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Introduction Pearl is a religious dream-vision in which the dream is largely taken up by dialogue between the narrator or dreamer, as a figure in his dream, and a woman who is a fount of divine wisdom. The closest analogy in fourteenth-century English writing is the dream-dialogue between the dreamer and Lady Holy Church in Passus I of the B-text of Piers Plowman . 1 In both the dreamer figure struggles with the great question of how to make the church’s teaching on salvation meaningful to him. Piers Plowman is vast and multi-faceted but Pearl is
Chapter 3 Pearls before swine: limiting godly speech in early seventeenth-century England   Karl Gunther S ome time in the late 1620s an English minister named William Hinde penned a lengthy and laudatory biography of the recently deceased Cheshire Puritan John Bruen. Leaving no virtue unremarked, Hinde drew attention to the godly patriarch’s ‘holy conversation’ with all manner of people.1 Bruen offered ‘wholesome instructions, loving admonitions, godly exhortations, and good directions’ to ‘the tender Babes, Plants, and Lambes of Christ Jesus’.2 To ‘such as
: the momentary triumph – when Miss Giddens thinks the ghost of Quint has been exorcised – that then goes limp in her arms. Pauline Kael had a fine phrase for Miss Jessel’s tear on the blotter: she called it ‘that little pearl of ambiguity’. 29 That is what this film is: a pearl of ambiguity. The best ghost story in fiction has been turned into the best ghost story on film. Notes
Bliss: opera’s untenable pleasures Monica B. Pearl This is an essay about pleasure, to which opera, for me, is not incidental. What is incidental: my knowledge of opera, my musical knowledge. As someone committed to scholarship, I am invested in believing that if I don’t know something, I can correct that; I don’t mean I could take on any talent: I am not hubristic, not in this way at least. But I am practical. I am able to suppose that with some earnest application and attention (i.e., studying), I could learn about music. For the most part, I have chosen not
This essay’s close interrogation of James Baldwin’s 1956 novel Giovanni’s Room allows us to see one aspect of how sexual shame functions: it shows how shame exposes anxiety not only about the feminizing force of homosexuality, but about how being the object of the gaze is feminizing—and therefore shameful. It also shows that the paradigm of the closet is not the metaphor of privacy and enclosure on one hand and openness and liberation on the other that it is commonly thought to be, but instead is a site of illusory control over whether one is available to be seen and therefore humiliated by being feminized. Further, the essay reveals the paradox of denial, where one must first know the thing that is at the same time being disavowed or denied. The narrative requirements of fictions such as Giovanni’s Room demonstrate this, as it requires that the narrator both know, in order to narrate, and not know something at the same time.
This essay proposes that a number of the concerns expressed in Dracula can be read through Bram Stoker’s employment of the imagery of precious metals and jewels. Focusing on the materiality of place – the treasure-laced landscape of Transylvania and the cliffs of Whitby famous for their reserves of jet – and the association between these materials and vampirism, I argue that analysing the symbolism of precious materials leads to a fuller understanding of many of the novel’s key anxieties. Not only does this analysis demonstrate Stoker’s elaborate use of jewel imagery in developing the notion of the female vampire as a hard, penetrative woman, it identifies the imperial implications of the trade in precious materials. In doing so, it claims that Stoker employs a ‘language of jewels’ in Dracula, through which he critiques the imperialistic plundering of Eastern lands, and demonstrates how these monsters – intimately entwined with these materials – attempt a rejection of Western appropriation.
This chapter analyses the activism of African-American civil rights lawyer, Randall Robinson, who used the TransAfrica Forum to wage the anti-apartheid struggle in the US in the 1970s and 1980s (pushing for economic and other sanctions), as well as to oppose military rule and to restore democracy in Haiti in the early 1990s.
This book is an open-ended critical account of the Gawain-poems. The four poems of MS Cotton Nero A.x, Art. 3 are untitled in the manuscript, but titled by modern editors, in manuscript order: Pearl, Cleanness (or Purity), Patience, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The poems testify that he was cultivated, with an appreciation of the finer points of chivalric life, and also deeply religious - a cleric, no doubt, given his biblical knowledge, his interest in Christian doctrine, and his understanding of sermon style. Pearl is a religious dream-vision in which the dream is largely taken up by dialogue between the narrator or dreamer, as a figure in his dream, and a woman who is a fount of divine wisdom. Cleanness combines discussion of a religious virtue with retelling of stories from the Bible. Its three main stories are from the Old Testament, and they centre on Noah, Sodom and Gomorrah, and Belshazzar's feast. Patience is a poem that combines discussion of a moral quality with biblical narrative, in the case of Patience, one narrative only, the story of Jonah.Sir Gawain is a record of, and tribute to, the beauties and pleasures of chivalric life. Pearl, Cleanness, and Patience suggest that for the poet national events may have merged with events in his own life to challenge his faith. With Gawain too it is possible that the public and the personal intermingle to shake his faith in chivalry and the feudal model of social order.
This book is about the public language of the 'war on terrorism' and the way in which language has been deployed to justify and normalise a global campaign of counter-terrorism. It explains how the war on terrorism has been reproduced and amplified by key social actors and how it has become the dominant political narrative in America today, enjoying widespread bipartisan and popular support. The book also explains why the language of politics is so important and the main methodological approach for analysing the language of counter-terrorism, namely, critical discourse analysis. Then, it provides the comparison drawn between the September 11, 2001 attacks and World War II and the attack on Pearl Harbor. One of the most noticeable aspects of the language surrounding the attacks of September 11, 2001 is its constant reference to tragedy, grievance and the exceptional suffering of the American people. The book focuses on the way in which language was deployed to construct the main identities of the protagonists. It demonstrates how terrorism is rhetorically constructed as posing a catastrophic threat to the American 'way of life', to freedom, liberty and democracy and even to civilisation itself. The book analyses how the administration's counter-terrorism campaign has been rhetorically constructed as an essentially 'good' and 'just war', similar to America's role in World War II. Finally, the book concludes that responsible citizens have a moral duty to oppose and resist the official language of counter-terrorism.