The article traces the changes in the aesthetic conventions of Modern art in accordance with the dynamics of literary development in Great Britain. The study focuses on three key areas: the impact of “the
ancients and moderns” quarrel on European philosophical and literary thought; the nuances of critical and
literary discourse in Enlightenment-era Great Britain; and the reception of the Enlightenment aesthetic values and novelties in Victorian criticism, linking them to the emergence of twentieth-century modernism.
The subject involves the evolution of Enlightenment aesthetics and poetics in Great Britain, particularly the
departure from classical art and literature models, and the emergence of concepts like imagination, novelty, and the reader’s subjective experience of art. Seminal literary-critical essays of the eighteenth century,
including works by Joseph Addison, Henry Home, Richard Hurd, and Leslie Stephen’s monograph ‘History
of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century”, are analyzed. The paper also examines philosophical texts
by Michel de Montaigne, Francis Bacon, René Descartes, and Marquis de Condorcet to understand the oscillatory nature of philosophical thought before and during the Age of Enlightenment.
The study contextualizes “the ancients and moderns” debate on models for literary excellence and
accentuates its role in shaping the discourse of aesthetics and artistic creativity. Contributions by Enlightenment figures such as Addison, Home, and Hurd are explored, emphasizing how they reshaped the discourse of aesthetics by redefining the nature of beauty, the sublime, and the principles of artistic criticism,
thereby influencing the literary and artistic productions of their time and beyond. Particular attention is
paid to the critical views of Stephen who wrote about the “fluctuating mode” of the literature of the second half of the eighteenth century, illustrating his peculiar subjectivism as an exponent of the Victorian
worldview (Stephen saw Sterne’s novels as a serious moral threat), and simultaneously reflecting the normative aesthetic views of the second half of the nineteenth century.
The paper also demonstrates how the antinomianism in aesthetic thinking, which challenged traditional norms and values as seen in “the ancients and moderns” quarrel, was further evolved in the works
of Friedrich Schiller and Friedrich Schlegel, the latter articulating the antinomy of “classic versus romantic”.
This tradition of antinomian thinking, coupled with the rejection of the idea of linear progression in cultural
evolution, a call for a reassessment of values amidst a paradigm shift in culture and the breakdown of traditional ethic and aesthetic systems, finds a notable and unique expression in Friedrich Nietzsche’s works,
that significantly influenced the transition from Modernity to Postmodernity.
In summary, it is argued that the Modern Age was the time of the emergence of a new aesthetic sensibility, and its aesthetic pluralism and anti-classical literary ideas were pivotal in redefining concepts of
progress, novelty, and human consciousness in art and literature. This laid the groundwork for modernist
art and literature, characterized by a departure from tradition and a quest for new artistic expressions of
human experience.
The article deals with the development of international relations in Central Asia in the 1930s. The research featured the relationship between England and the Soviet Union during the uprising of the indigenous peoples of Xinjiang against the Chinese administration in 1931–1934. The analysis involved recent publications and archival sources. The research clarifies the historical picture of the confrontation between Great Britain and the Soviet Union in Central Asia. London made persistent attempts to establish its control over the rebel movement in order to gain economic and political influence in the province, which it had lost in the 1920s. However, the reciprocal actions of the Soviet government proved effective and completely deprived Britain of any serious prospects in that region. The confrontation, its forms, methods, and results affected the entire complex of international relations in Central Asia. The conflict became the final episode of the Great Game, which later determined the predominant position of the Soviet Union in Central Asia. Contrary to the opinion of many western researchers, the USSR never intended to annex the territory of Xinjiang. The research summarizes the history of international relations in Central Asia.
History of Russia. Soviet Union. Former Soviet Republics, Psychology
In recent years, the success of Irish female authors and the increase of Irish Young Adult literature publications have contributed to a wider recognition of narratives of girlhood. Such is the case of Claire Hennessy’s YA fiction novel Like Other Girls, which focuses on the experiences of sixteen-year-old Lauren Carroll as she navigates being a queer young female in contemporary Ireland and deals with having an abortion in the pre-Repeal Republic. This article analyses Like Other Girls focusing on three key aspects depicted in the novel: female body and sexuality, the concept of an LGBTQ+ group as a support network for queer youth, and the experience of abortion in pre-Repeal Ireland. Such analysis is carried out with the objective of giving recognition of Irish girlhood, as well as acknowledging the importance of narratives where the female body, diverse sexualities and those concerns involved in growing up female in contemporary Ireland are depicted so that young girls can find a space to identify themselves.
One year after the publication of Dracula (1897), the English photographer Francis Barraud was commissioned a painting from his picture of a dog looking at and listening to a cylinder phonograph. His work, entitled His Master’s Voice, became one of the most famous logos in the world. Barraud’s painting was particularly meaningful for not only did it raise the issue of the amplified voice, but it also visualized the impact and effect that technological instruments had on the amplified voice. The phonograph shows how voices can become disconnected from the material body and raises the issue of what actually constitutes a voice. Among the modern technological devices mentioned in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the phonograph plays an important role, a presence which is both disconcerting and reassuring. The power and the uncanny effect of the disembodied voice is evident in Mina’s reaction to Dr Seward’s phonographic recording, a ‘wonderful’ and ‘cruel’ device as it records not only the speaker’s voice but also its tone, thus revealing bodily sounds which writing, instead, hides. In Dracula, the distinction between speech and writing is constantly under pressure: on the one hand, the characters’ urge to write (journals, letters, etc.), on the other there is an agency of oral interaction. From Renfield’s calling in of the vampire (a master who needs a servant to be welcomed in), to Dracula’s attempt at mastering oral English in order to conceal his foreignness, the novel proves to be an important example of how literature deals with sound devices.
The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into publication practices from the perspective of academics working within four disciplinary communities: biosciences, astronomy/physics, education and history. The paper explores the ways in which these multiple overlapping communities intersect with the journal landscape and the implications for the adoption and use of new players in the scholarly communication system, particularly open-access mega-journals (OAMJs). OAMJs (e.g. PLOS ONE and Scientific Reports) are large, broad scope, open-access journals that base editorial decisions solely on the technical/scientific soundness of the article. Design/methodology/approach: focus groups with active researchers in these fields were held in five UK Higher Education Institutions across Great Britain, and were complemented by interviews with pro-vice-chancellors for research at each institution. Findings: а strong finding to emerge from the data is the notion of researchers belonging to multiple overlapping communities, with some inherent tensions in meeting the requirements for these different audiences. Researcher perceptions of evaluation mechanisms were found to play a major role in attitudes towards OAMJs, and interviews with the pro-vice-chancellors for research indicate that there is a difference between researchers’ perceptions and the values embedded in institutional frameworks. Originality/value: This is the first purely qualitative study relating to researcher perspectives on OAMJs. The findings of the paper will be of interest to publishers, policy-makers, research managers and academics.
Bibliography. Library science. Information resources
When Thomas Kilroy adapted Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts in 1989, he relocated the action of the play to an Irish provincial town in the mid-1980s. He retained Ibsen’s focus on loveless marriage but changed the son’s affliction, syphilis – Ibsen’s metaphor for “the devitalizing effect of inherited convention”, the real “ghosts” of the past – to HIV-AIDS. These various changes allowed Kilroy to include echoes of the 1986 Irish divorce referendum and the developing international AIDS crisis in his play. One ghost stalking Kilroy’s adaptation is Article 41 of the Irish Constitution which relates to “The Family” and particularly affects the position of women. Kilroy’s Ghosts not only confronts the spectre of that document but anticipates significant changes that would be made to it in subsequent decades: the legalization of divorce after a second referendum in 1995, and the legalization of same-sex marriage as a result of the 2015 marriage equality referendum.
Being the final poem in Heaney’s 1996 collection The Spirit Level, situates the poem “Postscript” significantly in Heaney’s poetic oeuvre. The collection was Heaney’s first to be published after winning the Nobel Prize for literature, it was also his first published amidst the changed social and political context following the 1994 paramilitary ceasefires in Northern Ireland. Here, I will explore the manner in which “Postscript” interacts with previous work by Heaney. Looking closely at the language, imagery and procedures of the poem, I argue that the poem embodies a fundamental shift in Heaney’s approach to the natural environment but that this change is reliant on poetic procedures which Heaney had come to trust early in his career. Heaney’s descriptive precision and openness to the “marvellous” combine to produce a uniquely effective poem. “Postscript” treats the natural world and the human subject in a manner atypical of Heaney’s procedures yet stands among his most accomplished work. I will consider the manner in which Heaney’s poem simultaneously exists “post” the “scripts” of literature mythologizing the West of Ireland while remaining in close dialogue with perhaps the most famous of these: Yeats’s poem “The Wild Swans at Coole”.
Irish folk medicine is perceived to be dying, if not dead already. It lies as a parallel system to modern biomedicine and is known only through word of mouth. However, no matter what modality is practised, be it bone-setting, plant medicine, charms or rituals, there are traditional characteristics common to all as a whole. An examination of these traditional elements allows us to see how Irish folk medicine is currently practised and to ascertain whether it has reached the second life that Lauri Honko suggested. If this were the case, “the recycling of material in an environment that differs from its original context” (Honko, “The Folklore” 42) should be evident.
The rallying of much of the feminist movement to support for the government, and even to enthusiasm for the war in 1914 is well-known. This article looks at a leader of a section of the suffragettes which followed a very different path. Sylvia Pankhurst broke with her patriotic mother and sister to work among working women in the East of London, using dynamic and original forms of activism to defend working women’s interests and encourage left wing consciousness.
In the 2014 referendum campaign the SNP claimed that an independent Scotland would use sterling as part of a currency union with the rest of the UK. George Osborne's blunt refusal to negotiate such a union turned this technical question into an issue. The currency symbolized the main arguments of the debate as the unionists argued that Scotland's economy would thus never be fully independent nor prosperous, which is the reason why many Yes campaigners advocated a new currency. Yet according to the SNP the Scots were entitled to retain a common asset while leading their own economic and social policies. Lingering doubt eventually prompted the remaining undecided voters to favour the UK.