Abstract Newnham College Library holds a collection of German Romantic material relating to the writer Clemens Brentano (1778–1842) and his family and associates. This article considers the provenance of this collection as evidence of a German–British cultural exchange. It uses Newnham’s archival sources on the donor, Edith Renouf, and a survey of the holdings to interrogate the connection between the personal and the institutional and to examine the bibliographic traces that a migrant family left in its wake.
Abstract By comparing two German Realist novellas rarely read together – Adalbert Stifter’s Der Hagestolz and Theodor Storm’s Eine Halligfahrt – this article shows how similar island settings can generate divergent moral and spatial imaginations. In both, a young man visits an older relative who has retreated to an island, yet the meaning of that retreat differs: Stifter’s remote island warns against social withdrawal, while Storm’s precarious Hallig – a shifting zone between land and sea – anchors a critique of mainland society. Both novellas engage with and subvert familiar motifs of island literature, such as the enchanted island or Isle of the Dead. Reading them side by side illuminates the distinctive interplay of topography and theme in each, while also contributing to debates in literary realism about how physical landscapes shape narrative form and the scope of social critique.
Abstract Guiomar Torresão was a nineteenth-century writer known for her career as a journalist, even though she also published novels, collections, translations and a few dramas. Although few in number, the plays represent a key component in her career, for she employed them to consolidate her consecration as a Portuguese ‘woman of letters’. This article explores the role drama played in the context of Torresão’s career by analysing the plays Educação moderna (1894), O fraco da baronesa (1878) and Amor de filha (1881). Focusing on the female characters, the article establishes a connection between the representation of women and the performative and commercial intention of the plays, showing how Torresão reinforced female stereotypes to please the public and gain recognition. It also draws attention to how the publication of Educação moderna, following its first performance, represents a crucial milestone in the author’s trajectory.
Abstract This article examines Romualdo Gentilucci’s Galleria Dantesca – a multimedia spectacle consisting of twenty-seven large-scale paintings displayed in rotation, accompanied by music and light effects – in the context of nineteenth-century commemorative practices and Dante reception traditions within Italy and beyond. Drawing on archival materials, exhibition programmes and press coverage, the article argues that the Galleria Dantesca complicates dominant Florence-centred accounts of the anniversary by advancing a distinctly Roman and Catholic vision of Dante. The article further demonstrates how the Galleria mobilized the rhetoric of cosmopolitanism to present Dante simultaneously as an Italian poet and a transnational cultural asset, revealing the interplay between literary commemoration, cultural diplomacy and commercial entrepreneurship in nineteenth-century Europe. By situating the project within the wider European ‘cult of the centenary’, the article shows how the image of Dante as a modern literary celebrity was constructed through both local rivalries and international networks of cultural exchange.
For Wilhelm von Humboldt, the pinnacle of linguistic creativity sits in the 'character of a language' that creates 'worldviews'. Yet, debate surrounds Humboldt's understanding of their formation. Answers appeal to relativism (Roger Langham Brown), to universalism (Kurt Mueller-Vollmer and Markus Messling) and sometimes to a blend of these together (J & uuml;rgen Trabant). I propose that language as a 'mental power' is an 'activity' that plays a fundamental role in the formation of character, but which resides necessarily in the individual. Character of language is not guaranteed and depends on the universal 'form of language' and its development among a people in order to flourish. This position reflects Humboldt's Kantian worldview. Therefore, the core of my argument proposes that creativity in a language's character follows Humboldtian linguistic principles of mind that are imaginative, conceptual and logical.
