Popular literature in Victorian Scotland: language, fiction and the press. By William Donaldson. Pp. xii, 186. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press. 1986. £13.95 hard back, £8.95 paper back. The laird of Drammochdyle and his contemporaries; or random sketches done in outline with a burnt stick. By William Alexander. Edited with an introduction by William Donaldson. Pp. xxi, 164. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press. 1986. £13.50 hard back, £8.90 paper back.In Popular literature in Victorian Scotland, Dr Donaldson has written a book of considerable importance. It combines literary criticism with social, economic and cultural history, and his work opens up many possibilities of further research. His subject is the world of Scottish news papers as they flourished after the repeal in 1855 of stamp duty on newspapers. More specific ally, he is concerned with the characteristic fiction which blossomed in their pages. The heart of his message is simply that there was so much of this fiction, until now completely lost sight of: at one point he calculates that there must have appeared in Victorian newspapers 'even at a conservative estimate . . . more than five thousand full-length Scottish novels'. This fact, he suggests, has considerable implications for our picture of the development of the novel in Scot land and, more broadly, for our ideas on Scottish culture in modern times.A large part of his purpose is to tell the story of nineteenth-century Scottish newspaper publishing and his account is of interest to anyone concerned with modern Scottish society. His mastery of the detailed intricacies of the economic and technical processes involved is striking. After a sketch of conditions in a newspaper office while the Stamp Act held the press in a som nolent trance, he illustrates the explosion following its repeal by surveying the rise of John Leng's Dundee-based group of newspapers, with special emphasis on his all-conquering People's Journal and People's Friend. He then discusses the prominent place given in their pages to Scots vernacular prose. This is especially fascinating, and he provides, through copious illust ration, ample evidence to substantiate his claim that 'a whole new vernacular prose came into being with a range and diversity unknown for centuries'. Seen through Dr Donaldson's eyes, the Victorian age ceases to be a period when Scottish verbal culture was in the doldrums and, in stead, seems vibrant and important.
in the search for a european heritage of folk song one potential source of discovery is the era of the revolution which affected several european countries in 1848 and 1849. particularly in the folk song traditions of ireland and germany in the decades leading up to and after 1848 one comes across many overlapping themes such as nationhood, political emancipation, hunger, exploitation, military service and mass emigration. before focusing on the aspects in common of these two song cultures it is important to outline the parallels and differences in the political and national contexts. ireland, a rural country embroiled in religious conflict, was under control of the british Crown, its peasants in the clutches of exploitative british landlords and further impoverished by famine, its trade dictated to by british markets. germany on the other hand was experiencing its industrial revolution: it had an ascending bourgeois class seeking political emancipation from the ruling aristocracy and a growing proletarian class displaced from the countryside, living in wretched conditions and also intermittently suffering from hunger. a Common european song heritage in the nineteenth Century songs oF ireland and germany david robb This paper deals with thematic similarities between German and Irish folk songs of the nineteenth century, particularly the period surrounding the 1848 Revolution. While clear commonalities can be seen to exist in songs about exploitative masters, hunger, emigration and army recruitment, there are differences in terms of the situation of Germany as a rapid industrialising nation while Ireland was still rural. At the same time the plight of the displaced German craftsmen due to industrialisation does have echoes in the struggles of the craft trade expressed in the Irish songs. Another difference lies in the dimension of religion and national liberation in the Irish ballads, whereas the German counterparts display more of a developing class consciousness. While the German and Irish narrative styles and approaches also differ from one another, there is nonetheless evidence of a common folk language and musical heritage between the two countries, which has been affirmed by the cultural exchange between their respective folk movements since the 1970s. keywords: folk song, folk revival 1848 Revolution, Industrial Revolution, famine, emigration, anti-militarism, drinking ballads, travelling craftsmen. Članek obravnava vsebinske podobnosti med nemškimi in irskimi ljudskimi pesmimi iz 19. stoletja, posebej še iz časa okrog revolucionarnih sprememb leta 1848. Medtem ko lahko opazimo izrazite podobnosti v pesmih, ki pojejo o izkoriščevalskih gospodarjih, emigraciji in vojaških vpoklicih, pa so opazne razlike med Nemčijo kot deželo izrazite indistrializacije in Irsko kot še vedno zelo ruralno deželo. Istočasno pa težak položaj zaradi industrializacije razseljenih nemških rokodelcev odmeva v tistih irskih pesmih o rokodelstvu. Druga je razlika v religiji in nacionalni osvoboditvi, kakor odsevata v irskih baladah, m...
One of the most creative communicative strategies of German twentieth-century political song has been narrative role-play. From the songs of Kurt Tucholsky and Walter Mehring in Weimar cabaret during the 1920s to the dramatic monologues of Franz Josef Degenhardt in the 1960s and beyond, singers have assumed identifiable roles to parody the language, mannerisms, and characteristics of known establishment social types. Role play has also been evident in the narrative identities constructed by singers and performers, either by means of literary association or by association with certain political ideas or stances, as in the case of Ernst Busch embodying the proletarian worker. This article examines different types of role-play, including that of Hans-Eckard Wenzel and Steffen Mensching who, in their 1980s performances, assumed the ironic masks of clowns, with which they projected an alternative ‘carnival’ vision of society in the German Democratic Republic. David Robb is Senior Lecturer in German at Queen's University of Belfast. He is an experienced songwriter and performing musician, the author of Zwei Clowns im Lande des verlorenen Lachens: das Liedertheater Wenzel & Mensching (1998) and the editor of Protest Song in East and West Germany since the 1960s (2007).
No abstract
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.