"Rest before Labour": The Pre-Text/s of Blake's The Four Zoas

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Lussier
Keyword(s):  
William Blake ◽  
Julia Kristeva ◽  
Dream Work ◽  
Romantic Period ◽  
The Public ◽  
Critical Elements ◽  
State Of Mind ◽  
Four Zoas ◽  
Insightful Analysis ◽  
The Public Sphere

Abstract This essay explores the ambiguities and ironies resident in the aphoristic phrase "Rest before Labour," which William Blake positions as the portal of "readerly" entry into his preliminary epic Vala, or The Four Zoas, which Blake never published. The "Rest" implied (the slumber of Albion, read historically and psychologically) occurs in the remainder of the poem yet functions as the boundary condition for the work itself—the first pre-text for this problematic work one might say. The "Labour" implied (the nightmare of alienation and fragmentation that ensues within Albion's sleep) occurs in the space-time of dreams across nine nights yet functions as the state of mind-matter relations in the waking world—the second pre-text for the work. The labor implicated in this dream narrative (visionary transformation of the public sphere) can only be achieved upon completion of the poem, again rendering all labors within the poem as pre-text for historical action. Once the work concludes its inner and outer operations (its labors, so to speak), reception dynamics shift the discursive arena to its readers, enacting a psycholinguistic transference until, ideally, Albion's awakening becomes our own. The poem's dream-work, then, inverts traditional associations of "rest" and "labour," and the implications of such an inversion best emerge when comparing Blake's view of dream-work with the critical elements articulated by Julia Kristeva in her analysis of a revolution in poetic language following the Romantic period itself. Kristeva's insightful analysis helps map Blakean cartographies of inner and outer symmetry.

Hall of Mirrors: Media, Democratization, and the Public Sphere in Maranhão, Brazil

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 208-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julián Durazo Herrmann
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Regime Change ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
The Public ◽  
Critical Elements ◽  
Strong Interference ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Public Sphere

Freedom of expression and access to diverse sources of information are seen as critical elements of democracy, although their concretization on the ground is subject to strong interference. Recent regime change in Maranhão, one of Brazil’s poorest states, has led to the emergence of new media and some expansion of the public sphere. The traditional oligarchy continues to dominate the media, however, and the opposition media replicate its exclusion of nonelite actors. The Maranhão experience confirms that normative approaches to the media either as automatic contributors to democracy or as instruments of elite manipulation have little value for understanding media dynamics. Liberdade de expressão, bem como o acesso a diversas fontes de informação, são considerados elementos críticos da democracia, ainda que a concretização desses fatores esteja sujeita a forte interferência. A recente troca de regime no Maranhão, um dos estados mais pobres do Brasil, tem levado ao surgimento de uma nova mídia e a uma certa expansão da esfera pública. Contudo, a oligarquia continua dominando a mídia tradicional e a mídia alternativa imita a prática de exclusão de atores não pertencentes à elite. A experiência do Maranhão confirma que tratamentos normativos que veem a mídia como contribuinte automática do processo democrático, ou como instrumento de manipulação da elite, teem pouco valor para se entender a dinâmica da mídia.

Present State of the Manners, Society, Etc. Etc. of the Metropolis of England

PMLA ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 119 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Robinson ◽  
Adriana Craciun
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Print Culture ◽  
Present State ◽  
Urban Culture ◽  
Urban Identity ◽  
Romantic Period ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
The Public ◽  
Lyrical Ballads ◽  
The Public Sphere

Mary robinson's essay “present state of the manners, society, etc. etc. of the metropolis of England,” published in the reformist Monthly Magazine shortly before the author's death in 1800, makes a significant statement on the volatility of British print culture at the turn of the nineteenth century. Once again recognized as a major writer of the Romantic period, Robinson influenced and was influenced by contemporaries such as Southey, Wordsworth, and especially Coleridge, who called Robinson “a woman of undoubted genius” (Letter). “Metropolis” is an important document not only because of its engagement with the contemporary debate over the direction of print culture and the public sphere but also because of the alternative it offers to Wordsworth's Preface to the Lyrical Ballads. Moreover, it provides an important link between earlier eighteenth-century concepts of urban culture and cosmopolitan refinement and later nineteenth-century ideas of urban identity such as Poe's Man of the Crowd and Baudelaire's flâneur. Resolutely urban, democratic, and cosmopolitan, Robinson's essay amounts to a manifesto of metropolitan culture.

Religie, recht en de kennis van goed en kwaad

2017 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 348-359
Author(s):  
Ashley Terlouw
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Church And State ◽  
The State ◽  
Civil Servants ◽  
Present Contribution ◽  
Formal Approach ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
The Public ◽  
State Of Mind ◽  
The Public Sphere

Summary It is not sufficient to take a purely formal approach to the question whether laws are just, as Witteveen does in his ten nomoi. Laws should not only meet procedural norms, but should also adhere to material and moral standards. Religion is one of the sources for morality, including our conception of justice. What are the consequences of this for the place of religion in the public sphere? What relation exists between religious and legal norms? The Dutch interpretation of the relation between state and religion is relatively flexible. Despite the constitutional separation of church and state, there is room for religion in the public sphere. Furthermore, the state can under special circumstances intervene in the private, religious sphere. But due to this flexibility, new questions arise to which the law does not provide answers. The present contribution addresses a particular issue that has been the subject of litigation: is it appropriate for civil servants to wear religious symbols, such as a headscarf, turban or yarmukle? The author argues that in these cases it is insufficient to appeal to the neutrality of the state. Neutrality is not an external feature, but it is the state of mind with which civil servants perform their functions.

"FREEDOM'S CHARTER'D AIR

2003 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 326-367 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. SAGLIA
Keyword(s):  
Political Representation ◽  
British Politics ◽  
Individual Freedom ◽  
Practical Realization ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Romantic Period ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
The Public ◽  
Verse Drama ◽  
The Public Sphere

Felicia Hemans's tragedy The Vespers of Palermo (1823) dramatizes the Sicilians' struggle to free their island from the foreign domination of Charles of Anjou, culminating in their successful popular uprising of 1282. The play's narrative of events in medieval Sicily, however, also constitutes a commentary on the situation of post-Napoleonic Europe. In effect the play reßects on more general notions of liberty and tyranny, revolution, patriotism, political representation, and the roots of the national compact. More speciÞcally, it complicates issues such as the democratic process, patriotic allegiance, and an idea of community which is in many ways related to what JŸrgen Habermas would term the "public sphere." The tragedy is particularly relevant because its revision of these principles took place at a time when liberal ideas were starting to take shape in the Spanish and Italian constitutional revolts of 1820-21 and in British politics. In this essay I approach Hemans's verse-drama as yet another instance of a Romantic-period displaced representation of topical political issues; but I also propose this work as a critical reßection on its own ideological materials and on the obstacles besetting any practical realization of liberal principles. Moreover, in The Vespers of Palermo this ideological elaboration is rooted in speciÞc structural and formal strategies, the most conspicuous of which is an insistence on the semantic and metaphoric Þelds of voice and sound. Through its interweaving of ideological and formal features, Hemans's tragedy throws light on the difÞculties in separating an imperializing police state from a community based on tolerance and the respect and protection of individual freedom. Hemans thus teaches her public to read the liberal project as a developing and unÞnished process.

The Suffering of the Perpetrators: The Ethics of Traumatic German Historicity in Karen Bass's Young Adult World War II Novels

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-77
Author(s):  
Doris Wolf
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Young Adult ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Childhood Studies ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
World War ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Adult World ◽  
The Public Sphere

This paper examines two young adult novels, Run Like Jäger (2008) and Summer of Fire (2009), by Canadian writer Karen Bass, which centre on the experiences of so-called ordinary German teenagers in World War II. Although guilt and perpetration are themes addressed in these books, their focus is primarily on the ways in which Germans suffered at the hands of the Allied forces. These books thus participate in the increasingly widespread but still controversial subject of the suffering of the perpetrators. Bringing work in childhood studies to bear on contemporary representations of German wartime suffering in the public sphere, I explore how Bass's novels, through the liminal figure of the adolescent, participate in a culture of self-victimisation that downplays guilt rather than more ethically contextualises suffering within guilt. These historical narratives are framed by contemporary narratives which centre on troubled teen protagonists who need the stories of the past for their own individualisation in the present. In their evacuation of crucial historical contexts, both Run Like Jäger and Summer of Fire support optimistic and gendered narratives of individualism that ultimately refuse complicated understandings of adolescent agency in the past or present.

Female Professionals and (Neo-)Victorianism: The Case ofThe Good Wife

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-24
Author(s):  
Isabel Santaularia i Capdevila
Keyword(s):  
Television Series ◽  
The Public ◽  
Bleak House ◽  
Professional Success ◽  
The Law ◽  
Good Wife ◽  
Woman In White ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Female Professionals ◽  
Nineteenth Century Novels

The article examines The Good Wife (CBS 2009–), as well as other recent television series with female professionals as protagonists, alongside nineteenth-century novels such as Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White and The Law and the Lady, Charles Dickens's Bleak House, or Bram Stoker's Dracula, which, like The Good Wife, place ‘the law’ and ‘the lady’ in direct confrontation. This comparative analysis reveals that current television series, even those that showcase women's professional success, articulate a discourse that valorises domestic stability and motherhood above professional achievements and, therefore, resonate with Victorian ideologies about the conflicted relation between women and the public sphere. Contemporary television series are not so different from Victorian texts that grant their heroines freedom to move outside home-boundaries, while treating women's public ascendancy as a transgression of normative femininity and using a number of strategies devised to guarantee women's return home and/or an appreciation of what they have to sacrifice in order to advance in their careers.

Habermas, Cultural Hegemony, and the Educational Public Sphere

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 43-62
Author(s):  
Wisam Kh. Abdul-Jabbar
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Social Inequality ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Pedagogical Practices ◽  
Cultural Hegemony ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Arabic Speaking

This study explores Habermas’s work in terms of the relevance of his theory of the public sphere to the politics and poetics of the Arab oral tradition and its pedagogical practices. In what ways and forms does Arab heritage inform a public sphere of resistance or dissent? How does Habermas’s notion of the public space help or hinder a better understanding of the Arab oral tradition within the sociopolitical and educational landscape of the Arabic-speaking world? This study also explores the pedagogical implications of teaching Arab orality within the context of the public sphere as a contested site that informs a mode of resistance against social inequality and sociopolitical exclusions.

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