This book represents a selection of papers presented by academics and researchers at the 12th Conference on British and American Studies. They are grouped in two main theme clusters, corresponding to the two chapters of the book: Languages in Contact and Languages in Use and Multidisciplinarity and Multiculturalism in Literary Studies. In the first section, language is described, in turn, as subject to influence by other language systems, as an object of learning and acquisition, and as an instrument enabling users to bridge between cultures, disciplinary domains, and people. The second part of the volume is mainly concerned with such notions as hybridity, tolerance, identity, subversion and deconstruction, as reflected in classical and contemporary Anglo-American literary texts.
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This volume brings together a selection of papers in linguistics presented at the 13th edition of the Conference on British and American Studies. Structured into three chapters, the studies included here are illustrative for the different perspectives, methodologies, and research traditions in the investigation of language-related phenomena. The first chapter, "Language Change and Cross-Linguistic Analysis", is mainly concerned with the external and internal catalysts for language change, and with a number of morphosyntactic and semantic particularities of Romanian, set in contrast with other languages. Aspects related to first or second language learning and language as an instrument of thought form the content of the second chapter, "Language Acquisition, Teaching and Processing". The focus of the final chapter, "Pragmatics, Translation, and the Negotiation of Meaning", is language as an instrument of power and (self-)communication.
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• List of illustrations--
• 1. Prostitution, performance, and Mae West: speaking from the whore position--
• 2. Betty Boutell, 'Whom All the Town Fucks': constructing the actress/whore--
• 3. Memoir and masquerade: Charlotte Charke, Margaret Leeson, and eighteenth-century performances of self--
• 4. Burlesque, breeches, and blondes: illegitimate nineteenth-century cultural and theatrical performance--
• 5. 'We need status as actresses!': contemporary prostitution and performance--
• 6. Afterpiece: millennial prostitution-- Bibliography-- Index.
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The image of the actress as prostitute has haunted the theatrical profession since women first went on the stage. Kirsten Pullen explores the history of this connection both in the cultural imagination and in real life. She shows, through case studies of women working in Britain and the United States between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries, that some women have drawn on the dual tradition of 'whore' as radical and victim to carve out a space for female sexual agency. Female performers from Elizabeth Boutell and Charlotte Charke to Mae West redefined gender identity and appropriate female sexuality. Pullen integrates substantial archival research and interviews with working prostitutes with a consideration of feminist and cultural perspectives on the myth and reality of the actress/whore. This highly original study offers many new insights to theatre historians and scholars of cultural, social and gender studies.
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Taking its title from a poem of William Butler Yeats, this collection of essays focuses on "Adam's Curse" - the burdens and harsh conditions that, as Denis Donoghue underscores throughout, make any human achievement difficult. As he says, those "conditions include at various levels of reference the Fall of Man, categorical failure, loss, the limitations inscribed so insistently in human life that they seem to be in the nature of things, like death and weather." But hope is never ruled out, as Donoghue reminds us of "the possibility of putting up with the conditions and turning them to some account." It is the "putting up with the conditions and turning them to some account" - a post-lapsarian struggle fraught with religious questions - that most interests Donoghue. These essays, which are explorations of both faith and literary works that engage faith, address a dazzling range of texts and writers: Yeats, Milton, Larkin, Heaney, Emmanuel Levinas, Alasdair Maclntyre, John Crowe Ransom, Henry Adams, William Lynch's Christ and Apollo, and Robert Bellah's Beyond Belief, among others. Common to all is an alertness to the social bearing of literature and the role it plays in relation to politics, religion, and especially ethics. What emerges, for Donoghue, is the need to restore the primary of theology and church doctrine without evading the "dark parts" of the Old and New Testaments. Through his probing, reflective encounters with philosophical and religious issues, we witness a magisterial intelligence at work.
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• Contents: Introduction-- The bonds of sentiment, Stephen Ahern--
• Part 1 Sympathy's Empire: Capitalism and slavery, once again with feeling, George Boulukos-- Acts of sympathy: abolitionist poetry and transatlantic identification, Tobias Menely.
• Part 2 Nation, Narration, Emancipation: Commerce, sentiment, and free air: contradictions of abolitionist rhetoric, Anthony John Harding-- Sympathy, nerve physiology, and national degeneration in Anna Letitia Barbauld's Epistle to William Wilberforce, Mary Waters.
• Part 3 Spectacles of Suffering: To force a tear: British abolitionism and the 18th-century stage, Brycchan Carey-- 'Pity for the poor Africans': William Cowper and the limits of abolitionist affect, Joanne Tong-- 'We beg Your Excellency': the sentimental politics of abolitionist petitions in the late 18th century, Christine Levecq.
• Part 4 Sentimental Bondage: The contradictions of racialized sensibility: gender, slavery and the limits of sympathy, Jamie Rosenthal-- The cruelty of slavery, the cruelty of freedom: colonization and the politics of humaneness in the early republic, Margaret Abruzzo-- Bibliography-- Index.
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At the turn of the nineteenth century, writers arguing for the abolition of the slave trade and the emancipation of those in bondage used the language of sentiment and the political ideals of the Enlightenment to make their case. This collection investigates the rhetorical features and political complexities of the culture of sentimentality as it grappled with the material realities of transatlantic slavery. Are the politics of sentimental representation progressive or conservative? What dynamics are in play at the site of suffering? What is the relationship of the spectator to the spectacle of the body in pain? The contributors take up these and related questions in essays that examine poetry, plays, petitions, treatises and life-writing that engaged with contemporary debates about abolition.
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• List of Figures. List of Tables. Series Preface. Acknowledgements.
• 1. Introduction.
• 2. African Americans in the Samana Peninsula.
• 3. African Americans in Nova Scotia: Settlement and Data.
• 4. External Controls.
• 5. Method.
• 6. The Past Tense.
• 7. The Present Tense.
• 8. The Future Tense.
• 9. Conclusions: An Essay on the Origins and Development of African American English. References. Index.
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This provocative volume investigates the origins of contemporary African American Vernacular English (AAVE), one of the oldest, yet unsolved, questions in sociolinguistics. Exploring the hypothesis that contemporary AAVE is a direct descendant of colonial British English rather than of a widespread Creole precursor, this volume presents a comprehensive analysis of tense and aspect as manifested in recorded conversations with 101 former slaves and their descendants. The study is staged in three distinct "diaspora" enclaves in Canada and the Caribbean, whose language has evolved independently of AAVE, modern Creoles and neighboring speech varieties. Advanced quantitative methodology, combined with linguistically precise analyses of English dialects in historical context, make this an essential text for researchers and students of linguistics, the history of English and African American Studies.
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Alphabetically arranged entries discuss the lives and works of more than 75 British and American 17th-century writers The 17th century was a time of significant cultural and political change. The era saw the rise of exploration and travel, the growth of the scientific method, and the spread of challenges to conventional religion. Many of these developments took place in England and North America, and literature of the period reflects the intellectual and emotional fervour of the age. This reference work chronicles the lives and works of more than 75 British and American writers of the 17th century. Included are entries on such major canonical authors as Donne, Milton, and Jonson. But the volume also covers the writings of such leading thinkers as Hobbes and Locke, along with the works of such leading European figures as Galileo and Descartes. The volume also profiles a significant number of women writers, including Mary Astell, Aphra Behn, and Anne Killigrew. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and includes a biography, a discussion of major works and themes, a survey of the writer's critical reception, and primary and secondary bibliographies. The volume additionally includes entries on several artists who significantly influenced British and American literary culture. Each entry is written by an expert contributor, and includes a biography, a discussion of major works and themes, a survey of the writer's critical reception, and bibliographies Profiles many women writers Includes entries on political, scientific, and philosophical writers, in addition to literary figures Includes entries on several continental European writers who influenced British and American culture.
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Arm yourself against my dawn, which may at any moment cast you and Harry into obscurity, Alice James writes her brother William in 1891. In Judith Hooper's magnificent novel, zingers such as this fly back and forth between the endlessly articulate and letter-writing Jameses, all of whom are geniuses at gossiping. And the James family did, in fact, know everyone intellectually important on both sides of the Atlantic, but by the time we meet her in 1889, Alice has been sidelined and is lying in bed in Leamington, England, after taking London by storm. We don't know what's wrong with Alice. No one does, though her brothers have inventive theories, and the best of medical science offers no help. So, with Alice in bed, we travel to London and Paris, where the James children spent part of their unusual childhood. We sit with her around the James family's dinner table, as she - the youngest and the only girl - listens to the intellectual elite of Boston, missing nothing. The book is accompanied by Hooper's Afterword, "What was Wrong with Alice?, " an analysis of the varied psychological ills of the James family and Alice's own medical history.
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Alistair Cooke, for 52 years the unmistakable voice of BBC's "Letter from America", was 90 in 1998. Drawing upon correspondence, private papers and the reminiscences of family and friends, this is the biography of one the most famous names in British broadcasting history.
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• Introduction: 'Original Response'--
• 1. 'The All-Sustaining Air': Variations on a Romantic Metaphor--
• 2. 'A Vision of Reality': Mid-to-Late Yeats--
• 3. 'Dialectic Ways': T. S. Eliot and Counter-Romanticism--
• 4. 'The Guts of the Living': Auden and Spender in the 1930s--
• 5. 'The Death of Satan': Stevens's 'Esthetique du Mal', Evil, and the Romantic Imagination--
• 6. 'Shining in Modest Glory': Post-Romantic Strains in Kavanagh, Heaney, Mahon, and Carson--
• 7. : 'Just Another Twist in the Plot': Paul Muldoon's Madoc--
• 8. 'Deep Shocks of Recognition' and 'Gutted' Romanticism: Geoffrey Hill and Roy Fisher.
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Drawn from Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, the title of this book suggests the cultural and literary persistence of the Romantic in the work of many British, American, and Irish poets since 1900. Allowing for and celebrating the multiple, even fractured nature of Romantic legacies, Michael O'Neill focuses on the creative impact of Romantic poetry on twentieth- and twenty-first century poetry. Individual chapters embrace numerous authors and texts, and span different cultures; the intention is not the forlorn hope of completeness, but the wish to open up possibilities and intersections, and there is a strong sense throughout of poetry serving as a subtle and profound form of literary criticism. A wide-ranging introduction analyses the persistence of the Romantic in poets such as Ted Hughes, Wilfred Owen, Robert Frost, Denise Levertov, Robert Lowell, and others, and sets the scene for subsequent discussions. Chapter 1 dwells on images of 'air', using these to understand the efforts of a number of twentieth-century poets to 'sustain' Romanticism, or forms of it.Chapters 2 and 3 focus on Yeats and Eliot, respectively, the latter apparently shunning the Romantic, the former seeming to embrace it, but both responding with subtlety and individuality to the Romantic bequest. Chapter 4 argues that Wallace Stevens's 'Esthetique du Mal' should be read as a work that illuminates the writings of the major Romantics, especially about evil and suffering. Chapter 5 discusses the work of W. H. Auden and Stephen Spender, exploring the complex response of both poets to the Romantic, Auden complicated in his post-Romantic attitudes, Spender daring in his attempts to renew a Romantic lyricism in a post-Romantic age. Chapter 6 returns to a broader sweep as it investigates the response of a range of contemporary poets from Northern Ireland, including Heaney, Kavanagh, Mahon, and Carson, to Romantic poetry. Chapter 7 sustains the Irish connection, discussing Paul Muldoon's dealings with Byron and other Romantics, especially in Madoc.And Chapter 8 focuses on Geoffrey's Hill's tense and tensed relations with Romantic poetry, and on Roy Fisher's sense of being a 'gutted Romantic', in order to illustrate two diverse ways of being post-Romantic in contemporary culture.
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"Cultivating Allegiance argues that British representations of America, Americans, and Anglo-American relations at the turn of the twentieth century provided an important forum for promoting the improving effects of culture, particularly literature. Analyzing America provided an indirect form of self-scrutiny for British writers and readers, safely insulated by the superiority invoked by critiquing American difference. Operating within a reflexive transatlantic print culture, writers crafted cultivated personae as markers of an ideal Britishness. In so doing, they deployed a variety of images of the United States as counterparts to their visions of these ideals. Thus, British representations of America provide an important linkage between nineteenth and twentieth century visions of British culture and national identity"--Provided by publisher.

• Introduction : Admitting America to British life
• "I used to like gangsters and newspaper films, but i'm not so sure now" : the Hollywood dreams of Jessie Matthews and the British film industry
• "But he's so kind and friendly!" The mysterious American in 1930s British cinema
• Johnny in the clouds : middle-class fantasies of the American G.I.
• "Funny thing about controls, suddenly they go haywire" : debating the necessity of restraint in postwar Britain
• "A well-intentioned but inexperienced colossus" : British cinema, Picture Post and the redefinition of national identity in the postwar period
• A world worth saving? Redefining national identity in Margaret Thatcher's Britain
• "You're his little English bitch and you don't even know it" : Gendering Anglo-american relations in post/9/11 British cinema.

As the British watched their empire crumble, many British films depicted the danger and allure of American culture, reflecting a common belief that the United States-the newly dominant world power-could be reckless and irreverent. As social mobility became more common in British life, Americans on screen were portrayed as crude, outspoken and ambitious. Yet the same films that portrayed the U.S. as an agent of chaos also suggested Britons might do well to embrace American-style energy and egalitarianism.Movies like Love Actually, The Quatermass Xperiment, 28 Weeks Later, Local Hero and Alfred Hitchcock's The Secret Agent have delved into the storied ""special relationship"" between the U.S. and U.K. These films and many more are examined this first book-length study of British movies about America, revealing much about British attitudes regarding power, gender, class, sexuality and emotion.
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• 1. Introduction--
• 2. Spelling differences--
• 3. Letter sequences and affixation--
• 4. Higher frequency words--
• 5. Lower frequency words--
• 6. Part of speech categories--
• 7. Semantic categories--
• 8. Swearing, identity and discourse markers--
• 9. Conclusion.
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Is British English becoming more like American English? If so, why, and in what ways? This book compares examples of American and British language data from the 1930s, 1960s, 1990s and 2000s, to track the most important ways that both varieties are changing over time, and compares the extent to which they are following similar paths using a mixture of computer and human analysis. The analysis is carried out across several levels, including spelling differences (such as colour vs color), vocabulary (truck vs lorry), and a range of morphological, grammatical, semantic and pragmatic features. Baker explores the changing aspects of American and British society which help to explain the findings.
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• Introduction Sources Indexed The Index About the Author.
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In 1979, Scarecrow Press published J. P. Wearing's American and British Theatrical Biography: A Directory, which enabled users to quickly locate biographical information about figures-both major and minor-who are or were connected with British and American theatre. In American and British Theatrical Biographies: An Index, Wearing has revised and extensively expanded the previous work. This edition draws upon more than 130 sources and 500 volumes that have been surveyed and indexed, providing information on more than 90,000 individuals from the earliest times to the present. For each person listed in the index, the following is provided where available: *Name (with cross-references to stage names, pseudonyms, etc.) *Birth and death date *Nationality *Theatrical occupation(s) *Codes to sources containing more extensive biographical information While the focus of the index is on American and British figures working in live theatre before paying audiences, "foreign" personalities are included when the sources surveyed make some mention of their contribution to the British or American theatre. American and British Theatrical Biographies: An Index also embraces the spheres of ballet, opera, music, circus, and music halls. This comprehensive index is a useful source for scholars, theatrical personnel, theatre students, librarians, writers, and theatre historians.
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