Briefe wider die Freidenker

Epistolary writing is probably not the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of Russia’s contributions to world literature—despite the landmark theoretical work of the Russian Formalists in the 1920s, which presciently highlighted the literary interest of the letter and paved the way for the explosion of scholarship on epistolarity in the West in the late 20th century. Nevertheless, the epistolary mode has accompanied and helped to shape Russian literature since its beginnings. For many centuries, epistolary texts offered a space for unusually vivid expressions of unique authorial selves while at the same time encouraging self-conscious play with literary form. Within a century of the adoption of writing by the Eastern Slavs in the mid-10th century, people across the social spectrum were writing letters on birchbark; in the Middle Ages, when Russian writing aimed above all to teach religious truths and build a Christian community, epistolary forms facilitated the creation of exceptionally individualized representations of the author(s) and/or addressee(s) of letters. In the early modern period, epistolary forms played an important role in the development of literature, since they were among the first types of text to be recognized as distinct genres. The late 18th and early 19th centuries witnessed the heyday of the European-style familiar letter, which became a primary literary genre through which elite writers maintained emotional, social, and professional ties, projected a sophisticated self-image, and wrestled with the implications of Russia’s participation in Western cultural life.

This chapter examines Sara Coleridge’s first extended religious essay, ‘On Rationalism’ (1843), and places the work in its historical context, in order to emphasize the boldness of her intervention in the public sphere. The chapter analyses Sara Coleridge’s innovative critical methodology, and the vitality of her language in delivering a radical critique of the theology of John Henry Newman and his fellow Tractarians. Schofield examines how Sara Coleridge’s religious critique is inflected by considerations of gender, and discusses her strategies in overcoming the restricting conventions of women’s authorship. The chapter discusses the liberalism and inclusivity of Sara Coleridge’s theology, which underlies her developing commitment to dialogic methods, and her Miltonic commitment to freedom of conscience.

The article deals with what publicist discourse on the late-20th century has to say about soldiers of Russian origin and the extent to which the formation and assessment of this concept has been affected by the historical, political, and ideological context. Material for this study was gathered in the Corpus of the contemporary Lithuanian language: a total of about 400 sentences that mention Russian soldiers. The aim of the article is to analyse the most typical attributes of the concept of RUSSIAN SOLDIER and the potential cognitive definition of the Russian soldier in reliance on the late-20th century publicist discourse. Scientific novelty. Scholars have not yet been drawn to study the image of the Russian soldier in the Lithuanian language and it‘s worldviews; therefore, it is meaningful to formulate the concept of the RUSSIAN SOLDIER on the basis of the analysis of opinion journalism texts; it is interesting to see how Lithuanian consciousness perceives the Russian soldier today. A semantic analysis has clearly revealed that the Russian soldier carries a strong emotional charge in nearly all of the sentences selected for the study and has a negative connotation in publicist texts as often as not. In conclusion, the following cognitive definition is formulated: the Russian soldier is fierce, cruel, impolite, a lout who has no understanding of the traditional Lithuanian values, often ravaging them barbarically. He has no mercy for his enemies and the civilian residents of the lands he has invaded alike, gunning them down, torturing and raping them; he is often a marauder and a drunk, swapping different things, weapons and such for vodka only to become even more brutal when drunk. He has no respect for the living or the dead and feels he is the true master of the occupied lands. So, for all practical purposes, between the 17th century and the late 20th century the image of the Russian soldier had been encoded with negative information. This can be said of both personal recollections and collective memory alike. It should nevertheless be noted that such an image of the Russian soldier is prompted by the texts of opinion journalism of the late 20th century only. The analysis of the opinion journalism of the 1940s–1970s would bring up an absolutely different definition of the Russian soldier, because the evaluation and image of this figure in peopleʼs consciousness is highly dependent on the political and historical context.

Japanese food first became the focus of serious attention in the United States during the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), when Japan’s victory over the Russian empire signaled that nation’s arrival as a new world power. This newfound interest had nothing to do with gastronomy. The conviction driving it was that diet and preventative health care in the Japanese military, which had been critical to its unexpected success, could serve as models for the United States. Military doctors, home economists, dietitians, businesses, vegetarians, and physical fitness fans joined this discourse, each with their own agendas. Many participants were women whose advocacy linked the supposed innate feminine propensity for nurturing and care giving with a shared faith in science to solve the problems facing the modern world. All believed Japan’s rice, vegetable, and fish-based diet contributed to the exceptional physical strength and stamina of the Japanese people because, unlike their own, “it was plain, rational, and easily digested, metabolized and assimilated.” More enthusiasm than knowledge in their claims, but this mattered little since the goal was not to popularize Japanese culinary culture, but to reform U.S. eating habits. This article examines the American discourse on Japanese food and health and how it shaped and reflected domestic political, social, and economic priorities in the 20th Century’s first decade.

The Plurality of Substantial Forms in John Pecham Caleb Glenn Colley (bio) John Pecham was a Franciscan theologian who took both a strongly anti-Thomist position and a strongly anti-Averroist position in late-13th-century debates in philosophy of mind. Following a successful career as a theologian, Pecham was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1279 until his death in 1292. Pecham is one of a number of Franciscan philosophers who advocated for what has become known as the “Binarium Famosissimum,” or the two famous and related doctrines of the plurality of forms and universal hylomorphism.1 These two doctrines were vigorously opposed by Thomas Aquinas. They had a history prior to the 13th century, with an embryonic presence in the work of Augustine and then fuller expression in Avicebron and his translator/interpreter Dominicus Gundissalinus. The traditional view of the scholarship has been that Avicebron and Gundissalinus were the primary inspiration for the 13th-century emphasis on these doctrines, although a recent doctoral dissertation by Michael B. Sullivan has claimed that Augustine is the inspiration for 13th-century teaching in support of spiritual matter.2 Yet in Sullivan’s discussion of Pecham in particular, we find the Binarium Famosissimum have been artificially separated. Furthermore, Sullivan leaves out the direct relevance of the doctrines to the theological controversies that were pressing in the 13th century and which provided motivation for the doctrines. Here, I will argue based on Pecham’s texts3 that one cannot properly understand Pecham’s doctrine of spiritual matter (and why he would vigorously [End Page 59] oppose Aquinas’ doctrine of matter) without taking into account the larger philosophical and theological context, which includes the plurality of forms debate. It will become clear that (1) Sullivan’s emphasis on Augustine’s influence must be significantly qualified; (2) It is possible to develop a more complete understanding of Pecham according to which his views are more fully motivated and relevant to his historical context. Sullivan’s Discussion Sullivan’s discussion of spiritual matter includes a summarization of some of Pecham’s passages on spiritual matter. Sullivan rightly emphasizes some aspects of Pecham’s writing on the subject, particularly Pecham’s connection to Bonaventure. These aspects include the following: Pecham argues for spiritual matter based on the soul as a moving principle. Pecham cites what he takes to be Plato’s doctrine: “the soul moves itself and that movement is continuous.”4 Pecham argues that the corporeal body cannot be the principle that individuates the soul, since the soul retains its individuality even when [End Page 60] separated from the body. That is, matter must have already played a role in individuating the spiritual substance, independent of the body.5 Pecham argues that matter could possibly exist without form.6 Pecham argues that the genus of substance is divided into spiritual and corporeal substances, and that all substances must be composed of matter and form.7 Pecham assumes the Boethian authenticity of the Gundissalinus text De Unitate et Uno.8 In this report of what Sullivan includes in his brief discussion of Pecham, I have provided citations from a number of Pecham texts. Sullivan, however, actually cites only three Pecham passages—one from the Commentary on the Sentences, one from the fourth Quodlibet [Romanum], and one from the Tractatus De Anima. This limited reading gives very little attention to the Tractatus and no attention to Pecham’s Summa De Ente et Essentia or Quaestiones De Anima. The rationale behind the limited nature of Sullivan’s reading would seem to be the fact that Sullivan’s project is oriented toward presenting Augustine as the leading inspiration for the doctrine of spiritual matter in the 13th century. In fact, despite what Sullivan says, Avicebron (through his translator and interpreter Gundissalinus) must be considered the primary source for the Binarium Famosissimum.9 But one cannot understand Pecham’s doctrine [End Page 61] of spiritual matter without taking into account the larger philosophical and theological context of his writing, which is highlighted by the plurality of forms debate. Pecham’s Doctrines of Spiritual Matter and the Plurality of Forms Pecham believes in universal hylomorphism. One cannot believe in universal hylomorphism without believing...

Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection stands as the cornerstone of modern biology. Yet, its formulation and reception occurred against the backdrop of pre-existing evolutionary ideas, most notably Jean-Baptiste Lamarck's theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics, often summarized as "use and disuse." This paper provides a comprehensive comparison of these two pivotal theories, examining their core concepts, historical contexts, and crucially, their evaluation in light of modern science. We detail Lamarck's vision of organisms actively adapting through use and disuse of organs, passing these modifications directly to offspring. We contrast this with Darwin's mechanism of natural selection, where heritable variation within populations is acted upon by environmental pressures, leading to differential survival and reproduction. The historical analysis explores the intellectual climate of the 18th and 19th centuries, the influence of Lamarck on Darwin's thinking, and the fierce debates surrounding the publication of On the Origin of Species. Modern scientific evaluation, grounded in genetics, molecular biology, and rigorous experimentation, overwhelmingly supports the core tenets of natural selection as the primary driver of adaptation and evolutionary change. While Lamarckian inheritance, as originally conceived, has been falsified, the paper explores nuances such as epigenetic inheritance and phenotypic plasticity, demonstrating how they differ fundamentally from Lamarckism while enriching our understanding of organism-environment interactions. Ultimately, this comparison highlights the revolutionary nature of Darwin's theory, its enduring explanatory power, and why Lamarck's "use and disuse," despite its historical importance and intuitive appeal, remains relegated to the annals of superseded scientific ideas, save for very specific and limited modern reinterpretations.

The article offers a historical context about the presence of castrated singers in the West and the known singing methods produced in the 18th century, as well as an analysis of the terminology used in teaching, reconstruction of the vocal technique and the possible baroque aesthetic of singing.

The article discusses memorial practices at a cemetery, i.e., the practices that represent earliest attempts to communicate a late person’s status and his/her lifetime deeds. The tombstone is considered as a set of elements containing semantic load (epitaphs, visuals, design features, etc.), which help to consolidate the image of a de-ceased person. The gravestone of Grigory Shelikhov, an Irkutsk merchant known for organizing expeditions to Russian America and founding the North-Eastern Company, is selected as a notable example. This monument was constructed on the territory of the Znamensky Monastery of Irkutsk in 1800. It combines typical features as well as some unique elements of gravestones of the late 18th – early 19th centuries (such as indicating poetic epi-taphs authorship and the cost of the tombstone, as well as an unconventional image of Empress Catherine II). The authors explore the features of Grigory Shelikhov’s tombstone and the historical context around the Shelikhovs’ activities after the merchant’s death. They demonstrate that the tombstone was an attempt to demon-strate the role of the deceased in establishing the future Russian-American Company. The Shelikhov family used the monument as a tool to secure their right to control the company and to signify the family’s social capital at the local level. The authors make use of field research database “Memorial Culture in Russia: Tombstones of the 18th – 20th Centuries”, collected at the National Research University Higher School of Economics.

The 18th century emerged as a grand era for Portuguese art and architecture, marked by a confluence of factors that contributed to its richness and splendor. The initial decades witnessed prosperity driven by the exploitation of gold and diamond mines in colonial Brazil complemented by the historical context following the restoration of Portugal’s independence from Spain. King John V, with his particular genius for the arts and architecture, played a pivotal role, creating favorable conditions for substantial investments. This period experienced a significant surge in the construction and embellishment of religious spaces, particularly in connection with ambitious projects for a new patriarchal basilica. The epicenter of this creative surge was the ambitious plan to reestablish the new Lisbon as an imperial, patriarchal, and Atlantic capital, conceived in the 1710s and 1720s. The Nacional Palace of Mafra stands as a reflection of these grand plans for Lisbon. The impact of the artistic and cultural renaissance fostered by the royal court was transformative, influencing artistic innovation across the entire Portuguese territory. Queen Maria Anna of Austria, consort of John V, played a crucial role, particularly contributing to the fields of music, opera, theater, and architecture. The devastating earthquake of 1755 in Lisbon did not halt artistic dynamism in other parts of the country, but the radical changes implemented in the reconstruction of the capital’s center had a profound impact on the development of Portuguese art in and beyond Lisbon. Throughout the 18th century, interactions among the fields of architecture, sculpture, gilded woodcarving, and ceiling painting gave rise to diverse artistic expressions and multiple forms of creativity across various Portuguese regions. Lisbon, whose influence extended to Alentejo (Évora); Porto and its surroundings (Braga, Guimarães); the Algarve; and southern Portugal each witnessed distinctive evolutions in the conception and crafting of religious artworks, as well as in the construction or remodeling of churches and chapels. Despite varying trends, a common thread permeated these developments: a shared pursuit of magnificence, opulence, and sumptuousness.

This thesis is concerned with how a performer might engage with the supposed narrative elements in piano ballades of the nineteenth century, and more generally with the performative principles that would be needed to sustain a narrative realisation of music wherever it seemed appropriate. Of course, the presence of narrative elements in music is usually defined not according to the methods employed by performers, but to those familiar from literary, historical, contextual and analytic studies of the music-as-a-text. Therefore a first step is to examine the tensions between methodologies centred on the “work-as-a-text”, and those concerned with the act of performance. Some important distinctions between critical interpretations and performance interpretations are suggested, even if the former sometimes provide an instigating basis for the latter. Out of this comes a need to demonstrate that, in respect to musical “meaning”, performance has a generative as well as reproductive role, and that the processes and decisions embedded in the acts of rehearsal and the “unfolding-through-time” of performances are central to the creation and emergence of such meanings, including narrative meanings. Next, the evidence for the existence of narrative meanings in music is placed in a particular historical context (that concerned with the development of the piano ballade and its conventions), and in the framework of the changing aesthetic attitudes towards programme music in the first half of the nineteenth century –attitudes that played out in radically different ways in relation to those piano works by Chopin, Schumann and Liszt that form part of this study. The focus then turns to possible and actual performances of these works, and questions are asked about how performances, as implicative sonic shapes and gestural events, for example, might be analysed and theorised by employing recent methodologies of the discipline of performance studies. A final step is to develop and test those findings against a series of case studies of performance approaches to particular works – by Kullak, Chopin, and Liszt – the last two of which are included in the recital that accompanies this doctoral investigation.

This paper aims at describing the self-reflexive functions of the vampire through the lens of remediation. First, I will describe remediation as the central form of representation used in the novel Dracula (1897). Its epistolary form remediates various contemporary high-tech media that are compiled as typewritten pages: It uses a hypermedia strategy. Dracula, the creature, mirrors this technique, since he and his abilities are an amalgamation of the characteristics of contemporary media. Dracula tries to remediate itself (that is to rehabilitate) in the shifting media-landscape of the outgoing 19th century and self-reflexively addresses this through the vampire’s connection to media. Second, Nosferatu: Eine Symphonie des Grauens (dir. Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, 1922) deviates from this hypermedia strategy and argues for film’s immediacy. However, it also self-consciously addresses its state as an adaptation of Dracula and clearly acknowledges its medium when vampirism is involved within the film itself. Nosferatu connects vampirism with cinema and its techniques and, consequently, presents its vampire, ‘Count Orlok’, as a personification of film instead of an amalgamation of different media. Shadow of the Vampire (dir. Edmund Elias Merhige, 2000), then, is a refashioning within the medium: it is Nosferatu’s fictional making-of. Here, the borders between cinema and vampirism and between medium and reality collapse, as Shadow of the Vampire not only borrows the style and story of Nosferatu, but also incorporates the history and the myths surrounding the production of this seminal vampire movie. Consequently, it argues for film’s failure as a medium of immediacy facing the new hypermedia-landscape of the beginning 21st century. These three iterations of the vampire and remediation demonstrate how the vampire has been functionalized as a self-reflexive technique to speak about the medium it is depicted in, be it on the brink of a changing media-landscape, at the beginning of movies as the medium of immediacy, or its existence as an established art form at the emerging digital age.

本文旨在探討內蒙古學者寶力格的中國民族關係研究與內蒙古族的應對策 略。寶力格以內蒙蒙古族的「共謀」為範例，做為中國民族關係研究另一種切入 角度。寶力格否認少數民族區域自古即為當代中國一部分的假說，進而對現代主 權國家概念與中國民族政策進行批評。他強調歷史與文化的穿透性與「國家」領 土僵固的概念在東北亞地區產生衝突，以致內蒙蒙古族人無法採取彈性的身分策 略；而中國則透過上述歷史文化的穿透性，利用「血緣」概念與少數民族建立連 結，則被認為是一種「內部殖民主義」。然而，寶力格於訪談中提到，其認知現 今國際結構的穩定與不可逆，盼能在承認現在國際結構下，尋求少數民族生存之 道。因而，其自二十世紀初內蒙蒙古族策略中，提出「協作式民族主義」概念， 強調少數民族應藉由主動建立與主體民族，甚至更大的社會建立連結，以求生 存。 本文發現寶力格在討論中國民族關係的論述中，看重中國社會強調「相關性」 的內涵，他一則透過歷史與詮釋解構中國對少數民族「歷史相關性」的論述，另 一方面，則在探討二十世紀初內蒙蒙古族策略時，將與漢族合作的「主動權」還 交給內蒙蒙古族，將其放置在一個更大的社會與歷史框架中尋求再現。

The paper examines how contemporary observers portrayed the ethnography of Trieste in the 19th and early 20th centuries, specifically focusing on their understanding of cultural diversity and interethnic relations. The emphasis is on nationalizing narratives from authors living in various historical contexts, offering insights into Trieste’s ethnic and national realities during a period characterized by the rise of national ideologies and polarization.

This article describes the creation and deployment of a virtual tour guide to deliver content and enhance the visitor experience at the third-largest living history museum in the United States. Our work differs from other museum applications in AR and VR by: focusing on narrative storytelling from the point of view of an historical character embodied by a conversational digital avatar; employing place-based engagement within a historical context; and showcasing a historical figure who has an authentic connection to the museum environment he inhabits. Our goals with the project are three-fold. First, we provide an overarching narrative about life in western New York during the 19th century through the telling of five digitally-rendered characters whose stories are recounted in short-form vignettes shared with audiences. Second, we endeavor to develop “thinking dispositions” that encourage visitors to gauge and construct the significance of historical narratives that have the capacity to motivate reflection upon these stories on a personal, local, and global level. Third, we create a tripartite deployment that offers a common experience and supports a variety of delivery methods that respond directly to the health safety concerns raised by COVID-19. In sum, our project offers first-person accounts of the past mediated via XR, a blending of past and present to enhance the visitor experience.KeywordsDigital storytellingInterpretation and management of cultural heritageMuseumsCOVID-19Visitor experienceHistorical narrative

Achill yawls, originally introduced to Ireland as ships' boats aboard Norwegian merchantmen, developed into distinct working vessels along Achill Island's shores during the 19th century. These boats were subsequently modified for recreational racing in the mid-20th century. Despite changes to their design, they are often nostalgically viewed as traditional symbols of an Achill islander identity, though their popularity may have been prompted by late-19th-century British legislation. The authors take an ethnographic approach in interpreting Achill yawls over time, contextualizing their social functions through an exploration of primary historical and photographic archives, extant vessels, and interviews with Achill islanders. © 2010 The Authors