Hasil untuk "History of Great Britain"

Anne Beauvallet

Industrial action by English teacher unions from 1984 to 1986 and in 2023 focused on teachers’ pay, but the earlier dispute was followed by Conservative educational reforms which the trade unions opposed, whereas the latter secured a significant one-year award in 2023. Could the 2023 dispute constitute the reverse of that from 1984-86 and evidence of now stronger trade unions? Compared to what happened in 1986-7, the outcome of the 2023 dispute can be considered as a strategic victory over a combative Conservative government. The analysis of inter- and intra-union tensions also contributes to the contrast. Yet, the pragmatism displayed by trade unions in 2023 shows that the 1980s still cast their shadow on industrial action as the prevailing orthodoxy in education has since been determined by Conservative themes and priorities and as the party recurrently tightened anti-strike legislation.

Nazarii Lutsenko

The aim of this article is to shed light on the phenomenon of «special relations» between the United States of America and Great Britain. Despite the fact that the topic gained considerable attention in the academic literature and the term «special relations» is applied to different states and regions, it is necessary to understand its origins. The purpose of the article is to investigate the phenomenon of American-British relations, to analyze the historical and political view of the problem, and to formulate the characteristics of the relations between the United States and the United Kingdom. Chronological limits are determined by the first mention of the term in 1946 and the presidential term of D.Trump, who managed the office in 2017–2021. Methodology of the article. Hypotheses were tested through historiographical analysis and the historical-comparative method were used to analyze published studies on the history of «special relations». The scientific novelty of the study consists in determining the peculiarities of relations between the United States and Great Britain during the tenure of Donald Trump. Therefore, the «special relationship» is a unique historically formed complex of interaction between the USA and Great Britain, which is manifested in various spheres of public life: political (to have an opportunity for better implementation of their own foreign policy), military (the USA and the United Kingdom have an unprecedented level of mutual trust and cooperation in the field of intelligence and nuclear programs), cultural (the historical memory of both nations makes American and British society sensitive to the problems of their «English-speaking neighbours»). We consider it necessary to highlight the following features of American-British relations:the long-term historical interaction that brought the two nations closer together and laid the foundation for relations between the United States and Great Britain; the common ideology of liberalism; cooperation provides an opportunity to better implement one’s own foreign policy; close relations between political figures of states; relations are characterized by periodic «approaching and distancing», which create new challenges for the allies. Each of these features is traced in the relations between the USA and Great Britain and during the administration of Donald Trump. Both states faced a number of challenges in international politics, due to the crisis state of the modern system of international relations. The governments of the United States and the United Kingdom have demonstrated the ability to compromise in critical situations, that proves the uniqueness of such an alliance.

Jaroszewicz-Pieresławcew Zoja

The article describes briefly the history of the Basilians monastery library in Żyrowice. It consisted of 3867 volumes at the beginning of the 19th century and was the second in the Lithuanian Province, the Vilnius was the first one. The collection was dispersed and can be found in many countries nowadays. The author aimed at identification and description of preserved copies of the Cyrillic prints, because the monastery documentation is incomplete. Specific provenance signs, placed on the books in 1758 and 1759, were helpful in the inquiry. The autopsy descriptions of the books from the Wróblewski Library of the Academy of Sciences in Vilnius, the library of the Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg, and the National Library of Poland in Warsaw were prepared by the author. The others, stored in the libraries of Russia (Moscow), Ukraine (Kyiv, Lviv), and Great Britain (London) were identified in printed catalogues and research articles. The majority of preserved monastic prints are liturgical and orthodox ones. Also works of the Orthodox Church Fathers, hagiographies, grammars of the Slavonic language, and the juristic work Statut Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskiego [the Statute of the Great Duchy of Lithuania] were found. They come from either Basilian or Orthodox printing houses active from the 15th until the end of the 18th century at the territory of Poland and Moscow Ruthenia.

Catherine Lanone

Drawing upon Annie Escuret’s epistemocritical method of reading, and on her vision of energy and entropy, this paper considers how, in Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles, agricultural steam machines begin to colonize the countryside and seem to violate and dislocate the female body. Whereas Talbothays still offers a pastoral community, Flintcomb Ash is a cold place of abjection where both the land and the women are ruthlessly exploited. This creates a kind of proto-ecofeminist logic, as colonial metaphors are applied to the landscape but also to Tess’s enslaved body, while she toils on the machine, relentlessly exposed to the male gaze. Her kinship with animals goes beyond mere metaphor to connect the plight of doomed birds, mice and snakes and of the vulnerable woman. Tess’s plight may be exceptional, but the exception is part of a wider meditation on instability and seasonal flux, as mutations tear the rural social fabric. Far from being merely pastoral and nostalgic, the novel breaks new ground by engaging with gendered and technological strategies that distort the biotope of Wessex.

Stéphanie Bory et Fiona Simpkins

Ekaterina Muraveva

This article aims to question media and advertising discourses, exemplified by an issue of Cosmopolitan, from a critical discourse analysis perspective and in a multidisciplinary and interdiscursive manner. Irish novelist Louise O’Neill provides a poignant critique of familiar schemes and patterns through the dystopian setting of her thought-provoking novel Only Ever Yours (2014). She is interested in problematic issues of female identity, various stereotypes related to beauty myths, objectification, female body, commodification, ageism, and other forms of discrimination. The study of her dystopian world cannot be complete without tracing some sociocultural particulars so that the reader can identify the targets deeply rooted in our culture’s popular tropes.

Louise Dalingwater

There has been a significant rise in the number of women working in Britain since the 1970s. This rise is directly related to the move towards a service economy and also higher levels of education and training. In addition, a series of laws introduced since the 1970s, notably the Equal Pay Act of 1970, the Sex Discrimination Act of 1974 and the Employment Protection Act of 1982, have encouraged women to work. However, there appears to be a discrepancy between the quantity of work available for women and the quality. Quality work, as defined by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), can be described as work that provides decent pay, and offers development and progression opportunities. Many of the jobs created in the service sector and largely occupied by women tend to be low paid and low prospect “pink-collar” jobs, failing to meet many of the “decent work” recommendations of the ILO. Women tend to cluster in flexible service sector jobs such as infant school assistants, home helps and domestic helpers. Although this is true of many industrialised countries with very different labour market conditions such as France and Germany, the pay and prospects gap for women is considerably higher in Britain. There are, of course, a number of causal effects. However, a body of evidence suggests that higher gender inequalities at work may be linked to neo-liberalism in Britain. The influence of neo-liberalism has not only shaped legislation in Britain but also attitudes to women and work since the 1970s. Indeed, after analysing the results of a nationwide survey carried out across Britain and France in 2014 on wellbeing at work, this article shows how British attitudes to inequalities at work are shaped by the neo-liberal model and may have serious implications for future policies to improve pay and prospects for women working in Britain. It will thus explore the influence of neo-liberalism in Britain on career pay and prospects in Britain, taking both a theoretical and evidence-based approach.

Fergal Lenehan

A fairly extensive German-language tradition of depicting Roger Casement exists that has, until now, not been surveyed by cultural historians. Three distinct strands of Casement representation dominate, and often intertwine: 1) Casement as an international humanitarian, 2) Casement as an extreme Irish nationalist, and 3) Casement as a gay martyr. These narratives have been highly dependent on the socio-political context and the needs of the creators. Thus Casement has been depicted as a rabid Irish nationalist within German anti-British propaganda texts during World War One and Two, but also as an international humanitarian who practiced a liberationist nationalism during the years of the democratic Weimar Republic, while the Casement story has in addition been mined to humanise gay men in post-War West Germany.

Géraldine Gadbin-George

Volunteer work is part of British culture, and of solicitors’ ethics. At the end of the 19th century, the legal professions and the not-for profit sector committed themselves jointly to improve access of the poor to the law, with the state's blessing. At the end of the Second World War, the welfare state was set up and legal aid was created. For a while, the State tried to provide for everyone's needs. This situation changed with the arrival of the economic crisis. Unlike the poor, the middle classes found themselves excluded from the benefit of legal aid and solicitors willingly came to their rescue. The rolling-back of the welfare state since the Thatcher years, along with the anti-corporatist and austerity-based government policies changed the relationship which the State had previously maintained with the legal professions. By trying to find ways to coerce the solicitor profession into working for free, the state breached its social contract with solicitors.

C. Nicholas Serra

This article examines Yeats’s broad use of Irish folklore between 1888 and 1938, and attempts to find a justification for his contention that his own unique metaphysical system expressed in both editions of A Vision, itself an outgrowth of his three decades of ritual practice as an initiate in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, could somehow function as both an interpretation and enlargement of “the folk-lore of the villages”. Beyond treating Irish fairy stories as a way for Yeats to establish his own Irishness, capture what remained of “reckless Ireland” in its twilight, or create a political counter-discourse set against English hegemony, the immutability and immortality of the sídhe are considered in light of the assertions of several minor lectures from the Golden Dawn. This connection sheds new light on Yeats’s ideas about Unity of Being, and hypothesizes a possible esoteric path to “escape” from his system of phases so as to resolve the body-soul dilemma evident in his poetry.

Daniela Panzera

Dante’s influence on Seamus Heaney’s poetry – generally analyzed from a religious, philosophical, and cultural perspective – has been widely acknowledged by critics and by Heaney himself. Heaney, though, was also fascinated with Dante’s stylistic achievements and concern for themes such as land, politics and language. As a conscious innovator of his time, Dante developed the vernacular in literature, demonstrating that it was suitable for poetic expression. He created a universal idiom out of the various Italian dialects, believing that a common tongue was the means to achieve some form of national unity. Following Dante’s example, in the place-name poems “Broagh” and “Anahorish” (Wintering Out), Heaney reunites both the English and the Irish traditions through a meditation of the semantic elements of both cultures. Moreover, in his collection Electric Light, and in his translation of Dante’s “Ugolino” (Inferno XXXII-XXXIII), the Irish poet places the local aspects of his culture in a universal framework. This article will display how, through his engagement with Dante and through the specific practice of translation, Heaney is able to transcend ethnic boundaries in order to obtain an objective view of the world. Like his medieval predecessor, in his works Heaney locates the global in the local and vice versa, emphasizing the epistemological value of constructively interacting with other cultures and languages, which ultimately enriches an understanding of one’s own cultural identity.

Zygmunt Stefan Zalewski

The article is an attempt to present and discuss – based on the struggle against Barbary pirates and corsairs waged in the Mediterranean Sea – dynamic and complex political and economic processes as well as diplomatic efforts that contributed to the French conquest of Algiers in 1830. The first three decades of the 19th century were among the most turbulent periods in the history of the French nation. Defeated and humiliated by the enemy coalition in 1815, France did not give up on her “imperial dream”, this time trying to make it come true in a non-distant Maghreb. The way to achieve this goal was, however, quite bumpy. At that time, the western part of the Mediterranean Sea was an arena of competition, mainly between the United States and Great Britain. After all, this turned out to be very favourable to France. Wishing to introduce an extra element into the game, eliminate rivals for overseas supremacy, as well as win Russia – that was gradually strengthening her influence in the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea – as an ally, at the end of the 1820’s Great Britain became an advocate of her neighbour across the English Channel. Gradually regaining her economic potential and international importance, France reached for Algiers by entering the armed conflict. However, the French stronghold in Maghreb would soon pose a major challenge to the British colonialism in Africa. Expressing their major concern over the security of so-called “imperial route” leading via the Mediterranean sea, British politicians and statesmen adopted a new political stance toward the declining Ottoman Empire. Owing to their “independence and integrity” doctrine (formulated in 1830’s), the rich Ottoman heritage managed to “survive” by the outbreak of World War II.

Daniel Karlin

Henry James travelled extensively in France, lived there for months at a time, and was personally acquainted with many leading French writers; he loved and admired the French novel, the French theatre, and the French critical faculty, not to mention ‘the genius of the French language’. His command of French was near-perfect: he was able to write letters in French, and his letters in English are filled with French words and phrases. His creative and critical intelligence was profoundly at work in such word-choices, which are of particular interest in his letters, as opposed to his fiction, where the use of French almost always has a dramatic function. In letters, by contrast, we glimpse James’s own ‘character’ at work—and at play. Patterns of usage may be unconscious (determined by certain recurring epistolary ‘situations’) but there are also cases where the use of French constitutes a trenchant and finely-judged stroke of art. Nowhere is this more so than when the subject is James’s own art. The essay concludes with some examples of this more intense and deliberate practice.

Sophie Mantrant

When mentioned at all, Hieroglyphics is usually described as an essay in which Arthur Machen exposes his views on literature. The aim of this paper is to show how the “Prefatory Note”, a sort of frame narrative, blurs the borderline between essay and fiction and makes the status of the text problematic. In this preliminary text, a narrator bearing the initials “A. M.” explains that he spent long hours listening to a scholarly hermit whose views on literature he later put down on paper. Machen thus encourages the reader to identify him not as the enunciator but as the listener ; he dissociates himself from the essayist, even though the latter expresses ideas that are also his. This is part of a game of masks that is played on several textual levels.

Jonathan R. Dull

C. Chu, J. Antoniou, B. Donley et al.

Elena Carolina Hewitt

Aunque Waiting for Godot, sea claramente arte dramático escrito en prosa, mi hipótesis original es que contenga pasajes con características poéticas y rítmicas. Por lo tanto, no debemos eludir la posibilidad de realizar un análisis por escansión en Godot. La originalidad en esta hipótesis ha sido confirmada recientemente por un experto a escala internacional en Beckett. Otros estudios sin embargo, han descrito facetas puramente lingüísticas de esta obra dramática, pero hasta el momento no parece haberse llevado a cabo análisis de la métrica o examen sistemático alguno a cerca de esta faceta. En este artículo, he tratado de suplir la desatención de este aspecto efectuando mi propia y original escansión en relación a la obra dramática de Waiting for Godot, en concreto de la versión en inglés, utilizando para ello el pasaje referente a las “voces muertas”(Beckett, 1977: 62 – 63). En consecuencia, describiré las conclusiones a las que he llegado después de llevar a cabo dicho análisis de esta obra teatral, por escansión poética.

Eric Williams

S. Mintz