Berlioz had already reviewed this opera by Louise-Angélique Bertin (1805–77), on a libretto by Victor Hugo, adapted from his novel Notre-Dame de Paris (RGM, 20 November 1836). While recognizing aspects that spoke of her inexperience, he could at least find it in him to praise beauties ‘that overall give evidence of a feeling for style and a power of invention that are extremely rare’. This extract translates four paragraphs from the middle of the feuilleton.

Before turning to a study of this work [Esmeralda], which is remarkable from many points of view, it may perhaps not be irrelevant to mention the cause of a number of inaccurate criticisms about which composers, more than other artists, have undoubted reason to complain. This cause is prejudice.

There is in fact no art more vulnerable to suffering from such unfair judgments than music. Painters, sculptors, engravers, architects, poets, and prose writers all have a real advantage in the fixity of their work: once out of hands of its maker, it can be immediately seen by the critic without its message being undermined, changed or weakened in any way. A painting or a statue is always the same; nothing can prevent the critic from seeing it as it is and understanding it perfectly. If an initial inspection is not enough to judge it overall and in detail, then the critic is free to come back next day, the day after, and several days in a row: the work is there waiting for him, immobile and unalterable.

Abstract: This article examines the comparison Jean Paul draws between his notetaking practices and a game of cards in an often-cited footnote to the Vorschule der Ästhetik (Preschool of Aesthetics). Setting out from the knowledge that the footnote's description of a “collection of notes” that could be shuffled together like cards does not reflect the material reality of Jean Paul's literary estate, the article reads the passage instead as a hypothetical reflection on the roles of chance and witty combinatorics in the author's work. It does so by setting its focus on a series of intertexts, including Hegel's critique of Jean Paul, Lessing's accounts of the role of chance in his bibliographic and literary work, and a parallel description of note-taking in Jean Paul's own short text “Die Taschenbibliothek.” These texts, which focus in various ways on the relationship between information management and the aleatoric, pave the way for an appraisal of Jean Paul's poetics as a playful yet risky way of engaging with the overwhelming amount of information made available by industrial modes of production—a problem that has only increased in relevance in the centuries since Jean Paul.

Keywords: Jean Paul, Cards, French Revolution, Vorschule der Ästhetik, Hegel, Lessing, Media, Materiality

Introduction In 1790, the French National Assembly formed a committee to oversee the creation of a national bibliography. The project aimed to catalogue every book belonging to the newly formed republic, among them many books that had recently been seized from the church.

Three questions have usually been asked about the French Revolution: why did it happen?; why was it so violent? and what was its legacy? At first sight all three questions seem to beg other, more conceptually ambitious questions, whether about causation, violence or legacies. The aim of this short book is to answer both sets of questions by bringing together events with ideas. Combining the two actually helps to make the answers to the second, more conceptually oriented set of questions more historically and analytically focussed. It does so because the French Revolution owes much of its complexity to ideas and, more particularly, to the range and multiplicity of appearances and temporalities that ideas can lend to events. Complexity, not only in France and not only at the time of the French Revolution, is more than an effect of large numbers of people living in different circumstances with different, sometimes antagonistic, interests. It is also an effect of the range of occasionally compelling, but occasionally competing, emotional responses, moral evaluations and causal assessments made by, or of, people living in similar circumstances with similar, overlapping or complementary interests.

The preceding chapter concluded with an exploration of the divine dimension inherent in the lessons imparted by the Estoria de Espanna. Indeed, the presence of God and the influence of divinity in matters of governance have, in various forms, been a recurring theme throughout this book. The last two chapters have explored the dual systems of legitimation that the chronicle builds around the concept of rightful succession, which underscores the continuity of the process outlined in Chapter 4, namely, the Translatio Imperii. However, as we have seen throughout this study, the binding agent between these ideological tools built by the Alfonsine scriptorium was the presence of divinity within the historical account, always necessary to secure the transmission of the imperium. In this chapter, I will explore how this divine legitimisation worked hand in hand with the principles described previously: the use of kin-right to legitimise succession and an elective system based on the personal traits and merits of the candidate. The involvement of the divine in these inheritance mechanisms secured, according to the Alfonsine ideological framework, the progression of the Translatio Imperii. The figure of God acted as an overseeing agent, supporting the position of the aspiring emperor.

The following pages will therefore explore the relationships established between divinity, the monarchs, and the Christian Church in the Alfonsine ideological framework, with a particular focus on how these are represented in the Estoria de Espanna. To fully grasp the ideological significance of the divine in the chronicle, this chapter will start by tracing the evolution of the Castilian monarchy's sense of sacrality during the medieval period. This topic has sparked considerable debate in academic circles.

Many of the more lurid predictions of the course of the French Revolution, such as the forecast of ‘torrents of blood’ made by Mably’s executors to Thomas Jefferson in 1791, or the warning about ‘fire and blood’ famously issued by Edmund Burke in his Reflections on the Revolution in France of 1790, or the scenario set out much earlier by the comte de Guibert in 1772, now look quite prescient. Other predictions of revolution, however, simply failed to materialise. Two, in particular, slowly faded from the sequence of events that began to unfold in France between 1787 and 1789. One set of predictions was centred on opposition to the royal government by the French Parlements, while the other focussed on the idea of a patriot king. Despite their disappearance, however, both are still relevant to the sequence of events that gave rise to the French Revolution partly because they were canvassed very widely at its beginning, but mainly because they also throw real light on the tangle of different and often competing assessments or evaluations of social, economic, moral and political conditions in late-eighteenth-century France. To some, like Voltaire, France was significantly backward, or not modern enough. To others, however, France was far too modern and possibly at a tipping point. One looked forward to the future, while the other looked backwards to the past. Both, however, converged on finding fault with the present.

Francisco Franco's authoritarian regime continues to be the main focus of Spanish historians and foreign Hispanists. The Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939 and subsequent dictatorship, which only came to end with the Caudillo's death in 1975, is rightly seen now as an anomaly in the history of twentiethcentury Spain. The military uprising of July 1936 initiated a long parenthesis in Spanish political development that was characterized by liberal monarchy and a democratic republic, before the fratricidal conflict, and a parliamentary monarchy, following the transition to democracy and the promulgation of the 1978 Constitution.

Yet it is also true that Francoism is inseparable from the broader history of Spain and the international context in which the dictatorship emerged. The enormous and ever-growing historiography on the Spanish Civil War shows that it maintains an extraordinary presence in the imaginations of Spaniards and foreigners alike. While some prominent historians – Stanley Payne, Paul Preston, Edward Malefakis, Santos Juliá, and Hugh Thomas – have written about the war and the long dictatorship in general, others – for example, Joan María Thomàs, Enrique Moradiellos, Julius Ruiz, Fernando del Rey, Manuel Álvarez Tardío, and Mercedes Peñalba – have penned empirically based monographs on specific aspects of the sad story of the collapse of Spanish democracy in the 1930s. Unsurprisingly, there is no historiographical consensus on the subject, and these debates have resonated far beyond the ivory towers of academia as the meaning and legacy of the war remain high on the contemporary Spanish political agenda. Certainly, the recent, controversial Law of Democratic Memory has kept these difficult years firmly in the public eye.

The abundant similarities between the English and Frisian languages either side of the North Sea, especially in the Old and Middle English and Old Frisian periods, were observed and described very early in antiquarian scholarship. From nineteenth-century Stammbaum philology through to contemporary historical sociolinguistics, we are the heirs to some two centuries of scholarship that has been devoted to the goal of producing a satisfactory explanatory ‘model’ of the relationships between these branches of the Germanic language family. An important facet of this endeavour in recent decades has been recognition of the contribution that can be made by archaeological evidence, contextualising the history of populations not only within specific regions but also in terms of their connexions and interactions with neighbours and more distant groups. While maintenance of the critical methods intrinsic to the individual historical, philological and archaeological disciplines remains essential, there is no disputing that only an integrated cross-fertilisation of all such relevant specialisations can now be considered a proper basis for understanding relationships in the relatively distant past.

The scholarly study of the runic script has become sufficiently well founded now for ‘runology’ to be claimed as the name of a field of specialist knowledge. Here, too, a distinct ‘Anglo-Frisian’ branch of the runic writing system has long been argued for, even though it was a later arrival on the scene than the concept of an anglofriesische Sprache. In the early 1930s, Otto von Friesen, Professor of Swedish Language at Uppsala University, used the term anglofrisiska runor, and he declared ‘I have named them thus because they occur only in English lands besides also in Frisian areas’ [author's translation].

Old Toldy, having changed his role from gardener to gallery attendant, was already waiting at the entrance ramp. With him, Andras.

“Is everything ready, Toldy?” asked the count.

Toldy nodded.

“Fine. But we’re not going up this way, not the grand staircase. I want to show the countess the old tower.”

With these words he took Franziska's arm and, as Andras went ahead and Toldy followed, he led her to an ancient fieldstone tower, now incorporated into the newer castle building. Within it was a spiral staircase that ascended two stories. The only light came in through narrow openings, no wider than a hand, which pierced the thick stonework every five steps. At one of these, the count paused and pointed to the landscape, which was particularly beautiful from this angle. In the far distance the lake shimmered, while to its right there arose a tall, sharply profiled rock formation known as “the Bishop,” since people professed to see in it a bishop's miter and crosier.

A few steps higher, and instead of these apertures there was a low door with a pointed arch, leading to the newer part of the castle, and here Andras stood, to show them the way through the tunnel-like passage. The count bent down and reached his hand back to Franziska.

Between the years 1450 and 1509, England endured a tremendous amount of upheaval and unrest springing from the civil wars we know today as the Wars of the Roses. The feuds, revolts and other related violence that occurred during this conflict resulted in a startlingly large number of monarchic changes. In this relatively short amount of time, there were five different kings of England – Henry VI (r.1422–61, 1470–71), Edward IV (r.1461–83), Edward V (r.1483), Richard III (r.1483–85) and Henry VII (r.1485–1509). Except for the twelve-year-old Edward V, each of these kings was married. Consequently, there were four different queens consort – Margaret of Anjou (c.1430–82; r.1445–61, 1470–71), Elizabeth Woodville (c.1437–92; r.1464–83), Anne Neville (c.1456–85; r.1483–85), and Elizabeth of York (c.1466–1503; r.1486–1503). In a father–son monarchic changeover, the queen consort's successor would typically have been her daughter-in-law, the wife of the new king. None of these queens was related to each other in this manner.

Margaret of Anjou, a niece of the French king, Charles VII (r.1422–61), was married to the Lancastrian king of England, Henry VI, in 1445 as part of diplomatic efforts by England to resolve the long-standing war with France. Henry, however, lost the throne to the Yorkists in battle in 1461. Although he regained his crown (and Margaret her title as queen consort) in October 1470 with the help of Richard Neville, earl of Warwick – who had famously changed sides from the Yorkists to the Lancastrians – he lost it again after only six months. This short period is known as Henry VI's Readeption.

From the beginning of the patristic project to the end, William Dyngley was in control of his manuscripts. He acquired exemplars, hired the scribes, paid for parchment and decoration, and provided the guard pages. Dyngley's first patristic manuscript, MS 169, was a training ground for the skills he used to create his own patristic library. As we saw in Chapter Three, Dyngley did not just copy Tabula super custodiarum and Registrum Anglie: he shortened incipits, deleted words he deemed unnecessary, and rearranged material. As the Rouses demonstrated, his was a ‘deliberate policy of alteration’. He similarly reconstructed Robert Kilwardby's tabulae, alphabetising, deleting and rearranging details for thirty-five individual works by Augustine (Table 3.2). He also created his own tabulae for Augustine's letters (MS 88) and three opuscula in his patristic anthology (MS 203). For the patristic anthology he also indexed the entire volume.

Early in 1523, around March, Las Casas was formally initiated as a Dominican novitiate in Santo Domingo. These vows constituted a radical change of direction for the worldly “protector” of the Indians. He accepted the discipline of the order that “is a trial period of his new vocation. It is an apprenticeship in the obedient life, renouncing one's own will, with little communication with the outside world from inside the cell of the Dominican monastery.”

A test to this commitment soon appeared in the form of letters from Cardinal Adrian and some of the Flemish gentlemen at the court. They wanted Las Casas to return to the court where he had found so much favor.

We don't know who opened the letters. Las Casas himself says that “the Dominicans in the monastery [he was still in Santo Domingo] did not wish to show him the letters so as not to disturb him.” One of his biographers, Huerga, wrote that “at the least they told him what was in the letters.” But, for the time being, Las Casas renounced the world and went into a metaphorical “sleep,” as he himself described it.

But “sleep” to one man is quite different to another. From 1523 to about 1526 he devoted himself to the discipline demanded by his Dominican brothers in Santo Domingo – study and prayer. Indeed, much of Las Casas's erudition displayed in the next forty years originated during these years as he dug into the books of the great church fathers, read the ancient pagan philosophers, and immersed himself in Scripture. He may have been quiet and superficially contemplative, but his voracious appetite for knowledge and wisdom drove him on.

The pseudonym ‘Calixtus’ appears throughout the Codex Calixtinus, although he is not the only author mentioned in the manuscript. The liturgical section features the “prescription of Pope Calixtus on the matins of Santiago”. He is also the named author of elements in the second book that recounts the miracles of St James, and again as the author of a prologue to the first account of the translation of St James. The opening of the Pilgrim's Guide is presented as the argumentum of Pope Calixtus. Even Book 4, the Pseudo-Turpin, assigns its last chapters to ‘Pope Calixtus’, after the death of ‘Turpin’. At the end of the manuscript a false bull of Innocent II reiterates the fiction. The author portrait on fol. 1r of the Codex Calixtinus shows ‘Calixtus’ seated on an arcaded stool and writing his name on the recto of an open codex (see Figure 1). The decision to set the figure within the bowl of a dragon initial ‘C’, with one dragon head hovering above his head and a second under his feet, may also signal the satiric nature of this pseudonym.

Berlioz's general unwillingness to accept the status quo in any field is manifest in this review, emphasising the useful improvements orchestral instrument makers were introducing to their products. While we today may marvel at the expertise he displayed in his Grand Traité d’instrumentation et d’orchestration modernes (1843), his surprise was that so many composers should be so ignorant of the tools of their trade.

Among instruments of the orchestra, the only ones to have called for and received technical improvements recently are the woodwind. The flute, the clarinet, and especially the bassoon had long suffered from serious faults of intonation and tone which the skill of virtuosos had only managed to disguise up to a point. Boehm's invention for the flute, consisting of a new way of boring the holes for the player's fingers but which unfortunately alters the conventional fingering, has led to important improvements for bassoons and clarinets. We’ve already had an opportunity to mention this excellent development, thanks to which these instruments, whose sound was the most unsatisfactory, will soon boast one that's perfectly in tune and absolutely equal through all registers. As for the violins and lower strings, there's nothing left to say: you don't find Stradivariuses round every corner. Only the piano continues to make progress, sometimes in one direction, sometimes in another. Érard has got them to produce a volume of sound which means that, at least in Liszt's hands, they can compete with a standard orchestra. Pape has produced them in various shapes to suit amateur tastes, so that this instrument, which is growing in popularity the world over, from London and Paris as far as the Philippines and the Indies, can cater simultaneously both to every musical need and to the dictates of fashion and luxury.