This article examines the sources behind the Pyrrhus Speech in Hamlet, demonstrating how Shakespeare’s manifold interweaving of texts can be decoded through sequential procedures of complexity and ultimately represented through networks.

With the slow metabolism of academic publishing, we are only now seeing in print those works produced during or shortly after Trump’s tenure as 45th president of the United States. Encountering these books now is curiously temporally displacing. On the one hand, such books offer the promise of reflecting soothingly, perhaps therapeutically, on a time confined to the past. The writing of history is a way of telling ourselves that certain things are over. But reading a book that engages in such reflection on the eve of the 2024 presidential election, then attempting to review it the day after forces a dislocation in perspective. Simultaneously, one looks at the past that was safely confined to the narrative of history, and one must also reckon with the traumatic intrusion of that past once again. It is hard not to read these books hauntologically.

The last musicologist to see the original canon-pictures was apparently Eusebius Mandyczewski, who says: ‘At Eisenstadt [the Esterházy family’s principal residence] there are still [1891] preserved Haydn’s presentation canons – as copies – in slender wooden frames, those that he hung on the walls of his room.’ Mandyczewski, a Haydn authority, recognised that the hand in the canon-pictures was not the composer’s, strengthening a claim made in 1811 by Johann Elßler, Haydn’s servant and copyist, that he had copied their music directly from autographs. Mandyczewski’s observation that the frames were ‘slender’ suggests that Haydn adopted a style of framing favoured by collectors of prints, which the composer would have seen in London and which was much imitated in Germany in the later eighteenth century.

The conclusion outlines key points in the book. On a Kantian-Kierkegaardian account, thought experiments lead to presentations that justify calling a thought experiment an experience, though not an empirical or sensory one. Without a sensible object, we can nevertheless have givenness, or presence, but not existence. Cognition, for that reason, is not necessarily truthful: although object-directed, cognition on its own does not justify belief in any particular object’s existence. My conclusion that thought experiments provide cognition rather than knowledge echoes Michael Stuart’s claim that thought experiments increase understanding. Cognition is a common basis for knowledge in Kant, but it is not the same thing as knowledge. The conclusion also draws implications for how we understand faith (religious belief) in Kierkegaard and how thought experiments make sense of the complexity of reality.

Historical thesauri are indispensable tools for understanding the historical lexicon of English. The arrangement of historical lexis by semantic field reveals patterns in vocabulary which cannot be seen in an alphabetical ordering, and so historical thesauri are essential for the investigation of cultural development and the history of ideas as well as charting the evolution of the lexicon. This chapter gives examples from the Historical Thesaurus of English and its related projects, including A Thesaurus of Old English, The Bilingual Thesaurus of Everyday Life in Medieval England and Love, Sex, and Marriage: A Historical Thesaurus. It enumerates the key principles of a historical thesaurus, discusses sources of lexical data as well as the organisational principles by which historical thesauri arrange words, and overviews research projects in the history of English which have been made possible by historical thesauri.

The experience of being tied up in Tehran while eating tangerines, and what it signifies as narrative, metaphor, and theoretical intervention. The chapter combines a personal story about a home invasion with an analysis of social and property relations in the space of the local neighborhood. The author establishes her identity as an arous farangi (a “foreign bride”), meaning both an insider and an outsider in the Iranian cultural community. In parallel, analysis of the history of the burgled house and the changing geography of its residential neighborhood reveals the complex transformations in Iranian class positions and urban spatial organization since the revolution. Whether tragic or absurd, the experience of being tied up in Tehran sets the narrative and interpretive paradigm for the rest of the book.

Chapter 4 analyzes several common features in New Religious Movements that turn violent – a millennial and apocalyptic worldview, totalistic organizational rules, isolation, and real or perceived persecution – and how these features can help make sense of the infusion of violent expectations in the sectarian movement of the Dead Sea Scrolls as represented especially in the Rule of the Community.

Sir John Ross was appointed Lord Chancellor of Ireland in 1921, being the last to hold that office with its abolition in 1922. Ross was born and raised in Londonderry, before proceeding to Trinity College, Dublin. Briefly an MP in the 1890s, Ross was chiefly interested in the law. Called to the Irish Bar in 1880, he took silk in 1891. His career as a Chancery barrister, and later a judge, led him to the Irish woolsack. As a result of the Government of Ireland Act 1920, his role as Lord Chancellor was very different to that of his predecessors. However, as Lord Chancellor he took no back-seat role, hearing cases in the newly established High Court of Appeal for Ireland up until his office was abolished. Ross also served as Speaker of the short-lived Senate of Southern Ireland. He retired to Northern Ireland, where he died in 1935.

This chapter deals with changes in the history of English as they are informed by the functional approach to language, which starts from the assumption that linguistic structure cannot be analysed independently from the uses to which it is put. Three types of external, functional explanation are distinguished: communication-based (discourse- and information-structural), processing and cognitive explanations. Against this background, I discuss the impact of these external functional factors on the traditional domains of language change: sound change, morphological change, syntactic change and semantic-pragmatic change. In a final section, I address grammaticalisation as a domain combining morphosyntactic and semantic-pragmatic change.

Across more than a century of film music’s history, numerous Czech and Slovak composers have excelled in the field. However, their works have gone largely unnoticed by musicologists. This chapter sheds light on some of the major paradigms and unique aspects of Czech film music by focusing on two key figures: Bohuslav Martinů and Zdeněk Liška. Prior to World War II, Bohuslav Martinů made important contributions to the emerging medium of sound film, although film music did not represent a major part of his overall output. In the second half of the twentieth century, Zdeněk Liška became a major figure in this domain and devoted his entire career to creating film scores. Most recently, many Czech film-music composers have also developed an interest in sound design, building on Liška’s legacy.

The Introduction reflects on Hegel’s unique approach to social and political philosophy, the distance that separates him from other modern thinkers and the contemporary reception of his ideas. Although the charges of conservatism and intolerance raised by Hegel’s early critics have since been discredited, the current tendency to regard him as a social-minded liberal fails to capture the true depth of his political thought. And this failure follows, it is argued, from the tendency to read the Philosophy of Right in a linear or horizontal manner, as a progression in which each dialectical stage is merely completed or expanded by subsequent ones. Introducing the book’s main thesis, the chapter claims that only a vertical reading, which recognizes the progression’s transformative nature, can do justice to Hegel’s overall argument. Moreover, anticipating the critical reconstruction of the Philosophy of Right undertaken in the book’s second part, it is claimed that such a reading leads beyond Hegel’s own political and economic views, towards a more progressive vision of modern society.

The Conclusion offers a brief recapitulation of the book’s main argument, highlighting its critical and reconstructive components. First, the criticism of the liberal reading that has come to dominate Hegelian scholarship is reiterated. The rational state envisioned in the Philosophy of Right, grounded in a dialectical synthesis of the particular and the universal dimensions of human freedom, is irreducible to the liberal state found today in most democratic nations. Second, the chapter insists on the need to move beyond Hegel’s own political and economic choices in order to bring out the true implications of his views. As argued throughout the book, only a fully democratic state, in which political and economic power are shared among all the citizens, can be deemed rational, in Hegelian terms. Finally, it is suggested that this alternative reading is not only more faithful to Hegel’s philosophical vision, but also more relevant for contemporary critical theory.

Partition brought with it severe challenges for the operation of railways in Ireland and in its aftermath the cross-border network declined. This chapter explores the challenges of running cross-border railways against a backdrop of the profound lack of cooperation between the administrations in Dublin and Belfast after partition. Even when both administrations grudgingly recognised that they had to cooperate to make even the Dublin/Belfast route viable, this effort towards partnership was stymied by the complicating factor of Belfast’s relations with London. The railways therefore provide a case study which highlights the challenges of sharing the Island of Ireland after partition, with consequences which run to the present.