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• Parkinson’s Law and an Ironic Rhetoric of Management

  Attila Sebestyén

  Views:

  132

  Cyril Northcote Parkinson, British historian, fiction writer, and, so to say, management guru, in Parkinson’s Law created his own successful way of critiquing organizational bureaucratization. Parkinson’s work falls under the Burkean category of “literature for use,” in which affectivity becomes guaranteed by the peculiarity of irony. As Wayne C. Booth suggested, even in the case of “stable irony” there may often be some possibility of further considerations (that is, the factor of uncertainty), despite all the efforts to rhetorically control this type of irony. Booth, however, also noted that a paradoxical situation may arise in which “unstable” irony, intended to be open-ended, becomes capable of creating possibilities for referential reading and practical application. Thus, Parkinson’s Law provides the duality of entertainment through its satire and the seriousness of its management thoughts (for instance, the relationship of work and time, work and headcount, workforce selection methods, and the extension of committees or departments). These two aspects, constantly intermingling, are examined through the rhetoric of irony working in Parkinson’s Law and the practical influences it may exert. (AS)

• Sage, Hero, Ironist: Sublimity and Irony in Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus and Lectures on Heroes

  Nataliya Novikova

  Views:

  43

  The paper focuses on the complex interplay between sublimity and irony, explored through a parallel reading of Sartor Resartus and On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History by the Victorian philosopher and historian Thomas Carlyle. The essay shows how a common philosophical framework, firmly based on a sublime principle, is affected by the style and structure of the analyzed works: it finds total affirmation in one case (On Heroes), while it undergoes ironic subversion in the other (Sartor Resartus). Carlyle’s transcendental ideal is dramatically at odds with what he identifies as the delusions of language and history, therefore, it requires an unusual agency and extraordinary cognitive powers defined as “heroic” to transform the common individual and ordinary collective being. The “hero” in Sartor Resartus, however, is radically different from those in the lectures On Heroes: the value of his sublime experience is repeatedly questioned through the intervention of an editorial persona and the fragmentation of the text.  (NN)

• The Rhetoric of Sublime Astonishment in the Burkean and Blakean Readings of Milton

  Éva Antal

  Views:

  78

  Although the Lockean clear and distinct ideas greatly influenced Burke in his writing on the sublime, Milton’s impact is emphatically displayed in the dark and obscure rhetoric of the work. Despite the fact that Burke’s text abounds in classical quotations, it is Milton’s “strong expressions” that overpower the argument. William Blake also borrows a lot from Milton, but he radically rejects Burke’s ideas. Through the revelatory power of his visionary sublime, Blake overtly criticizes Locke’s shallow empiricism and Burke’s obscure rhetoric, arguing against a simple disparity of light/clarity versus darkness/obscurity. This essay explores the Burkean and the Blakean readings of the Miltonic sublime side by side, analyzing the Miltonic quotations in Burke’s A Philosophical Enquiry parallel with the verbal and visual references in Blake’s Milton, and highlighting the differences in their views.  (ÉA)

• Introduction

  Éva Antal

  Views:

  35

  Introduction to the thematic section "On the Sublime."

• From Heroic Soldiers to Geometric Forms and Suffering Wrecks: The Transformation of the Male Body in the Art of World War I

  Eszter Edit Balogh

  Views:

  58

  Mechanized and trench warfare, which dominated World War I representations and made millions of soldiers suffer, challenged the rigid gender ideals and hierarchies in the Europe of the time. As the destruction of the traditional manly ideal ran parallel with the destruction of male bodies in the war, the hegemony of traditional representational modes of soldiers was also gradually replaced by more innovative strategies both in poetry and painting. The essay analyzes such works of art with a focus on the crisis of masculinity, manifested quite tangibly in new strategies and representations of visual art. Similarly to soldiers’ written reminiscences, works of visual art depict a sense of emasculation, powerlessness, physical and mental breakdown, testifying that the masculine ideal, which was in large part defined by the chivalric heroic tradition, became anachronistic and unattainable. The figure of the physically or mentally disabled, disempowered soldier as a new phenomenon gained a central position during and after World War I, questioning the validity of the old patriarchal order. Previously marginalized masculinities, for example, the masculinity of homosexual men, and traits previously associated exclusively with femininity such as sensitivity, found their way to open up the borders and shape the Modernist discourse of European masculinity, changing it once and for all. (EEB)

• Down to Earth, Up for Democracy

  Yuxuan Wu

  Views:

  80

  Book review:

  Gregory, Elizabeth. Apparition of Splendor: Marianne Moore Performing Democracy through Celebrity, 1952–1970. Newark: U of Delaware P, 2021. 264 pages. ISBN 9781644531969. Hb. $34.95.

• “Literature on the Edge”: Austro-Modernism of the Long War

  Enikő Bollobás

  Views:

  58

  Book review:

  Perloff, Marjorie. Edge of Irony: Modernism in the Shadow of the Habsburg Empire. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2016. 204 pages. ISBN-13: 978-0-226-05442-1. Hb. $23.98.

• Multiple Contexts: English and Jewish Aspects of Howard Jacobson’s Novels

  Katalin Szlukovényi

  Views:

  75

  Book review:

  Anténe, Petr. Howard Jacobson’s Novels in the Context of Contemporary British Jewish Literature. Olomouc: Palacký University, 2019. 166 pages. ISBN 978-80-244-5651-5. Pbk. N.p.

• Gendered Readings of the First World War: A European Overview

  Eszter Edit Balogh

  Views:

  36

  Book review:

  Hämmerle, Christa, Oswald Überegger, and Birgitta Bader Zaar, eds. Gender and the First World War. Hampshire, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 265 pages. ISBN 978-1-137-30219-9. Hb. $100.

• “Fun, disturbing and ultimately forgettable”? : Notes on the Royal Court Theatre Production of Martin McDonagh’s Hangmen

  Ondřej Pilný

  Views:

  43

  The essay compares the reflections of a translator on the text of Martin McDonagh’s latest play, Hangmen (2015), with the impact of its first production by the Royal Court Theatre in London. It considers the response of multiple reviewers and of the Royal Court and West End audiences and argues that while this may be the first work by McDonagh that features a serious concern—this being the practice of capital punishment and its effect on society—the Royal Court production unduly obscured this aspect of the drama by mostly playing it only for the laughs. (OP)

• Dermot Healy, Resourceful Playwright

  Ondřej Pilný

  Views:

  41

  Book review:

  Hopper, Keith, and Neil Murphy, eds. Dermot Healy: The Collected Plays. Victoria, TX: Dalkey Archive P, 2016. xxxiii + 583 pages. ISBN 978-1-56478-930-3. Pbk. $21.00/£15.00.