Thoughts suggested by bible texts : addressed to my children [Gedanken einer Mutter über biblische Texte ]

[Luise von Rothschild]

Thoughts suggested by bible texts : addressed to my children [Gedanken einer Mutter über biblische Texte ]

[Rothschild, Luise von]

Editorial genesis: From comparing texts (product) to interpreting rewritings (process)

In literary genetics, “editorial genetics” deals with the “public life” of texts, whereas the writing process is affected by edition and diffusion. Editorial genetics frequently has to deal with cases of “editorial rewriting”: in the literary domain for example, authors frequently modify previously published works, so that several versions may co-exist. We are especially interested in Balzac’s La Bourse (translated in English as The Purse) since we know three authorized versions of this specific work.By comparing different texts associated with a single work, the literary geneticist is facing different products that are themselves the result of a writing process. However, different specificities should be outlined: (1) the writing process does not leave any trace: we just have access to different products/texts and (2) since the texts we compare seem to be achieved, differences must be referred, not to programmatic or temporary linguistic structures, but to the reconfiguration of a pre-existing textuality.Do such products still reflect the processes that have given birth to them? Does the comparison between two texts considered as variations of a same text give access to this transformation’s processes? After describing the objects of this particular textual comparison and the terminology that permits to give an account of such phenomenon, this contribution suggests to express these questions differently, as a matter of poetics of transitions between texts, or, further digging, an hermeneutics of the transition between texts.

A changing climate of skepticism: The factors shaping climate change coverage in the US press

Skepticism toward climate change has a long tradition in the United States. We focus on mass media as the conveyors of the image of climate change and ask: Is climate change skepticism still a characteristic of US print media coverage? If so, to what degree and in what form? And which factors might pave the way for skeptics entering mass media debates? We conducted a quantitative content analysis of US print media during one year (1 June 2012 to 31 May 2013). Our results show that the debate has changed: fundamental forms of climate change skepticism (such as denial of anthropogenic causes) have been abandoned in the coverage, being replaced by more subtle forms (such as the goal to avoid binding regulations). We find no evidence for the norm of journalistic balance, nor do our data support the idea that it is the conservative press that boosts skepticism.

A Forgotten Original or an Original Copy? On MS. Douce 387 in the Bodleian Library: Collecting Early Modern Festival Books

Focusing on one manuscript, today in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, this chapter deals with the question how early modern objects became collectable items. The manuscript is categorized as MS. Douce 387 and its name indicates that it came from the collection of Francis Douce (1757–1834), who was keeper of manuscripts in the British Museum from 1799 until 1811. MS. Douce 387 is described in the catalogue of the Douce’ian collection as the “presentation copy with coloured designs by Marten de Vos and others” of the 1595 printed festival book Descriptio publicae gratulationis … in adventu … Ernesti archiducis Austriae. This festival book, printed in Antwerp’s Plantin-Moretus press, was commissioned by the magistrate of the city of Antwerp to commemorate the Joyous Entry of Archduke Ernest of Austria from June 1594; that an “archducal copy” bound in red velvet was commissioned as well and was owned by the Archduke is know as well. However, first research showed that Oxford copy cannot be this “archducal copy” or Marten de Vos’s artist’s copy even though it is the only know version with a handwritten text and hand-drawn illustrations. It rather should be examined as something totally different altogether. The main question remains why someone then commissioned a hand made version of this festival book, something unknown for other books of this genre? Why would someone between 1600 and 1800 sit down and copy texts and prints from a collectable book? Why was there such an on-going interest in early modern festival books? Could this manuscript be the only later made copy of the “archducal volume” or is it rather a forgery made for the European collectors’ market?

The Five Senses in Medieval and Early Modern England

Edited by Annette Kern-Stähler, Beatrix Busse, and Wietse de Boer The essays collected in The Five Senses in Medieval and Early Modern England examine the interrelationships between sense perception and secular and Christian cultures in England from the medieval into the early modern periods. They address canonical texts and writers in the fields of poetry, drama, homiletics, martyrology and early scientific writing, and they espouse methods associated with the fields of corpus linguistics, disability studies, translation studies, art history and archaeology, as well as approaches derived from traditional literary studies. Together, these papers constitute a major contribution to the growing field of sensorial research that will be of interest to historians of perception and cognition as well as to historians with more generalist interests in medieval and early modern England.