Journal articles on the topic 'Skepticism in literature – Germany – 18th century'

Abstract This paper deals with three historical large chess variants, Hyderabad Decimal Chess from late 18th century India and the 19th century German games Kaiserspiel (or Emperor's Game, played on a 10×10 board) and Sultanspiel (Sultan's game, 11×11), and their treatment in the literature. For each game, a set of rules is suggested and discussed.

This paper looks at how a given text, Carlo Goldoni’s comedy Un curioso accidente, has been translated, received and used in different adaptations in France, Germany and Denmark. In France and Germany the comedy is met with great interest already in the 18th century, mostly through very different adaptations (in France by François Roger and in Germany by Johann Christian Bock) used with considerable success on stage, less for the actual translations. Later the comedy was forgotten in those two countries. In the rest of Europe, the comedy is not translated till the 19th century ; in Denmark it is discovered about 1850, not least because Johanne Louise Heiberg, leading actress at the Royal Theatre, is enchanted by the female lead character Giannina. At the end of the century the play is restaged, but now — in agreement with the general spirit of the time — in much more realistic productions by William Bloch.

Lombardy poplar is a tree with a distinctive cypress shape, which grows very fast and has little soil requirements. The species probably originated at the turn of the 17th and 18th century in Lombardy, where it spread via France and Germany, arriving at the territory of the Crown in the second half of the 18th century. However, it was only in the 19th century that its popularity reached its peak. The Lombardy poplar was being planted as a popular avenue plant. It was also an important part of the park complexes designed in a sentimental landscape style inspired by the work of Jean Jacques Rousseau. The article analyses the phenomenon of the popularity of poplar trees on the territory of the Kingdom of Poland in the context of the then literary and philosophical programme of the garden, whose two key sources are to be found in Arcadian literature – J. Milton's Paradise Lost, J. J. Rousseau's works such as New Heloise or Jacques Dellille's Gardens.

‘Entertainment’ in the Early Modern Age is preferably situated in so called literary ‘salons’. The article aims to develop a theory of ‘Unterhaltung’ from a study that traces the spatial conditions and effects of entertainment. It sheds light on the case of Madeleine de Scudéry, who embodied conversational theory and practice and therefore became a role-model for early 18th century Germany. Her “carte de tendre” distributed the popular game of pre-sensitive conversation. This is embedded in Scudérys novel Clélie that influenced both poetics and ‘entertainment’ theories.

German Literature, written by Authors whose First Language is different to German, has a long tradition (18th and 19th Century). In the 1960s und 1970s a new Generation of Authors entered the Stage of Literature. This Essay deals with History and Development of their kind of German Literature from its beginnings as „Gastarbeiterliteratur“ until today, outlinig several of its phases: Immigration from Turkey, Italy, Yugoslavia and other Countries into Germany 1960–1985, Literature and Changes in Europe’s Political Map 1989/90, Growing Variety of Literary Styles 1990–2005, Success and Recognition of „Chamisso-Literature“ in the last ten years (Feridun Zaimoglu, Yoko Tawada, Ilija Trojanow, Artur Becker, Ilma Rakusa, Terézia Mora, and Others), Present Situation.

The Lisbon earthquake is famous for its central role in the 18th century ‘quarrel of Optimism’. The accounts of the disaster by some witnesses are presented and the contributions that the earthquake inspired to many European authors, less well-known than Voltaire, in the domains of science, literature, religion and philosophy, are summarily reviewed. The paper emphasizes the repercussions the earthquake had in Germany, quite remote from the disaster area, but intellectually much alive, at the time of Frederic II.

The relevance to study the representations of ageing is conditioned by the necessity to understand the variety between generations, differences in age psychological attitudes and increased life expectancy, in particular in European countries. All this is reflected in fiction. The aim of this work is to outline the main features of artistic representations (indirect, «secondary» prototypes and images) of ageing (old age) in German-language literature of Germany, Austria and Switzerland, especially during modernism, postmodernism and the formation of modern society. The twentieth century in the literature is characterized by the development of such directions as modernism and postmodernism. The last one was originated as an ideological signpost associated with a certain unity of philosophical, theoretical, and methodological approaches. The concept of a human in these theories was marked by skepticism on the world caused by The First and The Second World Wars, sarcasm, irony, despair and hopelessness about the absurdity of the world. In the hieratic works of the twentieth-century German-language literature, representations of old age and gerontological motives were very rarely central. Therefore, in social, physical and psychological dimensions, the ageing process has become richer over time. Artistic representations of the elderly were mostly stereotyped. Since the early twentieth century the problem of depicting the elderly has acquired existential sense, postmodern view on human life, the search for human sense of life, human loneliness in society, the role of an individual in the periods before, during and after the two World Wars.

Abstract This paper deals with the major role played by translated literature in the emergence of a new system of books for Jewish children in the German-speaking countries at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th. This role was due to the remarkable status of German culture in the eyes of the Haskala (Jewish Enlightenment movement), and to the absence of appropriate original texts which could serve the needs of the new system. As a result, translated texts were privileged in the system of Jewish children's literature, to the extent that, to the best of our knowledge, all books for children published by the Haskala in Germany were either official translations, pseudotranslations, or original texts based on existing German models.

The paper examines the spatial images of German borders in the Russian literature of the late 18th – early 20th centuries. These ‘liminal’ descriptions of Germany come in several variations. The first is the image of the boundary as a syncretic and transit locus between Russia and Germany, i.e. between Us and Them respectively. Their features are mixed there as in cases of Karamzin’s Livonia or Skalkovsky’s Kurland. Secondly, the booundary can be presented as a certain point, reaching which the narrator / hero finds themselves in a new space, for example, Travemünde during a sea voyage or Eydtkuhnen when traveling by rail. The description of this conventional point follows several traditions in the travel literature. One was set up by N.M. Karamzin’s Letters of a Russian Traveler ”, when the voyager is aware of his transition into Their space and experiences an emotional uplift. Over time, however, this “attack of topophilia” becomes the object of a travesty game and ridicule of the literary tradition, as, for example, in Myatlev’s poem “Sensations and Comments by Madame Kurdyukova Abroad, Dans L’etranger”. Topophilia, interest in the Other, can also be encouraged by the feeling of getting into a more free locus, which marks Germany in particular and Western Europe in general as spaces of freedom (in the travelogues by K.A. Skalkovsky, M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin). Another variant of a Russian traveler’s reaction to crossing the German border is frustration, which is felt in Fonvisin’s letters abroad. Their author feels disenchantment With each new point on the journey, D.I. Fonvizin feel inauthentic German space as the embodiment of the European Other. This generates a third variant of the German liminal locus, when the entire Germany becomes a border, a transitory, boring, semiotically empty place on the way to real Europe, for example, France (texts by D.I. Fonvizin, F.M. Dostoevsky and others). Probably, it determines the perception of the German nation as an average nation without any strongly pronounced characteristics. In addition, the situation of crossing the border with Germany can also be trivialized as opposed to Karamzin’s tradition, as in A.T. Averchenko’s travelogue. Along with topophilia, frustration and indifference in texts about the borders of Germany in the second half of the 19th century describe the motif of topophobia, fear of the Other in its version of the new German Empire, generating images of a latent or obvious threat, aggression, for example, in the texts by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, N.A. Leikin. Finally, early travelogues of this period emphasise the internal borders between German lands, while by the early 20th century the images of the internal German borders fade and become trivial.

This paper sheds light on the immediate counternarrative response to the publication of Samuel Richardson’s Pamela in 1740. Upon its publication, the female servant Pamela gained popularity among readers for her exemplary chastity, morality and virtue. This paper discusses the writings of Henry Fielding as a leading anti-Pamela approach through two subsequent narratives, Shamela (1741) and Joseph Andrews (1742). Fielding and others saw in Pamela a direct threat to 18th-century normative servant-master and aristocrat-bourgeois relations. In his novels, Fielding uses multiple literary motifs to confront Pamela’s readership with their beloved character’s hypocrisy and deception. Through his works, Fielding breaks down Richardson’s narrative to present Pamela as the deceptively structured plot of a hypocritical servant to marry her master and elevate her social status. Fielding bridges his narrative with Richardson’s novel to create a mode of skepticism concerning the moral values of Pamela’s readers. In Joseph Andrews, Fielding extends his criticism, presenting the novel as an offshoot to Richardson’s Pamela and highlighting an alternative reality to expose Pamela’s false images of chastity and virtue.

AbstractWhat are the similarities and the differences of icons from the same workshop depicting the same subject? An important portable icon with the representation of the Dormition of the Virgin, hitherto unknown, preserved today in the Art Collection of the University of Göttingen, helps answering this question. The studydeals with the fascinating journey of this icon from Venetian-dominated Crete in the 15th century to Germany of the 18th century. Furthermore, this paper shows that the icon of Göttingen belongs to a group of a numerous icons that they all derive from the same icon-workshop of the renowned Cretan painters Andreas and Nikolaos Ritzos in Candia. Finally, it turned out that this icon was also the inspiration for Cretan painters of the 17th CE such as Emmanuel Lambardos and Viktor.

The article explores the images of the German cities, Lubeck and Hamburg, presented in Nikolay Gretsch’s travelogue “The real trip to Germany in 1835”. The author determines the link between the images of the two cities and the tradition of describing Germany as an idyllic place. This tradition was widespread in Russian literature at the end of the 18th century — first half of the 19th century. In Gretsch’s text, Lubeck and Hamburg are depicted as idyllic but to different degrees. The locus of Lubeck is a homogeneous, patriarchal and achronous idyll, a static space that seems to have frozen in the Middle Ages. In contrast to Lübeck, the city of Hamburg is depicted as a large, contemporary, and dynamic city — in other words, as a modern type of idyll. Moreover, its orderliness goes beyond the idyll and is defined by the rational organisation of space, which is characterised by heterogeneity. Firstly, the idyllic subloci are distinguished, where the key role belongs to the demi-natural images of the garden, the park and the promenade. Secondly, the utilitarian-rational subloci of the stock exchange, quay, and canals are described. Subloci, which are marked by both idyll and rationality, have been identified (e. g. an orphanage, an almshouse). Finally, the third spatial type identified marginal sublocations of seafarers’ establishments associated with the motives of disorderli­ness — drunkenness, debauchery, etc.

Summary In the emergence of comparative grammar at the beginning of the 19th century, Sanskrit played a crucial role. The manner in which Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) characterized the grammatical structure of this language in his Ueber die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier of 1808 was of great importance for the early phases of development of Indo-European linguistics. As is shown in this paper, the characteristics attributed to Sanskrit derived not only from F. Schlegel’s romantic views on language and literature, but were also influenced by his general philosophical and natural-science views which largely reflected the intellectual climate of the late 18th and early 19th century in Germany. During this period biology, physiology, and comparative anatomy experienced rapid progress, and the ‘organic’ concept of nature they espoused provided cognitive models for other disciplines, notably philosophy (cf. Kant’s Kritik der Urteilskraft of 1790), aesthetics, poetics, and linguistics. These natural-science concepts proved particularly fruitful within the romantic movement; they convinced F. Schlegel to see in Sanskrit a language whose organization resembled most perfectly the ideal Ursprache of Indo-European.

Abstract In the study, I provide a comparative overview of the aesthetical debate that took place at the turn of the 18th and 19th century in Germany and Denmark concerning the use of the Old Norse versus the classical mythology in literature. I discuss Johann Gottfried Herder’s ideas on this topic, expressed in his work Vom neuern Gebrauch der Mythologie (1767) and especially in his dialogue Iduna oder der Apfel der Verjüngung (1796), with focus on the following question: Does the rejuvenating potential of the Norse myth as suggested by Herder in Iduna, allow any room for the classical inspirations in modern literature? Herder’s view will provide a starting point of the comparison for the cultural situation in Denmark where the University of Copenhagen announced in 1800 a prize question on aesthetics “Would it benefit Northern polite literature if ancient Northern mythology were introduced and generally accepted by our poets in place of its Greek counterpart?”. The entries in this contest represented the view of the younger generation, namely Adam Oehlenschläger, Jens Møller and Ludvig Stoud Platou. I summarize their views and examine Herder’s influence on the debate.

For a long time, in the tradition of semiotics the sign was considered to be of inferior epistemological value, and even Baumgarten’s attempt to develop the conception of a semiotic aesthetics did not free the sign from its theoretical low status. 1 Following Kant and his Kritik der ästhetischen Urteilskraft, especially Humboldt and Hegel ascribed to the sign a considerably higher theoretical value in their reflections about aesthetics. The sign no longer was considered to be a mere expression of a content that existed independently from it, but a constitutive role was given to the sign within the production of sense. The discourse of aesthetics, emerging by the end of the 18th century, therefore seems to contain a semiological subtext that grounds its aesthetic program on a theory of signs, whereas in the tradition of semiology, the skepticism towards the semiotic idea of the sign originated from the presuppositions of its conception of aesthetic represenation (Darstellung). Within a work of art, the content and its expression are combined by means of a semiological mediation as a result of which they are “so voneinander durchdrungen, daß das Äußere, Besondere ausschließlich als Darstellung des Inneren erscheint” (Hegel). This conception of representation was later called ‘symbolische Prägnanz’ by Cassirer. The emancipation of signs from their inferior theoretical value was predominantly based on the idea of an aisthetische form of expression such as Hegel had established within his philosophy of Kunstversinnlichung.

The article offers an extensive overview of modern approaches to definition of art nouveau as a literary era and to establishing its chronological boundaries. There have been analyzed main variations of the self-definition of the era as well as researchers attempts to find an appropriate definition to this complex aesthetic phenomenon. The extended interpretation of art nouveau as a macroepoch is examined, the period dating back to the end of the 18th century and connected primarily with the artistic system of Romanticism. Based on the aesthetic manifestos of German Naturalism, the meaning of the literary situation in 1880th Germany is examined, where the widespread proclamations of the aesthetic revolution and modern attitudes coexisted with the adherence to the deterministic aesthetics of the previous decades. The leading trends in the culture of the fin de sicle are connected with the onset of the first stage of art nouveau in the art and literature of 1890-1900, soon to be replaced by avant-garde art at the turn of the second decade of the new century. Avant-garde, which associated itself with modernity, was mainly destroying already established art forms. This article suggests that the literary avant-garde as a project of the future manifests a utilitarian approach to the attitudes of the art nouveau on the brink of the new century, making art nouveau accessible for the audience and bringing the artist into the space of political interaction with the society.

The new methodological principles for the research on the Enlightenment and its visual reflection in baroque ceiling painting in southern Germany show a clear correspondence between composition and iconography and the reform concepts of the Catholic Enlightenment. The methodological approach does no longer focus on stylistic questions which do not lead to conclusive results or on the relationship between neoclassicism and Enlightenment but aspects of religious and ideological changes taking place in the 18th-century – devotional rhetoric, instructions regarding the sacrament, or the scholarly approach to history in the sense of the Congrégation de Saint-Maur. The changes occurring during the Enlightenment did not lead to neoclassical forms but visual rhetoric structures in narrative cycles of large ceiling decorations. Earlier ceiling decorations followed the post-Tridentine principle of a correspondence between the calculated effects of the rhetoric of the images and the written words. The viewer should be surprised (maraviglia) by deceptions through ingenious perspectives (inganno degli occhi) as well as rejoice (diletto) in the beauty of the paintings. Later, in the years of the Catholic Enlightenment, we observed a return to the system of horizontal perspective, which focused more exclusively on the iconographic content of the representation. This tendency follows the goals of spiritual literature by authors like Lodovico Antonio Muratori.

The article is devoted to the peculiarities of book publishing and book distribution in France, changes in the French book industry over the centuries and recently. The French book industry is studied. Book publishing (as a branch of the country's economy) appeared in France at the end of the 18th century, and in the five centuries of its existence book publishing has come a long way, developed and improved, adapted to new conditions and actively used all the achievements of technical progress. The nineteenth century was the golden age of French literature. The European world spoke French. In the twentieth century France's position faltered. The United States, Great Britain and Germany took the first place. Therefore, in France, great importance is attached to book publishing as a way to spread knowledge about France and the French language. The article analyzes the features of book publishing and book distribution in France before the COVID-19 pandemic, highlights some features and trends in the development of the French publishing industry during the pandemic restrictions. The spread of the virus to stop or significantly reduce book production in France. The exploration analyzes the changes that have taken place in the industry as a whole and in its individual parts. The ways of development of retail trade and internet-trade before and during the pandemic in France are investigated. The role and place of different book formats in the general system of book publishing in France, the advantages of a printed book, the place of an e-book and an audiobook in the value system of French readers are clarified.

Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, published in 1795, provides a fictional account of a theatrical production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Its initiator is young Wilhelm, whose experiences with this project, in the context of the novel, mark a decisive stage in his education and personal development; as well as, on another level, in the formation of a German national theatre, the mapping out of a theatrical space peculiar to the German national character. To realize his project Wilhelm has to negotiate with his manager and his fellow-actors; these negotiations can be considered reflections of the cultural aspirations and constraints prevalent late 18th-century Germany: – The project itself, as represented by Wilhelm, appears to be informed by a cultural movement towards emancipation from French culture: The character of Hamlet was interpreted as representing a role model for young Germans. – Informed by a theatrical practice based on French conventions, the manager objects to the lack of dramaturgical coherence of the Shakespeare play. As a compromise, Wilhelm composes an adapted version in which references to Wittenberg, Poland, France and England as well as several minor characters are cut, but the Hamlet scenes and speeches are retained. – Wilhelm and his friends also take account of German audiences’ preferences and capacities.The Hamlet project in Wilhelm Meister can be considered a case study of cultural appropriation. Shakespeare becomes a cultural import, used to define and map a cultural space for the German middle class, which in the nineteenth century set store by the quality of its educational make-up.

We can assume that we find for the first time in the 15th century the character of Šahrazād as a courageous woman who had taken upon herself to get the king away from his bias against the women after his wife deceived him. Šahrazād tells him stories in which women have not infrequently more fortitude and deserve more to be trusted than men who are sometimes immature. But there are also from the same century other stories in which ancient themes continue, for instance about crafty and lustful women. In the 16th century, “Dalila the wily” upgrade crafty women, but in the seventeeth century, the Ottoman’s connections with Protestant communities in Germany introduced to the Arabian Nights European witches and bird-women. Anyway men have to avoid to fall in love with women. During the 18th century, a solution to the problem of good relationship between men and women is sketched in the “Masrūr and Zayn al-Mawāṣif” story. The two characters, a christian man and a jewish woman, live happily after they had both converted to Islam. In the same way, the Arabian Nights end when the king gives up his bias against the women and marry Šahrazād, “a good wife [. . .] a pure, a chaste, a devout one”. But he has to keep faith with his wife and preserve responbility for her, according to Islamic Law. Du ixe/xve siècle semble dater le personnage d’une Šahrazād qui s’est donné pour mission de faire revenir le roi de ses préventions sur les femmes, après qu’il ait découvert l’infidélité de son épouse. Šahrazād lui présente des contes où les femmes apparaissent souvent comme plus fortes et dignes de confiance que les personnages masculins, parfois immatures. Mais le recueil enregistre également pour cette époque, des contes où les vieux topoï de la femme rusée et lubrique persistent. Au xe/xvie siècle, le personnage de « Dalila la Rusée » revalorise la ruse des femmes, mais, au xie/xviie siècle, les contacts du pouvoir ottoman avec les protestants d’Allemagne introduisent dans les contes des Nuits, sorcières et femmes-oiseaux venues d’Europe, et les femmes à nouveau sont renvoyées à leur rôle de reproductrices dont il ne faut surtout pas s’éprendre. C’est au xiie/xviiie siècle, qu’une solution s’ébauche. Dans le conte de « Masrūr et Zayn al-Mawāṣif », les deux héros, un chrétien et une juive, trouvent leur bonheur dans une conversion à l’islam. De même à la fin des Nuits, lorsque le roi abandonne ses préventions à l’égard des femmes et épouse Šahrazād, la « bonne épouse [. . .] pure, chaste et pieuse », devient l’épouse du roi revenu de ses erreurs, et au roi s’imposent pour sa part les devoirs de fidélité et d’autorité sur sa femme, comme l’enseigne l’Islam. This article is in French.

Purpose. Romanticism as a movement developed in Germany, where, becoming the philosophy of time in the 18th-19th centuries, spread to all European countries. The "mobility" of the Romantic doctrine, its diversity, sometimes contradictory views, attitude to man as a free, harmonious, creative person led to the susceptibility of this movement by ethnic groups, different in nature and mentality. Its ideas found a wide response in Ukraine with its "cordocentric" type of culture in the early nineteenth century. Since the peculiarity of "Ukrainian Romanticism" was its "literary-centric" nature, the purpose of this study is to analyse and comprehend the place of man in the national philosophy and literature of this period. Accordingly, the main tasks of the work are as follows: to determine the main features, the nature of Ukrainian Romanticism; to trace the main vectors of comprehension and image of man in the literature of this time. Theoretical basis. The ideas of European Romanticism (as a philosophical-historical and general cultural movement) were creatively rethought and assimilated during the emergence of new Ukrainian literature. It provided samples of highly artistic works, unique names of talented writers – creators and thinkers, who in their works reflected the philosophy of time. Based on the works of F. Schlegel, partly E. Husserl, M. Heidegger, K. Jaspers, Romanticism in the Ukrainian humanities, in terms of philosophy, culturology, as well as at the intersection with literature, was studied by T. Bovsunivska, Y. Hrybkova, S. Efremov, N. Kalenichenko, S. Kozak, T. Komarynets, D. Nalyvayko, Y. Nakhlik, I. Ogorodnyk, V. Ogorodnyk, A. Sinitsyna, D. Chyzhevsky, M. Yatsenko, E. Kyryliuk, M. Biletsky, D. Dontsov, S. Efremov, G. Kostyuk, S. Krymsky, Y. Sherekh and others. Originality. The authors of the article prove that Romanticism in Ukraine, being "literary-centric" inherently, having absorbed the main ideas and features of European Romanticism, has its own features and vectors of formation and development. Man in this kind of movement, thanks to the means of art, appears very clearly as a spiritually rich, sensitive, vulnerable and strong person. For him or her, the highest value is freedom, the ability to make freely independent fateful decisions. Conclusions. Ukrainian writers, reflecting the philosophical ideas of Romanticism, saw in man a harmonious combination of "natural" and "social", through which he indirectly carries out his own national existence. In addition to the objective realities of the external world, in their works, Romantic writers appeal to the subjective, internal, spiritual, "ideal" world of the hero, who interacts with reality through his own system of values. At each level of development of the humanities and methodology of cognition, this allows a new reading of these works.

Between the late 18th and early 19th century, various philosophical schools of thought developed in Germany, which exerted influence on the young Hegel. Although the origins of Hegelian ‘idealism’ have yet to be fully explored, the studies of Pöggeler, Henrich and Jamme establish clear connections with the so-called Vereiningungsphilosophie in Hölderlin's research, which was acknowledged by Hegel during his Frankfurt period. Although the intellectual relationship between Hegel and Hölderlin is still being assessed, Hemsterhuis' philosophy of unification is emerging as a key influence on Hölderlin and many of his contemporaries, including Hegel. Despite the fact that Hemsterhuis was described by August Wilhelm Schlegel as the ‘prophet of transcendental idealism’ (Schlegel 1989: I: 296), there is little critical literature to date on this topic. So the questions remain open: who was Hemsterhuis? Why did he influence Hölderlin and consequently also Hegel?The aim of my paper is to suggest possible answers to these questions, thus I shall commence by exploring whether Hemsterhuis influenced Hegel directly — and, if so, how — or whether his influence was in any way mediated by Herder and Hölderlin. I will also attempt to compare Hemsterhuis' theories on desire, set forth in his Lettre sur ks désirs (1770), with Herder's commentary and Hegel's concept of love, which was developed firstly in the Tübingen Fragment entitled Religion is one of the most important questions (1793) and then in The Spirit of Christianity and its Fate, a work written in Frankfurt between 1798 and 1799 and published posthumously in 1907 with a title chosen by the editor Hermann Nohl. The paper is divided in two parts.

On October 17, 2017 the conference “An Alsatian Intellectual in Enlightenment Russia: L.G. Nikolay, Strasbourg President of the Russian Academy of Sciences” happened. Materials of the conference, with the addition of other essays and documents, formed the basis of the book under review (published under the editorship of Sorbonne Professor Rodolphe Baudin and Senior Researcher of IWL RAS Alexandra Veselova). The book’s authors are well-known scientists from France, Russia, Germany and Switzerland. Baron Ludwig Heinrich von Nikolay (1737–1820; in Russia he was called Andrey Lvovich) played a prominent role in Russian social and cultural life at the end of the 18th century. Nicolay came from the intellectual milieu of Strasbourg, which became a subject of research in the essays included the book by R. Baudin, D. Ryusk and V. Berelovich. From 1769 he was in Russia, where he was entrusted with the position of mentor to the heir to the throne, Pavel Petrovich. In 1798, Nikolay was appointed president of the Russian Academy of Sciences; N. Prokhorenko’s essay is devoted to his productive activity in this post. Thanks to his personal qualities, Nicholas managed to stay at court after the coup on March 12, 1801 and ingratiate himself with Alexander I; in 1803 he left the service. A number of materials of the reviewed work are devoted to the literary work of Nikolay, a prolific and versatile poet (articles by M. Arens and A. Ananyeva). For posterity, the name Nikolay is associated primarily with the famous estate of Mon Repos in Vyborg, which he acquired in 1788, to which he dedicated a poem in 1804, probably his best work (article by Yu. Moshnik and M. Efimov). The book also pays attention to Nikolay as a character in historiographical essays and fiction (articles by A. Veselova and M. Efimov). Attached are five unpublished letters from Nicolai; their addressees are the diplomat and lawyer F.A. Annenberg and the poet and scientist K. Pfeffel. The book is provided with a chronology of Nicolai’s life and work and brief annotations of articles (in French and Russian).

AN OVERVIEW OF RESEARCH INTO THE HISTORY OF LIBRARIES AND LIBRARIANSHIP IN POLAND IN 1945–2015The author of the article discusses selected academic and popular publications concerning the history of libraries and librarianship in Poland which appeared in 1945–2015. In that period information about the most important historical resources of various Polish libraries and early book collections was made available; in addition, the period was marked by progress in the study of materials originating before the end of the 18th century. Scholars published a range of methodological studies as well as studies dealing with sources, contributing to the development of scholarship. On the other hand, there were too few editions of source materials.After 1989 scholars intensified their efforts to find sources in foreign collections, especially in Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Russia and Germany. Polish collections kept abroad are yet to be fully researched and have their inventories and catalogues published.The vast body of literature is uneven when it comes to its focus on the various historical periods, regions, subregions and local centres. It comprises publications dealing with the history of libraries, their function and role in culture with regard to the history of the book, and publications focused on the types of libraries or individual libraries — of different traditions, sizes and stature. Scholars also explored the history of home book collections, reading rooms and libraries as well as biographies of librarians and collectors. The quality of the publications varies. There are gaps in, for example, the history of libraries in the former Polish Eastern Borderlands as well as “blank pages” in the historiography of Polish librarianship after the Second World War. There is a visible shortage of quantification of phenomena from the past of libraries, despite the fact that there are some possibilities in this respect. What is also needed is development in comparative studies, also in an international perspective, although this would require Polish historians to become more interested than before in the history of librarianship in other countries.

Heart-shaped brooches from modern timesDress accessories from modern times are only sparsely described in the Danish literature on the costume practices of the peasant population. The recent widespread use of metal detectors has yielded many finds which demonstrate that these dress accessories were found all across Denmark. Some types stand out as being particularly recognisable, and one of these comprises heart-shaped brooches typically decorated with a crown and birds. This article is based on ten such brooches in the collection of the Museums of Southwest Jutland, nine of which were found in the soil (fig. 1), but these will be comparable with brooches in many other museum collections across Denmark (fig. 7).Despite the fact that these ornaments have not left any particular traces in written or pictorial sources, they were very common. They were widespread across the entire country, even though the extant Danish literature on the subject is linked to particular geographical areas (fig. 6).The ornament type itself has a long history, and the Danish term særkespænde – shift brooch – refers to an original use in fastening the neck slit of a shift, the function originally performed by these brooches in the costumes of the High Middle Ages, (fig. 2).The heart as a motif on ring brooches and other ornaments is rooted in the Middle Ages and the Catholic symbolism, where the heart can symbolise both spiritual and worldly love, is associated with the worship of Christ (fig. 3).It is difficult to find a link between these medieval heart-shaped ring brooches and the heart-shaped brooches of post-Medieval times. The earliest dated Danish example is the silver brooch in the Horsens hoard dating from the middle of the 17th century (fig. 8), but there are no secure written or pictorial sources referring to such early use of these brooches in Denmark. Conversely, there are 17th century parallels in the published material from other countries (fig. 4).The brooches were used as lover’s gifts in Northern Germany, Norway and Sweden and occur in numerous variations and with various kinds of pendants and decoration, but always with the heart as the central motif (figs. 4 and 5). The brooches possibly had an original function innermost in the clothing as shift brooches, but at some time in the 18th – 19th century they began to be worn visibly as ornaments on the chest together with a scarf. Concurrent with this, they developed to become larger and more showy, as they were now worn where they could be seen (figs. 9, 10 and 11).The brooches could perhaps have had other functions and there are great differences in the size and quality of the examples that have been found and/or published. There are some reports that heart-shaped brooches were used in connection with children’s clothing/head attire in Norway.There were brooches for every taste, extravagant or simple, and some examples were intended for practical use, whereas others were exclusively for decoration. There was also something for every purse – some people could afford finer lover’s gifts than others. Mette Højmark SøvsøSydvestjyske Museer

The monograph is dedicated to the broad topic of the development of printing and publishing in Russia in the 18th - early 20th centuries. The study is not generalizing: this task is too complex and multifaceted. The authors touched upon different and at the same time interrelated subjects, some of which were practically not previously investigated. The reviewer notes that the project is based on Japanese historians and literary critics, which once again shows the productive work of Japanese historiography of late imperial Russia. Nine chapters of the monograph are divided into three parts according to the key periods: XVIII-XIX, XIX-XX centuries. and the eve of the 1917 Revolution. At the same time, thematic blocks are visible in each part. The first focuses on the Russian language and literature during the period of their transformation into a part of world culture. Y. Toriyama highlights the activities of the Society Striving for the Translation of Foreign Books created by Catherine II. A.I. Reitblat draws attention to the formation of the very concept of Russian classical literature. H. Kaizawa makes an attempt to rethink the “reactionary” 1880s, noting the importance of this period for the development of Russian literature, recognition of its importance and influence in Russia and around the world. The second part focuses on the development of the press of the peoples of the empire and the role of foreigners. The importance of the latter is noted by Y. Tatsumi, who speaks about several immigrants from Poland and Germany who managed to create large publishing firms in Russia in the second half of the 19th century. T. Inoue analyzes in detail the influence of the Russian press on the national identity and representation of the Kalmyks. D. Ross tells about the development of newspapers and magazines in the Tatar language, and A. Sakurama about the publishing activities of the baptized Tatars. Finally, the third part focuses on the impact of the 1905 Revolution and World War I on print and publishing. M. Stockdale examines in detail the period of 1914-1918, noting the importance of the press in the interest of Russian society in the events on the fronts of the war. T. Tsurumi briefly describes the situation and development of the Zionist press in Siberia and Chinese Harbin on the eve and during the Revolution and the Russian Civil War. On the whole, the monograph leaves the impression of a thorough work, in which important and interesting plots, though often poorly covered in historiography, are raised. Perhaps, there is a lack of a more detailed analysis of the development of the press during the revolutionary period, but this does not reduce the merits of the book, a rare example in modern historiography of late imperial Russia. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

The article aims at reviewing the rich and ambivalent Western folk ballad research tradition in terms of confluence of the oral and written traditions. Although being well-reflected in the West, this approach is hardly at all present in Lithuania. The article starts with discussing such cultural phenomenon as broadside ballads. In surveying them, the author maintains that popular publications of the 16th–19th century Europe (bibliothèque bleue, skyllingtricker, Volksbuch, pliegos de cordel, лубочная литература, etc.) were an inherent part of the folk culture. Printed sheets of folksongs and ballads used to be popular in Great Britain, the Netherlands, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, and subsequently in America. However, although spread and promoted by the press, the ballads hardly ascended the field of interest of the educated elite, remaining instead in the “lower” spheres of the popular culture.The first collectors of ballads from the 18th century (the “antiquarian period”) paid little attention to the sources of their material, being instead very keen on improving and elaborating of the ballad texts, and presenting them as creative manifestations of the “original bard” or the “national muse”. After the collections by Thomas Percy and Walter Scott appeared, William Motherwell turned back to the still thriving ballad tradition. This Scottish scholar, followed by his Danish colleague Svend Grundtvig and the American Francis James Child founded the modern ballad folklore research, since their collections represented the oral folk tradition rather than engaging in search for the “original” folk ballads. The subsequent researchers, influenced by the Child’s ballad scholarship (Phillips Barry, Cecil J. Sharp, Olive D. Campbell, Louise Pound, Henry M. Belden, etc.), continued investigating the American ballad legacy. However, while collecting and encouraging to further collect the surviving ballads they increasingly realized the huge distance between their endeavors and the Child’s collection. The heterogeneous and fragmented nature of the ballads from the oral tradition was increasingly recognized and acknowledged, along with unavoidable impact of the written and printed sources.Barre J. Toelkien, the scholar belonging to even later generation, attempted methodical indexing of the oral ballads belonging to the Child’s collection. Dianne M. Dugaw in turn suggested that assuming the non-written songs, those from the oral tradition, being inherently different from the printed ones had largely affected the way in which folklore researchers perceived and interpreted folksongs. She concluded that differences devised between the written and non-written, between commercial and non-commercial forms were frequently just illusive, since commercial dissemination constituted an integral part of the folksongs development.In view of the confluence of the oral and written traditions surveyed in this article, it is reasonable to conclude that written culture, or rather the popular press, constituted a significant factor affecting the existence of folk ballads in the West; because of obvious reasons, such culture was absent in old-time Lithuania. Contrary to Lithuania, the ballad tradition of the West was nurtured by the written and printed sources. Therefore, the Lithuanian case could present a kind of thought experiment to the folklore researcher, vividly illustrating the plausible ballad tradition development in the West, if it could be unaffected by such phenomena as printed texts in native languages, readily available to the common people.

Frantsev Vladimir Andreevich (April 4 (16), 1867 – March 19, 1942) – a Russian Slavicist, who authored more than 300 works on Slavic studies. He graduated from a Warsaw grammar school, then studied in the Imperial Warsaw University. In 1893–1895, V. Frantsev made several journeys abroad with the academic pupose. In 1895, he began to prepare for the master’s degree. In 1897, he went abroad and spent three years there. In 1899, V.A. Frantsev made a trip to Ugrian Rus, after which published an article “Review of the most important studies of Ugric Rus” in the Russian Philological Bulletin (1901, Nr. 1–2) in Warsaw. During his trip, V.A. Frantsev met and subsequently maintained contacts with prominent figures in the revival of Ugrian Rus. In 1899, he became Associate Professor of the Department of the History of Slavic Dialects and Literatures of the Imperial Warsaw University, in 1903 – an extraordinary professor, in 1907 – an ordinary professor. In 1900–1921, V.A. Frantsev lectured at the University of Warsaw, which in 1915 moved to Rostov-on-Don in connection with WWI. Teaching actively at the University, he devoted his free time to archival studies, working mainly in the Slavic lands of Austria-Hungary, where he went “for summer vacations” from 1901 to 1914. Sometimes he continued his work during the winter vacations and Easter holidays, as in 1906/07 and in 1907/08, when the university did not function due to student unrest. V.A. Frantsev reported to the “Society of History, Philology and Law” at the University of Warsaw, of which he was an active participant. In 1902–1907, Frantsev published almost all of his major works (except P.Y. Shafarik’s correspondence, published much later). Among them were his master’s thesis “An Essay on the History of the Czech Renaissance” (Warsaw, 1902), doctoral dissertation “Polish Slavic Studies in the late 18th and first quarter of the 19th century” (Prague, 1906), “Czech dramatic works of the 16th – 17th centuries” (Warsaw, 1903), etc. In 1909, during heated discussions on the future structure of Chełm-Podlasie Rus, he published “Maps of the Russian and Orthodox population of Chełm Rus with statistical tables”. In 1913, V.A. Frantsev became a member of the Czech Royal Society of Sciences. Since 1915, he was a corresponding member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg in the Department of Russian Language and Literature. He did not accept the October Revolution, yet never publicly opposed the new government. At the end of 1919, he received an offer from the Council of Professors of the Prague Charles University (Czechoslovakia) to head the Russian branch of the Slavic Seminar. In Czechoslovakia, he became a professor at Charles University. In 1927, he took Czechoslovak citizenship. V.A. Frantsev’s life was associated with the Russian emigration. He was a full member and chairman of the Russian Institute, as well as chairman of the “Russian Academic Group in Czechoslovakia”, deputy chairman of the “Union of Russian Academic Organizations Abroad”, a member of the Commission for the Study of Slovakia and Subcarpathian Rus. In 1924, the Uzhhorod “A. Dukhnovich Cultural and Educational Society” republished V.A. Frantsev’s From the Renaissance Era of Ugric Rus under the title On the Question of the Literary Language of Subcarpathian Rus and a brief From the History of Writing in Subcarpathian Rus (1929). In 1930, The Carpathian Collection was published in Uzhhorod, with Frantsev “From the history of the struggle for the Russian literary language in Subcarpathian Rus” in the preface. He spent his last years in Czechoslovakia occupied by Nazi Germany. V.A. Frantsev died on March 19, 1942, a few days before his 75th birthday. He is buried in the Olshansk cemetery in Prague.

The issue of the journal opens with an article dedicated to the formation of metrology as government regulated activity in France. The article has discussed the historical process of development of metrological activity in France. It was revealed that the history of metrology is considered as an auxiliary historical and ethnographic discipline from a social and philosophical point of view as the evolution of scientific approaches to the definition of individual units of physical quantities and branches of metrology. However, in the scientific literature, the little attention is paid to the process of a development of a centralized institutional metrology system that is the organizational basis for ensuring the uniformity of measurements. The article by Irena Grebtsova and Maryna Kovalska is devoted to the of the development of the source criticism’s knowledge in the Imperial Novorossiya University which was founded in the second half of the XIX century in Odesa. Grounding on a large complex of general scientific methods, and a historical method and source criticism, the authors identified the stages of the formation of source criticism in the process of teaching historical disciplines at the university, what they based on an analysis of the teaching activities of professors and associate professors of the Faculty of History and Philology. In the article, the development of the foundations of source criticism is considered as a complex process, which in Western European and Russian science was the result of the development of the theory and practice of everyday dialogue between scientists and historical sources. This process had a great influence on the advancement of a historical education in university, which was one of the important factors in the formation of source studies as a scientific discipline. The article by Tetiana Malovichko is devoted to the study of what changes the course of the probability theory has undergone from the end of the 19th century to our time based on the analysis of The Theory of Probabilities textbook by Vasyl P. Ermakov published in 1878. The paper contains a comparative analysis of The Probability Theory textbook and modern educational literature. The birth of children after infertility treatment of married couples with the help of assisted reproductive technologies has become a reality after many years of basic research on the physiology of reproductive system, development of oocyte’s in vitro fertilization methods and cultivation of embryos at pre-implantation stages. Given the widespread use of assisted reproductive technologies in modern medical practice and the great interest of society to this problem, the aim of the study authors from the Institute for Problems of Cryobiology and Cryomedicine of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine was to trace the main stages and key events of assisted reproductive technologies in the world and in Ukraine, as well as to highlight the activities of outstanding scientists of domestic and world science who were at the origins of the development of this area. As a result of the work, it has been shown that despite certain ethical and social biases, the discovery of individual predecessor scientists became the basis for the efforts of Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe to ensure birth of the world's first child, whose conception occurred outside the mother's body. There are also historical facts and unique photos from our own archive, which confirm the fact of the first successful oocyte in vitro fertilization and the birth of a child after the use of assisted reproductive technologies in Ukraine. In the next article, the authors tried to consider and structure the stages of development and creation of the “Yermak”, the world's first Arctic icebreaker, and analyzed the stages of preparation and the results of its first expeditions to explore the Arctic. Systematic analysis of historical sources and biographical material allowed to separate and comprehensively consider the conditions and prehistory for the development and creation of “Yermak” icebreaker. Also, the authors gave an assessment to the role of Vice Admiral Stepan Osypovych Makarov in those events, and analyzed the role of Sergei Yulyevich Witte, Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev and Pyotr Petrovich Semenov-Tian-Shansky in the preparation and implementation of the first Arctic expeditions of the “Yermak”icebreaker. The authors of the following article considered the historical aspects of construction and operation of train ferry routes. The article deals with the analysis and systematization of the data on the historical development of train ferry routes and describes the background for the construction of train ferry routes and their advantages over other combined transport types. It also deals with the basic features of the train ferries operating on the main international train ferry routes. The study is concerned with both sea routes and routes across rivers and lakes. The article shows the role of train ferry routes in the improvement of a national economy, and in the provision of the military defense. An analysis of numerous artefacts of the first third of the 20th century suggests that the production of many varieties of art-and-industrial ceramics developed in Halychyna, in particular architectural ceramic plastics, a variety of functional ceramics, decorative tiles, ceramic tiles, facing tiles, etc. The artistic features of Halychyna art ceramics, the richness of methods for decorating and shaping it, stylistic features, as well as numerous art societies, scientific and professional associations, groups, plants and factories specializing in the production of ceramics reflect the general development of this industry in the first half of the century and represent the prerequisites the emergence of the school of professional ceramics in Halychyna at the beginning of the 20th century. The purpose of the next paper is to analyze the formation and development of scientific and professional schools of art-and-industrial ceramics of Halychyna in the late 19th – early 20th centuries. During the environmental crisis, electric transport (e-transport) is becoming a matter for scientific inquiry, a subject of discussion in politics and among public figures. In the program for developing the municipal services of Ukraine, priorities are given to the development of the infrastructure of ecological transport: trolleybuses, electric buses, electric cars. The increased attention to e-transport on the part of the scientific community, politicians, and the public actualizes the study of its history, development, features of operation, etc. The aim of the next study is to highlight little-known facts of the history of production and operation of MAN trolleybuses in Ukrainian cities, as well as to introduce their technical characteristics into scientific circulation. The types, specific design solutions of the first MAN trolleybus generation and the prerequisites for their appearance in Chernivtsi have been determined. Particular attention has been paid to trolleybuses that were in operation in Germany and other Western European countries from the first half of the 1930s to the early 1950s. The paper traces the stages of operation of the MAN trolleybuses in Chernivtsi, where they worked during 1939–1944 and after the end of the Second World War, they were transferred to Kyiv. After two years of operation in the Ukrainian capital, the trolleybuses entered the routes in Dnipropetrovsk during 1947–1951. The purpose of the article by authors from the State University of Infrastructure and Technologies of Ukraine is to thoroughly analyze unpaved roads of the late 18th – early 19th century, as well as the project of the first wooden trackway as the forerunner of the Bukovyna railways. To achieve this purpose, the authors first reviewed how railways were constructed in the Austrian Empire during 1830s – 1850s. Then, in contrast with the first railway networks that emerged and developed in the Austrian Empire, the authors made an analysis of the condition and characteristics of unpaved roads in Bukovyna. In addition, the authors considered the first attempt to create a wooden trackway as a prototype and predecessor of the Bukovyna railway.

Canon and oblivion. The memorials of archaeologyThe article takes its point of departure in the sun chariot; the find itself and its find site at Trundholm bog where it was discovered in 1902. The famous sun chariot, now at the National Museum in Copenhagen, is a national treasure included in the Danish “Cultural Canon” and “History Canon”.The find site itself has alternated bet­ween experiencing intense attention and oblivion. A monument was erected in 1925; a new monument was then created in 1962 and later moved in 2002. The event of 1962 was followed by ceremonies, speeches and songs, and anniversary celebrations were held in 2002, during which a copy of the sun chariot was sacrificed.The memorial at Trundholm bog is only one of several memorials at archaeological find sites in Denmark. Which finds have been commemorated and marked by memorials? When did this happen? Who took the initiative? How were they executed? Why are these finds remembered? What picture of the past do we meet in this canon in stone?Find sites and archaeological memorials have been neglected in archaeology and by recent trends in the study of the history of archaeology. Considering the impressive research on monuments and monumentality in archaeology, this is astonishing. However, memorials in general receive attention in an active research field on the use of history and heritage studies, where historians and ethnologists dominate. The main focus here is, however, on war memorials. An important source of inspiration has been provided by a project led by the French historian Pierre Nora who claims that memorial sites are established when the living memory is threatened (a thesis refuted by the many Danish “Reunion” monuments erected even before the day of reunification in 1920).Translated into Danish conditions, studies of the culture of remembrance and memorials have focused on the wars of 1848-50 and 1864, the Reunion in 1920, the Occupation in 1940-45 and, more generally, on conflicts in the borderland bet­ween Denmark and Germany.In relation to the total number of memorials and public meeting places in Denmark, archaeological memorials of archaeology are few in number, around 1 % of the total. However, they prompt crucial questions concerning the use of the past, on canon and oblivion.“Canon” means rule, and canonical texts are the supposed genuine texts in the Bible. The concept of canon became a topic in the 1990s when Harold Bloom, in “The Western Canon”, identified a number of books as being canonical. In Denmark, canon has been a great issue in recent years with the appearance of the “Danish Literary Canon” in 2004, and the “Cultural Canon” and the “History Canon”, both in 2006. The latter includes the Ertebølle culture, the sun chariot and the Jelling stone. The political context for the creation of canon lists is the so-called “cultural conflict” and the debate concerning immigration and “foreigners”.Canon and canonization means a struggle against relativism and oblivion. Canon means that something ought to be remembered while something else is allowed to be forgotten. Canon lists are constructed when works and values are perceived as being threatened by oblivion. Without ephemerality and oblivion there is no need for canon lists. Canon and oblivion are linked.Memorials mean canonization of certain individuals, collectives, events and places, while others are allowed to be forgotten. Consequently, archaeological memorials constitute part of the canonization of a few finds and find sites. According to Pierre Nora’s thesis, memorials are established when the places are in danger of being forgotten.Whether one likes canon lists or not, they are a fact. There has always been a process of prioritisation, leading to some finds being preserved and others discarded, some being exhibited and others ending up in the stores.Canonization is expressed in the classical “Seven Wonders of the World”, the “Seven New Wonders of the World” and the World Heritage list. A find may be declared as treasure trove, as being of “unique national significance” or be honoured by the publication of a monograph or by being given its own museum.In practice, the same few finds occur in different contexts. There seems to be a consensus within the subject of canonization of valuing what is well preserved, unique, made of precious metals, bears images and is monumental. A top-ten canon list of prehistoric finds from Denmark according to this consensus would probably include the following finds: The sun chariot from Trundholm, the girl from Egtved, the Dejbjerg carts, the Gundestrup cauldron, Tollund man, the golden horns from Gallehus, the Mammen or Bjerringhøj grave, the Ladby ship and the Skuldelev ships.Just as the past may be used in many different ways, there are many forms of memorial related to monuments from the past or to archaeological excavations. Memorials were constructed in the 18th and 19th centuries at locations where members of the royal family had conducted archaeology. As with most other memorials from that time, the prince is at the centre, while antiquity and archaeology create a brilliant background, for example at Jægerpris (fig. 2). Memorials celebrating King Frederik VII were created at the Dæmpegård dolmen and at the ruin of Asserbo castle. A memorial celebrating Count Frederik Sehested was erected at Møllegårdsmarken (fig. 3). Later there were also memorials celebrating the architect C.M. Smith at the ruin of Kalø Castle and Svend Dyhre Rasmussen and Axel Steensberg, respectively the finder and the excavator of the medieval village at Borup Ris.Several memorials were erected in the decades around 1900 to commemorate important events or persons in Danish history, for example by Thor Lange. The memorials were often located at sites and monuments that had recently been excavated, for example at Fjenneslev (fig. 4).A large number of memorials commemorate abandoned churches, monasteries, castles or barrows that have now disappeared, for example at the monument (fig. 5) near Bjerringhøj.Memorials were erected in the first half of the 20th century near large prehistoric monuments which also functioned as public meeting places, for example at Glavendrup, Gudbjerglund and Hohøj. Prehistoric monuments, especially dolmens, were also used as models when new memorials were created during the 19th and 20th centuries.Finally, sculptures were produced at the end of the 19th century sculptures where the motif was a famous archaeological find – the golden horns, the girl from Egtved, the sun chariot and the woman from Skrydstrup.In the following, this article will focus on a category of memorials raised to commemorate an archaeological find. In Denmark, 24 archaeological find sites have been marked by a total of 26 monuments (fig. 6). This survey is based on excursions, scanning the literature, googling on the web and contact with colleagues. The monuments are presented chronological, i.e. by date of erection. 1-2) The golden horns from Gallehus: Found in 1639 and 1734; two monu­ments in 1907. 3) The Snoldelev runic stone: Found in c. 1780; monument in 1915. 4) The sun chariot from Trundholm bog: Found in 1902; monument in 1925; renewed in 1962 and moved in 2002. 5) The grave mound from Egtved: Found in 1921; monument in 1930. 6) The Dejbjerg carts. Found in 1881-83; monument in 1933. 7) The Gundestrup cauldron: Found in 1891; wooden stake in 1934; replaced with a monument in 1935. 8) The Bregnebjerg burial ground: Found in 1932; miniature dolmen in 1934. 9) The Brangstrup gold hoard. Found in 1865; monument in 1935.10-11) Maglemose settlements in Mulle­rup bog: Found in 1900-02; two monuments in 1935 and 1936. 12) The Skarpsalling vessel from Oudrup Heath: Found in 1891; monument in 1936. 13) The Juellinge burial ground: Found in 1909; monument in 1937. 14) The Ladby ship: Found in 1935; monument probably in 1937. 15) The Hoby grave: Found in 1920; monument in 1939. 16) The Maltbæk lurs: Found in 1861 and 1863; monument in 1942. 17) Ginnerup settlement: First excavation in 1922; monument in 1945. 18) The golden boats from Nors: Found in 1885; monument in 1945. 19) The Sædinge runic stone: Found in 1854; monument in 1945. 20) The Nydam boat: Found in 1863; monument in 1947. 21) The aurochs from Vig: Found in 1904; monument in 1957. 22) Tollund Man: Found in 1950; wooden stake in 1968; renewed inscription in 2000. 23) The Veksø helmets: Found in 1942; monument in 1992. 24) The Bjæverskov coin hoard. Found in 1999; monument in 1999. 25) The Frydenhøj sword from Hvidovre: Found in 1929; monument in 2001; renewed in 2005. 26) The Bellinge key: Found in 1880; monument in 2003.Two monuments (fig. 7) raised in 1997 at Gallehus, where the golden horns were found, marked a new trend. From then onwards the find itself and its popular finders came into focus. At the same time the classical or old Norse style of the memorials was replaced by simple menhirs or boulders with an inscription and sometimes also an image of the find. One memorial was constructed as a miniature dolmen and a few took the form of a wooden stake.The finds marked by memorials represent a broader spectrum than the top-ten list. They represent all periods from the Stone Age to the Middle Ages over most of Denmark. Memorials were created throughout the 20th century; in greatest numbers in the 1930s and 1940s, but with none between 1968 and 1992.The inscriptions mention what was found and, in most cases, also when it happened. Sometimes the finder is named and, in a few instances, also the person on whose initiative the memorial was erected. The latter was usually a representative part of the political agency of the time. In the 18th and 19th centuries it was the royal family and the aristocracy. In the 20th century it was workers, teachers, doctors, priests, farmers and, in many cases, local historical societies who were responsible, as seen on the islands of Lolland and Falster, where ten memorials were erected between 1936 and 1951 to commemorate historical events, individuals, monuments or finds.The memorial from 2001 at the find site of the Frydenhøj sword in Hvidovre represents an innovation in the tradition of marking history in the landscape. The memorial is a monumental hybrid between signposting and public art (fig. 8). It formed part of a communication project called “History in the Street”, which involved telling the history of a Copenhagen suburb right there where it actually happened.The memorials marking archaeological finds relate to the nation and to nationalism in several ways. The monuments at Gallehus should, therefore, be seen in the context of a struggle concerning both the historical allegiance and future destiny of Schleswig or Southern Jutland. More generally, the national perspective occurs in inscriptions using concepts such as “the people”, “Denmark” and “the Danes”, even if these were irrelevant in prehistory, e.g. when the monument from 1930 at Egtved mentions “A young Danish girl” (fig. 9). This use of the past to legitimise the nation, belongs to the epoch of World War I, World War II and the 1930s. The influence of nationalism was often reflected in the ceremonies when the memorials were unveiled, with speeches, flags and songs.According to Marie Louise Stig Sørensen and Inge Adriansen, prehistoric objects that are applicable as national symbols, should satisfy three criteria. The should: 1) be unusual and remarkable by their technical and artistic quality; 2) have been produced locally, i.e. be Danish; 3) have been used in religious ceremonies or processions. The 26 archaeological finds marked with memorials only partly fit these criteria. The finds also include more ordinary finds: a burial ground, settlements, runic stones, a coin hoard, a sword and a key. Several of the finds were produced abroad: the Gundestrup cauldron, the Brangstrup jewellery and coins and the Hoby silver cups.It is tempting to interpret the Danish cultural canon as a new expression of a national use of the past in the present. Nostalgia, the use of the past and the creation of memorials are often explained as an expression of crisis in society. This seems reasonable for the many memorials from 1915-45 with inscriptions mentioning hope, consolation and darkness. However, why are there no memorials from the economic crisis years of the 1970s and 1980s? It seems as if the past is recalled, when the nation is under threat – in the 1930s and 40s from expansive Germany – and since the 1990s by increased immigration and globalisation.The memorials have in common local loss and local initiative. A treasure was found and a treasure was lost, often to the National Museum in Copenhagen. A treasure was won that contributed to the great narrative of the history of Denmark, but that treasure has also left its original context. The memorials commemorate the finds that have contributed to the narrative of the greatness, age and area of Denmark. The memorials connect the nation and the native place, the capital and the village in a community, where the past is a central concept. The find may also become a symbol of a region or community, for example the sun chariot for Trundholm community and the Gundestrup cauldron for Himmerland.It is almost always people who live near the find site who want to remember what has been found and where. The finds were commemorated by a memorial on average 60 years after their discovery. A longer period elapsed for the golden horns from Gallehus; shortest was at Bjæverskov where the coin hoard was found in March 1999 and a monument was erected in November of the same year.Memorials might seem an old-fashioned way of marking localities in a national topography, but new memorials are created in the same period as many new museums are established.A unique find has no prominent role in archaeological education, research or other work. However, in public opinion treasures and exotic finds are central. Folklore tells of people searching for treasures but always failing. Treasure hunting is restricted by taboos. In the world of archaeological finds there are no taboos. The treasure is found by accident and in spite of various hindrances the find is taken to a museum. The finder is often a worthy person – a child, a labourer or peasant. He or she is an innocent and ordinary person. A national symbol requires a worthy finder. And the find occurs as a miracle. At the find site a romantic relationship is established between the ancestors and their heirs who, by way of a miracle, find fragments of the glorious past of the nation. A paradigmatic example is the finding of the golden horns from Gallehus. Other examples extend from the discovery of the sun chariot in Trundholm bog to the Stone Age settlement at Mullerup bog.The article ends with a catalogue presenting the 24 archaeological find sites that have been marked with monuments in present-day Denmark.Jes WienbergHistorisk arkeologiInstitutionen för Arkeologi och ­Antikens historiaLunds Universitet

AbstractAry Scheffer (1795-1858) is so generally included in the French School (Note 2)- unsurprisingly, since his career was confined almost entirely to Paris - that the fact that he was born and partly trained in the Netherlands is often overlooked. Yet throughout his life he kept in touch with Dutch colleagues and drew part of his inspiration from Dutch traditions. These Dutch aspects are the subject of this article. The Amsterdam City Academy, 1806-9 Ary Scheffer was enrolled at the Amsterdam Academy on 25 October 1806, his parents falsifying his date of birth in order to get him admitted at the age of eleven (fifteen was the oficial age) . He started in the third class and in order to qualify for the second he had to be one of the winners in the prize drawing contest. Candidates in this were required to submit six drawings made during the months January to March. Although no-one was supposed to enter until he had been at the Academy for four years, Ary Scheffer competed in both 1808 and 1809. Some of his signed drawings are preserved in Dordrecht. (Figs. 1-5 and 7), along with others not made for the contest. These last in particular are interesting not only because they reveal his first prowess, but also because they give some idea of the Academy practice of his day. Although the training at the Academy broadly followed the same lines as that customary in France, Italy and elsewhere (Note 4), our knowledge of its precise content is very patchy, since there was no set curriculum and no separate teachers for each subject. Two of Scheffer's drawings (Figs. 2 and 3) contain extensive notes, which amount to a more or less complete doctrine of proportion. It is not known who his teacher was or what sources were used, but the proportions do not agree with those in Van der Passe's handbook, which came into vogue in the 18th century, or with those of the canon of a Leonardo, Dürer or Lebrun. One gets the impression that what are given here are the exact measurements of a concrete example. Scheffer's drawings show him gradually mastering the rudiments of art. In earlier examples the hatching is sometimes too hasty (Fig. 4) or too rigidly parallel (Fig.5), while his knowledge of anatomy is still inadequate and his observation not careful enough. But right from the start he shows flair and as early as 1807 he made a clever drawing of a relatively complex group (Fig. 6) , while the difficult figure of Marsyas was already well captured in 1808 and clearly evinces his growing knowledge o f anatomy, proportion , foreshortening and the effects of light (Fig. 7). The same development can be observed in his portrait drawings. That of Gerardus Vrolik (1775-1859, Fig.8), a professor at the Atheneum Illustre (the future university) and Scheffer' s teacher, with whom he always kept in touch (Note 6), is still not entirely convincing, but a portrait of 1809, thought to be of his mother (Fig.9, Note 7), shows him working much more systematically. It is not known when he left the Academy, but from the summer of 1809 we find him in France, where he was to live with only a few breaks from 1811 to his death. The first paintings and the Amsterdam exhibitions of 1808 and 1810 Ary Scheffer's earliest known history painting, Hannibal Swearing to Avenge his Brother Hasdrubal's Death (Fig. 10) Notes 8-10) was shown at the first exhibition of living masters in Amsterdam in 1808. Although there was every reason for giving this subject a Neo-Classical treatment, the chiaroscuro, earthy colours and free brushwork show Scheffer opting for the old Dutch tradition rather than the modern French style. This was doubtless on the prompting of his parents,for a comment in a letter from his mother in 1810 (Note 12) indicates that she shared the reservations of the Dutch in general about French Neo-Classicism. (Note 11). As the work of a twelve to thirteen year old, the painting naturally leaves something to be desired: the composition is too crowded and unbalanced and the anatomy of the secondary figures rudimentary. In a watercolour Scheffer made of the same subject, probably in the 1820's, he introduced much more space between the figures (Fig. 11, Note 13). Two portraits are known from this early period. The first, of Johanna Maria Verbeek (Fig. 12, Note 14), was done when the two youngsters were aged twelve. It again shows all the characteristics of an early work, being schematic in its simplicity, with some rather awkward details and inadequate plasticity. On the other hand the hair and earrings are fluently rendered, the colours harmonious and the picture has an undeniable charm. At the second exhibition of works by living masters in 1810, Ary Scheffer showed a 'portrait of a painter' (Fig. 13), who was undoubtedly his uncle Arnoldus Lamme, who also had work in the exhibition as did Scheffer's recently deceased father Johan-Bernard and his mother Cornelia Scheffer-Lamme, an indication of the stimulating surroundings in which he grew up. The work attracted general attention (Note 16) and it does, indeed, show a remarkable amount of progress, the plasticity, effects of light, brushwork and colour all revealing skill and care in their execution. The simple, bourgeois character of the portrait not only fits in with the Dutch tradition which Scheffer had learned from both his parents in Amsterdam, but also has points in common with the recent developments in France, which he could have got to know during his spell in Lille from autumn 1809 onwards. A Dutchman in Paris Empire and Restoration, 1811-30 In Amsterdam Scheffer had also been laught by his mother, a miniature painter, and his father, a portrait and history painter (Note 17). After his father's death in June 1809, his mother, who not only had a great influence on his artistic career, but also gave his Calvinism and a great love of literature (Note 18), wanted him to finish his training in Paris. After getting the promise of a royal grant from Louis Napoleon for this (Note 19) and while waiting for it to materialize, she sent the boy to Lille to perfect his French as well as further his artistic training. In 1811 Scheffer settled in Paris without a royal grant or any hope of one. He may possibly have studied for a short time under Prudhon (Note 20) , but in the autumn of 1811 he was officially contracted as a pupil of Guérin, one of the leading artists of the school of David, under whom he mastered the formulas of NeD-Classicism, witness his Orpheus and Eurydice (Fïg.14), shown in the Salon of 1814. During his first ten years in Paris Scheffer also painted many genre pieces in order, so he said, to earn a living for himself and his mother. Guérin's prophecy that he would make a great career as a history painter (Note 21) soon came true, but not in the way Guérin thought it would, Scheffer participating in the revolution initiated by his friends and fellow-pupils, Géricault and Delacroix, which resulted in the rise of the Romantic Movement. It was not very difficult for him to break with Neo-Classicism, for with his Dutch background he felt no great affinity with it (Note 22). This development is ilustrated by his Gaston de Foix Dying on the Battlefield After his Victory at Ravenna, shown at the Salon of 1824, and The Women of Souli Throwing Themselves into the Abyss (Fig.15), shown at that of 1827-8. The last years of the Restoration and the July Monarchy. Influence of Rembrandt and the Dutch masters In 1829, when he seemed to have become completely assimilated in France and had won wide renown, Scheffer took the remarkable step of returning to the Netherlands to study the methods of Rembrandt and other Dutch old masters (Note 23) . A new orientation in his work is already apparent in the Women of Souli, which is more harmonious and considered in colour than the Gaston dc Foix (Note 24). This is linked on the one hand to developments in France, where numbers of young painters had abandoned extreme Romanticism to find the 'juste milieu', and on the other to Scheffer's Dutch background. Dutch critics were just as wary of French Romanticism as they had been of Neo-Classicism, urging their own painters to revive the traditions of the Golden Age and praising the French painters of the 'juste milieu'. It is notable how many critics commented on the influence of Rembrandt on Scheffer's works, e.g. his Faust, Marguérite, Tempête and portrait of Talleyrand at the Salon of 1851 (Note 26). The last two of these date from 1828 and show that the reorientation and the interest in Rembrandt predate and were the reasons for the return to the Netherlands in 1829. In 1834 Gustave Planche called Le Larmoyeur (Fig. 16) a pastiche of Rembrandt and A. Barbier made a comparable comment on Le Roi de Thule in 1839 (Note 27). However, as Paul Mantz already noted in 1850 (Note 28), Scheffer certainly did not fully adopt Rembrandt's relief and mystic light. His approach was rather an eclectic one and he also often imbued his work with a characteristically 19th-century melancholy. He himself wrote after another visit to the Netherlands in 1849 that he felt he had touched a chord which others had not attempted (Note 29) . Contacts with Dutch artists and writers Scheffer's links with the Netherlands come out equally or even more strongly in the many contacts he maintained there. As early as 1811-12 Sminck-Pitloo visited him on his way to Rome (Note 30), to be followed in the 1820's by J.C. Schotel (Note 31), while after 1830 as his fame increased, so the contacts also became more numerous. He was sought after by and corresponded with various art dealers (Note 33) and also a large number of Dutch painters, who visited him in Paris or came to study under him (Note 32) Numerous poems were published on paintings by him from 1838 onwards, while Jan Wap and Alexander Ver Huell wrote at length about their visits to him (Note 34) and a 'Scheffer Album' was compiled in 1859. Thus he clearly played a significant role in the artistic life of the Netherlands. International orientation As the son of a Dutch mother and a German father, Scheffer had an international orientation right from the start. Contemporary critics and later writers have pointed out the influences from English portrait painting and German religious painting detectable in his work (Note 35). Extracts from various unpublished letters quoted here reveal how acutely aware he was of what was likely to go down well not only in the Netherlands, but also in a country like England, where he enjoyed great fame (Notes 36-9) . July Monarchy and Second Empire. The last decades While most French artists of his generation seemed to have found their definitive style under the July Monarchy, Scheffer continued to search for new forms of expression. In the 1830's, at the same time as he painted his Rembrandtesque works, he also produced his famous Francesca da Rimini (Fig. 17), which is closer to the 'juste milieu' in its dark colours and linear accents. In the 1840's he used a simple and mainly bright palette without any picturesque effects, e.g. in his SS. Augustine and Monica and The Sorrows of the Earth (Note 41), but even this was not his last word. In an incident that must have occurred around 1857 he cried out on coming across some of his earlier works that he had made a mistake since then and wasted his time (Note 42) and in his Calvin of 1858 (Fig. 18) he resumed his former soft chiaroscuro and warm tones. It is characteristic of him that in that same year he painted a last version of The Sorrows of the Earth in the light palette of the 1840's. Despite the difficulty involved in the precise assessment of influences on a painter with such a complex background, it is clear that even in his later period, when his work scored its greatest successes in France, England and Germany, Scheffer always had a strong bond with the Netherlands and that he not only contributed to the artistic life there, but always retained a feeling for the traditions of his first fatherland. Appendix An appendix is devoted to a study of the head of an old man in Dordrecht, which is catalogued as a copy of a 17th-century painting in the style of Rembrandt done by Ary Scheffer at the age of twelve (Fig.19, Note 43). This cannot be correct, as it is much better than the other works by the twelve-year-old painter. Moreover, no mention is made of it in the catalogue of the retrospective exhibition held in Paris in 1859, where the Hannibal is given as his earliest work (Note 44). It was clearly unknown then, as it is not mentioned in any of the obituaries of 1858 and 1859 either. The earliest reference to it occurs in the list made bv Scheffer's daughter in 1897 of the works she was to bequeath to the Dordrecht museum. A clue to its identification may be a closely similar drawing by Cornelia Scheffer-Lamme (Fig. 20, Note 46), which is probably a copy after the head of the old man. She is known to have made copies after contemporary and 17th-century masters. The portrait might thus be attributable to Johan-Bernard Scheffer, for his wife often made copies of his works and he is known from sale catalogues to have painted various portraits of old men (Note 47, cf. Fig.21). Ary Scheffer also knew this. In 1839 his uncle Arnoldus Lamme wrote to him that he would look out for such a work at a sale (Note 48). It may be that he succeeded in finding one and that this portrait came into the possession of the Scheffer family in that way, but Johan-Bernard's work is too little known for us to be certain about this.

Introduction Cookbooks are an exceptional written record of what is largely an oral tradition. They have been described as “magician’s hats” due to their ability to reveal much more than they seem to contain (Wheaton, “Finding”). The first book printed in Germany was the Guttenberg Bible in 1456 but, by 1490, printing was introduced into almost every European country (Tierney). The spread of literacy between 1500 and 1800, and the rise in silent reading, helped to create a new private sphere into which the individual could retreat, seeking refuge from the community (Chartier). This new technology had its effects in the world of cookery as in so many spheres of culture (Mennell, All Manners). Trubek notes that cookbooks are the texts most often used by culinary historians, since they usually contain all the requisite materials for analysing a cuisine: ingredients, method, technique, and presentation. Printed cookbooks, beginning in the early modern period, provide culinary historians with sources of evidence of the culinary past. Historians have argued that social differences can be expressed by the way and type of food we consume. Cookbooks are now widely accepted as valid socio-cultural and historic documents (Folch, Sherman), and indeed the link between literacy levels and the protestant tradition has been expressed through the study of Danish cookbooks (Gold). From Apicius, Taillevent, La Varenne, and Menon to Bradley, Smith, Raffald, Acton, and Beeton, how can both manuscript and printed cookbooks be analysed as historic documents? What is the difference between a manuscript and a printed cookbook? Barbara Ketchum Wheaton, who has been studying cookbooks for over half a century and is honorary curator of the culinary collection in Harvard’s Schlesinger Library, has developed a methodology to read historic cookbooks using a structured approach. For a number of years she has been giving seminars to scholars from multidisciplinary fields on how to read historic cookbooks. This paper draws on the author’s experiences attending Wheaton’s seminar in Harvard, and on supervising the use of this methodology at both Masters and Doctoral level (Cashman; Mac Con Iomaire, and Cashman). Manuscripts versus Printed Cookbooks A fundamental difference exists between manuscript and printed cookbooks in their relationship with the public and private domain. Manuscript cookbooks are by their very essence intimate, relatively unedited and written with an eye to private circulation. Culinary manuscripts follow the diurnal and annual tasks of the household. They contain recipes for cures and restoratives, recipes for cleansing products for the house and the body, as well as the expected recipes for cooking and preserving all manners of food. Whether manuscript or printed cookbook, the recipes contained within often act as a reminder of how laborious the production of food could be in the pre-industrialised world (White). Printed cookbooks draw oxygen from the very fact of being public. They assume a “literate population with sufficient discretionary income to invest in texts that commodify knowledge” (Folch). This process of commoditisation brings knowledge from the private to the public sphere. There exists a subset of cookbooks that straddle this divide, for example, Mrs. Rundell’s A New System of Domestic Cookery (1806), which brought to the public domain her distillation of a lifetime of domestic experience. Originally intended for her daughters alone, Rundell’s book was reprinted regularly during the nineteenth century with the last edition printed in 1893, when Mrs. Beeton had been enormously popular for over thirty years (Mac Con Iomaire, and Cashman). Barbara Ketchum Wheaton’s Structured Approach Cookbooks can be rewarding, surprising and illuminating when read carefully with due effort in understanding them as cultural artefacts. However, Wheaton notes that: “One may read a single old cookbook and find it immensely entertaining. One may read two and begin to find intriguing similarities and differences. When the third cookbook is read, one’s mind begins to blur, and one begins to sense the need for some sort of method in approaching these documents” (“Finding”). Following decades of studying cookbooks from both sides of the Atlantic and writing a seminal text on the French at table from 1300-1789 (Wheaton, Savouring the Past), this combined experience negotiating cookbooks as historical documents was codified, and a structured approach gradually articulated and shared within a week long seminar format. In studying any cookbook, regardless of era or country of origin, the text is broken down into five different groupings, to wit: ingredients; equipment or facilities; the meal; the book as a whole; and, finally, the worldview. A particular strength of Wheaton’s seminars is the multidisciplinary nature of the approaches of students who attend, which throws the study of cookbooks open to wide ranging techniques. Students with a purely scientific training unearth interesting patterns by developing databases of the frequency of ingredients or techniques, and cross referencing them with other books from similar or different timelines or geographical regions. Patterns are displayed in graphs or charts. Linguists offer their own unique lens to study cookbooks, whereas anthropologists and historians ask what these objects can tell us about how our ancestors lived and drew meaning from life. This process is continuously refined, and each grouping is discussed below. Ingredients The geographic origins of the ingredients are of interest, as is the seasonality and the cost of the foodstuffs within the scope of each cookbook, as well as the sensory quality both separately and combined within different recipes. In the medieval period, the use of spices and large joints of butchers meat and game were symbols of wealth and status. However, when the discovery of sea routes to the New World and to the Far East made spices more available and affordable to the middle classes, the upper classes spurned them. Evidence from culinary manuscripts in Georgian Ireland, for example, suggests that galangal was more easily available in Dublin during the eighteenth century than in the mid-twentieth century. A new aesthetic, articulated by La Varenne in his Le Cuisinier Francois (1651), heralded that food should taste of itself, and so exotic ingredients such as cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger were replaced by the local bouquet garni, and stocks and sauces became the foundations of French haute cuisine (Mac Con Iomaire). Some combinations of flavours and ingredients were based on humoral physiology, a long held belief system based on the writings of Hippocrates and Galen, now discredited by modern scientific understanding. The four humors are blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm. It was believed that each of these humors would wax and wane in the body, depending on diet and activity. Galen (131-201 AD) believed that warm food produced yellow bile and that cold food produced phlegm. It is difficult to fathom some combinations of ingredients or the manner of service without comprehending the contemporary context within they were consumeSome ingredients found in Roman cookbooks, such as “garum” or “silphium” are no longer available. It is suggested that the nearest substitute for garum also known as “liquamen”—a fermented fish sauce—would be Naam Plaa, or Thai fish sauce (Grainger). Ingredients such as tea and white bread, moved from the prerogative of the wealthy over time to become the staple of the urban poor. These ingredients, therefore, symbolise radically differing contexts during the seventeenth century than in the early twentieth century. Indeed, there are other ingredients such as hominy (dried maize kernel treated with alkali) or grahams (crackers made from graham flour) found in American cookbooks that require translation to the unacquainted non-American reader. There has been a growing number of food encyclopaedias published in recent years that assist scholars in identifying such commodities (Smith, Katz, Davidson). The Cook’s Workplace, Techniques, and Equipment It is important to be aware of the type of kitchen equipment used, the management of heat and cold within the kitchen, and also the gradual spread of the industrial revolution into the domestic sphere. Visits to historic castles such as Hampton Court Palace where nowadays archaeologists re-enact life below stairs in Tudor times give a glimpse as to how difficult and labour intensive food production was. Meat was spit-roasted in front of huge fires by spit boys. Forcemeats and purees were manually pulped using mortar and pestles. Various technological developments including spit-dogs, and mechanised pulleys, replaced the spit boys, the most up to date being the mechanised rotisserie. The technological advancements of two hundred years can be seen in the Royal Pavilion in Brighton where Marie-Antoinin Carême worked for the Prince Regent in 1816 (Brighton Pavilion), but despite the gleaming copper pans and high ceilings for ventilation, the work was still back breaking. Carême died aged forty-nine, “burnt out by the flame of his genius and the fumes of his ovens” (Ackerman 90). Mennell points out that his fame outlived him, resting on his books: Le Pâtissier Royal Parisien (1815); Le Pâtissier Pittoresque (1815); Le Maître d’Hôtel Français (1822); Le Cuisinier Parisien (1828); and, finally, L’Art de la Cuisine Française au Dix-Neuvième Siècle (1833–5), which was finished posthumously by his student Pluméry (All Manners). Mennell suggests that these books embody the first paradigm of professional French cuisine (in Kuhn’s terminology), pointing out that “no previous work had so comprehensively codified the field nor established its dominance as a point of reference for the whole profession in the way that Carême did” (All Manners 149). The most dramatic technological changes came after the industrial revolution. Although there were built up ovens available in bakeries and in large Norman households, the period of general acceptance of new cooking equipment that enclosed fire (such as the Aga stove) is from c.1860 to 1910, with gas ovens following in c.1910 to the 1920s) and Electricity from c.1930. New food processing techniques dates are as follows: canning (1860s), cooling and freezing (1880s), freeze drying (1950s), and motorised delivery vans with cooking (1920s–1950s) (den Hartog). It must also be noted that the supply of fresh food, and fish particularly, radically improved following the birth, and expansion of, the railways. To understand the context of the cookbook, one needs to be aware of the limits of the technology available to the users of those cookbooks. For many lower to middle class families during the twentieth century, the first cookbook they would possess came with their gas or electrical oven. Meals One can follow cooked dishes from the kitchen to the eating place, observing food presentation, carving, sequencing, and serving of the meal and table etiquette. Meal times and structure changed over time. During the Middle Ages, people usually ate two meals a day: a substantial dinner around noon and a light supper in the evening (Adamson). Some of the most important factors to consider are the manner in which meals were served: either à la française or à la russe. One of the main changes that occurred during the nineteenth century was the slow but gradual transfer from service à la française to service à la russe. From medieval times to the middle of the nineteenth century the structure of a formal meal was not by “courses”—as the term is now understood—but by “services”. Each service could comprise of a choice of dishes—both sweet and savoury—from which each guest could select what appealed to him or her most (Davidson). The philosophy behind this form of service was the forementioned humoral physiology— where each diner chose food based on the four humours of blood, yellow bile, black bile, or phlegm. Also known as le grand couvert, the à la française method made it impossible for the diners to eat anything that was beyond arm’s length (Blake, and Crewe). Smooth service, however, was the key to an effective à la russe dinner since servants controlled the flow of food (Eatwell). The taste and temperature of food took centre stage with the à la russe dinner as each course came in sequence. Many historic cookbooks offer table plans illustrating the suggested arrangement of dishes on a table for the à la française style of service. Many of these dishes might be re-used in later meals, and some dishes such as hashes and rissoles often utilised left over components of previous meals. There is a whole genre of cookbooks informing the middle class cooks how to be frugal and also how to emulate haute cuisine using cheaper or ersatz ingredients. The number dining and the manner in which they dined also changed dramatically over time. From medieval to Tudor times, there might be hundreds dining in large banqueting halls. By the Elizabethan age, a small intimate room where master and family dined alone replaced the old dining hall where master, servants, guests, and travellers had previously dined together (Spencer). Dining tables remained portable until the 1780s when tables with removable leaves were devised. By this time, the bread trencher had been replaced by one made of wood, or plate of pewter or precious metal in wealthier houses. Hosts began providing knives and spoons for their guests by the seventeenth century, with forks also appearing but not fully accepted until the eighteenth century (Mason). These silver utensils were usually marked with the owner’s initials to prevent their theft (Flandrin). Cookbooks as Objects and the World of Publishing A thorough examination of the manuscript or printed cookbook can reveal their physical qualities, including indications of post-publication history, the recipes and other matter in them, as well as the language, organization, and other individual qualities. What can the quality of the paper tell us about the book? Is there a frontispiece? Is the book dedicated to an employer or a patron? Does the author note previous employment history in the introduction? In his Court Cookery, Robert Smith, for example, not only mentions a number of his previous employers, but also outlines that he was eight years working with Patrick Lamb in the Court of King William, before revealing that several dishes published in Lamb’s Royal Cookery (1710) “were never made or practis’d (sic) by him and others are extreme defective and imperfect and made up of dishes unknown to him; and several of them more calculated at the purses than the Gôut of the guests”. Both Lamb and Smith worked for the English monarchy, nobility, and gentry, but produced French cuisine. Not all Britons were enamoured with France, however, with, for example Hannah Glasse asserting “if gentlemen will have French cooks, they must pay for French tricks” (4), and “So much is the blind folly of this age, that they would rather be imposed on by a French Booby, than give encouragement to an good English cook” (ctd. in Trubek 60). Spencer contextualises Glasse’s culinary Francophobia, explaining that whilst she was writing the book, the Jacobite army were only a few days march from London, threatening to cut short the Hanoverian lineage. However, Lehmann points out that whilst Glasse was overtly hostile to French cuisine, she simultaneously plagiarised its receipts. Based on this trickling down of French influences, Mennell argues that “there is really no such thing as a pure-bred English cookery book” (All Manners 98), but that within the assimilation and simplification, a recognisable English style was discernable. Mennell also asserts that Glasse and her fellow women writers had an enormous role in the social history of cooking despite their lack of technical originality (“Plagiarism”). It is also important to consider the place of cookbooks within the history of publishing. Albala provides an overview of the immense outpouring of dietary literature from the printing presses from the 1470s. He divides the Renaissance into three periods: Period I Courtly Dietaries (1470–1530)—targeted at the courtiers with advice to those attending banquets with many courses and lots of wine; Period II The Galenic Revival (1530–1570)—with a deeper appreciation, and sometimes adulation, of Galen, and when scholarship took centre stage over practical use. Finally Period III The Breakdown of Orthodoxy (1570–1650)—when, due to the ambiguities and disagreements within and between authoritative texts, authors were freer to pick the ideas that best suited their own. Nutrition guides were consistent bestsellers, and ranged from small handbooks written in the vernacular for lay audiences, to massive Latin tomes intended for practicing physicians. Albala adds that “anyone with an interest in food appears to have felt qualified to pen his own nutritional guide” (1). Would we have heard about Mrs. Beeton if her husband had not been a publisher? How could a twenty-five year old amass such a wealth of experience in household management? What role has plagiarism played in the history of cookbooks? It is interesting to note that a well worn copy of her book (Beeton) was found in the studio of Francis Bacon and it is suggested that he drew inspiration for a number of his paintings from the colour plates of animal carcasses and butcher’s meat (Dawson). Analysing the post-publication usage of cookbooks is valuable to see the most popular recipes, the annotations left by the owner(s) or user(s), and also if any letters, handwritten recipes, or newspaper clippings are stored within the leaves of the cookbook. The Reader, the Cook, the Eater The physical and inner lives and needs and skills of the individuals who used cookbooks and who ate their meals merit consideration. Books by their nature imply literacy. Who is the book’s audience? Is it the cook or is it the lady of the house who will dictate instructions to the cook? Numeracy and measurement is also important. Where clocks or pocket watches were not widely available, authors such as seventeenth century recipe writer Sir Kenelm Digby would time his cooking by the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer. Literacy amongst protestant women to enable them to read the Bible, also enabled them to read cookbooks (Gold). How did the reader or eater’s religion affect the food practices? Were there fast days? Were there substitute foods for fast days? What about special occasions? Do historic cookbooks only tell us about the food of the middle and upper classes? It is widely accepted today that certain cookbook authors appeal to confident cooks, while others appeal to competent cooks, and others still to more cautious cooks (Bilton). This has always been the case, as has the differentiation between the cookbook aimed at the professional cook rather than the amateur. Historically, male cookbook authors such as Patrick Lamb (1650–1709) and Robert Smith targeted the professional cook market and the nobility and gentry, whereas female authors such as Eliza Acton (1799–1859) and Isabella Beeton (1836–1865) often targeted the middle class market that aspired to emulate their superiors’ fashions in food and dining. How about Tavern or Restaurant cooks? When did they start to put pen to paper, and did what they wrote reflect the food they produced in public eateries? Conclusions This paper has offered an overview of Barbara Ketchum Wheaton’s methodology for reading historic cookbooks using a structured approach. It has highlighted some of the questions scholars and researchers might ask when faced with an old cookbook, regardless of era or geographical location. By systematically examining the book under the headings of ingredients; the cook’s workplace, techniques and equipment; the meals; cookbooks as objects and the world of publishing; and reader, cook and eater, the scholar can perform magic and extract much more from the cookbook than seems to be there on first appearance. References Ackerman, Roy. The Chef's Apprentice. London: Headline, 1988. Adamson, Melitta Weiss. Food in Medieval Times. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood P, 2004. Albala, Ken. Eating Right in the Renaissance. Ed. Darra Goldstein. Berkeley: U of California P, 2002. Beeton, Isabella. Beeton's Book of Household Management. London: S. Beeton, 1861. Bilton, Samantha. “The Influence of Cookbooks on Domestic Cooks, 1900-2010.” Petit Propos Culinaires 94 (2011): 30–7. Blake, Anthony, and Quentin Crewe. Great Chefs of France. London: Mitchell Beazley/ Artists House, 1978. Brighton Pavilion. 12 Jun. 2013 ‹http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/interactive/2011/sep/09/brighton-pavilion-360-interactive-panoramic›. Cashman, Dorothy. “An Exploratory Study of Irish Cookbooks.” Unpublished Master's Thesis. M.Sc. Dublin: Dublin Institute of Technology, 2009. Chartier, Roger. “The Practical Impact of Writing.” Trans. Arthur Goldhammer. A History of Private Lives: Volume III: Passions of the Renaissance. Ed. Roger Chartier. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap P of Harvard U, 1989. 111-59. Davidson, Alan. The Oxford Companion to Food. New York: Oxford U P, 1999. Dawson, Barbara. “Francis Bacon and the Art of Food.” The Irish Times 6 April 2013. den Hartog, Adel P. “Technological Innovations and Eating out as a Mass Phenomenon in Europe: A Preamble.” Eating out in Europe: Picnics, Gourmet Dining and Snacks since the Late Eighteenth Century. Eds. Mark Jacobs and Peter Scholliers. Oxford: Berg, 2003. 263–80. Eatwell, Ann. “Á La Française to À La Russe, 1680-1930.” Elegant Eating: Four Hundred Years of Dining in Style. Eds. Philippa Glanville and Hilary Young. London: V&A, 2002. 48–52. Flandrin, Jean-Louis. “Distinction through Taste.” Trans. Arthur Goldhammer. A History of Private Lives: Volume III : Passions of the Renaissance. Ed. Roger Chartier. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap P of Harvard U, 1989. 265–307. Folch, Christine. “Fine Dining: Race in Pre-revolution Cuban Cookbooks.” Latin American Research Review 43.2 (2008): 205–23. Glasse, Hannah. The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy; Which Far Exceeds Anything of the Kind Ever Published. 4th Ed. London: The Author, 1745. Gold, Carol. Danish Cookbooks: Domesticity and National Identity, 1616-1901. Seattle: U of Washington P, 2007. Grainger, Sally. Cooking Apicius: Roman Recipes for Today. Totnes, Devon: Prospect, 2006. Hampton Court Palace. “The Tudor Kitchens.” 12 Jun 2013 ‹http://www.hrp.org.uk/HamptonCourtPalace/stories/thetudorkitchens› Katz, Solomon H. Ed. Encyclopedia of Food and Culture (3 Vols). New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2003. Kuhn, T. S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1962. Lamb, Patrick. Royal Cookery:Or. The Complete Court-Cook. London: Abel Roper, 1710. Lehmann, Gilly. “English Cookery Books in the 18th Century.” The Oxford Companion to Food. Ed. Alan Davidson. Oxford: Oxford U P, 1999. 277–9. Mac Con Iomaire, Máirtín. “The Changing Geography and Fortunes of Dublin’s Haute Cuisine Restaurants 1958–2008.” Food, Culture & Society 14.4 (2011): 525–45. Mac Con Iomaire, Máirtín, and Dorothy Cashman. “Irish Culinary Manuscripts and Printed Cookbooks: A Discussion.” Petit Propos Culinaires 94 (2011): 81–101. Mason, Laura. Food Culture in Great Britain. Ed. Ken Albala. Westport CT.: Greenwood P, 2004. Mennell, Stephen. All Manners of Food. 2nd ed. Chicago: U of Illinois P, 1996. ---. “Plagiarism and Originality: Diffusionism in the Study of the History of Cookery.” Petits Propos Culinaires 68 (2001): 29–38. Sherman, Sandra. “‘The Whole Art and Mystery of Cooking’: What Cookbooks Taught Readers in the Eighteenth Century.” Eighteenth Century Life 28.1 (2004): 115–35. Smith, Andrew F. Ed. The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink. New York: Oxford U P, 2007. Spencer, Colin. British Food: An Extraordinary Thousand Years of History. London: Grub Street, 2004. Tierney, Mark. Europe and the World 1300-1763. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1970. Trubek, Amy B. Haute Cuisine: How the French Invented the Culinary Profession. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2000. Wheaton, Barbara. “Finding Real Life in Cookbooks: The Adventures of a Culinary Historian”. 2006. Humanities Research Group Working Paper. 9 Sep. 2009 ‹http://www.phaenex.uwindsor.ca/ojs/leddy/index.php/HRG/article/view/22/27›. Wheaton, Barbara Ketcham. Savouring the Past: The French Kitchen and Table from 1300-1789. London: Chatto & Windus, 1983. White, Eileen, ed. The English Cookery Book: Historical Essays. Proceedings of the 16th Leeds Symposium on Food History 2001. Devon: Prospect, 2001.

IntroductionThere are two types of Africa. The first is a place where people and cultures live. The second is the image of Africa that has been invented through colonial knowledge and power. The colonial image of Africa, as the Other of Europe, a land “enveloped in the dark mantle of night” was supported by western states as it justified their colonial practices (Hegel 91). Any evidence that challenged the myth of the Dark Continent was destroyed, removed or ignored. While the looting of African natural resources has been studied, the looting of African knowledges hasn’t received as much attention, partly based on the assumption that Africans did not produce knowledge that could be stolen. This article invalidates this myth by examining the legacy of Ethiopia’s indigenous Ge’ez literature, and its looting and abduction by powerful western agents. The article argues that this has resulted in epistemic violence, where students of the Ethiopian indigenous education system do not have access to their books, while European orientalists use them to interpret Ethiopian history and philosophy using a foreign lens. The analysis is based on interviews with teachers and students of ten Ge’ez schools in Ethiopia, and trips to the Ethiopian manuscript collections in The British Library, The Princeton Library, the Institute of Ethiopian Studies and The National Archives in Addis Ababa.The Context of Ethiopian Indigenous KnowledgesGe’ez is one of the ancient languages of Africa. According to Professor Ephraim Isaac, “about 10,000 years ago, one single nation or community of a single linguistic group existed in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and the Horn of Africa” (The Habesha). The language of this group is known as Proto-Afroasiatic or Afrasian languages. It is the ancestor of the Semitic, Cushitic, Nilotic, Omotic and other languages that are currently spoken in Ethiopia by its 80 ethnic groups, and the neighbouring countries (Diakonoff). Ethiopians developed the Ge’ez language as their lingua franca with its own writing system some 2000 years ago. Currently, Ge’ez is the language of academic scholarship, studied through the traditional education system (Isaac, The Ethiopian). Since the fourth century, an estimated 1 million Ge’ez manuscripts have been written, covering religious, historical, mathematical, medicinal, and philosophical texts.One of the most famous Ge’ez manuscripts is the Kebra Nagast, a foundational text that embodied the indigenous conception of nationhood in Ethiopia. The philosophical, political and religious themes in this book, which craft Ethiopia as God’s country and the home of the Ark of the Covenant, contributed to the country’s success in defending itself from European colonialism. The production of books like the Kebra Nagast went hand in hand with a robust indigenous education system that trained poets, scribes, judges, artists, administrators and priests. Achieving the highest stages of learning requires about 30 years after which the scholar would be given the rare title Arat-Ayina, which means “four eyed”, a person with the ability to see the past as well as the future. Today, there are around 50,000 Ge’ez schools across the country, most of which are in rural villages and churches.Ge’ez manuscripts are important textbooks and reference materials for students. They are carefully prepared from vellum “to make them last forever” (interview, 3 Oct. 2019). Some of the religious books are regarded as “holy persons who breathe wisdom that gives light and food to the human soul”. Other manuscripts, often prepared as scrolls are used for medicinal purposes. Each manuscript is uniquely prepared reflecting inherited wisdom on contemporary lives using the method called Tirguamme, the act of giving meaning to sacred texts. Preparation of books is costly. Smaller manuscript require the skins of 50-70 goats/sheep and large manuscript needed 100-120 goats/sheep (Tefera).The Loss of Ethiopian ManuscriptsSince the 18th century, a large quantity of these manuscripts have been stolen, looted, or smuggled out of the country by travellers who came to the country as explorers, diplomats and scientists. The total number of Ethiopian manuscripts taken is still unknown. Amsalu Tefera counted 6928 Ethiopian manuscripts currently held in foreign libraries and museums. This figure does not include privately held or unofficial collections (41).Looting and smuggling were sponsored by western governments, institutions, and notable individuals. For example, in 1868, The British Museum Acting Director Richard Holms joined the British army which was sent to ‘rescue’ British hostages at Maqdala, the capital of Emperor Tewodros. Holms’ mission was to bring treasures for the Museum. Before the battle, Tewodros had established the Medhanialem library with more than 1000 manuscripts as part of Ethiopia’s “industrial revolution”. When Tewodros lost the war and committed suicide, British soldiers looted the capital, including the treasury and the library. They needed 200 mules and 15 elephants to transport the loot and “set fire to all buildings so that no trace was left of the edifices which once housed the manuscripts” (Rita Pankhurst 224). Richard Holmes collected 356 manuscripts for the Museum. A wealthy British woman called Lady Meux acquired some of the most illuminated manuscripts. In her will, she bequeathed them to be returned to Ethiopia. However, her will was reversed by court due to a campaign from the British press (Richard Pankhurst). In 2018, the V&A Museum in London displayed some of the treasures by incorporating Maqdala into the imperial narrative of Britain (Woldeyes, Reflections).Britain is by no means the only country to seek Ethiopian manuscripts for their collections. Smuggling occurred in the name of science, an act of collecting manuscripts for study. Looting involved local collaborators and powerful foreign sponsors from places like France, Germany and the Vatican. Like Maqdala, this was often sponsored by governments or powerful financers. For example, the French government sponsored the Dakar-Djibouti Mission led by Marcel Griaule, which “brought back about 350 manuscripts and scrolls from Gondar” (Wion 2). It was often claimed that these manuscripts were purchased, rather than looted. Johannes Flemming of Germany was said to have purchased 70 manuscripts and ten scrolls for the Royal Library of Berlin in 1905. However, there was no local market for buying manuscripts. Ge’ez manuscripts were, and still are, written to serve spiritual and secular life in Ethiopia, not for buying and selling. There are countless other examples, but space limits how many can be provided in this article. What is important to note is that museums and libraries have accrued impressive collections without emphasising how those collections were first obtained. The loss of the intellectual heritage of Ethiopians to western collectors has had an enormous impact on the country.Knowledge Grabbing: The Denial of Access to KnowledgeWith so many manuscripts lost, European collectors became the narrators of Ethiopian knowledge and history. Edward Ullendorff, a known orientalist in Ethiopian studies, refers to James Bruce as “the explorer of Abyssinia” (114). Ullendorff commented on the significance of Bruce’s travel to Ethiopia asperhaps the most important aspect of Bruce’s travels was the collection of Ethiopic manuscripts… . They opened up entirely new vistas for the study of Ethiopian languages and placed this branch of Oriental scholarship on a much more secure basis. It is not known how many MSS. reached Europe through his endeavours, but the present writer is aware of at least twenty-seven, all of which are exquisite examples of Ethiopian manuscript art. (133)This quote encompasses three major ways in which epistemic violence occurs: denial of access to knowledge, Eurocentric interpretation of Ethiopian manuscripts, and the handling of Ge’ez manuscripts as artefacts from the past. These will be discussed below.Western ‘travellers’, such as Bruce, did not fully disclose how many manuscripts they took or how they acquired them. The abundance of Ethiopian manuscripts in western institutions can be compared to the scarcity of such materials among traditional schools in Ethiopia. In this research, I have visited ten indigenous schools in Wollo (Lalibela, Neakutoleab, Asheten, Wadla), in Gondar (Bahita, Kuskwam, Menbere Mengist), and Gojam (Bahirdar, Selam Argiew Maryam, Giorgis). In all of the schools, there is lack of Ge’ez manuscripts. Students often come from rural villages and do not receive any government support. The scarcity of Ge’ez manuscripts, and the lack of funding which might allow for the purchasing of books, means the students depend mainly on memorising Ge’ez texts told to them from the mouth of their teacher. Although this method of learning is not new, it currently is the only way for passing indigenous knowledges across generations.The absence of manuscripts is most strongly felt in the advanced schools. For instance, in the school of Qene, poetic literature is created through an in-depth study of the vocabulary and grammar of Ge’ez. A Qene student is required to develop a deep knowledge of Ge’ez in order to understand ancient and medieval Ge’ez texts which are used to produce poetry with multiple meanings. Without Ge’ez manuscripts, students cannot draw their creative works from the broad intellectual tradition of their ancestors. When asked how students gain access to textbooks, one student commented:we don’t have access to Birana books (Ge’ez manuscripts written on vellum). We cannot learn the ancient wisdom of painting, writing, and computing developed by our ancestors. We simply buy paper books such as Dawit (Psalms), Sewasew (grammar) or Degwa (book of songs with notations) and depend on our teachers to teach us the rest. We also lend these books to each other as many students cannot afford to buy them. Without textbooks, we expect to spend double the amount of time it would take if we had textbooks. (Interview, 3 Sep. 2019)Many students interrupt their studies and work as labourers to save up and buy paper textbooks, but they still don’t have access to the finest works taken to Europe. Most Ge’ez manuscripts remaining in Ethiopia are locked away in monasteries, church stores or other places to prevent further looting. The manuscripts in Addis Ababa University and the National Archives are available for researchers but not to the students of the indigenous system, creating a condition of internal knowledge grabbing.While the absence of Ge’ez manuscripts denied, and continues to deny, Ethiopians the chance to enrich their indigenous education, it benefited western orientalists to garner intellectual authority on the field of Ethiopian studies. In 1981, British Museum Director John Wilson said, “our Abyssinian holdings are more important than our Indian collection” (Bell 231). In reaction, Richard Pankhurst, the Director of Ethiopian Studies in Addis Ababa, responded that the collection was acquired through plunder. Defending the retaining of Maqdala manuscripts in Europe, Ullendorff wrote:neither Dr. Pankhurst nor the Ethiopian and western scholars who have worked on this collection (and indeed on others in Europe) could have contributed so significantly to the elucidation of Ethiopian history without the rich resources available in this country. Had they remained insitu, none of this would have been possible. (Qtd. in Bell 234)The manuscripts are therefore valued based on their contribution to western scholarship only. This is a continuation of epistemic violence whereby local knowledges are used as raw materials to produce Eurocentric knowledge, which in turn is used to teach Africans as though they had no prior knowledge. Scholars are defined as those western educated persons who can speak European languages and can travel to modern institutions to access the manuscripts. Knowledge grabbing regards previous owners as inexistent or irrelevant for the use of the grabbed knowledges.Knowledge grabbing also means indigenous scholars are deprived of critical resources to produce new knowledge based on their intellectual heritage. A Qene teacher commented: our students could not devote their time and energy to produce new knowledges in the same way our ancestors did. We have the tradition of Madeladel, Kimera, Kuteta, Mielad, Qene and tirguamme where students develop their own system of remembering, reinterpreting, practicing, and rewriting previous manuscripts and current ones. Without access to older manuscripts, we increasingly depend on preserving what is being taught orally by elders. (Interview, 4 Sep. 2019)This point is important as it relates to the common myth that indigenous knowledges are artefacts belonging to the past, not the present. There are millions of people who still use these knowledges, but the conditions necessary for their reproduction and improvement is denied through knowledge grabbing. The view of Ge’ez manuscripts as artefacts dismisses the Ethiopian view that Birana manuscripts are living persons. As a scholar told me in Gondar, “they are creations of Egziabher (God), like all of us. Keeping them in institutions is like keeping living bodies in graveyards” (interview, 5 Oct. 2019).Recently, the collection of Ethiopian manuscripts by western institutions has also been conducted digitally. Thousands of manuscripts have been microfilmed or digitised. For example, the EU funded Ethio-SPaRe project resulted in the digital collection of 2000 Ethiopian manuscripts (Nosnitsin). While digitisation promises better access for people who may not be able to visit institutions to see physical copies, online manuscripts are not accessible to indigenous school students in Ethiopia. They simply do not have computer or internet access and the manuscripts are catalogued in European languages. Both physical and digital knowledge grabbing results in the robbing of Ethiopian intellectual heritage, and denies the possibility of such manuscripts being used to inform local scholarship. Epistemic Violence: The European as ExpertWhen considered in relation to stolen or appropriated manuscripts, epistemic violence is the way in which local knowledge is interpreted using a foreign epistemology and gained dominance over indigenous worldviews. European scholars have monopolised the field of Ethiopian Studies by producing books, encyclopaedias and digital archives based on Ethiopian manuscripts, almost exclusively in European languages. The contributions of their work for western scholarship is undeniable. However, Kebede argues that one of the detrimental effects of this orientalist literature is the thesis of Semiticisation, the designation of the origin of Ethiopian civilisation to the arrival of Middle Eastern colonisers rather than indigenous sources.The thesis is invented to make the history of Ethiopia consistent with the Hegelian western view that Africa is a Dark Continent devoid of a civilisation of its own. “In light of the dominant belief that black peoples are incapable of great achievements, the existence of an early and highly advanced civilization constitutes a serious anomaly in the Eurocentric construction of the world” (Kebede 4). To address this anomaly, orientalists like Ludolph attributed the origin of Ethiopia’s writing system, agriculture, literature, and civilisation to the arrival of South Arabian settlers. For example, in his translation of the Kebra Nagast, Budge wrote: “the SEMITES found them [indigenous Ethiopians] negro savages, and taught them civilization and culture and the whole scriptures on which their whole literature is based” (x).In line with the above thesis, Dillman wrote that “the Abyssinians borrowed their Numerical Signs from the Greeks” (33). The views of these orientalist scholars have been challenged. For instance, leading scholar of Semitic languages Professor Ephraim Isaac considers the thesis of the Arabian origin of Ethiopian civilization “a Hegelian Eurocentric philosophical perspective of history” (2). Isaac shows that there is historical, archaeological, and linguistic evidence that suggest Ethiopia to be more advanced than South Arabia from pre-historic times. Various Ethiopian sources including the Kebra Nagast, the works of historian Asres Yenesew, and Ethiopian linguist Girma Demeke provide evidence for the indigenous origin of Ethiopian civilisation and languages.The epistemic violence of the Semeticisation thesis lies in how this Eurocentric ideological construction is the dominant narrative in the field of Ethiopian history and the education system. Unlike the indigenous view, the orientalist view is backed by strong institutional power both in Ethiopia and abroad. The orientalists control the field of Ethiopian studies and have access to Ge’ez manuscripts. Their publications are the only references for Ethiopian students. Due to Native Colonialism, a system of power run by native elites through the use of colonial ideas and practices (Woldeyes), the education system is the imitation of western curricula, including English as a medium of instruction from high school onwards. Students study the west more than Ethiopia. Indigenous sources are generally excluded as unscientific. Only the Eurocentric interpretation of Ethiopian manuscripts is regarded as scientific and objective.ConclusionEthiopia is the only African country never to be colonised. In its history it produced a large quantity of manuscripts in the Ge’ez language through an indigenous education system that involves the study of these manuscripts. Since the 19th century, there has been an ongoing loss of these manuscripts. European travellers who came to Ethiopia as discoverers, missionaries and scholars took a large number of manuscripts. The Battle of Maqdala involved the looting of the intellectual products of Ethiopia that were collected at the capital. With the introduction of western education and use of English as a medium of instruction, the state disregarded indigenous schools whose students have little access to the manuscripts. This article brings the issue of knowledge grapping, a situation whereby European institutions and scholars accumulate Ethiopia manuscripts without providing the students in Ethiopia to have access to those collections.Items such as manuscripts that are held in western institutions are not dead artefacts of the past to be preserved for prosperity. They are living sources of knowledge that should be put to use in their intended contexts. Local Ethiopian scholars cannot study ancient and medieval Ethiopia without travelling and gaining access to western institutions. This lack of access and resources has made European Ethiopianists almost the sole producers of knowledge about Ethiopian history and culture. For example, indigenous sources and critical research that challenge the Semeticisation thesis are rarely available to Ethiopian students. Here we see epistemic violence in action. Western control over knowledge production has the detrimental effect of inventing new identities, subjectivities and histories that translate into material effects in the lives of African people. In this way, Ethiopians and people all over Africa internalise western understandings of themselves and their history as primitive and in need of development or outside intervention. African’s intellectual and cultural heritage, these living bodies locked away in graveyards, must be put back into the hands of Africans.AcknowledgementThe author acknowledges the support of the Australian Academy of the Humanities' 2019 Humanities Travelling Fellowship Award in conducting this research.ReferencesBell, Stephen. “Cultural Treasures Looted from Maqdala: A Summary of Correspondence in British National Newspapers since 1981.” Kasa and Kasa. Eds. Tadesse Beyene, Richard Pankhurst, and Shifereraw Bekele. Addis Ababa: Ababa University Book Centre, 1990. 231-246.Budge, Wallis. A History of Ethiopia, Nubia and Abyssinia. London: Methuen and Co, 1982.Demeke, Girma Awgichew. The Origin of Amharic. Trenton: Red Sea Press, 2013.Diakonoff, Igor M. Afrasian Languages. Moscow: Nauka, 1988.Dillmann, August. Ethiopic Grammar. Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2005.Hegel, Georg W.F. The Philosophy of History. New York: Dover, 1956.Isaac, Ephraim. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido Church. New Jersey: Red Sea Press, 2013.———. “An Open Letter to an Inquisitive Ethiopian Sister.” The Habesha, 2013. 1 Feb. 2020 <http://www.zehabesha.com/an-open-letter-to-an-inquisitive-young-ethiopian-sister-ethiopian-history-is-not-three-thousand-years/>.Kebra Nagast. "The Queen of Sheba and Her Only Son Menyelik I." Trans. Wallis Budge. London: Oxford UP, 1932.Pankhurst, Richard. "The Napier Expedition and the Loot Form Maqdala." Presence Africaine 133-4 (1985): 233-40.Pankhurst, Rita. "The Maqdala Library of Tewodros." Kasa and Kasa. Eds. Tadesse Beyene, Richard Pankhurst, and Shifereraw Bekele. Addis Ababa: Ababa University Book Centre, 1990. 223-230.Tefera, Amsalu. ነቅዐ መጻህፍት ከ መቶ በላይ በግዕዝ የተጻፉ የእኢትዮጵያ መጻህፍት ዝርዝር ከማብራሪያ ጋር።. Addis Ababa: Jajaw, 2019.Nosnitsin, Denis. "Ethio-Spare Cultural Heritage of Christian Ethiopia: Salvation, Preservation and Research." 2010. 5 Jan. 2019 <https://www.aai.uni-hamburg.de/en/ethiostudies/research/ethiospare/missions/pdf/report2010-1.pdf>. Ullendorff, Edward. "James Bruce of Kinnaird." The Scottish Historical Review 32.114, part 2 (1953): 128-43.Wion, Anaïs. "Collecting Manuscripts and Scrolls in Ethiopia: The Missions of Johannes Flemming (1905) and Enno Littmann (1906)." 2012. 5 Jan. 2019 <https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00524382/document>. Woldeyes, Yirga Gelaw. Native Colonialism: Education and the Economy of Violence against Traditions in Ethiopia. Trenton: Red Sea Press, 2017.———. “Reflections on Ethiopia’s Stolen Treasures on Display in a London Museum.” The Conversation. 2018. 5 June 2018 <https://theconversation.com/reflections-on-ethiopias-stolen-treasures-on-display-in-a-london-museum-97346>.Yenesew, Asres. ትቤ፡አክሱም፡መኑ፡ አንተ? Addis Ababa: Nigid Printing House, 1959 [1951 EC].

Cultural sociologists (Bourdieu; DiMaggio, “Cultural Capital”, “Classification”; Gans; Lamont & Foumier; Halle; Erickson) wrote about high culture and popular culture in an attempt to explain the growing social and economic inequalities, to find consensus on culture hierarchies, and to analyze cultural complexities. Halle states that this categorisation of culture into “high culture” and “popular culture” underlined most of the debate on culture in the last fifty years. Gans contends that both high culture and popular culture are stereotypes, public forms of culture or taste cultures, each sharing “common aesthetic values and standards of tastes” (8). However, this article is not concerned with these categorisations, or macro analysis. Rather, it is a reflection piece that inquires if opera, which is usually considered high culture, has become more equal to popular culture, and why some directors change the time and place of opera plots, whereas others will stay true to the original setting of the story. I do not consider these productions “adaptations,” but “post-modern morphologies,” and I will refer to this later in the paper. In other words, the paper is seeking to explain a social phenomenon and explore the underlying motives by quoting interviews with directors. The word ‘opera’ is defined in Elson’s Music Dictionary as: “a form of musical composition evolved shortly before 1600, by some enthusiastic Florentine amateurs who sought to bring back the Greek plays to the modern stage” (189). Hence, it was an experimentation to revive Greek music and drama believed to be the ideal way to express emotions (Grout 186). It is difficult to pinpoint the exact moment when stage directors started changing the time and place of the original settings of operas. The practice became more common after World War II, and Peter Brook’s Covent Garden productions of Boris Godunov (1948) and Salome (1949) are considered the prototypes of this practice (Sutcliffe 19-20). Richard Wagner’s grandsons, the brothers Wieland and Wolfgang Wagner are cited in the music literature as using technology and modern innovations in staging and design beginning in the early 1950s. Brief Background into the History of Opera Grout contends that opera began as an attempt to heighten the dramatic expression of language by intensifying the natural accents of speech through melody supported by simple harmony. In the late 1590s, the Italian composer Jacopo Peri wrote what is considered to be the first opera, but most of it has been lost. The first surviving complete opera is Euridice, a version of the Orpheus myth that Peri and Giulio Caccini jointly set to music in 1600. The first composer to understand the possibilities inherent in this new musical form was Claudio Monteverdi, who in 1607 wrote Orfeo. Although it was based on the same story as Euridice, it was expanded to a full five acts. Early opera was meant for small, private audiences, usually at court; hence it began as an elitist genre. After thirty years of being private, in 1637, opera went public with the opening of the first public opera house, Teatro di San Cassiano, in Venice, and the genre quickly became popular. Indeed, Monteverdi wrote his last two operas, Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria and L’incoronazione di Poppea for the Venetian public, thereby leading the transition from the Italian courts to the ‘public’. Both operas are still performed today. Poppea was the first opera to be based on a historical rather than a mythological or allegorical subject. Sutcliffe argues that opera became popular because it was a new mixture of means: new words, new music, new methods of performance. He states, “operatic fashion through history may be a desire for novelty, new formulas displacing old” (65). By the end of the 17th century, Venice alone had ten opera houses that had produced more than 350 operas. Wealthy families purchased season boxes, but inexpensive tickets made the genre available to persons of lesser means. The genre spread quickly, and various styles of opera developed. In Naples, for example, music rather than the libretto dominated opera. The genre spread to Germany and France, each developing the genre to suit the demands of its audiences. For example, ballet became an essential component of French opera. Eventually, “opera became the profligate art as large casts and lavish settings made it the most expensive public entertainment. It was the only art that without embarrassment called itself ‘grand’” (Boorstin 467). Contemporary Opera Productions Opera continues to be popular. According to a 2002 report released by the National Endowment for the Arts, 6.6 million adults attended at least one live opera performance in 2002, and 37.6 million experienced opera on television, video, radio, audio recording or via the Internet. Some think that it is a dying art form, while others think to the contrary, that it is a living art form because of its complexity and “ability to probe deeper into the human experience than any other art form” (Berger 3). Some directors change the setting of operas with perhaps the most famous contemporary proponent of this approach being Peter Sellars, who made drastic changes to three of Mozart’s most famous operas. Le Nozze di Figaro, originally set in 18th-century Seville, was set by Sellars in a luxury apartment in the Trump Tower in New York City; Sellars set Don Giovanni in contemporary Spanish Harlem rather than 17th century Seville; and for Cosi Fan Tutte, Sellars chose a diner on Cape Cod rather than 18th century Naples. As one of the more than six million Americans who attend live opera each year, I have experienced several updated productions, which made me reflect on the convergence or cross-over between high culture and popular culture. In 2000, I attended a production of Don Giovanni at the Estates Theatre in Prague, the very theatre where Mozart conducted the world premiere in 1787. In this production, Don Giovanni was a fashion designer known as “Don G” and drove a BMW. During the 1999-2000 season, Los Angeles Opera engaged film director Bruce Beresford to direct Verdi’s Rigoletto. Beresford updated the original setting of 16th century Mantua to 20th century Hollywood. The lead tenor, rather than being the Duke of Mantua, was a Hollywood agent known as “Duke Mantua.” In the first act, just before Marullo announces to the Duke’s guests that the jester Rigoletto has taken a mistress, he gets the news via his cell phone. Director Ian Judge set the 2004 production of Le Nozze di Figaro in the 1950s. In one of the opening productions of the 2006-07 LA opera season, Vincent Patterson also chose the 1950s for Massenet’s Manon rather than France in the 1720s. This allowed the title character to appear in the fourth act dressed as Marilyn Monroe. Excerpts from the dress rehearsal can be seen on YouTube. Most recently, I attended a production of Ariane et Barbe-Bleu at the Paris Opera. The original setting of the Maeterlinck play is in Duke Bluebeard’s castle, but the time period is unclear. However, it is doubtful that the 1907 opera based on an 1899 play was meant to be set in what appeared to be a mental institution equipped with surveillance cameras whose screens were visible to the audience. The critical and audience consensus seemed to be that the opera was a musical success but a failure as a production. James Shore summed up the audience reaction: “the production team was vociferously booed and jeered by much of the house, and the enthusiastic applause that had greeted the singers and conductor, immediately went nearly silent when they came on stage”. It seems to me that a new class-related taste has emerged; the opera genre has shot out a subdivision which I shall call “post-modern morphologies,” that may appeal to a larger pool of people. Hence, class, age, gender, and race are becoming more important factors in conceptualising opera productions today than in the past. I do not consider these productions as new adaptations because the libretto and the music are originals. What changes is the fact that both text and sound are taken to a higher dimension by adding iconographic images that stimulate people’s brains. When asked in an interview why he often changes the setting of an opera, Ian Judge commented, “I try to find the best world for the story and characters to operate in, and I think you have to find a balance between the period the author set it in, the period he conceived it in and the nature of theatre and audiences at that time, and the world we live in.” Hence, the world today is complex, interconnected, borderless and timeless because of advanced technologies, and updated opera productions play with symbols that offer multiple meanings that reflect the world we live in. It may be that television and film have influenced opera production. Character tenor Graham Clark recently observed in an interview, “Now the situation has changed enormously. Television and film have made a lot of things totally accessible which they were not before and in an entirely different perception.” Director Ian Judge believes that television and film have affected audience expectations in opera. “I think audiences who are brought up on television, which is bad acting, and movies, which is not that good acting, perhaps require more of opera than stand and deliver, and I have never really been happy with someone who just stands and sings.” Sociologist Wendy Griswold states that culture reflects social reality and the meaning of a particular cultural object (such as opera), originates “in the social structures and social patterns it reflects” (22). Screens of various technologies are embedded in our lives and normalised as extensions of our bodies. In those opera productions in which directors change the time and place of opera plots, use technology, and are less concerned with what the composer or librettist intended (which we can only guess), the iconographic images create multi valances, textuality similar to Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of multiplicity of voices. Hence, a plurality of meanings. Plàcido Domingo, the Eli and Edyth Broad General Director of Los Angeles Opera, seeks to take advantage of the company’s proximity to the film industry. This is evidenced by his having engaged Bruce Beresford to direct Rigoletto and William Friedkin to direct Ariadne auf Naxos, Duke Bluebeard’s Castle and Gianni Schicchi. Perhaps the most daring example of Domingo’s approach was convincing Garry Marshall, creator of the television sitcom Happy Days and who directed the films Pretty Woman and The Princess Diaries, to direct Jacques Offenbach’s The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein to open the company’s 20th anniversary season. When asked how Domingo convinced him to direct an opera for the first time, Marshall responded, “he was insistent that one, people think that opera is pretty elitist, and he knew without insulting me that I was not one of the elitists; two, he said that you gotta make a funny opera; we need more comedy in the operetta and opera world.” Marshall rewrote most of the dialogue and performed it in English, but left the “songs” untouched and in the original French. He also developed numerous sight gags and added characters including a dog named Morrie and the composer Jacques Offenbach himself. Did it work? Christie Grimstad wrote, “if you want an evening filled with witty music, kaleidoscopic colors and hilariously good singing, seek out The Grand Duchess. You will not be disappointed.” The FanFaire Website commented on Domingo’s approach of using television and film directors to direct opera: You’ve got to hand it to Plàcido Domingo for having the vision to draw on Hollywood’s vast pool of directorial talent. Certainly something can be gained from the cross-fertilization that could ensue from this sort of interaction between opera and the movies, two forms of entertainment (elitist and perennially struggling for funds vs. popular and, it seems, eternally rich) that in Los Angeles have traditionally lived separate lives on opposite sides of the tracks. A wider audience, for example, never a problem for the movies, can only mean good news for the future of opera. So, did the Marshall Plan work? Purists of course will always want their operas and operettas ‘pure and unadulterated’. But with an audience that seemed to have as much fun as the stellar cast on stage, it sure did. Critic Alan Rich disagrees, calling Marshall “a representative from an alien industry taking on an artistic product, not to create something innovative and interesting, but merely to insult.” Nevertheless, the combination of Hollywood and opera seems to work. The Los Angeles Opera reported that the 2005-2006 season was its best ever: “ticket revenues from the season, which ended in June, exceeded projected figures by nearly US$900,000. Seasonal attendance at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion stood at more than 86% of the house’s capacity, the largest percentage in the opera’s history.” Domingo continues with the Hollywood connection in the upcoming 2008-2009 season. He has reengaged William Friedkin to direct two of Puccini’s three operas titled collectively as Il Trittico. Friedkin will direct the two tragedies, Il Tabarro and Suor Angelica. Although Friedkin has already directed a production of the third opera in Il Trittico for Los Angeles, the comedy Gianni Schicchi, Domingo convinced Woody Allen to make his operatic directorial debut with this work. This can be viewed as another example of the desire to make opera and popular culture more equal. However, some, like Alan Rich, may see this attempt as merely insulting rather than interesting and innovative. With a top ticket price in Los Angeles of US$238 per seat, opera seems to continue to be elitist. Berger (2005) concurs with this idea and gives his rationale for elitism: there are rich people who support and attend the opera; it is an imported art from Europe that causes some marginalisation; opera is not associated with something being ‘moral,’ a concept engrained in American culture; it is expensive to produce and usually funded by kings, corporations, rich people; and the opera singers are rare –usually one in a million who will have the vocal quality to sing opera arias. Furthermore, Nicholas Kenyon commented in the early 1990s: “there is suspicion that audiences are now paying more and more money for their seats to see more and more money spent on stage” (Kenyon 3). Still, Garry Marshall commented that the budget for The Grand Duchess was US$2 million, while his budget for Runaway Bride was US$72 million. Kenyon warns, “Such popularity for opera may be illusory. The enjoyment of one striking aria does not guarantee the survival of an art form long regarded as over-elitist, over-recondite, and over-priced” (Kenyon 3). A recent development is the Metropolitan Opera’s decision to simulcast live opera performances from the Met stage to various cinemas around the world. These HD transmissions began with the 2006-2007 season when six performances were broadcast. In the 2007-2008 season, the schedule has expanded to eight live Saturday matinee broadcasts plus eight recorded encores broadcast the following day. According to The Los Angeles Times, “the Met’s experiment of merging film with live performance has created a new art form” (Aslup). Whether or not this is a “new art form,” it certainly makes world-class live opera available to countless persons who cannot travel to New York and pay the price for tickets, when they are available. In the US alone, more than 350 cinemas screen these live HD broadcasts from the Met. Top ticket price for these performances at the Met is US$375, while the lowest price is US$27 for seats with only a partial view. Top price for the HD transmissions in participating cinemas is US$22. This experiment with live simulcasts makes opera more affordable and may increase its popularity; combined with updated stagings, opera can engage a much larger audience and hope for even a mass consumption. Is opera moving closer and closer to popular culture? There still seems to be an aura of elitism and snobbery about opera. However, Plàcido Domingo’s attempt to join opera with Hollywood is meant to break the barriers between high and popular culture. The practice of updating opera settings is not confined to Los Angeles. As mentioned earlier, the idea can be traced to post World War II England, and is quite common in Europe. Examples include Erich Wonder’s approach to Wagner’s Ring, making Valhalla, the mythological home of the gods and typically a mountaintop, into the spaceship Valhalla, as well as my own experience with Don Giovanni in Prague and Ariane et Barbe-Bleu in Paris. Indeed, Sutcliffe maintains, “Great classics in all branches of the arts are repeatedly being repackaged for a consumerist world that is increasingly and neurotically self-obsessed” (61). Although new operas are being written and performed, most contemporary performances are of operas by Verdi, Mozart, and Puccini (www.operabase.com). This means that audiences see the same works repeated many times, but in different interpretations. Perhaps this is why Sutcliffe contends, “since the 1970s it is the actual productions that have had the novelty value grabbed by the headlines. Singing no longer predominates” (Sutcliffe 57). If then, as Sutcliffe argues, “operatic fashion through history may be a desire for novelty, new formulas displacing old” (Sutcliffe 65), then the contemporary practice of changing the original settings is simply the latest “new formula” that is replacing the old ones. If there are no new words or new music, then what remains are new methods of performance, hence the practice of changing time and place. Opera is a complex art form that has evolved over the past 400 years and continues to evolve, but will it survive? The underlining motives for directors changing the time and place of opera performances are at least three: for aesthetic/artistic purposes, financial purposes, and to reach an audience from many cultures, who speak different languages, and who have varied tastes. These three reasons are interrelated. In 1996, Sutcliffe wrote that there has been one constant in all the arguments about opera productions during the preceding two decades: “the producer’s wish to relate the works being staged to contemporary circumstances and passions.” Although that sounds like a purely aesthetic reason, making opera relevant to new, multicultural audiences and thereby increasing the bottom line seems very much a part of that aesthetic. It is as true today as it was when Sutcliffe made the observation twelve years ago (60-61). My own speculation is that opera needs to attract various audiences, and it can only do so by appealing to popular culture and engaging new forms of media and technology. Erickson concludes that the number of upper status people who are exclusively faithful to fine arts is declining; high status people consume a variety of culture while the lower status people are limited to what they like. Research in North America, Europe, and Australia, states Erickson, attest to these trends. My answer to the question can stage directors make opera and popular culture “equal” is yes, and they can do it successfully. Perhaps Stanley Sharpless summed it up best: After his Eden triumph, When the Devil played his ace, He wondered what he could do next To irk the human race, So he invented Opera, With many a fiendish grin, To mystify the lowbrows, And take the highbrows in. References The Grand Duchess. 2005. 3 Feb. 2008 < http://www.ffaire.com/Duchess/index.htm >.Aslup, Glenn. “Puccini’s La Boheme: A Live HD Broadcast from the Met.” Central City Blog Opera 7 Apr. 2008. 24 Apr. 2008 < http://www.centralcityopera.org/blog/2008/04/07/puccini%E2%80%99s- la-boheme-a-live-hd-broadcast-from-the-met/ >.Berger, William. Puccini without Excuses. New York: Vintage, 2005.Boorstin, Daniel. The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination. New York: Random House, 1992.Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1984.Clark, Graham. “Interview with Graham Clark.” The KCSN Opera House, 88.5 FM. 11 Aug. 2006.DiMaggio, Paul. “Cultural Capital and School Success.” American Sociological Review 47 (1982): 189-201.DiMaggio, Paul. “Classification in Art.”_ American Sociological Review_ 52 (1987): 440-55.Elson, C. Louis. “Opera.” Elson’s Music Dictionary. Boston: Oliver Ditson, 1905.Erickson, H. Bonnie. “The Crisis in Culture and Inequality.” In W. Ivey and S. J. Tepper, eds. Engaging Art: The Next Great Transformation of America’s Cultural Life. New York: Routledge, 2007.Fanfaire.com. “At Its 20th Anniversary Celebration, the Los Angeles Opera Had a Ball with The Grand Duchess.” 24 Apr. 2008 < http://www.fanfaire.com/Duchess/index.htm >.Gans, J. Herbert. Popular Culture and High Culture: An Analysis and Evaluation of Taste. New York: Basic Books, 1977.Grimstad, Christie. Concerto Net.com. 2005. 12 Jan. 2008 < http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=3091 >.Grisworld, Wendy. Cultures and Societies in a Changing World. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 1994.Grout, D. Jay. A History of Western Music. Shorter ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, 1964.Halle, David. “High and Low Culture.” The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology. London: Blackwell, 2006.Judge, Ian. “Interview with Ian Judge.” The KCSN Opera House, 88.5 FM. 22 Mar. 2006.Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary. 2001. 19 Nov. 2006 < http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=opera&searchmode=none >.Kenyon, Nicholas. “Introduction.” In A. Holden, N. Kenyon and S. Walsh, eds. The Viking Opera Guide. New York: Penguin, 1993.Lamont, Michele, and Marcel Fournier. Cultivating Differences: Symbolic Boundaries and the Making of Inequality. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1992.Lord, M.G. “Shlemiel! Shlemozzle! And Cue the Soprano.” The New York Times 4 Sep. 2005.Los Angeles Opera. “LA Opera General Director Placido Domingo Announces Results of Record-Breaking 20th Anniversary Season.” News release. 2006.Marshall, Garry. “Interview with Garry Marshall.” The KCSN Opera House, 88.5 FM. 31 Aug. 2005.National Endowment for the Arts. 2002 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts. Research Division Report #45. 5 Feb. 2008 < http://www.nea.gov/pub/NEASurvey2004.pdf >.NCM Fanthom. “The Metropolitan Opera HD Live.” 2 Feb. 2008 < http://fathomevents.com/details.aspx?seriesid=622&gclid= CLa59NGuspECFQU6awodjiOafA >.Opera Today. James Sobre: Ariane et Barbe-Bleue and Capriccio in Paris – Name This Stage Piece If You Can. 5 Feb. 2008 < http://www.operatoday.com/content/2007/09/ariane_et_barbe_1.php >.Rich, Alan. “High Notes, and Low.” LA Weekly 15 Sep. 2005. 6 May 2008 < http://www.laweekly.com/stage/a-lot-of-night-music/high-notes-and-low/8160/ >.Sharpless, Stanley. “A Song against Opera.” In E. O. Parrott, ed. How to Be Tremendously Tuned in to Opera. New York: Penguin, 1990.Shore, James. Opera Today. 2007. 4 Feb. 2008 < http://www.operatoday.com/content/2007/09/ariane_et_barbe_1.php >.Sutcliffe, Tom. Believing in Opera. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton UP, 1996.YouTube. “Manon Sex and the Opera.” 24 Apr. 2008 < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiBQhr2Sy0k >.

The autobiographical documentary film “18q – a valuable life”, is one attempt to redefine the place of disability in contemporary western society. My work presents some key moments in my life and that of my family since the birth of my youngest child, Allycia in 1995. Allycia was born with a rare genetic condition affecting the 18th chromosome resulting in her experiencing the world somewhat differently to the rest of the family. The condition, which manifests in a myriad of ways with varying levels of severity, affects individuals’ physical and intellectual development (Chromosome 18, n. pag.). While the film outlines the condition and Allycia’s medical history, the work is primarily concerned with the experiences of the family and offering an alternate story of disability as “other”. Drawing on Rosemarie Garland Thomson’s notion of shape structuring story ("Shape") and Margrit Shildrick’s discussion of becoming vulnerable as theoretical foundations, I reflect on how the making of the film has challenged my previously held views about disability and ultimately about myself. The Film & Disability “18q – a valuable life” introduces a new, previously “invisible” shape in the form of bodies coded as Chromosome 18 to the screen. The initial impulse to make the film was driven by a need to provide a media presence for a rare genetic condition known collectively as Chromosome 18 (Chromosome 18, n. pag.) where previously there was none. This impulse was fuelled by a desire to tell a different story, our story; a story about what life can be like when a child with intellectual and physical impairment is born into one’s family. This different story is, in Garland Thompson’s terms, one that “insists that shape structures story” (114) and endeavours to contribute to recasting disability “as an occasion for exuberant flourishing” (Garland Thompson 114). The categorisation and depiction of people with disability in western society’s media have been scrutinised by many writers including Mitchell and Snyder ("Representations"; "Visual"), Oliver and Norden who point out that negatively charged stereotypical representations of the disabled continue to proliferate in the mediasphere. Englandkennedy for example examines the portrayal of the new disability classification Attention Deficit Disorder and is highly critical of its representation in programs such as The Simpsons (1989-2008) and films such as Pecker (1998). She asserts, “few media representations of ADD exist and most are inaccurate; they reflect and reinforce social concerns and negative stereotypes” (117) to the detriment of the condition being better understood by their audiences. However, Englandkennedy also identifies the positive possibilities for informed media representations that offer new models and stories about disability, citing works such as Children of a Lesser God (1986) and The Bone Collector (1999) as examples of shifts in fictional story telling modes. There are also shifts in recent documentary films such as My Flesh and Blood (2004), Tarnation (2003) and Murderball (2005) which provide insightful, powerful and engaging stories about disability. I suggest however that they still rely upon the stereotypical modes identified by numerous disability studies scholars. For example, Darke’s (n. pag.) heroic mother figure and disabled outsider and victim are depicted in the extreme in My Flesh and Blood and Tarnation respectively, whilst Murderball, as powerful as it is, still constructs disability as “something” to be overcome and is celebrated via the character construction of the “super-crip” (Englandkennedy 99). These stories are vital and insightful developments in challenging and re-shaping the many stigmas associated with disability, but they remain, for the most part, inaccessible to me in terms of my place in the world as a person parenting a little girl with physical and intellectual impairment. Able to Live The opening of the film features footage of my two older children Adam and Kristina, as “normal”, active children. These idyllic images are interrupted by an image of me by Allycia’s bedside where, as an infant, she is attached to life saving machines. She is at once “othered” to her active, healthy siblings. Her survival was reliant, and remains so, albeit to a much lesser extent, upon the intrusion of machines, administering of medication and the intervention of strangers. The prospect of her dying rendered me powerless, vulnerable; I lacked the means to sustain her life. To hand over my child to strangers, knowing they would carve her tiny chest open, suspend the beating of her already frail heart and attempt to repair it, was to surrender to the unknown without guarantees; the only surety being she would cease to be if I did not. Allycia survived surgery. This triumph however, was recast in the shadow of abnormality as outlined in the film when genetic screening of her DNA revealed she had been born with a rare genetic abnormality coded as 18q23 deletion. This information meant she was missing a part of her eighteenth chromosome and the literature available at that time (in 1997) gave little cause for hope – she was physically and intellectually retarded. This news, delivered to me by a genetic counsellor, was coupled with advice to ensure my daughter enjoyed “quality of life”. The words, “rare genetic abnormality” and “retarded” succeeded in effectively “othering” Allycia to me, to my other two children and the general population. My knowledge and experience with people with genetic abnormalities was minimal and synonymous with loss, sadness, suffering and sacrifice and had little to do with quality of life. She was frail and I was confronted with the loss of a “normal” child that would surely result in the “loss” of my own life when framed within this bleak, imagined life that lay before me; her disability, her otherness, her vulnerability signalled my own. As unpalatable as it is for me to use the word monstrous with reference to my daughter, Shildrick’s work, aligning the disabled experience with the monstrous and the possibility of becoming via a refiguring of vulnerability, resonates somewhat with my encounter with my vulnerable self. Schildrick proposes that “any being who traverses the liminal spaces that evade classification takes on the potential to confound normative identity” (6). As Allycia’s mother, I find Shildrick’s assertion that the monstrous “remains excessive of any category, it always claims us, always touches us and implicates us in its own becoming” (6) is particularly pertinent. This is not to say that Schildrick’s notion of the monstrous is an unproblematic one. Indeed Kaul reminds us that: to identify disabled bodies too closely with the monstrous seems to risk leaving us out of universal, as well as particular, experience, entirely in the figurative. (11) Schildrick’s notion of the universality of vulnerability however is implicit in her reference to that which confounds and disturbs us, and it is an important one. Clearly Allycia’s arrival has claimed me, touched me; I am intimately implicated in her becoming. I could not have anticipated however the degree to which she has been intertwined with my own becoming. Her arrival, in retrospect crystallised for me Shildrick’s proposition that “we are already without boundaries, already vulnerable” (6). The film does not shy away from the difficulties confronting Allycia and my family and other members of the chromosome 18 community. I have attempted however to portray our environment and culture as contributing factors and challenge the myth of medicine as a perfect science or answer to the myriad of challenges of navigating life with a disability in contemporary society. This was a difficult undertaking as I did not want the work to degenerate into one that was reliant on blame or continued in the construction of people with disability as victims. I have been mindful of balancing the sometimes painful reality of our lives with those moments that have brought us a sense of accomplishment or delight. Part of the delight of our lives is exemplified when my sister Julie articulates the difference in Allycia’s experiences as compared to her own nine year old daughter, Lydia. Julie succeeds in valorising Allycia’s freedom to be herself by juxtaposing her own daughter’s preoccupation with “what others think” and her level of self consciousness in social contexts. Julie also highlights Lydia’s awareness of Allycia’s difference, via narration over footage of Lydia assisting Allycia, and asserts that this role of becoming a helper is a positive attribute for Lydia’s development. Able to Laugh Including humour in the film was a vital ingredient in the reframing of disability in our lives and is employed as a device to enhance the accessibility of the text to an audience. The film is quite dialogue driven in furnishing background knowledge and runs the risk at times, when characters reveal some of their more painful experiences, of degenerating into a tale of despair. Humour acts as device to lift the overall mood of the film. The humour is in part structured by my failures and incompetence – particularly in reference to my command (or rather lack) of public transport both in Australia and overseas. While the events depicted did occur – my missing a ferry and losing our way in the United States – their inclusion in the film is used as a device to show me, as the able bodied person; the adult ‘able’ mother, with flaws and all. This deliberate act endeavours to re-shape the “heroic mother” stereotype. A wistful form of humour also emerges when my vulnerability becomes apparent in a sequence where I break down and cry, feeling the burden in that moment of the first eleven years of Allycia’s life. Here Allycia as carer emerges as she uses our favourite toy to interrupt my crying, succeeding in turning my tears into a gentle smile. Her maturity and ability to connect with my sadness and the need to make me feel better are apparent and serve to challenge the status of intellectual impairment as burden. This sequence also served to help me laugh at myself in quite a different way after spending many hours confronted with the many faces that are mine during the editing process. I experienced a great deal of discomfort in front of the camera due to feelings of self-consciousness and being on display. That discomfort paled into insignificance when I then had to watch myself on the monitor and triggered a parallel journey alongside the making of the film as I continued to view myself over time. Those images showing my distress, my face contorted with tears as I struggled to maintain control made me cry for quite a while afterwards. I felt a strange empathy for myself – as if viewing someone else’s pain although it was mine, simultaneously the same and other. Chris Sarra’s “notion of a common core otherness as constituting the essence of human being” is one that resonates closely with these aspects. Sarra reinterprets Bhaskar (5) arguing that “we should regard the same as a tiny ripple on the sea of otherness”, enabling us “to enshrine the right to be other” capturing “something of the wonder and strangeness of being” (5). Over time I have become used to seeing these images and have laughed at myself. I believe becoming accustomed to seeing myself, aging as I have during these years, has been a useful process. I have become "more" comfortable with seeing that face, my face in another time. In essence I have been required to sit with my own vulnerabilities and have gained a deeper acceptance of my own fragility and in a sense, my own mortality. This idea of becoming “used to”, and more accepting of the images I was previously uncomfortable with has given me a renewed hope for our community in particular, the disability community in general. My experience I believe indicates the potential for us, as we become more visible, to be accepted in our difference. Critical to this is the need for us to be seen in the fullness of human experience, including our capacity to experience laughter and love and the delight these experiences bring to our lives and those around us. These experiences are captured exquisitely when Allycia sees her newfound chromosome 18 friends, Martin and Kathryn kissing one another. She reacts in much the same way I expect other little girls might in a similar situation. She is simultaneously “grossed out” and intrigued, much to our delight. It is a lovely spontaneous moment that says much in the space of a minute about Martin and Kathryn, and about Allycia’s and my relationship. For me there is a beauty, there is honesty and there is transparency. Able to Love My desire for this film is similar to Garland Thomson’s desire for her writing to “provide access to some elements of my community to both disabled and non disabled audiences alike” (122). I felt part of the key to making the film “work” was ensuring it remained accessible to as wide an audience as possible and began with a naive optimism that the film could defy stereotypical story lines. I discovered this accessibility I desired was reliant upon the traditions of storytelling; language, the construction of character and the telling of a journey demanded an engagement in ways we collectively identify and understand (Campbell). I found our lives at times, became stereotypical. I had moments of feeling like a victim; Allycia as a dancer could well be perceived as a “supercrip” and the very act of making a film about my daughter could be viewed as a heroic one. The process resulted in my surrendering to working within a framework that relies upon, all too often, character construction that is stereotypical. I felt despondent many times upon realising the emergence of these in the work, but held onto the belief that something new could be shown by exposing “two narrative currents which are seldom included in the usual stories we tell about disability: sexuality and community” (Garland Thompson 114). The take on sexuality is a gentle one, concerned with emerging ideologies surrounding sexuality in our community. This is a new phenomenon in terms of the “place” of sexuality and intimacy within our community. One of our parents featured in the film makes this clear when he explains that the community is watching a new romance blossom “with interest” (18q) and that this is a new experience for us as a whole. In focussing on sexuality, my intention is to provoke discussion about perceptions surrounding people categorised as intellectually impaired and their capacity to love and build intimate relationships and the possibilities this presents for the chromosome 18 community. The theme of community features significantly in the film as audiences become privy to conferences attended by, in one instance, 300 people. My intention here is to “make our mark”. There has been no significant filmic presence of Chromosome 18. The condition is rare, but when those affected by it are gathered together, a significantly “bigger picture” of is presented where previously there was none. The community is a significant support network for families and is concerned with becoming empowered by knowledge, care and advocacy. The transcendence of global and cultural boundaries becomes apparent in the film as these differences become diminished in light of our greater need to connect with each others’ experiences in life as, or with, people born with genetic difference. The film highlights the supportive, educated and joyful “shape” of our community. In presenting our community I hope too that western society’s preoccupation with normativity and ableism (Goggin) is effectively challenged. In presenting a version of life that “destabilises the system and points up its inadequacy as a model of existential relations”, I am also demonstrating what Shildrick calls “unreflected excess, that which is other than the same” (105). The most significant shift for me has been to refigure my ideas about Allycia as an adult. When I was given her medical prognosis I believed she would be my responsibility for the rest of my life. I did not hold a lot of hope for the future and could not have possibly entertained the idea that she may live independently or heaven forbid, she may enter into an intimate adult relationship; such was my experience with the physically and intellectually impaired. Thankfully I have progressed. This progression has been, in part, due to attending a Chromosome 18 conference in Boston in 2007 where we met Kathryn and Martin, a young couple in the early stages of building a relationship. This is a new phenomenon in our community. Kathryn and Martin were born with chromosome 18 deletions. Meeting them and their families has signalled new possibilities for our children and their opportunities and their right to explore intimate adult relationships. Their relationship has given me confidence to proceed with an open mind regarding Allycia’s adulthood and sexuality. Conclusion The very act of making the film was one that would inevitably render me vulnerable. Placing myself before the camera has given me a new perspective on vulnerability as a state that simultaneously disempowers and empowers me. I could argue this process has given me a better understanding of Allycia’s place in the world, but to do this is to deny our differences. Instead I believe the experience has given me a renewed perspective in embracing our differences and has also enabled me to see how much we are alike. My understanding of myself as both “able” and “othered”, and the ensuing recognition of, and encounter with, my vulnerable self have in some measure, come as a result of being continually confronted with images of myself in the editing process. But more than this, reflecting upon the years since Allycia’s birth I have come to a more intimate understanding and acceptance of myself as a consequence of knowing Allycia. Whereas my experience has been a matter of will, Allycia’s contribution is in the fact that she simply is. These experiences have given me renewed hope of acceptance of people of difference - that over time we as a society may become used to seeing the different face and the different behaviours that often accompany the experience of people living with genetic difference. References Bhaskar, R. Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom. London: Verso, 1993. Campbell, J. The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work. California: New World Library, 2003 Caouette, J. Tarnation. Dir. J. Caouette. DVD. 2004. Chromosome 18. "Chromosome 18 Research & Registry Society." 2008. 3 March 2008 ‹http://www.chromosome18.org/›. Darke, P. "The Cinematic Construction of Physical Disability as Identified through the Application of the Social Model of Disability to Six Indicative Films Made since 1970: A Day In The Death of Joe Egg (1970), The Raging Moon (1970), The Elephant Man (1980), Whose Life Is It Anyway? (1981), Duet for One (1987) and My Left Foot (1989)." 1999. 10 Feb. 2006 ‹http://www.darke.info/›. Englandkennedy, E. “Media Representations of Attention Deficit Disorder: Portrayals of Cultural Skepticism in Popular Media.” Journal of Popular Culture 41.1 (2008): 91-118. Garland Thomson, R. “Shape Structures Story: Fresh and Feisty Stories about Disability.” Narrative 15.1 (2007): 113-123. –––. Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1997. Goggin, G. Division One: Bodies of Knowledge. 2002. 10 Feb. 2006 ‹http://adt.library.qut.edu.au/adt-qut/uploads/approved/adt-QUT20041123.160628/public/02whole.pdf›. Groening, M. The Simpsons. 20th Century Fox Television. 1989-2008. Iacone, J. The Bone Collector. Dir. P. Noyce. DVD. Columbia Pictures Corporation, 1999. Karsh, J. My Flesh and Blood. DVD. San Francisco: Chaiken Films, 2004. Kaul, K. Figuring Disability in Disability Studies: Theory, Policy and Practice. Toronto: York University, 2003. Medoff, M. Children of a Lesser God. Dir. R. Haines. Paramount Pictures, 1986. Mitchell, D. T., and S. L. Snyder. "Representation and Its Discontents: The Uneasy Home of Disability in Literature and Film." In Handbook of Disability Studies, eds. G. L. Albrecht, K. D. Seelman, and M. Bury. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2001. 195-218. –––. “The Visual Foucauldian: Institutional Coercion and Surveillance in Frederick Wiseman's Multi-Handicapped Documentary Series.” Journal of Medical Humanities 24.3 (2003): 291. Norden, M.F. The Cinema of Isolation. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1994 Oliver, M. The Politics of Disablement. The Disability Archive UK. University of Leeds, 1990. 3 April 2005 ‹http://www.leeds.ac.uk/disability-studies/archiveuk/Oliver/p%20of%20d%20oliver4.pdf›. Rubin, H. A., and D. A. Shapiro. Murderball. DVD. Paramount Pictures, 2005. Sarra, C. Chris Sarra & The Other. Unpublished manuscript, 2005. Shildrick, M. Embodying the Monster: Encounters with the Vulnerable Self. London: Sage, 2002.Wain, Veronica. 18q – A Valuable Life. Prod. V. Wain. 2008. Waters, J. Pecker. Videocassette. Polar Entertainment, 1998.

Introduction Utopia has always been countercultural, and ever since technological progress has allowed, utopia has been using alternative media to promote and strengthen its underpinning ideals. In this article, I am seeking to clarify the connections between counterculture and alternative media in utopian contexts to demonstrate their reciprocity, then draw together these threads through reference to a well-known figure of the Rainbow Region–Rusty Miller. His trajectory from iconic surfer and Aquarian reporter to mediator for utopian politics and ideals in the Rainbow Region encompasses in a single identity the three elements underpinning this study. In concluding, I will turn to Rusty’s Byron Guide, questioning its classification as alternative or mainstream media, and whether Byron Bay is represented as countercultural and utopian in this long-running and ongoing publication. Counterculture and Alternative Media in Utopian Contexts Counterculture is an umbrella that enfolds utopia, among many other genres and practices. It has been most often situated in the 1960s and 1970s as a new form of social movement embodying youth resistance to the technocratic mainstream and its norms of gender, sexuality, politics, music, and language (Roszak). Many scholars of counterculture underscore its utopian impulses both in the projection of better societies where the social goals are achieved, and in the withdrawal from mainstream society into intentional communities (Yinger 194-6; McKay 5; Berger). Before exploring further the connections between counterculture and alternative media, I want to define the scope of countercultural utopian contexts in general, and the Rainbow Region in particular. Utopia is a neologism created by Sir Thomas More almost 500 years ago to designate the island community that demonstrates order, harmony, justice, hope and desire in the right balance so that it seems like an ideal land. This imaginary place described in Utopia (1516) as a counterpoint to the social, political and religious shortcomings of contemporary 16th century British society, has attracted accusations of heresy (Molner), and been used as a pejorative term, an insult to denigrate political projects that seem farfetched or subversive, especially during the 19th century. Almost every study of utopian theory, literature and practice points to a dissatisfaction with the status quo, which inspires writers, politicians, architects, artists, individuals and communities to rail against it (see for example Davis, Moylan, Suvin, Levitas, Jameson). Kingsley Widmer’s book Counterings: Utopian Dialectics in Contemporary Contexts reiterates what many scholars have stated when he writes that utopias should be understood in terms of what they are countering. Lyman Tower Sargent defines utopia as “a non-existent society described in considerable detail and normally located in time and space” and utopianism as “social dreaming” (9), to which I would add that both indicate an improvement on the alternatives, and may indeed be striving to represent the best place imaginable. Utopian contexts, by extension, are those situations where the “social dreaming” is enhanced through human agency, good governance, just laws, education, and work, rather than being a divinely ordained state of nature (Schaer et al). In this way, utopian contexts are explicitly countercultural through their very conception, as human agency is required and their emphasis is on social change. These modes of resistance against dominant paradigms are most evident in attempts to realise textual projections of a better society in countercultural communal experiments. Almost immediately after its publication, More’s Utopia became the model for Bishop Vasco de Quiroga’s communitarian hospital-town Santa Fe de la Laguna in Michoacan, Mexico, established in the 1530s as a counterculture to the oppressive enslavement and massacres of the Purhépecha people by Nuno Guzmán (Green). The countercultural thrust of the 1960s and 1970s provided many utopian contexts, perhaps most readily identifiable as the intentional communities that spawned and flourished, especially in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand (Metcalf, Shared Lives). They were often inspired by texts such as Charles A. Reich’s The Greening of America (1970) and Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia (1975), and this convergence of textual practices and alternative lifestyles can be seen in the development of Australia’s own Rainbow Region. Located in northern New South Wales, the geographical area of the Northern Rivers that has come to be known as the Rainbow Region encompasses Byron Bay, Nimbin, Mullumbimby, Bangalow, Clunes, Dunoon, Federal, with Lismore as the region’s largest town. But more evocative than these place names are the “rivers and creeks, vivid green hills, fruit and nut farms […] bounded by subtropical beaches and rainforest mountains” (Wilson 1). Utopian by nature, and recognised as such by the indigenous Bundjalung people who inhabited it before the white settlers, whalers and dairy farmers moved in, the Rainbow Region became utopian through culture–or indeed counterculture–during the 1973 Aquarius Festival in Nimbin when the hippies of Mullumbimby and the surfers of Byron Bay were joined by up to 10,000 people seeking alternative ways of being in the world. When the party was over, many Aquarians stayed on to form intentional communities in the beautiful region, like Tuntable Falls, Nimbin’s first and largest such cooperative (Metcalf, From Utopian Dreaming to Communal Reality 74-83). In utopian contexts, from the Renaissance to the 1970s and beyond, counterculture has underpinned and alternative media has circulated the aims and ideals of the communities of resistance. The early utopian context of the Anabaptist movement has been dubbed as countercultural by Sigrun Haude: “During the reign of the Münster (1534-5) Anabaptists erected not only a religious but also a social and political counterculture to the existing order” (240). And it was this Protestant Reformation that John Downing calls the first real media war, with conflicting movements using pamphlets produced on the new technology of the Gutenberg press to disseminate their ideas (144). What is striking here is the confluence of ideas and practices at this time–countercultural ideals are articulated, published, and disseminated, printing presses make this possible, and utopian activists realise how mass media can be used and abused, exploited and censored. Twentieth century countercultural movements drew on the lessons learnt from historical uprising and revolutions, understanding the importance of getting the word out through their own forms of media which, given the subversive nature of the messages, were essentially alternative, according to the criteria proposed by Chris Atton: alternative media may be understood as a radical challenge to the professionalized and institutionalized practices of the mainstream media. Alternative media privileges a journalism that is closely wedded to notions of social responsibility, replacing an ideology of “objectivity” with overt advocacy and oppositional practices. Its practices emphasize first person, eyewitness accounts by participants; a reworking of the populist approaches of tabloid newspapers to recover a “radical popular” style of reporting; collective and antihierarchical forms of organization which eschew demarcation and specialization–and which importantly suggest an inclusive, radical form of civic journalism. (267) Nick Couldry goes further to point out the utopian processes required to identify agencies of change, including alternative media, which he defines as “practices of symbolic production which contest (in some way) media power itself–that is, the concentration of symbolic power in media institutions” (25). Alternative media’s orientation towards oppositional and contestatory practices demonstrates clear parallels between its ambitions and those of counterculture in utopian contexts. From the 1960s onwards, the upsurge in alternative newspaper numbers is commensurate with the blossoming of the counterculture and increased utopian contexts; Susan Forde describes it thus: “a huge resurgence in the popularity of publications throughout the ‘counter-culture’ days of the 1960s and 1970s” (“Monitoring the Establishment”, 114). The nexus of counterculture and alternative media in such utopian contexts is documented in texts like Roger Streitmatter’s Voices of Revolution and Bob Osterlag’s People’s Movements, People’s Press. Like the utopian newspapers that came out of 18th and 19th century intentional communities, many of the new alternative press served to educate, socialise, promote and represent the special interests of the founders and followers of the countercultural movements, often focusing on the philosophy and ideals underpinning these communities rather than the everyday events (see also Frobert). The radical press in Australia was also gaining ground, with OZ in Australia from 1963-1969, and then from 1967-1973 in London. Magazines launched by Philip Frazer like The Digger, Go-Set, Revolution and High Times, and university student newspapers were the main avenues for youth and alternative expression on the Vietnam war and conscription, gay and lesbian rights, racism, feminism and ecological activism (Forde, Challenging the News; Cock & Perry). Nimbin 1973: Rusty Miller and The Byron Express The 1973 Aquarius Festival of counterculture in Nimbin (12-23 May) was a utopian context that had an alternative media life of its own before it arrived in the Rainbow Region–in student publications like Tharnuka and newsletters distributed via the Aquarius Foundation. There were other voices that announced the coming of the Aquarius Festival to Nimbin and reported on its impact, like The Digger from Melbourne and the local paper, The Northern Star. During the Festival, the Nimbin Good Times first appeared as the daily bulletin and continues today with the original masthead drawn by the Festival’s co-organiser, Graeme Dunstan. Some interesting work has been done on this area, ranging from general studies of the Rainbow Region (Wilson; Munro-Clark) to articles analysing its alternative press (Ward & van Vuuren; Martin & Ellis), but to date, there has been no focus on the Rainbow Region’s first alternative newspaper, The Byron Express. Co-edited by Rusty Miller and David Guthrie, this paper presented and mediated the aims and desires of the Aquarian movement. Though short-lived, as only 7 issues were published from 15 February 1973 to September 1973, The Byron Express left a permanent printed vestige of the Aquarian counterculture movement’s activism and ideals from an independent regional perspective. Miller’s credentials for starting up the newspaper are clear–he has always been a trailblazer, mixing “smarts” with surfing and environmental politics. After graduating from a Bachelor of Arts in history from San Diego State College, he first set foot in Byron Bay during his two semesters with the inaugural Chapman College affiliated University of the Seven Seas in 1965-6. Returning to his hometown of Encinitas, he co-founded the Surf Research accessory company with legendary Californian surfer Mike Doyle, and launched Waxmate, the first specially formulated surf wax in 1967 (Davis, Witzig & James; Warshaw 217), selling his interest in the business soon after to spend a couple of years “living the counterculture life on the Hawaiian Island of Kauai” (Davis, Witzig & James), before heading back to Byron Bay via Bells Beach in 1970 (Miller & Shantz) and Sydney, where he worked as an advertising salesman and writer with Tracks surfing magazine (Martin & Ellis). In 1971, he was one of the first to ride the now famous waves of Uluwatu in Bali, and is captured with Steven Cooney in the iconic publicity image for Albe Falzon’s 1971 film, Morning Of The Earth. The champion surfer from the US knew a thing or two about counterculture, alternative media, advertising and business when he found his new utopian context in Byron Bay. Miller and Guthrie’s front-page editorial of the inaugural issue of The Byron Express, published on 15 February 1973, with the byline “for a higher shire”, expressed the countercultural (cl)aims of the publication. Land use, property development and the lack of concern that some people in Byron had for their impact on the environment and people of the region were a prime target: With this first issue of the Byron Express, we hope to explain that the area is badly in need of a focal point. The transitions of present are vast and moving fast. The land is being sold and resold. Lots of money is coming into the area in the way of developments […] caravan parts, hotels, businesses and real estate. Many of the trips incoming are not exactly “concerned” as to what long term effect such developments might have on the environment and its people. We hope to serve as a focus of concern and service, a centre for expression and reflection. We would ask your contributions in vocal and written form. We are ready for some sock it to ya criticism… and hope you would grab us upon the street to tell us how you feel…The mission of this alternative newspaper is thereby defined by the need for a “focal point” that inscribes the voices of the community in a freely accessible narrative, recorded in print for posterity. Although this first issue contains no mention of the Aquarius Festival, there were already rumours circulating about it, as organisers Graeme Dunstan and Johnny Allen had been up to Main Arm, Mullumbimby and Nimbin on reconnaissance missions beginning in September 1972. Instead, there was an article on “Mullumbimby Man–Close to the Land” by Nicholas Shand, who would go on to found the community-based weekly newspaper The Echo in 1986, then called The Brunswick Valley Echo and still going strong. Another by Bob McTavish asked whether there could be a better form of government; there was a surf story, and a soul food section with a recipe for honey meade entitled “Do you want to get out of it on 10 cents a bottle?” The second issue continues in much the same vein. It is not until the third issue comes out on 17 March 1973 that the Aquarius Festival is mentioned in a skinny half column on page four. And it’s not particularly promising: Arrived at Nimbin, sleepy hamlet… Office in disused R.S.L. rooms, met a couple of guys recently arrived, said nothing was being done. “Only women here, you know–no drive”. Met Joanne and Vi, both unable to say anything to be reported… Graham Dunstan (codenamed Superfest) and John Allen nowhere in sight. Allen off on trip overseas. Dunstan due back in a couple of weeks. 10 weeks to go till “they” all come… and to what… nobody is quite sure. This progress report provides a fascinating contemporary insight into the tensions–between the local surfies and hippies on one hand, and the incoming students on the other–around the organisation of the Aquarius Festival. There is an unbridled barb at the sexist comments made by the guys, implicit criticism of the absent organisers, obvious skepticism about whether anyone will actually come to the festival, and wonderment at what it will be like. Reading between the lines, we might find a feeling of resentment about not being privy to new developments in their own backyard. The final lines of the article are non-committal “Anyway, let’s see what eventuates when the Chiefs return.” It seems that all has been resolved by the fifth issue of 11 May, which is almost entirely dedicated to the Aquarius Festival with the front page headline “Welcome to the New Age”. But there is still an undertone of slight suspicion at what the newcomers to the area might mean in terms of property development: The goal is improving your fellow man’s mind and nourishment in concert with your own; competition to improve your day and the quality of the day for society. Meanwhile, what is the first thing one thinks about when he enters Byron and the area? The physical environment is so magnificent and all encompassing that it can actually hold a man’s breath back a few seconds. Then a man says, “Wow, this land is so beautiful that one could make a quid here.” And from that moment the natural aura and spells are broken and the mind lapses into speculative equations, sales projections and future interest payments. There is plenty of “love” though, in this article: “The gathering at Nimbin is the most spectacular demonstration of the faith people have in a belief that is possible (and possible just because they want it to be) to live in love, through love together.” The following article signed by Rusty Miller “A Town Together” is equally focused on love: “See what you could offer the spirit at Nimbin. It might introduce you to a style that could lead to LOVE.” The centre spread features photos: the obligatory nudes, tents, and back to nature activities, like planting and woodworking. With a text box of “random comments” including one from a Lismore executive: ‘I took my wife and kids out there last weekend and we had such a good time. Seems pretty organized and the town was loaded with love. Heard there is some hepatitis about and rumours of VD. Everyone happy.” And another from a land speculator (surely the prime target of Miller’s wrath): “Saw guys kissing girls on the street, so sweet, bought 200 acres right outside of town, it’s going to be valuable out there some day.” The interview with Johnny Allen as the centrepiece includes some pertinent commentary on the media and reveals a well-founded suspicion of the mediatisation of the Aquarius Festival: We have tried to avoid the media actually. But we haven’t succeeded in doing so. Part of the basic idea is that we don’t need to be sold. All the down town press can do is try and interpret you. And by doing that it automatically places it in the wrong sort of context. So we’ve tried to keep it to people writing about the festival to people who will be involved in it. It’s an involvement festival. Coopting The Byron Express as an “involved” party effects a fundamental shift from an external reporting newspaper to a kind of proponent or even propaganda for the Aquarius festival and its ideas, like so many utopian newspapers had done before. It is therefore perhaps inevitable that The Byron Express should disappear very soon after the Aquarius festival. Fiona Martin and Rhonda Ellis explain that Rusty Miller stopped producing the paper because he “found the production schedule exhausting and his readership too small to attract consistent advertising” (5). At any rate, there were only two more issues, one in June–with some follow up reporting of the festival–and another in September 1973, which was almost entirely devoted to environmentally focused features, including an interview with Kath Walker (Oodgeroo Noonuccal). Byron Bay 2013: Thirty Years of Rusty’s Byron Guide What Rusty did next is fairly well known locally–surfing and teaching people how to surf and a bit of writing. When major local employer Walkers slaughterhouse closed in 1983, he and his wife, social geographer Tricia Shantz, were asked by the local council to help promote Byron Bay as a tourist destination, writing the first Byron guide in 1983-4. Incorporating essays by local personalities and dedicated visitors, the Byron guide perpetuates the ideal of environmental awareness, spiritual experimentation, and respect for the land and sea. Recent contributors have included philosopher Peter Singer, political journalist Kerry O’Brien, and writer John Ralston Saul, and Miller and Shantz always have an essay in there themselves. “People, Politics and Culture” is the new byline for the 2013 edition. And Miller’s opening essay mediates the same utopian desires and environmental community messages that he espoused from the beginning of The Byron Express: The name Byron Bay represents something that we constantly try to articulate. If one was to dream up a menu of situations and conditions to compose a utopia, Australia would be the model of the nation-state and Byron would have many elements of the actual place one might wish to live for the rest of their lives. But of course there is always the danger of excesses in tropical paradises especially when they become famous destinations. Australia is being held to ransom for the ideology that we should be slaves to money and growth at the cost of a degraded and polluted physical and social environment. Byron at least was/is a refuge against this profusion of the so-called real-world perception that holds profit over environment as the way we must choose for our future. Even when writing for a much more commercial medium, Miller retains the countercultural utopian spirit that was crystallised in the Aquarius festival of 1973, and which remains relevant to many of those living in and visiting the Rainbow Region. Miller’s ethos moves beyond the alternative movements and communities to infiltrate travel writing and tourism initiatives in the area today, as evidenced in the Rusty’s Byron Guide essays. By presenting more radical discourses for a mainstream public, Miller together with Shantz have built on the participatory role that he played in launching the region’s first alternative newspaper in 1973 that became albeit briefly the equivalent of a countercultural utopian gazette. Now, he and Shantz effectively play the same role, producing a kind of countercultural form of utopian media for Byron Bay that corresponds to exactly the same criteria mentioned above. Through their free publication, they aim to educate, socialise, promote and represent the special interests of the founders and followers of the Rainbow Region, focusing on the philosophy and ideals underpinning these communities rather than the everyday events. The Byron Bay that Miller and Shantz promote is resolutely utopian, and certainly countercultural if compared to other free publications like The Book, a new shopping guide, or mainstream media elsewhere. Despite this new competition, they are planning the next edition for 2015 with essays to make people think, talk, and understand the region’s issues, so perhaps the counterculture is still holding its own against the mainstream. References Atton, Chris. “What Is ‘Alternative’ Journalism?” Journalism: Theory, Practice, Criticism 4.3 (2003): 267-72. Berger, Bennett M. The Survival of a Counterculture: Ideological Work and Everyday Life among Rural Communards. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2004. Cock, Peter H., & Paul F. Perry. “Australia's Alternative Media.” Media Information Australia 6 (1977): 4-13. 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