A child’s burial in unconsecrated ground in early modern Dorchester

Re-examination of a child burial found during excavations in advance of the construction of new offices for Dorset County Council in the north-west quarter of Dorchester in 1937 indicates that it is of early modern, rather than of Roman date, as originally believed at the time of excavation. A possible context is explored for the burial of a child in unconsecrated ground in the 17th century.

Learners’ perceptions of being identified as very able: insights from Modern Foreign Languages and Physical Education

While learners’ attitudes to Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) and to Physical Education (PE) in the UK have been widely investigated in previous research, an under-explored area is learners’ feelings about being highly able in these subjects. The present study explored this issue, among 78 learners (aged 12-13) from two schools in England, a Specialist Language College, and a Specialist Sports College. Learners completed a questionnaire exploring their feelings about the prospect of being identified as gifted/talented in these subjects, and their perceptions of the characteristics of highly able learners in MFL and PE. Questionnaires were chosen as the data collection method to encourage more open responses from these young learners than might have been elicited in an interview. While learners were enthusiastic about the idea of being highly able in both subjects, this enthusiasm was more muted for MFL. School specialism was related to learners’ enthusiasm only in the Sports College. Learners expressed fairly stereotypical views of the characteristics of the highly able in MFL and PE. The relevance of these findings for motivation and curriculum design within both subjects is discussed.

Science in modern poetry: new directions

An edited collection of essays by the leading scholars in the field on science in poetry from 1900 to the present. This is a collection of research essays, not a companion. The introduction (pp. 1-15) and one of the 12 main chapters, 'From Bergson to Darwin: Evolutionary Biology in the Poetry of Judith Wright' (pp. 194-209), are by the editor.

Sleepwalking certainties: agency, aesthetics, and incapacity in W.G. Sebald’s 'Austerlitz' and Hermann Broch’s 'The Sleepwalkers'

When we first encounter the narrator of Austerlitz, he is wandering around the unfamiliar town of Antwerp with, he tells us, “unsicheren Schritten” (1; 9). As well as reflecting the unfamiliarity of the locale, these “uncertain steps” evince a proud modesty characteristic of the classic Sebaldian narrator, a wanderer who discreetly relays the stories of the people and places he is privileged to encounter. Although Sebald does not use the phrase, steps of this sort, unpurposed yet unerring, are made with what is commonly known in German as somnambule Sicherheit: the legendary surefootedness of the sleepwalker. The convergence of sleepwalking and certainty in a single phrase poses an interesting challenge to one of the central tenets of the English-language canonization of Sebald, for his writing has been most highly valued for its ability to move the reader through apparent certainties towards a salutary uncertainty. But somnambule Sicherheit also presents the possibility that the current may be reversed, that narrative may move under cover of uncertainty towards certainty. That Sebald criticism has not been more troubled by this possibility is in no small part due to the fact that it tends to deploy the notion of sleepwalking with a minimum of reflection on its theoretical ramifications. To evoke some of the complexities of this matter, I first offer a brief cultural history of sleepwalking, as well as a brief account of the topic of uncertainty in Sebald criticism. Most of my argument, however, involves an extended comparative analysis of sleepwalking in Sebald's Austerlitz and Hermann Broch's 1933 trilogy The Sleepwalkers. Although these writers have not previously been the object of any sustained comparison, sleepwalking in Broch's novels illuminates much that is left implicit on the topic in Sebald's fiction and points toward some difficult questions regarding the role of aesthetics and agency in Sebald's work.

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.