scholarly journals An Unseen Eighth Rune: Runic Legacy and Multiliteral Performativity in Cynewulf’s The Fates of the Apostles

Humanities ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 124
Author(s):  
Jacob Wayne Runner
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Proper Interpretation ◽  
Prevailing View

The four Old English poems containing the runic Cyn(e)wulf ‘signature’ have continuously provoked debate as to the characters’ intratextual function and proper interpretation. While the prevailing view is that they are predominantly logogrammatic instantiations of traditional runic names, a case has nevertheless also been made for alternative words indicated by initialisms. Referencing both of these lines of reasoning in conjunction with a semiotic literary methodological stance, this article evaluates a single Cynewulf poem (The Fates of the Apostles) and its particular inclusion of runes amongst the bookhand alphabet characters. The assessment demonstrates the poem’s multiliteral destabilization of associative boundaries between different scripts, as well as between perceived boundaries of orality and legibility. In doing so, it identifies in the text an unseen ‘eighth rune’ that is semiotically operative.

Remembering the Past in Nineteenth-Century Scotland

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
James J. Coleman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
The Past ◽  
Prevailing View ◽  
The Way

At a time when the Union between Scotland and England is once again under the spotlight, Remembering the Past in Nineteenth-Century Scotland examines the way in which Scotland’s national heroes were once remembered as champions of both Scottish and British patriotism. Whereas 19th-century Scotland is popularly depicted as a mire of sentimental Jacobitism and kow-towing unionism, this book shows how Scotland’s national heroes were once the embodiment of a consistent, expressive and robust view of Scottish nationality. Whether celebrating the legacy of William Wallace and Robert Bruce, the reformer John Knox, the Covenanters, 19th-century Scots rooted their national heroes in a Presbyterian and unionist view of Scotland’s past. Examined through the prism of commemoration, this book uncovers collective memories of Scotland’s past entirely opposed to 21st-century assumptions of medieval proto-nationalism and Calvinist misery. Detailed studies of 19th-century commemoration of Scotland’s national heroes Uncovers an all but forgotten interpretation of these ‘great Scots’ Shines a new light on the mindset of nineteenth-century Scottish national identity as being comfortably Scottish and British Overturns the prevailing view of Victorian Scottishness as parochial, sentimental tartanry

The Hydra of Tyranny, The Fall of Robespierre and the Early Demise of Robert Southey's Revolutionary Enthusiasm

Romanticism ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Later Life ◽  
Joan Of Arc ◽  
Principled Explanation ◽  
Closet Drama ◽  
Prevailing View

This article explores Robert Southey's pessimistic re-appropriation of the popular revolutionary symbol of the hydra in the closet drama The Fall of Robespierre (1794). Challenging the prevailing view that Southey was an enthusiastic revolutionary throughout the 1790s, the study progresses from an exploration of the hydra's ubiquitous use in revolutionary and loyalist propaganda to an account of Southey's damning re-appropriation of the monster as a symbol for recurrences of tyranny in France's revolutionary governments. Analyses of The Fall of Robespierre, Southey's closet drama Wat Tyler (1794) and epic Joan of Arc (1796) demonstrate that Southey acquired an early conviction that tyranny was a recurrent obstacle to democracy, which rendered revolution futile. Arguing that Southey's revolutionary zeal had largely abated by 1793, I contend that his youthful incredulity about the plausibility of establishing a republic informed, and constitutes a principled explanation for, his notorious apostasy and conservatism in later life.

Transportation and the Environment

2017 ◽  
Vol 94 (3) ◽  
pp. 37-61
Author(s):  
Douglas R. Littlefield
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Sierra Nevada ◽  
Mississippi River ◽  
San Joaquin Valley ◽  
Eastern United States ◽  
Major Health ◽  
San Joaquin River ◽  
Natural Wetlands ◽  
Prevailing View

Some histories of California describe nineteenth-century efforts to reclaim the extensive swamplands and shallow lakes in the southern part of California's San Joaquin Valley – then the largest natural wetlands habitat west of the Mississippi River – as a herculean venture to tame a boggy wilderness and turn the region into an agricultural paradise. Yet an 1850s proposition for draining those marshes and lakes primarily was a scheme to improve the state's transportation. Swampland reclamation was a secondary goal. Transport around the time of statehood in 1850 was severely lacking in California. Only a handful of steamboats plied a few of the state's larger rivers, and compared to the eastern United States, roads and railroads were nearly non-existent. Few of these modes of transportation reached into the isolated San Joaquin Valley. As a result, in 1857 the California legislature granted an exclusive franchise to the Tulare Canal and Land Company (sometimes known as the Montgomery franchise, after two of the firm's founders). The company's purpose was to connect navigable canals from the southern San Joaquin Valley to the San Joaquin River, which entered from the Sierra Nevada about half way up the valley. That stream, in turn, joined with San Francisco Bay, and thus the canals would open the entire San Joaquin Valley to world-wide commerce. In exchange for building the canals, the Montgomery franchise could collect tolls for twenty years and sell half the drained swamplands (the other half was to be sold by the state). Land sales were contingent upon the Montgomery franchise reclaiming the marshes. Wetlands in the mid-nineteenth century were not viewed as they are today as fragile wildlife habitats but instead as impediments to advancing American ideals and homesteads across the continent. Moreover, marshy areas were seen as major health menaces, with the prevailing view being that swampy regions’ air carried infectious diseases.

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