Bücher der Reihe Legenda

Are our actions and values freely chosen, or imposed on us by a complex interplay of unconscious motivations, culture, history, institutions and the pressure of others? Is the human subject a self-defining, self-creating autonomous agent, or merely the product or plaything of forces beyond its control? Are other people allies in the project to realize freedom, or unmovable obstacles who stand in our way? If we knew how to embrace freedom, would it be a blessing or a curse, a joyous epiphany or a crushing burden? To what extent does our finite mortal existence condition and limit our freedom? The work of Christina Howells has been instrumental in demonstrating how Continental thought has explored these questions in ways which are intellectually rigorous and humanly compelling. In this volume, some of her colleagues and former students build upon her work by addressing the situation of 'theory' today - literary, political, psychoanalytic, aesthetic and philosophical - in its relation to freedom and subjectivity. The volume includes a number of new essays on each of Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), Frantz Fanon (1925-1961), Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) and Jean-Luc Nancy (b. 1940), as well as essays on a range of other theorists. Taken together, the volume's essays show how the modern theorising subject may be both the source and the product of its endeavour to understand its place in the human, mortal world.Oliver Davis is Reader in French Studies at Warwick University. Colin Davis is Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London. Christina Howells is Professor of French and Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford.

Gravity and grace are spiritual terms, but they can also offer us a way to think about literature. Grace may mean not only the felicity and ease - what Schiller refers to as the 'mobile beauty' - inhabiting certain works of art, but also the sense of something given, or about to be given, by a work as we read it: something incalculable, perhaps accidental, but vital and regenerative. Like a promise, this quality also needs gravity, a sense of substance within it. The gracefulness of a dancer relies upon gravity, and the grace of a text depends on the weight of words. These matters are pursued here in essays on subjects ranging from Voltaire to Ali Smith, from Baudelaire to Beckett, not forgetting Mallarmé, and offered to Roger Pearson in honour of the grace and gravity of his own writing.

In the late Middle Ages, the Low Countries - ruled by the Dukes of Burgundy and their Hapsburg successors - boasted a dynamic literary culture in both French and Dutch. Speakers of these languages interacted in more ways than might be expected. Writers shared topics and techniques; works were translated; printers who spoke one language published material in the other. The Multilingual Muse brings together an unprecedented community of scholars, both historians and literary specialists, to chart these interactions. It reveals that poetry, far from resisting linguistic and cultural translation as is widely supposed, was a deeply transcultural enterprise in the region.Adrian Armstrong is Centenary Professor of French at Queen Mary University of London. Elsa Strietman is a Fellow Emerita of Murray Edwards College, Cambridge and was Senior Lecturer in Dutch, University of Cambridge.

Texts of different kinds grant insight into the rich cultural canvas of the Middle Ages: epic poetry, vernacular lyric, and music; liturgical rites and ceremonial manuals; manuscripts, illuminations, modern adaptations and editions, and many more. Adopting a range of disciplinary perspectives-literary studies, liturgical studies, and musicology-this collection of essays reveals the two-fold performative nature of such texts: they document, mediate, or prefigure acts of performance, while at the same time taking on performative roles themselves by generating additional layers of meaning. Focussing on acts, authors, and performative processes of reception, the contributors demonstrate the significance of the performative to the culture and study of the High and Late Middle Ages (c.1000-1500), from troubadour songs and Minnesang to motets, from the biblical figure of Job to Christine de Pizan and Dante, from Scandinavia to Béarn and Imperial Augsburg.Henry Hope (Music) and Pauline Souleau (French) are early-career researchers at the universities of Bern and Oxford; with Ardis Butterfield (John M. Schiff Professor of English, Professor of French and Music at Yale University) they share an interest in transcending linguistic, national, generic, and disciplinary borders in the study of medieval texts.

This three-volume set brings together current research in the history of language learning and teaching (HoLLT) in Europe and beyond. Providing the first overview of research in the field, it will be an indispensable reference for teachers, teacher educators and all those interested in the history of language learning and teaching and the history of applied linguistics avant la lettre.Part I of Volume III (The Place of Culture in Language Teaching) examines the history of how 'foreign cultures' have been presented to learners in language classrooms and language materials. Part II (Beyond Europe) presents studies of the history of language learning and teaching beyond Europe, including the Middle East, China, Japan, India and New Zealand.Nicola McLelland is Professor of German and History of Linguistics at the University of Nottingham. She has published widely in the history of German linguistics and the history of language learning, and is co-editor of the journal Language & History.Richard Smith is a Reader in English Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics at the University of Warwick. Founder of the Warwick ELT Archive and the AILA Research Network on History of Language Learning and Teaching, he has been active in the fields of historical research and teacher-research in language education.

This three-volume set brings together current research in the history of language learning and teaching (HoLLT) in Europe and beyond. Providing the first overview of research in the field, it will be an indispensable reference for teachers, teacher educators and all those interested in the history of language learning and teaching and the history of applied linguistics avant la lettre.The chapters in Volume II present case studies from the period when modern languages became established in school curricula across Europe and when modern language teaching became professionalized. The chapters consider 19th-century innovations in Europe including the Reform Movement and its precursors, as well as developments in policy and practice in the 20th century.Nicola McLelland is Professor of German and History of Linguistics at the University of Nottingham. She has published widely in the history of German linguistics and the history of language learning, and is co-editor of the journal Language & History.Richard Smith is a Reader in English Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics at the University of Warwick. Founder of the Warwick ELT Archive and the AILA Research Network on History of Language Learning and Teaching, he has been active in the fields of historical research and teacher-research in language education.

This three-volume set brings together current research in the history of language learning and teaching (HoLLT) in Europe and beyond. Providing the first overview of research in the field, it will be an indispensable reference for teachers, teacher educators and all those interested in the history of language learning and teaching and the history of applied linguistics avant la lettre.Volume I presents the history of how languages were learnt and taught across Europe, from Russia and Scandinavia to the Iberian peninsula, up to about 1800. Case studies deal with the teaching and learning of French, Italian, German and Portuguese, as well as Latin, still the first 'foreign language' for many learners in this period.Nicola McLelland is Professor of German and History of Linguistics at the University of Nottingham. She has published widely in the history of German linguistics and the history of language learning, and is co-editor of the journal Language & History.Richard Smith is a Reader in English Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics at the University of Warwick. Founder of the Warwick ELT Archive and the AILA Research Network on History of Language Learning and Teaching, he has been active in the fields of historical research and teacher-research in language education.