Translating Nietzsche, mediating literature: Alexander Tille and the limits of Anglo-German intercultural transfer

Dr. Alexander Tille (1866–1912) was one of the key-figures in Anglo-German intercultural transfer towards the end of the 19th century. As a lecturer in German at Glasgow University he was the first to translate and edit Nietzsche’s work into English. Writers such as W. B. Yeats were influenced by Nietzsche and used Tille’s translations. Tille’s social Darwinist reading of the philosopher’s oeuvre, however, had a narrowing impact on the reception of Nietzsche in the Anglo-Saxon world for decades. Through numerous publications Tille disseminated knowledge about British authors (e.g., Robert Louis Stevenson, William Wordsworth) in Germany and about German authors (e.g., Johann Wolfgang von Goethe) in Britain. His role as mediator also extended into areas such as history, religion, and industry. During the Boer war, however, Tille’s outspoken pro-German nationalism brought him in conflict with his British host society. After being physically attacked by his students he returned to Germany and published a highly anglophobic monograph. Tille personifies the paradox of Anglo-German relations in the pre-war years, which deteriorated despite an increase in intercultural transfer and knowledge about the respective Other. [From the Author]

El significado de la prosopopeya de las Leyes en el "Critón" de Platon

El objeto de este trabajo es realizar un estudio iusfilosófico sobre la aparición de las Leyes (nómoi) personificadas de Atenas en el Critón de Platón. La prosopopeya de las Leyes resulta ser un aspecto central para poder comprender la obra, ya que éstas entablan un diálogo imaginario con Sócrates en el cual instalan diversos argumentos filosóficos para fundamentar la autoridad de la pólis. A los fines de identificar el valor argumentativo de este recurso en la obra, analizaré el significado del nómos en la Atenas del siglo V a. C. y la naturaleza de las Leyes en el contexto general del diálogo. Se busca demostrar la importancia que tienen aquéllas para explicar la decisión de Sócrates de beber la cicuta.

De artista a andragogo. Experiencias educativas de docencia no reglada en cursos dirigidos por artistas contemporáneos.

This article focuses mainly on identifying innovative andragogical experiences and educational links established between contemporary artists and university students outside the formal teaching. Its structure consists of an introduction that defines the theoretical and contextual framework, the objectives pursued, the methodology and analytical development results. The analysis of educational concepts, resulting in the kind of knowledge and artistic andragogic, conceptually form a generative teaching in the context of non-formal teaching. Delimiting the complex responsibilities of university professors, linked to Art, through analysis of experiences in higher education andragogic which, initially part of the model of “artist educator” (Barrett, 1995; Laferrière, 2000), plunging into the innovative and alternative educational settings that are currently the compliance with the declaration of 2009 as the International Year of Creativity and Innovation.

Maternal imagination: Reconceiving first impressions

The concept of maternal imagination, whereby the disordered thoughts and impressions of pregnant women are used to explain the prevalence of monstrous births, was at its height during the early modern period, albeit it with many prior and subsequent manifestations. Against a more familiar, and enduring, medieval and Renaissance context of supernatural agency at work, the device of MI was seen as a 'naturalistic' model more in keeping with the advent of Enlightenment scientism. Nonetheless, the debate around it was ferocious and indicative more of a masculine anxiety about female desire and generative power than of a concern for impartial explanation. In problematizing a simply descriptive approach to archival material, my purpose is to explore what is at stake in the competing discourses that seem alternately, and even simultaneously, to empower and degrade the place of the mother. What is the unspoken of an historical debate that prefigures our contemporary interest in feminine excess?

Epistolarum Familiarium Liber Unus in The Complete Works of John Milton: Volume XI (672pp.)

This edition of Milton’s Epistolarum Familiarium Liber Unus and of his Uncollected Letters, will appear as 672 pp. of The Complete Works of John Milton Volume XI, eds. Gordon Campbell and Edward Jones (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2016). A diplomatic Latin text and a new facing English translation are complemented by a detailed Introduction and commentary that situate Milton’s Latin letters in relation to the classical, pedagogical and essentially humanist contexts at the heart of their composition. Now the art of epistolography advocated and exemplified by Cicero and Quintilian and embraced by Renaissance pedagogical manuals is read through a humanist filter whereby, via the precedent (and very title) of Epistolae Familiares, the Miltonic Liber is shown to engage with a neo-Latin re-invention of the classical epistola that had come to birth in quattrocento Italy in the letters of Petrarch and his contemporaries. At the same time the Epistolae are seen as offering fresh insight into Milton’s views on education, philology, his relations with Italian literati, his blindness, the poetic dimension of his Latin prose, and especially his verbal ingenuity as the ‘words’ of Latin ‘Letters’ become a self-conscious showcasing of etymological punning on the ‘letters’ of Latin ‘words’. The edition also announces several new discoveries, most notably its uncovering and collation of a manuscript of Henry Oldenburg’s transcription (in his Liber Epistolaris held in Royal Society, London) of Milton’s Ep. Fam. 25 (to Richard Jones). Oldenburg’s transcription (from the original sent to his pupil Jones) is an important find, given the loss of all but two of the manuscripts of Milton’s original Latin letters included in the 1674 volume. The edition also presents new evidence in regard to Milton’s relationships with the Italian philologist Benedetto Buonmattei, the Greek humanist Leonard Philaras, the radical pastor Jean Labadie (and the French church of London), and the elusive Peter Heimbach.

Assessing the determinants of public confidence in the police: A case study of a post-conflict community in Northern Ireland

Drawing upon original survey research this article seeks to identify the generative processes that influence perceptions of the police in the context of an inner-city neighbourhood in Northern Ireland that has been affected by increases in crime and disorder in the aftermath of the peace process. Conceptually we draw upon recent research from England and Wales that outlines confidence in the police in terms of instrumental and expressive dimensions. We apply this framework and consider whether it provides a useful template for understanding the post-conflict dynamics of police-community relations in our study area. Contrary to much received wisdom our analysis suggests that instrumental concerns about crime and illegal activity are a more influential predictor of attitudes to the police than expressive concerns with disorder and anti-social behaviour. Consequently our discussion points to the variance in local and national survey data and questions the degree to which the latter can usefully inform our understanding of trends and developments in discrete micro-spaces. Our conclusion outlines the potential policy implications for state policing practice in deprived urban spaces.

An English Source for a Latin Text? Wind Prognostication in Oxford, Bodleian MSS Hatton 115 and Ashmole 345

This article focuses on a type of prognostication that bases its predictions on the behavior of the wind during the twelve nights of Christmas and in particular on the relationship between the Old English version in Oxford, Bodleian, Hatton 115, and a fourteenth/fifteenth-century English text in Latin of the same prognostication, which appears in Oxford, Bodleian, Ashmole 345, fol. 69r. The wind prognostication in Ashmole 345 is remarkably similar to the twelfth-century OE version in Hatton 115, fol. 149v, to the extent that one might be tempted to argue for direct transmission, if it were not for the large temporal gap between the two manuscripts and for the fact that the two texts are being transmitted in two different languages. Interestingly the Latin text in A contains an Old English word that may make us reconsider the relationship between the two manuscripts and may shed light on the reception and transmission of Old English and prognostication by the wind between the end of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth centuries in English monastic centers.

'Pues tanto se esconde': Elusion at (inter)play in Ana Caro's El conde Partinuplés

El conde Partinuplés (first published 1653) is one of only two extant plays written by the Sevillan poet/dramatist Ana Caro Mallén de Soto (‘la décima musa sevillana’). Despite McKendrick's dismissal of the play as ‘extremely bad’, it has been the object of substantial critical scrutiny since the 1970s, impelled in great part by the production of modern editions (Luna and Delgado) and by Kaminsky's bio-biographical study (1973). Two responses have dominated: analysis of the play's imaginative reconceptualization of source material (most notably the Classical myth of Cupid and Psyche as contained in Apuleius and transmitted via the anonymous French chivalric romance Portonopeus de Blois; and more contemporary models, such as Calderón's La vida es sueño); discussions of the play from a gender/feminist perspective. There is some inevitable entanglement in these approaches, areas of ideological concurrence, but also of contradiction. This article will offer a critical synthesis of these lines of enquiry around an analysis of the play's patterns of non-identical repetition and, following Hubert's theory of ‘double movement’, will move beyond these to consider the generative and potentially transcendent nature of the interplay of inscription (text) and transcription (interpretive performance). A subversive strategy of elusion underpins this interference, a dynamic, mobile frame within which ‘envidia’ (‘celos’) functions as a prominent dramatic catalyst, directed outwards, and mobilized both as a potent catalyst for the female dramatist's artistic creativity and as an antagonistic interrogation of broader socio-cultural forms of inequality. The play's (new) marvellous versions and inversions expand the functions of the sign beyond Renaissance resemblance and repetition, challenging its promotion of unity and stable identity, and opening up an interactive space between the represented (world/product) and the representing (stage/process). The power of authorities, as figured in/through the dramatic and rhetorical devices of the play, is self-consciously precarious, but it is this very anxious articulation that challenges the very authority of power.

Generating Realistic Labelled, Weighted Random Graphs

Generative algorithms for random graphs have yielded insights into the structure and evolution of real-world networks. Most networks exhibit a well-known set of properties, such as heavy-tailed degree distributions, clustering and community formation. Usually, random graph models consider only structural information, but many real-world networks also have labelled vertices and weighted edges. In this paper, we present a generative model for random graphs with discrete vertex labels and numeric edge weights. The weights are represented as a set of Beta Mixture Models (BMMs) with an arbitrary number of mixtures, which are learned from real-world networks. We propose a Bayesian Variational Inference (VI) approach, which yields an accurate estimation while keeping computation times tractable. We compare our approach to state-of-the-art random labelled graph generators and an earlier approach based on Gaussian Mixture Models (GMMs). Our results allow us to draw conclusions about the contribution of vertex labels and edge weights to graph structure.