An interdisciplinary exploration of the concept of passages.

The study of literature and culture is marked by various distinct understandings of passages—as both phenomena and critical concepts. These include the anthropological notion of rites of passage, the shopping arcades (Passagen) theorized by Walter Benjamin, the Middle Passage of the Atlantic slave trade, present-day forms of migration and resettlement, and understandings of translation and adaptation. This book explores passages as contexts and processes within which liminal experiences and encounters are situated. Based on the premise that concepts travel through times, contexts, and discursive settings, the volume enables a meaningful exchange regarding passages across disciplinary, national, and linguistic boundaries. Contributions from senior scholars and early-career researchers whose work focuses on areas such as cultural memory, performativity, space, media, (cultural) translation, ecocriticism, gender, and race utilize specific understandings of passages and liminality, reflecting on their value and limits for their research.

This monograph encompasses the first critical edition, translation, and historical study of a series of lectures from the cathedral school of Notre-Dame, Peter Comestor’s Glosses on the Glossed Gospel of John. Delivered in Paris in the mid-1150s, Comestor’s expansive lecture course on the Glossa ordinaria on the Gospel of John has survived in no fewer than seventeen manuscript witnesses, being preserved in the form of continuous transcripts taken in shorthand by a student-reporter (reportationes). The editor has selected the fifteen best witnesses to produce a critical edition and translation of the first chapter of Comestor’s lectures on the Gospel of John. In addition to the text of the original lectures, the edition includes appendices containing accretions to the lecture materials added by Comestor and his students, as well as the corresponding text of the Glossa ordinaria from which Comestor lectured. The Latin text and translation of Peter Comestor’s lectures are preceded by a wide-ranging critical study of the historical and intellectual context of Peter Comestor’s biblical teaching. This study begins with an outline of Comestor’s scholastic career and known works, with a detailed introduction to his Gospel lectures and the relevant historiography. Subsequently, a survey is made of the intellectual landscape of Comestor’s lectures: namely, the tradition of biblical teaching originating at the School of Laon, preserved in the Glossa ordinaria, and developed in the classroom by Peter Lombard and a succession of Parisian masters, notably Comestor himself. The following section examines the portion of the lectures presented in this book, encompassing an overview of its contents and structure, a description of Comestor’s teaching method and scholastic setting, a study of the text’s sources, and a consideration of Comestor’s participation and reception in the scholastic tradition. The final chapters contain a careful description of the manuscripts and editorial principles adopted in the Latin edition and translation.

Modern theories of meaning usually culminate in a critique of science. This book presents a study of human intelligence beginning with a semantic theory and leading into a critique of music.

By implication it sets up a theory of all the arts; the transference of its basic concepts to other arts than music is not developed, but it is sketched, mainly in the chapter on artistic import. Thoughtful readers of the original edition discovered these far-reaching ideas quickly enough as the career of the book shows: it is as applicable to literature, art and music as to the field of philosophy itself.

The topics it deals with are many: language, sacrament, myth, music, abstraction, fact, knowledge--to name only the main ones. But through them all goes the principal theme, symbolic transformation as the essential activity of human minds. This central idea, emphasizing as it does the notion of symbolism, brings Mrs. Langer's book into line with the prevailing interest in semantics. All profound issues of our age seem to center around the basic concepts of symbolism and meaning. The formative, creative, articulating power of symbols is the tonic chord which thinkers of all schools and many diverse fields are unmistakably striking; the surprising, far-reaching implications of this new fundamental conception constitute what Mrs. Langer has called "philosophy in a new key."

Mrs. Langer's book brings the discussion of symbolism into a wider general use than criticism of word meaning. Her volume is vigorous, effective, and well written and will appeal to everyone interested in the contemporary problems of philosophy.

In Piros and Prehistory, David Leedom Shaul turns his attention to the Piro language, once spoken by the people of the Piro pueblos in New Mexico but extinct since approximately the year 1900. While arguments have been made in favor of Piro belonging to the Tiwa branch of the Tanoan family, Shaul counters this classification with a detailed rebuttal, firmly establishing Piro within the Tanoan family but outside of the Tiwa branch.

Shaul’s arguments use linguistic analyses coupled with historic and prehistoric records of migration and cultural interaction. Following the establishment of Piro as a Tanoan language, much of the linguistic analysis involves determining the aspects of Piro that were inherited from the earlier Proto-Tanoan versus those that were incorporated later as a result of borrowing from other languages through cultural interaction. This book lays out the linguistic argument that the similarities between Piro and Tiwan languages result from borrowing, not common ancestry, and it provides a record of contact between groups and linguistic evolution based on these movements.

Taras Ševčenko (1814–1861) is the central figure in modern Ukrainian literature, but despite the enormous attention that has been devoted to his person, his work, and his role in Ukrainian history and the Ukrainian national renascence, the core of the Ševčenko phenomenon—the symbolic nature of his poetry—has received little systematic analysis.

As this book argues, myth serves as the underlying code and model of Ševčenko’s poetic universe. Examining the structures and paradigms of Ševčenko’s mythical thought provides answers for various crucial and heretofore intractable questions, such as those concerning the relation of his Ukrainian poetry to his Russian prose, his sense of a transcendent “curse” and “guilt” in the Ukrainian past and present, the interrelation of his revolutionist fervor with his apparent providentialism, or of the tension between the nativism and the universalism of his poetry.

Moreover, it is through the structures of his mythical thought that we can understand Ševčenko’s “prophecy,” in effect, his millenarian vision. In this framework, too, the author focuses on the religious tenor of Ševčenko’s poetry, in which he is both expiator and carrier of the Word, and, finally, on the reception—indeed the cult of Ševčenko among generations of Ukrainians.

The empirical starting point for anyone who wants to understand political cleavages in the democratic world, based on a unique dataset covering fifty countries since World War II.

Who votes for whom and why? Why has growing inequality in many parts of the world not led to renewed class-based conflicts, seeming instead to have come with the emergence of new divides over identity and integration? News analysts, scholars, and citizens interested in exploring those questions inevitably lack relevant data, in particular the kinds of data that establish historical and international context. Political Cleavages and Social Inequalities provides the missing empirical background, collecting and examining a treasure trove of information on the dynamics of polarization in modern democracies.

The chapters draw on a unique set of surveys conducted between 1948 and 2020 in fifty countries on five continents, analyzing the links between voters’ political preferences and socioeconomic characteristics, such as income, education, wealth, occupation, religion, ethnicity, age, and gender. This analysis sheds new light on how political movements succeed in coalescing multiple interests and identities in contemporary democracies. It also helps us understand the conditions under which conflicts over inequality become politically salient, as well as the similarities and constraints of voters supporting ethnonationalist politicians like Narendra Modi, Jair Bolsonaro, Marine Le Pen, and Donald Trump.

Bringing together cutting-edge data and historical analysis, editors Amory Gethin, Clara Martínez-Toledano, and Thomas Piketty offer a vital resource for understanding the voting patterns of the present and the likely sources of future political conflict.

In his comprehensive study of types from the earliest times to the twentieth century, Daniel Berkeley Updike, founder of the famous Merrymount Press of Boston, traces the sequence of development in typography and discusses the relative importance of each period and the lesson that it holds for the modern printer. The 367 illustrations reproduce carefully selected pages from rare and beautiful books. The text constitutes a running commentary on the historical and artistic significance of these specimens, which exemplify the best work of printers and type founders from Gutenberg to Bruce Rogers. The closing chapters on choice of type and on the industrial conditions of the past and their relationship to the problem of printers today are particularly valuable.

Printing Types is the master work of a master printer, collecting in two volumes a wealth of material once scattered through widely diverse sources. Everyone interested in the graphic arts will welcome the reissue of this classic on the art of printing.

In his comprehensive study of types from the earliest times to the twentieth century, Updike, founder of the famous Merrymount Press of Boston, traces the sequence of development in typography and discusses the relative importance of each period and the lesson that it holds for the modern printer. The 367 illustrations reproduce carefully selected pages from rare and beautiful books. The text constitutes a running commentary on the historical and artistic significance of these specimens, which exemplify the best work of printers and type founders from Gutenberg to Bruce Rogers. The closing chapters on choice of type and on the industrial conditions of the past and their relationship to the problem of printers today are particularly valuable.

Printing Types is the master work of a master printer, collecting in two volumes a wealth of material once scattered through widely diverse sources. Everyone interested in the graphic arts will welcome the reissue of this classic on the art of printing.

This book offers a new theory of the structure of propositions, which provides a uniform treatment of constative and performative sentences. Jerrold Katz shows that performatives can enter into logically valid arguments, even though, as Austin claimed, they can't be true or false. Katz also argues that “speech act theory” is not a theory at all, but an assortment of observations about heterogeneous aspects of the performance of speech acts. He shows that a better explanation of speech acts is given by a grammatical account of the iIIocutionary potential of sentences and a separate pragmatic account of how this potential is realized in actual speech situtations. Katz provides such a grammatical account, which makes it possible for the first time to explain the iIIocutionary potential of sentences within grammar.

In this timely book, the first comprehensive study of the modern American public intellectual--that individual who speaks to the public on issues of political or ideological moment--Richard Posner charts the decline of a venerable institution that included worthies from Socrates to John Dewey.

With the rapid growth of the media in recent years, highly visible forums for discussion have multiplied, while greater academic specialization has yielded a growing number of narrowly trained scholars. Posner tracks these two trends to their inevitable intersection: a proliferation of modern academics commenting on topics outside their ken. The resulting scene--one of off-the-cuff pronouncements, erroneous predictions, and ignorant policy proposals--compares poorly with the performance of earlier public intellectuals, largely nonacademics whose erudition and breadth of knowledge were well suited to public discourse.

Leveling a balanced attack on liberal and conservative pundits alike, Posner describes the styles and genres, constraints and incentives, of the activity of public intellectuals. He identifies a market for this activity--one with recognizable patterns and conventions but an absence of quality controls. And he offers modest proposals for improving the performance of this market--and the quality of public discussion in America today.

This paperback edition contains a new preface and and a new epilogue.

In 1753, at the request of the London Jewish community, the Peiham administration passed an act repealing the religious test that prevented Jewish aliens from being naturalized. This act, formally known as the Jewish Naturalization Act, was of negligible practical importance, but political opponents exploited the issue for an upcoming election campaign. The "Jew Bill" became a battle cry that swept across England. The Peiham administration, sensing the political damage that could be caused by the bill, bowed to the clamor and then took the initiative in defeating its own act.

This book is the first thorough account of that notorious but little-understood episode in English history. Using a largely narrative form the author first discusses the position of the Jews in the mid-eighteenth century and explains why they sought and obtained passage of the bill. He then recounts the beginnings of opposition to it and discusses the religious, economic, political, and psychological reasons for the opposition. He describes in detail the propaganda campaign against the bill and the resultant effect on the election.

The author concludes that this was not an isolated explosion of anti-Semitism, but rather a renewal of a long-standing debate over general naturalization policy. He further concludes that Parliament was more sensitive to public opinion than is generally supposed and that the terms "Whig supremacy" or "trusteeship" are not entirely accurate.

The reader will find that this study reveals much of the English political system of that era: the style and structure of parliamentary politics and electioneering; religious attitudes and economic notions; and the methods and ethical and intellectual standards of journalism and political propaganda.