Above Rubies: Popular Views of Medieval Women

Shirley Marchalonis' essay suggests that it is not always so easy to define the medieval attitude toward womerz in such clear-cut terms as the virgin or the whore. Nonetheless, Marchalonis admits that the courtly lady of the romances comes awfully close to the passivity of the Virgin Mary. The courtly lady in the romances plays only a minor role i n many instances; she is the prize, more often than not, of the hero at the end of the story. At best, she is a vehicle ofpassive virture, acted upon rather than acting. Obviously such a role is admired: the woman stays within her boundaries, which are defined by men, and so is respected and desired. One of the popular images of women, i n the medieval world at least, is one of dependence; women exist as complements to men.     

跨文化戏剧的创意实践——现代舞剧《海伦之梦》的启示

由中美艺术家联合排演制作的现代舞剧《海伦之梦》,是当代中国跨文化戏剧一次有益的艺术和产业实践.作品突破传统经典跨文化戏剧的严肃格调和小众诉求,以抒情、浪漫的气质和大众通俗的形式,紧扣“爱与理解”的主题,采用自由梦幻曲形式和心理蒙太奇结构,大胆增设小红军的虚构形象,巧妙运用中美两国的民间意象元素,富有创意地开拓了跨文化戏剧的艺术领域和产业前景.     

Feminae Populi: Popular Images of Women in Medieval Literature

Maureen Fries's essay, although not about witches, expands upon Elizabeth Tucker's paper. The duality of women i n the literature examined by Fries show them to be virgin or whore: the woman saint is a model of such desirable qualities as chastity, obedience, and fortitude, while the fabliau woman uses her sexuality for fun and for profit. The literature, in both instances, depicts male values in a male world. Ultimately, the popular image of women can be distilled into the roles of Mary, wholly above feminine weakness, and Eve, who represents theopposite. Possibly the only “mixed” image is that of the Magdalene, who recalls the fallen Eve, but who also is transformed into the virtuous woman. The Lack of flexibility, not noted elsewhere in medieval literature, in the perception of medieval women suggests that we need to know more about the society of the Middle Ages and women's place in it.     

The Household Encyclopedia as Magic Kit: Medieval Popular Interest in Pranks and Illusions*

Each of us has wished at some time to send in three box tops andget a magic kit that contains itchingpowder to give to our enemies, instructions for tricks designed to baffle our friends, and potions to make us more desirable. Exactly so in the Middle Ages. Bruno Roy's delightful essay on medieval do-it-yourself magic reveals the strong popular interest in practical jokes, illusions and tricks. People in the Middle Ages were playful and high-spirited, waiting to entertain and be entertained. The transformative power implicit i n the tricks played by jugglers or entertainers appealed to all classes of society; these same jugglers not only dealt in illusory tricks but often used various chemicalpreparations, giving a “scientific” cast to their pranks. That so many of these tricks were related to the household in terms of the joke itself or the ingredients used suggests the widespread popularity of magic kits, a popularity that today perhaps resides only with the children who save the box tops.     

关汉卿散曲美学价值重估

关汉卿创作的元曲中,杂剧和散曲各有侧重:杂剧面对社会生活,散曲面向心灵世界;杂剧以社会价值为主,散曲以审美价值为主;杂剧的创作主旨是惩恶扬善,散曲的创作主旨则是弘扬美质;杂剧以叙事为主,散曲以抒情为主.与此相应,研究散曲就应该以美丑为评判标准,重点透视其审美意蕴和美学价值.关汉卿的散曲注重自然意象的天然美和哲理品味,关注女性形象内外兼美的艺术价值,并注重发掘情感美的理想美质,显示了超凡脱俗的审美追求.     

Baseball in Cuba

While futbol (soccer) has long been the favorite sport in most of Latin America, baseball holds sway in the circum-Caribbean region in countries such as Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, the Dominican Republic and Cuba. It is perhaps surprising that revolutionary Cuba, with its strong anti-American foreign policy, should continue to hold dear this sport that was born and nurtured in the United States. Yet Fidel Castro himself, who regularly issues anti-Yankee attacks, is also proud of demonstrating his skill with the bat andglove. Eric Wagner gives us a valuable overview of the development of baseball on the island, Cuba's singular success in international competition and the game's role in contemporary Cuba. With this background and analysis, it is easy to see why the revolutionary government has not tampered with a sport that is so firmly rooted as a popular national pastime. Regarding baseball in Cuba after 1959, Wagner discusses how it has become an integral part of the new social system in factories, villages, towns, urban neighborhoods and schools. Competition is fierce on both the local and national levels because of its wide appeal among the popular classes, who brought baseball with them when they assumed power in 1959. It is likely to continue to play an essential role in the country's socioeconomic integration.     

Iago the meritocrat: Conflicting interpretations of individualism in the early modern period

Shakespeare's Iago can be used as a vehicle for critically contemplating the changing values of the transitional period between medieval and modern England and Europe. In addition to other speculative explanations that traditionally have been offered, Iago's malevolence can be interpreted as a merit-based expression of the fundamental changes of a pre-liberal society that would, eventually, transition into the modern economic marketplace of today. According to that perspective, Iago is motivated not only by his anger for having been passed over for promotion but by his belief that he was denied a position that he demonstrably deserved. In contrast, it can be argued that the traditional interpretation of Shakespeare's preference for conservative principles of hierarchy and order (as found within the medieval remnants of Elizabethan England) is, thus, reflected in his assignment of that character to be a symbol of evil. Therefore, the play can be employed (consistent with a historicist approach) as an instrument of historical, socio-economic, and political-theory analysis by reflecting the tension that the emergence of the politically autonomous and sociologically meritocratic individualist posed to the modern world that was just emerging at that time and that soon would begin to dominate the modern liberal society as it has evolved from the 17th to the 21st centuries.     

Woman as Mediator in the Meddle English Romances

The two previousessays by Maureen Fries and Shirley Marchalonis are further elaborated on by Caroline Eckhardt in her analysis of one of the most popular medieval images o f women-that of mediator. This image of women has a long and complex history and remains with us today, as evidenced in Marina Warner's Alone of All Her Sex. The link between the image of the Virgin Mary as mediatrix and women in medieval romances is a strong one, and, as Eckhardtpoints out, mayprovide us with a reasonable hypothesis of audience taste and response to the romances. If women comprised a goodly proportion of the audience, and it is likely that they did, the image of women presented to them affirmed the life-nurturing functions in a heightened fashion; at the same timeit maintained the established and accepted relationships between men and women. In the role of intercessor, women might act, but within carefully accepted limits.     

Innocence and Suffering in the Middle Ages: An Essay about Popular Taste and Popular Literature

Michael Stugrin's essay is both theoretical and practical: he suggests that texts, when viewed as “structures ofperception,” give us the “voices of the reality which they were part of and helped shape.” He then proceeds to apply this theory to a number of spiritual texts popular during the Middle Ages to give us an idea of popular taste at that time. Such texts were structured in a highly affective way to affirm testimonies o f faith and to commemorate God's promises to men. But perhaps most importantly, these spiritual texts, along with such texts as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and countless prose treatises and sermons, provided medieval audiences with a way of “knowing” within the context of human experience in a time of great cultural stress.     

Propagating the New Zealand ideal

From 1829 to the 1860s, Edward Gibbon Wakefield applied domestic ideas of reform to the British Empire and successfully mobilized public opinion in favor of continued British imperial endeavors. Through a widespread dissemination of literature, Wakefield and his New Zealand Company reshaped British imperial ideas. The success of the Company's organized public and political campaign encouraged settlers to travel to New Zealand and mobilized public opinion in favor of the colonization of New Zealand. The Company's renewed propaganda in the mid-1840s saved their own efforts, and also changed the public and political discourse of imperialism. By the late 1840s, newspapers, journals, and Parliamentary Debates were no longer discussing if colonization should occur, but rather what British colonial practice should include.     

从“前现代”到“现代”——改革开放以来我国乡村剧的“现代化叙事”

1978年的“改革开放”给乡村带来了巨大变化，《篱笆女人和狗》、《轱辘女人和井》和《乡村爱情》等当代电视“乡村剧”，通过影像故事参与了“现代化叙事”，反映出我国不同历史时期乡村剧“现代化”叙事的变化及其原因。     

The Three Forms of the Marxist Philosophy and Their Historical Fate

马克思哲学分析和解决的“总问题”,是资本占有劳动与无产阶级的解放。马克思哲学在探索这一问题的过程中,形成了大众形态、学术形态和政治形态三种有机统一的基本形态。然而,马克思主义哲学在马克思以后的发展史中,却呈现出不同的演变和命运。马克思哲学的三种基本形态在当代中国的命运可概括为：大众形态得以倡导,但尚未完全实现;学术形态强劲,但疏离政治和大众的倾向较为明显;政治形态突出,但需进一步得到学理支持和大众认同。当代中国马克思主义哲学研究的健康发展,不仅需要廓清马克思哲学的完整结构,而且要营造马克思主义哲学研究的可持续发展的“生态环境”,以推动其大众形态、学术形态与政治形态的良性互动。

关键词: 马克思哲学?大众形态?学术形态?政治形态

The “general problem” that Marx's philosophy analyzes and aims to solve is capital's ownership of labor‐power and the emancipation of the proletariat. In the course of exploring this problem, Marx's philosophy developed three basic, organically integrated forms: the popular, the scholarly and the political. However, the post‐Marx history of Marxist philosophy has seen these three forms evolve differently and meet with different fates. The situation in contemporary China can be summarized as follows. The popular form is proposed but not fully realized; the scholarly form is robust but estranged from politics and the public; and the political form is prominent but needs further academic support and popular recognition. For the healthy development of Marxist philosophical research in contemporary China, we must not only clarify the integral structure of Marx's philosophy but also create an “ecological environment” favorable to its sustainable development with a view to facilitating the benign interaction of the three basic forms.     

A CAUTIONARY NOTE ON ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS

Environmental questions have become a permanent feature of the political landscape in contemporary Australia and now play a significant role in election campaigns at both state and federal levels. Indeed, one of the most significant policy debates in the 1996 Federal election focussed on the environmental policy proposed by the Liberal/National Party coalition, which sought to fund a host of environmental programs from the proceeds of a part privatisation of Telstra. The trade-offs involved in this policy have generated substantial opposition to it and served to underline the prominence of environmental questions in Australian politics. Despite the importance of ‘the environment’ in popular thought, public debate is still typically characterised by ‘feel good’ policy announcements by politicians, sensationalist media reporting and deceptive claims by some environmental interest groups. Whilst progress has undoubtedly been made, the result has often been a plethora of inchoate and frequently conflicting policies. Not surprisingly this ‘muddle through’ approach has produced numerous instances of government intervention not only failing to meet its planned objectives but also generating unintended consequences.     

The Festival of Progress: The Globalizing World-System and the Transformation of the Caracas Carnival

While the carnival in Latin America functions as a form of popular entertainment, it can also be viewed as having other roles. Robert Lavenda examines the Caracas carnival as an event which is atonce symptomatic of the social reality that surrounds it and able to bring about change within Venezuelan society. As popular culture, the carnival has been an important mediator in directing this society toward the modern capitalist worJd-system. Lavenda traces how, under the leadership o f Antonio Guzman Blanco, Venezuela took a major step in the second half of the nineteenth certury towards becoming a modern country. Under Guzman's and other modernizers' influence the old carnival, which had been characterized as a wild and rowdy small-group activity, was transformed to bring it into line with contemporary European models, that is, a highly organized and closely monitored mass celebration. The author discusses how the new power relationships that had developed in the city were reflected by the composition of the carnival's governing board. By setting up a series of oppositions between the South American and European versions of the carnival, Caracas' ruling elite hoped to orient the masses away from the former values and towards the latter.     

Tension and Extension: Thoughts on Scottish Surnames and Medieval Popular Culture

The answer to the question “What's in a name?” is plenty, according to W.F.H. Nicolaisen in his essay on Scottish surnames and what they can tell us of medieval popular culture. Place names, for example, often provide information about prehistoric strata and come to be equivalent in significance to material items which provide archeological insight into cultures. Surnames, when tied to place names, can give us information on migrations, while other types of names reveal occupational histories. and patterns of kinship. The very act of naming has both communal and personal importance and can yield significant socio-cultural data.     

The topography of medieval popular protest

ABSTRACT

Assumptions about the topography of popular revolt have been essential in constructing sociological and historical models that demarcate a ‘pre-modern’ from the ‘modern’ period. In Charles Tilly’s words, the ‘repertoires of collective action’ before the mid-nineteenth century were ‘parochial, particular, and bifurcated’, while afterwards, they became ‘cosmopolitan, autonomous, and modular’ (2008). By relying on primary sources across the Italian peninsula, France, Flanders and Britain and for the early modern period across German-speaking regions into Russia, this article shows that the plethora of late medieval revolts were rarely, if ever, confined to a neighbourhood or bounded by local religious congregations or family ties. Instead, they were citywide and north of the Alps fused alliances with the peasantry and other cities. With popular protest pushing eastward in the early modern period, these long-distant dimensions became more extensive, crossing linguistic boundaries and thousands of kilometres. In addition, this article raises new questions, such as why peasants and urban rebels in Italy, in contrast to northern Europe, resisted cross-mural alliances, and to what extent late medieval popular insurrection differed from those of the early modern period. The article ends with a call for new models to understand these differences.     

On a red line across Europe: butchers and rebellions in fourteenth-century Siena

As a result of the role played in urban uprisings and conspiracies in late medieval and early modern western Europe, the butchers’ trade has been one of the most intensively studied food-related occupations. Recent research on medieval butchers has shown a renewed interest in the topic. This article begins by presenting a review and synthesis of the historiography of butchers’ revolts in late medieval cities across western Europe. It then moves on to an analysis of the specific case of Siena, based on original primary research. The aim of the article is to show how Sienese butchers rebelled more than once during the fourteenth century and to examine why it was inevitable that they failed, despite the long-standing alliances they built with part of the educated elite. Indeed, social and political tensions within the guild forced a two-way split within the guild and its elites. These findings definitively call into question the traditional view of the cohesiveness of the butchers’ guilds in medieval Europe and their supposed marginalization in medieval society, advancing understanding of fourteenth-century Siena, of its enduring popular regime and, more generally, of late medieval urban society, politics and revolts. Moreover, such a case study has the potential to enable further comparative analysis across medieval and early modern Europe.     

Popular politics in composite monarchies: Barcelona artisans and the campaign for a papal bull against hoarding (1580–5)

During the 1580s, Barcelona master artisans participated in a campaign to secure a papal declaration against hoarding, believing this would bring down the excessively high prices of wheat and other goods in the city. However, only the king could request the papal decree, and opponents of the proposal among Catalonia's clergy and nobility tried to convince Philip II of Spain not to do so. The events surrounding the master artisans' campaign offer an exceptional look at the interaction between popular politics and the relations between central government and local elites in a composite monarchy. Divisions within the Catalan elite, as well as the monarchy's desire to foster close ties between ruler and subjects throughout its territories, offered ordinary people such as Barcelona artisans the possibility to become political actors.     

II. Patients of the department of psychological medicine,guy's hospital,london 1

Abstract

Harvey Dean (1998) rejects my (Wakefield, 1988a; 1988b) argument that minimal distributive justice is the essential mission of social work and that treatment of mental disorder is not part of the profession's essential mission but rather a derived task. He argues that social work has broader ethical aims that encompass both pursuit of justice and treatment of mental disorder. In this article, 1 review my earlier position and respond to Dean's objections. I argue that Dean's narrativist account of the profession's ethical aims is overly broad and that he confuses non‐disordered psychological problems with mental disorders. I conclude that neither my “minimal distributive justice” view of social work's mission nor my exclusion of treatment of mental disorder from the profession's essential mission are disconfirmed by Dean's arguments.     

Film,Television and Traditional Folk Culture in Bye Bye Brasil1

Brazilian Cinema Novo [New Cinema] has produced a number of films that have circulated in the United States but perhaps the most familiar to American audiences is Carlos Diegues' Bye Bye Brasil (1980). In his article, Randal Johnson focuses on this film which presents Brazil as a country in a process of rapid transformation, an agro-pastoral economy giving way to rapid industrialization. He notes that “running throughout [the work] is a subtext which constitutes a good-humored yet critical retrospective of the trajectory of Brazilian cinema over the last twenty years and its relationship to other conscious-forming media, notably television.” Johnson examines this subject as well as the complex relationship between cinema, television and popular culture as developed through the device of the Caravana Rolidei, a small-time circus troupe. Each of its characters represents a different aspect of contemporary Brazilian society, and the film as a whole presents the panoply of Brazilian culture, a mixture of elements from diverse sources, both foreign and domestic. Randal Johnson teaches literature and film at the University of Florida. He is the co-author of Brazilian Cinema (1982).