The Power of Tragedy: An Eighteenth-Century Debate on Theater and its Relevance to Literature Pedagogy Today

This article brings to light a debate on tragic fiction in eighteenth-century France, and more specifically, on whether or not tragedy has the power to transform individuals intellectually and emotionally. Through analysis of abbé Dubos’s Reflexions critiques sur la poésie et sur la peinture and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Lettre à d’Alembert sur les spectacles, I contend that Dubos’s overwhelmingly positive conception of fiction—and especially his contention that we learn through the emotions when we engage with tragic fiction—can serve as an admirable pedagogical model for today’s fiction-focused foreign language classrooms.

Health, Justice, and Fairness

In this study I will endeavor to show that the American system of health care violates any conception of distributive justice understood as equality of opportunity. This system fails to provide equal access through a lack of universal insurance, a consumer driven conception of quality, and a system wide focus on cost control, leaving millions of Americans exposed to the ravages of disease. However, if health is understood as an antecedent for one's ability to function across a number of categories that have been objectively deemed as vital to engage in a life that is fully human than the commitment our nation has to the protection of fair equality of opportunity, established by our adoption of a Rawlsian conception of justice, necessitates a revision of our nation's conception of quality to encapsulate health outcomes as well as the advent of a system of universal coverage. Quality care will come to be understood as care that returns to the patient the ability to function across those categories of functioning that illness has jeopardized, and this conception of quality will precipitate system wide reform geared at the creation of positive health outcomes. This paper will articulate this argument by reconstructing and synthesizing precepts from the contemporary philosophical sources and then applying these to the practical workings of our healthcare system, while concurrently demonstrating that a system of distributive justice is compatible with the creation of a universal system of healthcare.

National Values and Theatrical Values. The Battle of the Siege de Calais (1765)

This article underscores the complex relationship between national concerns and dramatic criticism by interrogating the role of theatre in the creation of a 'national culture' during the last few decades of the Ancien regime. The author focuses more specifically on the forms of patriotism proposed by Pierre-Laurent De Belloy, author of Le Siege de Calais, France's "first tragedy in which the nation is given the pleasure to take an interest in itself," as well as by his adversaries and his allies. The version of patriotism proffered by De Belloy - a 'fatherland' that he defines as both bourgeois and monarchical - renders problematic several aesthetic and political norms in place in 1765. The author thus responds modestly to one of the most essential questions posed by research on eighteenth-century political and cultural history: how did patriotism operate before the French Revolution?

'Initiators of Discursive Practices': Authorship, attribution, and intent in the debates between philosophes and anti-philosophes

This article focuses on the “social side” of pseudonymity—on how writers and readers compete to influence the critical destiny of a pseudonymous work. By analyzing pseudonymity and attribution in both the specific context of Voltaire’s 1760 staging of the play, Le café ou l’écossaise, and in larger debates in the emerging fields of anonymity, pseudonymity, and attribution studies, I hope to show how literary scholars at present can address the individuality of each pseudonymous case while not letting go of trans-historical, general problems of anonymous strategies. Voltaire’s use of multiple pseudonyms before and after releasing L’Ecossaise, a comédie sérieuse in which Voltaire attacks his enemy Elie-Cathérine Fréron, supports his philosophe friends at a crucial moment in history, and exemplifies his emerging taste for serious comedy and British drama calls into question traditional takes on pseudonymity, anonymity, and attribution by refusing to fit into the binary arguments of anonymous vs. attributed and authorial intent vs. the reader’s control.

Marx and the Bible: José Miranda’s Critique of the Philosophy of Oppression

This paper critically examines the liberation theology of José Porfirio Miranda, as expressed in his Marx and the Bible (1971), with a focus on the central idea (and subtitle) of this work: the “Critique of the Philosophy of Oppression.” Miranda’s critique is examined via certain key tropes such as “power,” “justice,” and “freedom,” both in the context of late twentieth-century Latin American society, and in the state of the “post-Christian” and “post-Marxist” world more generally, vis-à-vis contemporary liberal justice theory. Close examination of the potentialities, paradoxes and subtle evasions in Miranda’s critique leads not to the conclusion that Miranda does not go far enough in his application of Christian principles to justice theory.

A Blueprint for Buddhist Revolution: The Radical Buddhism of Seno’o Girō (1889–1961) and the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism

In the early decades of the twentieth century, as Japanese society became engulfed in war and increasing nationalism, the majority of Buddhist leaders and institutions capitulated to the status quo. One notable exception to this trend, however, was the Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei (Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism), founded on 5 April 1931. Led by Nichiren Buddhist layman Seno’o Girō and made up of young social activists who were critical of capitalism, internationalist in outlook, and committed to a pan-sectarian and humanist form of Buddhism that would work for social justice and world peace, the league’s motto was “carry the Buddha on your backs and go out into the streets and villages.” This article analyzes the views of the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism as found in the religious writings of Seno’o Girō to situate the movement in its social and philosophical context, and to raise the question of the prospects of “radical Buddhism” in twenty-first century Japan and elsewhere.

"Enemigos de la virilidad": Sex, Masturbation, and Celibacy in Nineteenth-Century Spain

The discourse on sexuality in nineteenth-century Spain presents a fundamental difference between the masculine ideal of that period and our current definition of masculinity. According to today’s popular stereotype, the typical man seeks out sexual contact and takes any opportunities that arise. By contrast, within the hygiene texts of the nineteenth century one detects a sense of unease associated with sexual activity and its corresponding role in the construction of hegemonic masculinity. In particular, sexual excess, masturbation, and celibacy were viewed as antagonistic to middle-class masculinity, which was instead associated with venereal moderation, marriage, and fatherhood. Men who transgressed this model risked their health as well as their masculinity. This formula reveals an element of fragility with regard to notions of manhood, in contrast to the traditional image of Spanish masculinity that originated during the Reconquest and is based on bellicose heroism, bravado, and sexual prowess.