73812 results in Boydell & Brewer
4 - Political Economy: William Stanley Jevons
- Paul Watt, University of Adelaide
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- Music, Morality and Social Reform in Nineteenth-Century Britain
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- 21 February 2024
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- 21 November 2023, pp 103-129
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Summary
William Stanley Jevons (1835–1882) is an especially important figure in the history of nineteenth-century morality because through self-instruction he cultivated his own moral sensibility on the one hand and a fashioning of economic and political theory on the other hand, in which personal and social interests overlapped and interconnected. His interests in music, literature, religion, politics and aesthetics played significant parts in the fashioning of his own character and that of the public good in his suggested reforms to the British postal service and the labour market. The way in which Jevons’ worlds so significantly overlapped provides an extraordinary exemplar of how his personal and public interests meshed. This chapter shows how concepts of utility and progress married with narratives of personal morality and the public good. This type of synthesis had, in fact, been part of British life and culture in some ways before the advent of Jevons’ work in music, aesthetics and political and economic theory.
The year 1749 was a watershed in British life and letters, marked by the publication of the first edition of David Hartley's influential book Observations on Man, His Frame, His Duty, and His Expectations. This book, and the hundreds of books and pamphlets like it by other authors that followed in its wake over the next 150 years, attempted to provide a systematic rationale for a morality often tied to economic or political theory. The moral schemes and codes put forward by these writers were usually rules and regulations about how individuals might mould themselves in service to their fellow countrymen, women and children. This vast range of literature was often a combination of moral philosophy and economic and political theory; for example, David Hume's Essays Literary, Moral and Political (1770), Jeremy Bentham's An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1780), William Paley's The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (1785), John Stuart Mill's The Principles of Political Economy with their Applications to Social Philosophy (1848), and many more books besides. In addition to his work on political economy, the letters, diaries and essays by W.S. Jevons demonstrate the extent to which music, along with reading and a love of architecture, for example, kindled a sense of personal wellbeing and nurtured a public advocate for social reform.
2 - Manners and Etiquette
- Paul Watt, University of Adelaide
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- Music, Morality and Social Reform in Nineteenth-Century Britain
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 21 February 2024
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- 21 November 2023, pp 49-72
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The cultivation of manners (a term used interchangeably with ‘morals’) was vital to character formation, civility and civilisation and was written about extensively in the hundreds of etiquette books published in the nineteenth century in Britain and North America. It was agreed that a well-mannered woman provided stability and cohesion in the home and was, at times, regarded to be an icon of nation and empire. Improving the individual, as well as society, was what etiquette books sought to do. Books on manners and etiquette for women (and sometimes men) were written and read widely. Instructions were provided on the conduct of daily life, from how to arrange the text on an invitation card to how to carve roast lamb. Music sometimes played a part in the books that sought to define and shape social hierarchies, whether it be hosting and participating in music-making at private gatherings, dancing or attending public performances. This chapter begins by discussing the social spheres addressed by etiquette books, then outlines the aims and content of such books, before analysing them for the light they shed on the theory and practice of leading a moral life. It shows that claims of rational recreation, amusement and moral education were far from universal, and greatly influenced by differing values across class, gender and demography.
Scholars have long argued that etiquette books were a means to control and regulate the domestic sphere. The notion that nineteenth–century culture was cultivated in a domestic or private (or feminine) sphere in contrast to a public or political (or masculine) sphere has long been debated. The separation of spheres might explain divides such as class and gender but, as some scholars have pointed out, it detracts from recognising the fluidity of the movement of people between the spheres. David Kennerley and Phyllis Weliver have provided such a critique. Kennerley is sceptical about the very concept of spheres as they relate to music, arguing that they are a twentieth-century intellectual construct overlaid on a society that did not think in terms of spheres, and where musical performance was neither a strictly private nor public undertaking. In her work on the Gladstone salon, Weliver argues that visitors to the salon came from a diversity of backgrounds – and spheres – and thus employs the term ‘social sphere’ or a ‘sub-sphere’ to account for the plurality of those at work or play in the salon.
3 - Mechanics' Institutes
- Paul Watt, University of Adelaide
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- Music, Morality and Social Reform in Nineteenth-Century Britain
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 21 February 2024
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- 21 November 2023, pp 73-100
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Moral management and the building of individual and collective character extended from childhood and the private sphere into public institutions such as the mechanics’ institutes. The mechanics’ institutes provided a blend of scientific, literary and occasionally musical classes and endeavours that sought to provide a holistic approach to the formation of the young man and, in some cases, the young woman. As we will see below, the membership of mechanics’ institutes was rarely comprised solely of mechanics, and occasionally included women in their administration and student profile. The range of activities and classes was extremely broad in most cases, opening up a vast world of knowledge for young men and women. The desire to cultivate a young and mostly working-class mind was seen to be a good investment for individual and social wellbeing. As we have seen in previous chapters, reference to cultivating and concentrating the mind, improving the intellect, and undertaking leisure and other activities, such as musical games and concerts from which aesthetic pleasure could be derived, were central to all schemes of moral education. The mechanics’ institutes offered such activities in spades, but they were never far from controversy, including vastly different values placed on the value of music in the formation of a moral sensibility.
The establishment of the mechanics’ institutes came after the founding in 1753 of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce that had very similar aims and aspirations. Its Royal Charter described its function as ‘bestowing pecuniary and honorary rewards for meritorious works in the various departments of the fine arts, for discoveries, inventions, and improvements in agriculture, chemistry, mechanics, manufactures, and other useful arts’. In many ways the Society set the pattern for the mechanics’ institutes: an extremely varied curriculum, in which music was often part and parcel of a smorgasbord of scientific and creative instruction. Unlike the mechanics’ institutes, the Society did involve itself in music education through the Royal Academy of Music and the efforts of various musicians such as John Ella.
Even though hundreds of mechanics’ institutes and similar institutions were established for the education of working men across the Anglophone world, their history cannot be said to be a collective one.
Index
- Paul Watt, University of Adelaide
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- Music, Morality and Social Reform in Nineteenth-Century Britain
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 21 February 2024
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- 21 November 2023, pp 207-215
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2 - Contentious places: Reconciling Arthurian places in the fifteenth century
- Mary Bateman, University of Bristol
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- Local Place and the Arthurian Tradition in England and Wales, 1400-1700
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 21 February 2024
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- 21 November 2023, pp 89-136
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In order to appreciate the connections between localised, in situ experiences of Arthur in the fifteenth century and the local Arthur handed down by later antiquarians such as John Leland and William Camden, it is crucial to understand the sheer number of Arthurian localities available to Arthur's early modern defenders, and the ways in which those defenders consolidated, reconciled, and managed such a wealth of Arthurian place claims. As the previous chapter demonstrated, the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were characterised by Arthurian sites communicating their local histories to interested visitors, some of whom noted them down in travel diaries or perused the holdings of the on-site libraries. This was the first step in the emergence of a local Arthur; by the fifteenth century, there were a very large number of places across England, Wales, and Scotland claiming a connection to Arthur in some way, and visitors to Arthurian localities in this period, such as William Worcester and John Hardyng, often visited a significant proportion of them. This multiplicity means that the local Arthur in the fifteenth century would have been hard to miss.
For those invested in defending Arthur's reality and purging his history of some of its less credible elements, these Arthurian locations needed to be sorted through. The enormous range of Arthurian place claims that existed by this stage – some of which were contradictory – laid the groundwork for those writing about Arthur in the sixteenth century to locate Arthur wherever they thought most appropriate. Later chapters of this book will analyse the different regions carved out for Arthur by his early modern defenders according to their own affiliations and interests; but before we come to these it is important to grasp the vast number of possible places in which Arthur might be located.
This chapter therefore pulls together the competing Arthurian place claims that were current in the fifteenth century, and suggests reasons as to why some sites were contested while others were not. Some of these place claims are obviously contradictory, sometimes the product of civic, episcopal, or local competition (largely over unidentifiable obsolete toponyms from ancient texts). Others, however, are less contentious than they initially seem. Locations claimed as Arthur's court or the site of his Round Table, for example, are accepted as plural. Sometimes Arthurian toponyms are not fought over, but rather shared out.
3 - The best of the west: John Leland's West Country Arthur
- Mary Bateman, University of Bristol
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- Local Place and the Arthurian Tradition in England and Wales, 1400-1700
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 21 February 2024
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- 21 November 2023, pp 137-170
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Although many factors could contribute to the Arthurianisation of specific places – from local pride to ancient earthworks to scribal misreading – one factor in particular encouraged the gradual emergence of Arthurian regions; that is, a gathering of several Arthurian localities. We might consider this factor in terms of the ‘contagious’ sacred geographies proposed by Laura Varnam, or else as a kind of logic of geographical association. Often, this logic involved reasoning on the basis of a location's proximity to existing Arthurian places presumed to be genuine. Assuming Geoffrey's Historia to be reliable, how far would Arthur realistically have travelled in pursuit of Mordred from Winchester to Camlan? And might it make more sense for Gawain to buried in Dover, where he died, rather than Rhos in Wales? Arthurian settings could be more readily mapped over real-world places that were close to established Arthurian locations. One example is Pomparles bridge between Street and Glastonbury, located within walking distance of Arthur's alleged grave at Glastonbury Abbey. It is recorded by its romance name, the ‘Poynt Perilous’ (that is, the perilous bridge) in the Middle English romance Lybeaus Desconus (c. 1375–1400). The author of Lybeaus Desconus translates the geographies of their French romance source, moving Arthur's court from Caerleon to Glastonbury, and the nearby ‘gue perilleus’ (perilous ford) to the ‘poynt perillous’. Pomparles bridge is also recorded as ‘pons periculosus’ in a local charter of 1344 and a 1415 hundred court roll. Later in the sixteenth century, the antiquarian and poet John Leland (c. 1503–52), the subject of this chapter, visited the Glastonbury area, and in his notes he recorded passing by ‘Pontperlus, wher men fable that Arture caste in his swerd’. Perhaps because of its dubious romance associations, the bridge did not make it into Leland's later published Arthurian text, a defence of Arthur's existence titled the Assertio inclytissimi regis Arthurii regis Britanniae [An assertion of the most famous Arthur, King of Britain] (1544). Yet other geographically logical sites put forward by Leland, such as Cadbury Castle, would go on to be fully incorporated into Arthur's geography even to the present day. These presumptive geographies were vital to the emergence of an Arthurian West Country region by the midsixteenth century, accruing incrementally around the one Arthurian site which remained largely uncontested: Glastonbury.
Yet not even Glastonbury, with its impressive material remains, would remain entirely uncontested for long.
1 - Elementary Instruction
- Paul Watt, University of Adelaide
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- Music, Morality and Social Reform in Nineteenth-Century Britain
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 21 February 2024
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- 21 November 2023, pp 17-48
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The formation of moral character begins in childhood, and good parenting is a key to this enterprise. In the nineteenth century, however, parents were not the only role models in the home: nannies, governesses and other domestic staff played a part in the running of all kinds of morality-building activities in homes of the affluent. In other households, siblings and members of extended families facilitated moral or rational recreation. Older children relied less on role models to govern their choice of leisure activities and a large literature was published on what young women and men could do to guide their recreation. The pursuit of ‘purest enjoyment’ (a term we come to shortly), or a heightened moral sensibility, is achieved through engagement with music and is evident through musical and other activities. Recalling Kivy's work from the Introduction, various epistemic, behavioural and character-building activities – involving making music and reading appropriate books and magazines – were used in initiatives to cultivate moral living.
Songs, toys, games, and the making and playing of musical instruments were put into the service of moral education and recreation in the home for children and young adults. Approaches to the education of girls and boys in the nineteenth century have been the subject of extensive studies that emphasise differences in approach for each gender, rather than the common points. Although much of this chapter deals with the rational recreational activities for each gender separately, at times they overlap. By drawing on references to musical activities, I show how the masculine and feminine interests of the period were not always mutually exclusive; as Michael Roper and John Tosh have shown, masculinity and femininity are not distinct entities. This chapter first considers the values underlying most of the educational and recreational activities undertaken by children. It then considers the types of activities considered suitable for moral education for both boys and girls, after which the discussion turns to issues of literature for each gender in turn, lastly illustrating a crossover readership between genders. The chapter draws on an abundance of literature that instructed and guided moral and musical education from infancy to adolescence.
‘PURE ENJOYMENT’: SONGS AND TEXTS
Education and moral instruction sought to provide children with the ‘purest enjoyment’. Impure or irrational thoughts and feelings were considered the result of bad breeding, poor taste and vulgar manners.
Foreword
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- By Zara Conway
- Hazel Conway, Paul Rabbitts
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- People's Parks
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 22 February 2024
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- 14 November 2023, pp xi-xii
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My mother, Dr Hazel Conway, was born on 28 April 1933. Her mother, Kathleen Barham, was a chiropodist. Her Austrian father, Emil Oesterly, was a merchant banker, and at the outbreak of the Second World War returned home to fight as an officer. During the war, Hazel was evacuated to the country to live with her English grandmother. Granny took her responsibilities very seriously and was extremely strict. Granny also took the opportunity to teach Hazel as much as she could while she was in her care – especially maths and science. This ensured Hazel had confidence and was well ahead of the other children when she eventually went to school.
After the war Hazel returned to her mother in Watford, who by this time was divorced. Aged 18, Hazel visited Austria – hoping to reunite with her father and his new family. Sadly this came to nothing; but while there she had a serious car accident. With a badly broken leg, Hazel spent months in a little cottage hospital, ending up with a permanent limp. Never one to feel sorry for herself, Hazel used the time while convalescing to teach English to local people.
After studying physics at Reading University, Hazel's first job was working at Battersea Power Station as a librarian and information officer. She then became the first woman journalist on Fleet Street – a technical journalist writing for Scientific Instruments. Hazel regularly had to attend the many large lunches given for journalists. Afterwards the men would retire to a smoking room … and Hazel simply joined them!
While still living in London, she took a post that required commuting to Leicester to teach liberal studies at the polytechnic – which in 1992 became De Montfort University. By the early 1970s all practical art and design students had to pass in associated historical studies alongside their main subject. While art and architectural history were long established, new subjects were evolved to cover the many branches of design. The teaching expertise gradually acquired and developed in both these old and new subjects encouraged many institutions to establish their own single honours art history degree programmes. In 1975 Mary Stewart initiated such a course.
Treating the subject in a democratic way, Mary and her team opened it up so that it was accessible to everyone, and from the outset it must have been one of the broadest degree programmes in the country.
12 - Later Municipal Park Designers
- Hazel Conway, Paul Rabbitts
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- People's Parks
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 22 February 2024
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- 14 November 2023, pp 191-216
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The early park designers included Paxton, Loudon, Milner and Pennethorne as well as other notable architects. Towards the end of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th century, many of the parks were designed and laid out by a number of individuals that included landscape architects and gardeners, and nurserymen, as well as park superintendents, who were also responsible for the establishment of early iterations of the parks department.
The park designers
Competitions were popular as a way of obtaining schemes for new parks, and attracted entries particularly from professional designers and nursery firms. The Gardeners’ Chronicle of 1890 thought the success of many recent schemes was a result of the prevailing custom of offering prizes for the best designs for laying out parks, the keen competition having had a stimulating influence on the landscape architect. The Builder commended Wrexham on holding a competition for the design of its new park rather than calling in the local landscape gardener, but suggested that in the case of a public competition, an assessor of wider experience than the park superintendent might have been appointed. The response to the Liverpool competition, held in 1914, showed that by this time there was a considerable amount of ability in park design present in the country. It was suggested by The Builder, which reviewed the competition, that other municipalities should follow the example set and either engage a park expert or hold a competition in the hopes that this might result in ‘fewer of those deplorable attempts at public parks with which we are so familiar in English towns’. Thomas Hayton Mawson (1861–1933), in a lecture to the Town Planning Conference of 1910, had made similar disparaging comments on the nation's success at park making. The problem, he felt, lay at the initial stages of the park's life: ‘our public parks, which contrast so unfavourably with our private gardens, are almost entirely the work of amateurs’. Whether or not this was true depends rather on one's definition of the word ‘amateur’.
Landscape gardeners and designers
A number of individuals and firms specialised in the layout of public parks. Mawson has been described as ‘probably the most successful designer of parks in the first quarter of this century’ and ‘the leading park designer’ of the period covered by this study.
7 - Local Pride and Patriotism
- Hazel Conway, Paul Rabbitts
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- People's Parks
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 22 February 2024
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- 14 November 2023, pp 117-134
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Public parks provide space for marking local, national and international events and achievements. A visit by the queen, the virtues of particular individuals, the achievements of industry and local government, and Britain's imperial role were celebrated, sometimes in very ingenious ways. The most readily recognisable characters on that stage were those whose statues commanded prominent positions: royalty, MPs, benefactors, dignitaries and local heroes.
By mid-century the expanding railway network was making travel quicker, safer and far less exhausting and, until the death of Prince Albert in 1861, Queen Victoria travelled extensively throughout the kingdom, visiting towns and opening new buildings and parks. Such visits were cause for great local celebration, to be remembered with pride. The statues of the queen that were erected in public parks during the 1850s and 1860s were commissioned largely, if not wholly, in response to a royal visit. On the occasion of her first visit to Peel Park, Salford, in 1851, the queen was greeted by more than 80,000 children and their teachers, and a marble statue sculpted by Matthew Noble was erected. The second visit, in 1857, was commemorated by the building of the Victoria Arch. Similarly, when the queen and Prince Albert visited Pearson Park, Hull, in 1854, the event was commemorated by two statues, that of the queen being unveiled in 1863 and that of the Prince Consort sometime later.
After the death of the Prince Consort the queen went into deep mourning and was rarely seen, except to unveil memorials to him. Salford was one of the first towns to consider erecting a memorial to Prince Albert, and the statue, by Matthew Noble, was unveiled in 1864. In the 1870s the queen began to resume public life, and Birmingham was among the places she visited in 1877, in order to lay the first stone of the new law courts. She arrived by train at Small Heath station and was first driven slowly round Small Heath Park, before going on to the city centre. The public were excluded from the park that day, but the 7-metre-wide carriage drive was lined by nearly 50,000 cheering children. This event was commemorated by renaming the park Victoria Park and by a stained-glass window in the Great Hall of the law courts, which showed the scene in the park.
Appendix 1 - Summary of main legislation promoting early park development
- Hazel Conway, Paul Rabbitts
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- People's Parks
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 22 February 2024
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- 14 November 2023, pp 293-294
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8 - Planting and Park Maintenance
- Hazel Conway, Paul Rabbitts
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- People's Parks
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 22 February 2024
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- 14 November 2023, pp 135-150
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For many park visitors it was the flowers that were the main attraction, and park superintendents at the beginning of the 20th century strove to satisfy this taste by providing ‘vast expanses of colour over as long a period as possible’. Spring bulbs were followed by hardy and half-hardy annuals and other summer flowering plants and these were replaced, as summer drew to a close, by dahlias and chrysanthemums. These floral displays cheered the visitors, as well as holding a deeper significance by providing metaphors about society as a whole. During the course of the park movement, the emphasis on flowers varied, as did styles of planting and the types of gardens in which flowers were planted. Since so many municipal parks were located in areas of heavy air pollution, this proved a significant influence on the type of planting that was possible.
One of the main differences between the gardening of the 18th and the 19th centuries had been the prolific growth in the new species available, for many new plants and trees had been brought back to Britain from Australasia, North and South America and Asia. Some of them became acclimatised, while others needed protection from the rigours of the British climate if they were to thrive at all. Gardeners faced the problem of growing an increasing variety of unfamiliar plants and sought ways of incorporating them into an overall theory of landscape design. Repton's principles of landscape gardening advocated variety and contrast, with particular species planted in different types of gardens, such as the rock garden, the flower garden, the American garden, rosarium and arboretum. Within these gardens individual plants or species did not tend to be emphasised. The great increase in new and exotic species encouraged the wish to show individual plants and trees to advantage, and it was J C Loudon's development of the gardenesque school of landscape gardening which provided the principles for such planting. The aim of the gardenesque school was to allow individual plants to develop to their full glory and ‘to add, to the acknowledged charms of the Repton school, all those [of] which the sciences of gardening and botany in their present advanced state are capable’.
At Derby Arboretum trees and shrubs were planted so that their growth was uninhibited.
Brecht Post-2020: Part 2—Pandemic Learning Plays and the Logic of the Specter
- Edited by Markus Wessendorf, University of Hawaii, Manoa
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- The Brecht Yearbook / Das Brecht-Jahrbuch 48
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- 22 February 2024
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- 14 November 2023, pp -
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Frontmatter
- Edited by Markus Wessendorf, University of Hawaii, Manoa
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- The Brecht Yearbook / Das Brecht-Jahrbuch 48
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 22 February 2024
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- 14 November 2023, pp i-vi
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The Brecht Yearbook / Das Brecht-Jahrbuch 48
- Edited by Markus Wessendorf
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- 22 February 2024
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- 14 November 2023
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The Brecht Yearbook 48 is the central scholarly forum for discussion of the life and work of Bertolt Brecht and of aspects of theater and literature that were of particular interest to him
Appendix 2 - Chronology of main municipal and public park developments between 1800 and 1885
- Hazel Conway, Paul Rabbitts
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- People's Parks
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 22 February 2024
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- 14 November 2023, pp 295-300
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Structural Undecidability and the Logic of the Specter in Bertolt Brecht's Drums in the Night
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- By Alba Knijff
- Edited by Markus Wessendorf, University of Hawaii, Manoa
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- The Brecht Yearbook / Das Brecht-Jahrbuch 48
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 22 February 2024
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- 14 November 2023, pp 197-216
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Summary
Incidentally I have never had any respect for revolutionaries who put off the revolution because things were too hot for them.
An error?
I have always needed the spur of contradiction.
Bertolt Brecht's Drums in the Night (1919) has been canonically included in the author's undertheorized and premature period, preluding the complex theoretical epic theater that would mostly be associated with his name. As the object of a controversy that ranged from absolute denial of the play's artistic value by the author himself to its unfortunate aesthetic appraisal on the side of the bourgeoisie, Drums in the Night can be considered an undecidable play that avoids the telos of the epic Fabel while dismantling the traditional principles of the bürgerliches Trauerspiel (bourgeois tragedy). Taking as a starting point Astrid Oesmann's injunction that Brecht's early writings (1918–26) can be thought of as precarious gestures already pointing toward the author's later commitment to dialectical materialism and political theater, this article will analyze Andreas Kragler's various (dis)articulations from the perspective of Jacques Derrida's hauntology of the specter. Based on this framework, I will argue that Kragler's unusual characterization, in Derrida's terminology, undermines the orthodoxy of “theatres of representation” by bringing to the fore the eschatological dimensions of the enlightened subject. Brecht's phantasmatic figure, as we will see, disrupts the macro-political, aesthetical concepts of “revolution,” “representation,” and “sameness,” and thus inscribes itself into a site of hegemonic struggle, both formally/abstractly and ontologically. I have divided this article into three parts: the first one historicizes the critical reception of Kragler in order to show that the commentators’ prolific divergences construct the character's political identity as a necessarily undecidable critical gap. In this section, Kragler's contradictoriness and ambiguity will be conceived as an aporetic force of meaning-production, i.e., a principle of indeterminacy which gives Brecht's early play the potential to preempt post-structuralist notions of “subject” and “society.” Consistent with the purpose of historicizing the play, the second part will deal with the theoretical framework by which Kragler's phantasmatic nature, beyond epitomizing the telos of the “traditional ghost-story,” can be conceived of as the bearer of a supplementary incarnation and thus as an ontological différance of the Marxist revolutionary subject. To conclude, in order to explain the complex conjuncture between spectral ontology and politics that Kragler's undecidability incarnates, a link will be established between Derrida's logic of spectrality and Laclau's deconstructive theory of hegemony.
Preface
- Hazel Conway, Paul Rabbitts
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- People's Parks
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 22 February 2024
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- 14 November 2023, pp ix-ix
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Summary
This book, formerly People's Parks: The Design and Development of Victorian Parks in Britain, was written in 1991 by Dr Hazel Conway, and identified the main national and international influences on park development from the 19th century in Britain, relating them to the design and use of municipal and other public parks. Municipal parks made an important contribution to the urban environment and they developed within a social, economic and political context which affected people's attitudes to recreation. The promoters of parks wanted to encourage education and particular forms of recreation, and parks reflected this in their design, buildings, statues, bandstands and planting.
In 2022, the opportunity arose to update Hazel's book, with permission from her daughter, Zara, as Hazel had passed away in December 2017. Since it was originally published by Cambridge University Press in 1991, further research work has evolved over the last 30 years, in particular by Harriet Jordan, David Lambert, Katy Layton-Jones, Carole O’Reilly, Paul Rabbitts, Historic England, the Association of Public Service Excellence, the Heritage Fund and many other parks historians, and it was decided not only to update the book, but to add new chapters to it, covering garden cities and the new towns movement; the impact of sport and physical activity in public parks, in particular during the war and inter-war years; post-war Britain and the gradual changes in recreation; the changing perspectives in parks management; decline and social upheaval; revival and renewal; and finally the role of public parks in the 21st century, taking into account the global pandemic of COVID-19 and how it renewed our interest in people's parks. This update could not have come at a better time as public parks face fresh austerity post-COVID-19, aligned with their increase in popularity and the climate crisis we face.
Interlude I: Wohnen im Schreiben oder Kein Schreibtisch nirgends
- Edited by Markus Wessendorf, University of Hawaii, Manoa
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- Book:
- The Brecht Yearbook / Das Brecht-Jahrbuch 48
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- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 22 February 2024
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- 14 November 2023, pp 89-94
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Summary
In Berlin und somit gleichsam im Schatten des berühmten Hauses in der Chausseestraße gelangt man bei Brecht unversehens von den Bühnenmöbeln zum Exil und zu einem Wohnen, das, wie Lara Tarbuk gezeigt hat, auch ein Sich-Einrichten in einem weiteren und denkbar weiten Sinn impliziert— zumal, wenn damit verbunden ist, was man im Deutschen so sprechend einen Wohnsitz nennt, gesteigert: einen festen Wohnsitz. Dessen erst noch zu entdeckende Qualität beschreibt ein damals auch in Berlin und München lebender, insgesamt praktisch nie wohnender Dichter und Zeitgenosse Brechts in einem 1907 veröffentlichten Gedicht ohne Titel, es genügt hier vielleicht schon die erste Strophe, ein Dialog-Anfang:
Ich lehre dich den sanften reiz des zimmers
Empfinden und der trauten winkel raunen
Des feuers und des stummen lampen-flimmers
Du hast dafür das gleiche müde staunen
schreibt Stefan George, ein Autor, der wie gesagt, nie einen festen Wohnsitz und meist keine eigene Wohnung hatte. Das Gedicht erinnert spätestens mit der Strophenpointe des “staunen[s]” auch daran, dass das Wohnen vielerorts der Ausnahmefall ist, der Normalfall ein zumal in der Moderne zunehmendes Unbehaustsein. Nicht die vielbeschworene “transzendentale Obdachlosigkeit,” sondern ihr reales Gegenstück war und ist in den Städten allerorten zu sehen, erst recht in den Grenzzonen des heutigen Europas, wo Menschen an Zäunen stehen oder bestenfalls aus Plastikabfall zeltartige Gebilde herstellen können—unter, wie wir falsch sagen, freiem Himmel. “Wohnen bzw. Wohnraum ist nicht nur ein soziales, sondern zu jeder Zeit auch ein politisches Thema,” schreibt Birgit Johler und zitiert Äußerungen Wiener Politiker von 2017, die dafür plädieren, “Asylquartiere an den Rand der Großstadt” zu verlegen, wie schon 1938 die Vertreibung und Vernichtung der “Anderen” nicht nur in Wien von Beginn an deren Wohnraum betraf.
Entsprechend finden Brechts Flüchtlingsgespräche im Nachlass- Manuskript gleichen Titels aus der zweiten Hälfte der 1930er Jahre als Dialoge zweier Männer im Exil an einem besonderen Ort moderner Mobilität statt, in einem Bahnhofsrestaurant in Helsinki, über das es am Ende des Textes heißt, es sei ein “Lokal, das ihnen beiden wegen seiner Ungemütlichkeit lieb geworden war.” Um ein Buch zu schreiben, erfährt man dort, braucht es allerdings ein Zimmer—Lesen kann man dagegen die “schwedischen Zeitungen,” wie es an anderer Stelle heißt, auch im Freien, nämlich in einem Schaufenster, in dem “Bericht[e] über das Vorrücken der Deutschen in Frankreich ausgehängt” sind. In diesem doppelten Draußen warten die beiden und blicken “düster auf die staubigen Anlagen vor dem Außenministerium, wo sie die Aufenthaltsbewilligung erneuern lassen mussten.”
9 - Permitted Pastimes
- Hazel Conway, Paul Rabbitts
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- Book:
- People's Parks
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 22 February 2024
- Print publication:
- 14 November 2023, pp 151-168
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- Chapter
- Export citation
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Summary
Parks were places where people could enjoy the open air and the beauty of the flowers and trees, and through a variety of activities become physically, socially and morally improved. Generally, these activities tended to be rather sober in comparison with those offered by the pleasure gardens, but there were exceptions to this, particularly on special occasions such as a park opening. Three days of celebrations marked the opening of Derby Arboretum on 16 September 1840. The corporation's procession to the arboretum and the official opening ceremonies were followed the next day by a second procession, this time of trades and societies, and the celebrations included a balloon ascent, dancing and a firework display. On the third day, children's day, there were sports, games and more dancing. Subsequently, 15 August, the birthday of the donor Joseph Strutt, was celebrated by a general half-holiday, with a procession, massed bands and special attractions in the arboretum. At the opening of Birkenhead Park on 5 April 1847, the crowd, estimated at 10,000, enjoyed the sports, the bands and the Lancashire bellringers who performed on the upper storey of the boathouse, but the highlight of the day was the rural sports competition. This included sack, hurdle, foot and blindfold wheelbarrow races, races for women, and other competitions such as a grinning match, eating a bowl of ‘stirrah’ or porridge, and catching the greasy pig. The pigs were prepared for this ordeal by shaving them and soaping their tails. To enable people from the surrounding towns to enjoy the opening of People's Park, Halifax, 10 years later, special excursion trains were laid on. There was a general holiday, a huge procession to the park led by the Sixth West Yorkshire militia followed by nine bands, and thousands came from Huddersfield, Bradford and Leeds to participate in the feasting which lasted into the small hours: ‘There never was a more happy day in all our town's history than 14th August. Gladness beamed in every eye; pleasure ruled in all hearts; happiness filled every mind, joy lighted up every individual's face.’
Parks were places which large numbers of people could use and they did so, on special occasions and on ordinary Sundays.