The transformations of the modern era have led to today’s vast social divisions between wealth and poverty, but also created a human community that is interconnected on a global scale, processes that are examined in this chapter. Major economic and political changes, such as industrialization and de-industrialization, imperialism and anti-imperialism, the rise and collapse of communism, and the expansion of nationalism, have intersected with social and cultural changes within a framework of rapidly increasing population and human impact on the environment. International movements for social justice have called for greater egalitarianism and understanding, while ethnic, religious, and social divisions have led to brutality, genocides, and war. Technological developments in agriculture, medicine, and weaponry have both extended human life and extinguished it at levels unimagined in earlier eras, simultaneously challenging and reinforcing long-standing social hierarchies and cultural patterns.

In 1910, women's suffrage campaigners Gabrielle Jeffery and May Kendall met outside Holloway Prison in London waiting to cheer on released suffragettes. They were allied by their passion for the suffrage cause, but also, as they realised that day, by their Catholic identity. This fortuitous meeting led to the formation of the Catholic Women's Suffrage Society (renamed St Joan's Social and Political Alliance in 1923; then St Joan's International Alliance in 1954). Co-religionists were recruited to the cause of women's suffrage and by 1913, the Catholic Women's Suffrage Society claimed over 1,000 members. Over the next 50 years, the Society expanded to twenty-four countries over five continents. Outlasting most suffrage societies, they successfully moved from their original aim of suffrage for women on the same terms as men, towards broader aims of political, social and economic equalities between men and women. The women of St Joan's Alliance saw their Catholic faith as an integral component of their feminism; they identified their causes for equality between men and women as ‘elementary justice’ and argued for the ‘essential Catholicity of our feminist creed’.

The concert on 3 February also included a Mozart quartet, a cantata by Porpora, and songs and Schubert's ‘Trout’ Quintet. These were dealt with in summary fashion in the first two paragraphs, so that Berlioz could expand on what interested him most; the translation starts at the third paragraph.

Then came the duet from act 3 of Orphée, sung by Duprez and Mlle Pauline Garcia, accompanied by M. Dietsch. You can imagine the audience's curiosity. For my part, never having heard the young singer whose name has attained a reputation that might have its dangers, I took a double interest in hearing her for the first time in a work of the great dramatic school. Singing Gluck as she did, Mlle Garcia overcame an immense difficulty, if one takes account of the musical milieu in which she has lived so far. It is not the cavatinas and flatulent duets – equally false in their expression, taken from most contemporary Italian operas – that could put her on the path to what counts, in my opinion, as the highest summit of art. It's not by singing music one really likes every evening, if not to hear oneself, at least to give them a hearing in the frivolous salons of almost every European capital, that she would acquire the absolute intelligence and passionate feeling of the grandeur of Gluck's genius. And if we were to express a final judgment on her singing, we should have to say she remained well short of the target she was aiming at.

INTRODUCTION

These trials took place before the central justiciary court in Edinburgh in September 1678. The prosecutor was the lord advocate, Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh. The accused persons came from several parishes in Haddingtonshire, where a massive wave of witchcraft accusations swept over the area in a short time. Most of the accused were women, of widely varying ages. Twelve death sentences were passed, all upon women.

The first group of convictions included nine women from the parishes of Ormiston, Crichton and Humbie: Margaret Dodds, Peaston (Ormiston parish); Margaret Douglas, Crichton (Crichton parish); Isobel Elliot, first Peaston (Ormiston parish) and then Templehall (Pencaitland parish); Helen Forrester, Crichton (Crichton parish); Helen Laing, Peaston (Ormiston parish); Margaret Lowes, Humbie (Humbie parish); Isobel Shanks, Crichton (Crichton parish); Margaret Small, Humbie (Humbie parish); and Marion Veitch, Keith (Humbie parish). One of the women accused in this group, Christian Hogger (residence not recorded), had her case dropped. The second group of convictions included three women all from Fala, in the parish of Fala and Soutra: Bessie Gourlay, Agnes Somerville and Margaret Souness.

A further group of accused witches, eight women and one man, were declared fugitive: Margaret Anderson, Ormiston (Ormiston parish); James Campbell, Winton (Pencaitland parish); Marion Campbell, Peaston (Ormiston parish); Margaret Dalgleish, Keith (Humbie parish); Elspeth Knox, Keith (Humbie parish); Margaret Russell, Peaston (Ormiston parish); Agnes Thomson, Over Keith (now called Upper Keith; Humbie parish); Grisell Walker, Keith (Humbie parish); and Elizabeth Wood, Over Keith (now called Upper Keith; Humbie parish). Another fugitive recorded was Gideon Penman, the deposed former minister of Crichton. Other sources mention him as a suspected witch and master of witches; various stories were told about him, but he was never brought to trial.

The Elizabethan output of Thomas Lodge provides a useful case study for the topic of ‘bad’ or ‘drab’ poetry. Whereas it was mostly ignored (if not openly scorned) by subsequent critics, this essay contends that it was a product of late sixteenth-century literary culture: places, and associated networks that nurtured it (grammar school, university, inns of court, private households); the pressures placed on professional writers, such as Lodge, to produce works for the competitive marketplace of print; and the transition from ‘mid-Tudor’ to ‘high Elizabethan’ tastes and styles. Examining such critically neglected works casts light on a groundbreaking, and prolific, period of English writing, and the imitation, innovation, and rivalries that fuelled it. The essay breaks into two main sections: the first introduces Lodge in the context of his literary milieus and networks; the second focuses on Phillis (1593), as the volume of poetry which has attracted the most critical attention (mainly accusing Lodge of plagiarism), but one which also has suggestive resonances with Shakespeare's sonnets.

Born in 1558 to a leading London merchant's family, Lodge's formative years were spent in a series of locations which almost certainly cultivated his literary sensibilities and ambitions. His father (also Thomas) was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1563, before the end of his tenure as Lord Mayor of London. The younger Thomas subsequently spent some of ‘his infancie […] incorporated’ into the household of Henry Stanley, Lord Strange, later Fourth Earl of Derby, a period which he remembers with gratitude in A Fig for Momus (1595).

Here begin the rules, which Robert Grosseteste the good bishop of Lincoln made for the Countess of Lincoln, on how to guard and govern lands and household. He who will keep to the rules will live well and comfortably off his demesne and keep himself and his people.

This inscription marks the beginning of a set of rules that was compiled by Robert Grosseteste, the thirteenth-century bishop of Lincoln. The rules included advice for the management of estates and rules for the domestic arrangements of the household, and it was one of the best known contemporary treatises on estate and household management. This treatise was specifically addressed to Margaret de Lacy, the widowed countess of Lincoln, who presided over a large magnate household and vast complex of landholdings. The practical nature of the advice offered in this treatise demonstrates the bishop's concern for the countess’ level of competence in administrative matters now that she had been widowed and had assumed sole control of the family's properties. It also suggests that the bishop accepted the idea that a noble widow could assume direct ownership and governance of her own lands. The bishop was not alone in his beliefs, judging from descriptions by his contemporary Gerald of Wales, who said that Matilda de Saint Valery, wife of William de Braose, a Welsh Marcher lord, was ‘well equipped to rule her household’ and ‘highly skilled in preserving her property’. These viewpoints are indicative of a general acceptance of the idea that all women, not only those who had been widowed, could participate actively and effectively in household and estate administration.

English was not the only language used for worship in the Church of England and the Church of Ireland. During the early modern period, translations of the BCP into three further languages were officially authorized. A Latin translation was issued by order of Elizabeth I in 1560, for use in the English universities and leading public schools, and the Irish Act of Uniformity of that year allowed Latin to be used by ministers who could not speak English. An ‘Act for the translating of the bible and dyvine service into the Welshe tongue’ was passed in 1563, to provide for the perhaps 90 per cent of Welsh speakers among the population of Wales, and for further congregations in the border diocese of Hereford. As will be shown below, there was continuing support for public worship in Welsh. This contrasted with a general neglect of two other large vernacular language groups, in Ireland and Scotland. In the Church of Ireland and the Episcopal Church in Scotland, use of Gaelic was treated as evidence of backwardness and catholicism, and its replacement by worship in English as essential for the advancement of protestantism.

A French translation of the BCP was ordered by Charles II in October 1662, for use by churches in the Channel Islands and by exiled congregations of Huguenots that conformed to the Church of England. In 1700, seven ‘French’ churches in London and nine others in southern England worshipped under a licence issued by the bishop of London; presumably a similar licence was issued for the ‘several hundred’ Huguenots who in 1685 worshipped in a chapel in St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin.

In support of their political arguments against the doctrines of non-resistance and passive obedience, the pseudo-reform comedians highlighted patriarchs’ intentional or unintentional errors. This way of representation posed two significant problems from the standpoint of conduct literature. First, it did not render inferiors’ disobedient acts justifiable. Because two wrongs do not make a right, superiors’ wrongdoing would not change the fact that inferiors’ subsequent breach of the code of conduct was morally wrong. The pseudo-reform comedians’ exploitation of the loopholes in the principle of general obedience in conduct literature revealed their awareness of the need to distract their audience from this simple fact. Second, it was generally accepted that superiors had the power to punish inferiors, but not vice versa. In contrast to the Nonconformist conduct writers, who defined their non-conformity as passive obedience and did not argue for disobedience, the pseudo-reform comedians equated disobedience and resistance with punishment and interpreted punishment as the means of ‘reforming’ superiors.

In what way, then, could a wife reform her libertine husband while observing the code of conduct? This question is vital for understanding the ingenious design and the controversial nature of The Careless Husband. The design is ingenious because Cibber, instead of asking the question directly, threw it to the audience by giving a simple answer: the immoral husband was reformed by the female protagonist Lady Easy's patience – she did nothing but fulfil her duty as an obedient wife.

Abstract: Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz's short story “Zerbin, or Recent Philosophy” (1776; “Zerbin oder die neuere Philosophie”) stands alongside Heinrich Leopold Wagner's The Childmurderess (1776; Die Kindermörderin) and Goethe's Urfaust as one of the most important literary depictions of infanticide of the German Storm and Stress (Sturm und Drang). “Zerbin,” which is often overlooked in English-language Lenz scholarship, features thematic similarities to his better-known dramas The Tutor (1774; Der Hofmeister) and The Soldiers (1776; Die Soldaten): gender inequality, economic disparities, Enlightenment philosophy, class differences, suicide, and the moral conflicts attending an individual's independence and obligation toward others. This translation makes “Zerbin” available to English audiences for the first time. It is accompanied by an introduction providing a biographical overview of Lenz, context for the story's composition and publication, and a summary of its key themes. It also situates “Zerbin” in historical and recent Lenz scholarship and makes a case for its enduring relevance. Explanatory notes ensure this translation's suitability for both literary scholars and general audiences.

Keywords: Zerbin, J. M. R. Lenz, Storm and Stress, Sturm und Drang, Enlightenment, infanticide in literature, suicide in literature

Storm and Stress

Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz (1751–1792) may be known to English readers, if he is known at all, as the disturbed protagonist of Georg Büchner's (1813–1837) novella Lenz (1839), which fictionalizes a period in Lenz's life when he suffered from mental illness and was cared for by pastor Johann Friedrich Oberlin (1740–1826). However, for a brief moment in time he was one of Germany's most daring and experimental authors.

Brussels, KBR (Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België), ms. 1828–30 is a composite codex comprised of two parts of differing date and origin: fols 1–35 and fols 36–109. The first part, whose main content is the Historia apostolica of Arator, dates to the tenth century and was written on the Continent. The latter part (fols 36–109) is thought to have been copied in England during the first half of the eleventh century and then moved to the Continent, where it received additions, to be eventually bound to the first part of the manuscript. Before the two parts of the codex were bound together, one – or more – twelfth-century Continental hands copied poetic compositions, sometimes fragmentary, on fols 1r and 35r–v, which mark the beginning and the end of the first part of the manuscript. The main contents of these two folios are eight Latin poems, which are connected in content and tone. Five of these poems celebrate the song of the nightingale, while the other three have different subjects but share a riddling quality.

The Manuscript

In the sixteenth century, Brussels, KBR, ms. 1828–30 belonged to the library of Anchin. Nothing is known about its former life. The first part of the codex contains the Historia apostolica of Arator, which begins on fol. 1v with the Epistola ad Florianum, accompanied by commentary glosses, which become less numerous after the initial folios. This part of the manuscript has been dated to the tenth century and, according to McKinlay, was copied in the abbey of Anchin.