger as ‘the one cheerful, sunny composer living’:

Throughout his life, such a characterisation followed Grainger. In the reception of his works, descriptions of his playing, and in the depiction of him as a person, he was painted as vitally youthful and happy, if a little superficial. In part, this was an organic response by critics to the tone of his most popular works, but it was also fostered by Grainger himself through his behaviour and interactions with the press. This was, however, also a characterisation that he deliberately pushed back against in later life. As he wrote in ‘an outburst of frustration’ in 1951, ‘the entire musical world is entirely oblivious of the whole world of bitterness, resentment, iconoclasm & denunciation that lies behind my music’.

Peter Tregear has recently demonstrated the depth of Grainger's under¬standing of his own music as ‘the art of agony’: that pronouncements like the above were not simply ‘antipodean contrariness or attention-seeking’, but rather sincerely held beliefs.

Plots and the Press

French dramatists were as committed as their English contemporaries to the view that the duty of comedy was to correct morals through laughter: indeed, the Latin tag Castigat ridendo mores was coined by a French seventeenthcentury poet, Jean-Baptiste de Santeul. This ethical motivation was particularly visible in the plays of the new Italian theatre known as the école de Marivaux. Arlequin Sauvage was as popular in London as in Paris, and London audiences clearly appreciated its relevance to recent events and its blend of comedy with socio-political questioning. However, other plays in Francisque's season, possibly with the connivance of some of his aristocratic patrons, may have had more dangerously topical resonance.

Recent scholarship has emphasised the importance of religion in the cultural and political controversies of this period. The twin spectres of Catholicism and Jacobitism haunted both the national psyche and the daily papers in the 1730s. The Gunpowder Plot and the ‘Glorious Revolution’ were far from forgotten, and the extensive official celebrations of the Fifth of November now had a double significance, commemorating not only the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot but the arrival of William of Orange in 1688 to guarantee the Protestant Succession. Two Jacobite plots were still fresh in the minds of the public. The Atterbury Plot of 1722, led by Francis Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester, was ‘the most serious challenge to the Hanoverian regime before the ‘45 rebellion’, while the much feebler Cornbury Plot of 1733 was foiled by lack of support from the French. Throughout 1734 and early 1735, the London press was filled with warnings of the immediate danger of Popery. Colin Haydon has identified more than a dozen different ‘anti-Papist panics’.

Phillipa was one of five clients I attended to as part of my job at Cherish Care. I had gotten Nurse-aid certified in December of the previous year, gotten my visa immediately after and left for England before the government could implement the electronic passport they had newly devised to control the excessive emigration. A wife of a brother of a former workmate had connected me with Cherish Care Agency, one of hundreds of African-owned hospice and care companies in the UK.

The day I left Zimbabwe, I arrived at the airport 6 hours before my departure and waited happily for my flight, the promise of a fresh start effervescing in my throat. I was finally leaving my wretched country where years of toiling for an engineering degree had amounted to a grocery store job that I had secured through connections and not merit. Everyday, I would tick the hours away doing miscellaneous stuff at an OK Supermarket located on the corner of Robert Mugabe and Inez Terrence Street. My duties at that job were non-specific, and my skills were an adaptable disposition and a need to survive. I would mop the floors in the staff toilets every two hours. I had to stack countless commodities I could never afford whenever I was not at the toilets. I would occasionally offer disinterested guidance to lost customers in the aisles at random. Faceless shoppers who could only be distinguished by the contents of their baskets. Government employees usually had medium sized baskets holding only basics. A few rich Hararians strolled past me with overfilled trollies, large assortments of meats and beers exposing their plans to braai the weekend away.