Mutated bodies: stage performances of Beckett's late prose texts by Mabou Mines (1984) and Gare St. Lazare Players, Ireland (2005)

An exploration of the stage adaptations of Beckett's fictional texts by the New York based Mabou Mines theatre company.

Between writing and type: the stencil letter

An exhibition of stencil letters from the 18th century to the present day. Co-curated by Eric Kindel and Fred Smeijers, the exhibition featured a wide selection of stencil letters in the context of historical artefacts, documents and ephemera, including stencil plates and stencilling devices, specimens and catalogues and patent inventions. The exhibition also introduced a series of new stencil fonts designed by Maurice Göldner, Pierre Pané-Farré and Fred Smeijers. The design of each font made reference to and was informed by the historical material.

Piety and sociability in early modern women's devotional writing

The letters of early modern women demonstrate that their experience of religion was essentially social, contrary to the impression created by much modern work on diaries or meditations. The stereotypical melancholic, pious lady is far from the ideal offered by spiritual advisors, women and men, in their correspondence. Letters demonstrate how women created networks of spiritual support within and beyond their families. Letters also testify to the agency exercised by early modern women in religious matters, particularly in their assumption of the role of religious advisor and in their engagement with ecclesiastical politics. While this is far from showing that religion empowered all early modern women, it does offer a corrective to the unduly gloomy view of the role of religion in such women's lives. Letters provide indispensable testimony to the social nature of women's responses to the changing religious culture and politics of the eighteenth century.

Writing, death and absence in 'Tim' by H.O. Sturgis

There has been a considerable critical interest in the representation of death in Children's Literature, with an increasingly prevalent move to read it as granting the child the status of object. Thus, for example, Judith Plotz takes it to 'increase [the] presence' of the child. Through a detailed reading of one late C19th school story, I suggest that such readings proceed through a resistance to textuality. This essay offers a reading of death as bound up with the play of the text, deferred, shifting and retrospectively constructed rather than a state of simple, recoverable objecthood.

"De rappels en prédictions, savoir convaincre et savoir agir : le rôle ambigu de Merlin, de la naissance d'Arthur à son accès au trône de Bretagne (dans le Merlin en prose et la Suite Vulgate)"

Bénéficiant de la connaissance du passé, du présent et du futur, Merlin ne se contente pas de rappeler, observer, ou prédire, mais il agit et influence le cours de l'histoire en favorisant la conception problématique d'Arthur. L'étude porte sur la nature et la portée de son investissement dans une trame narrative où il n'a de cesse d'argumenter, de convaincre, et de se justifier.

Continuity and discontinuity: illuminating and interlacing the adventures of Viviane and Merlin in the 'Prose Merlin'

La rareté des miniatures consacrées à l'histoire amoureuse de Merlin et Viviane, dont le développement est à la fois épisodique et structuré par le recours au procédé de l'entrelacement, souligne son caractère marginal au sein de la narration. Les artistes et concepteurs de ces ouvrages manifestent une certaine réticence à l'égard d'aventures qui peuvent affecter l'autorité morale de Merlin, même si elles sont étroitement liées à la disparition du personnage et à la clôture du récit.

La Suite Vulgate, 'Suite historique' du Merlin? Histoire et roman dans un récit arthurien en prose

La Suite Vulgate, une œuvre d'orientation à la fois romanesque et historique, interroge la pertinence des constructions et catégories génériques dans la littérature médiévale. Afin de mieux cerner le statut de cette œuvre hybride, cet article explore les questions de l'écriture de l'histoire, la terminologie à travers laquelle l'œuvre s'auto-désigne, son rapport à la temporalité, et le mode de représentation de l'histoire que propose le texte.