FROM GENRE TO MODE: SHAKESPEARE's VENUS AND ADONIS

Probably the most famous kiss in Shakespeare occurs in Act 1, Scene 5 of Romeo and Juliet. In fact there are two kisses in that memorable encounter, the first being the culmination of the celebrated sonnet in which the courting lovers converse in lines 92–105, while the second kiss provides for the greater climax, rounding off the four-line coda that directly follows.

The sonnet form (with its brief extension) is important. Early modern drama is full of kisses, and in this regard Shakespeare is not exceptional; but, as I have said before, few stage kisses betray close kinship with the lyrical basium. Where the basium tradition does make itself felt in dramatic texts, there is almost always some aspect of the lyrical. No surprise there, since to borrow from the basium is to toy with a known genre. Sometimes the lyrical language of kissing is used for purposes of characterization, often with more or less of a satirical effect, when the artificial and rhapsodic comes up against the mundane and prosaic (as we saw in Aphra Behn). But in many cases the interjection of identifiable elements from the kiss-poem repertoire into dramatic writing actually comes in the form of lyric.

The lyrical conversation between Romeo and Juliet is a remarkable example of lyric intrusion, for it is not a song, but an authentic part of the narrative dialogue, and yet ostentatiously adopts lyrical form. That it should do this in emphatic relation to the kiss betokens the association between kiss and lyric, and specifically the sonnet. This has at least as much to do with vernacular Petrarchism as with the Neo-Latin basium, for the language is courtly and not Catullan; but the lineage, as we know, is thoroughly muddled in reality—and what does it mean to ‘kiss by the book’, if not that the lyrical manner in which Romeo, who instigates the seductive sonnet, thinks about the business of kissing is abstracted from literature and literary convention? An ironic observation, which canny readers and audiences could as well apply to the dramatist.

As we saw in the introduction, the manner in which jazz became ‘black,’ what is here called the scoring of race, cannot be understood merely as a twentiethor even a nineteenth-century phenomenon. Indeed, the mechanisms by which music in general became the aesthetic category in which and through which difference would be articulated and naturalized find their origins at the very inception of Western thought as Western. To the extent that the West lays claims to Greek philosophy as its epistemological origin and the origin of its epistemology, we can already locate there the construction of an aesthetics in which media of expression are categorized and located hierarchically in relation to each other. This formal order gains strength and precision throughout the history of philosophy and is finally consolidated in the nineteenth century where it is recuperated and redeployed in a now overtly racialist, not to say racist, project by the racial scientists – anthropologists, historians, ethnologists, and biologists – for whom dividing humanity into categories of merit becomes the central preoccupation. While the vast majority of these thinkers were white supremacists for whom science was an instrument justifying various oppressive projects, the language they developed and the constitutive tropes to which they repeatedly returned remain with us to this day and became the principal lens through which jazz would be comprehended in the twentieth century. That jazz was largely given positive valence by those most interested in understanding it has made any kind of recuperation or counterdiscourse all the more difficult. In a sense, because jazz was circumscribed by white critics through the revalorization as positive of what were originally negative racist tropes, these terms were seen as somehow less offensive and therefore worked their way into the very understanding of what the music is and what makes it important. One of the most radical and vexing ways in which this happened was in a French literary tradition in which jazz played (and continues to play) a significant symbolic role.

In the eleventh century, the sentence of exile was codified in English law with the famous decree, caput gerat lupinum: let his be a wolf 's head. This particular designation for the outlaw is commonly attributed to statutes from both before and after the Conquest and was retained for centuries, feeding into a sprawling pan-European literary tradition of exile and animality along the way. In this chapter I look at two texts connected to this tradition: Marie de France's Bisclavret and the Old English elegiac poem Wulf and Eadwacer. They are also texts that depend for their narrative force on the effects of the abject, the suspension of linguistic norms or organised language, and the return of the outside/r.

The unspeakable has so far been explored as the space between: the distance between language and what it represents – between signifier and signified – and the figurative ground left undetermined by the conditions of socio-historical norms or categories. As such it becomes a repository for a diverse collection of unvocalised, conflicting descriptions, and (for the advocate of the hegemonic order) the defining characteristic of the wayward, transgressive body or pattern of behaviour. However, in looking at the various epistemological positions in which the concept of the unspeakable appears to be rooted, it also becomes clear that what cannot be captured in words does not cease to exist, but is present in these very epistemes. While the unity of theological or socio-economic or gendered or any other class of cultural norms is maintained through a systematic process of abjection, the abjected does not disappear, nor can it be allowed to do so; the paradox of the unified, regulated centre is the marginal, uncontainable, fragmented outside to which it is diametrically opposed but upon which it is fundamentally reliant.

The unspeakable, then, points not only to a space between but to a place beyond; yet in both these cases it is, crucially, nevertheless inextricably bound up in the workings of those supposedly cohesive forces between or beyond which it is found. Present both within and outside the prevailing order, the continued manifestation of the unspeakable serves as a constant reminder of the formative exclusion upon which the spoken – the nameable, the representable portion of reality – is founded.

One of the aims of the Eritrean National Service (ENS) is to preserve and transmit the core values engendered during the liberation struggle to the present generation. This chapter examines the extent to which the ENS is an effective mechanism of preserving and transmitting these values to the present generation. It also discusses the impact of a war fought against an external enemy on internal solidarity and on citizens’ willingness to serve and sacrifice their lives in defence of these values, as well as in the service of the nation. As discussed in Chapter 4, the relationship between the warsai and the yikealo is hostile, and understandably these inauspicious relationships between those who are supposed to transmit the values of the liberation struggle and the recipients is likely to impact upon the effectiveness of the ENS as a mechanism of transmission. This chapter also identifies the virtues and vices the conscripts developed and internalised in the process of participating in the national service. Some abuses unrelated to the aims and objectives of the ENS, such as exploitation of conscripts’ labour power for commanders’ personal gain and how these corrupt activities and practices reduce the effectiveness of the ENS to function as a mechanism of preservation and transmission of the values and culture of the liberation struggle are also discussed.

As evidenced in Chapter 2, national/military service is perceived as a civic duty and as an expression of political and civic rights; this is said to create and reproduce core values that are amenable to greater crosscultural understanding, mutual respect, national unity and greater commitment to the common good. More often than not, these values are developed and reproduced in conditions of war fought against a common enemy. As set out in Chapter 2, war fought against a common enemy produces social capital, which is the glue that holds a society together, including those marked by ‘super diversity’ (on the latter concept see Vertovek 2007). The gluing effect of war on solidarity and social cohesion is well documented (see Chapter 2). This is due to war's ability to engender a set of values and a sense of common purpose among citizens that are necessary conditions for solidarity and unity. Edward E. Carr (1942: 115) observed that war engenders meaning and purpose otherwise absent in modern societies.

The guiding principle for many social historians of the English/British maritime community is that the countless works that focus almost exclusively on those at the top of the maritime hierarchy – the Francis Drakes and Horatio Nelsons – are only part of the story. For those of us who are more comfortable rubbing shoulders with the swabbers than the admirals, it is gratifying just how many heretofore nameless men we can retrieve from the records. It is normally much easier to track down men of higher ranks which is why our knowledge has always been slanted in their favour. Nevertheless, it is possible to produce more balanced analyses of the men who served in various sectors of the seafaring labour force, whether they did so at the top, in the middle or lower down the shipboard hierarchy.

Now that both volumes are completed, it is useful to see how the men of the merchant marine, the navy, privateers and pirates fared over the entire period 1485 to 1815. In terms of health care, aid to naval veterans, shipboard diet and hygiene, there were gradual improvements during the early modern era. However, it is remarkable how enduring many of the challenges were in the English maritime community. A number of the struggles of Tudor-Stuart seamen still persisted centuries later – issues such as the quantity and quality of their provisions, the amount and manner of the payment of their wages, the state overriding their freedoms, lack of regulated training, manning issues, the threat posed by various diseases, and the challenges of being part of a maritime family. Although England and Britain changed during the early modern period, there was much about seafaring and seafarers’ existence that did not, despite the passage of time.

It is evident that Britain's growing empire and trade owed much to its blue water policy. Seamen's vital role was recognized, and increasingly, the state took responsibility for its veterans. This slow development began in the late Elizabethan era as the Crown begrudgingly bestowed pensions on a small number of needy individuals who had served in its naval campaigns.

While Ede is a predominantly Muslim town, Islam is practised in many different ways. A study of the Tablighi Jamaat, one of several reformist Islamic groups in the town with a small but significant following, contributes to an understanding of the diversity and difference within Yoruba Muslim life. As different and contradictory debates and practices exist within Ede's Muslim community, any reflection on their religious interaction in everyday life must explore how this is experienced in the relationships between Muslims of different backgrounds and convictions. Relationships between different Muslim groups take place not only in the form of abstract theological debates but also in the negotiation of social relations, material interests and political ambition. Exploring the Tablighis’ relationships with other Muslims in Ede not only by looking at their theological arguments but also by exploring their everyday relations and practices, this chapter discusses the local meaning of the Tablighi insistence on travelling tours for daʻwa or proselytisation, as well as their rejection of traditional everyday Yoruba practices such as prostrating and kneeling on greeting. Also looking at non-Muslim views on the Tablighi Jamaat, this chapter emphasises the ways in which the interaction between different religious groups ‘is conceived and experienced indigenously within specific African societies’.

The Tablighi movement has expanded very successfully over the past decades and is known to have millions of followers in about 150 countries around the world, including West Africa. But despite the group's growing presence in Nigeria, recent studies on Islamic organisations in Nigeria, and particularly in the south-west of Nigeria where the group has been particularly successful, are silent on its activities. Perhaps because the Tablighi Jamaat has been studied primarily as a transnational movement, with relatively little attention to the way in which this movement is appropriated by different groups in the local context, its activities in Nigeria are associated with rumours and misconceptions. Often, the Tablighi Jamaat's membership, its activities and relationships with other religious groups in Nigeria are automatically considered to be politically radical without any close examination of the context in which they operate.

AS World War I drew to a close, speculation began about the future of the great national musical festivals. On 14 September 1918 a lengthy article appeared in the Saturday Review:

Going on to describe the provincial Festival as having been ‘one of the prime glories of musical life in this country’, the article stressed the key role which it had played in maintaining England's old supremacy in the department of choral singing, and ended with a plea for its future life: ‘After all, at a Festival it is not the band, nor the soloists, nor the novelties, nor the conductor, but the choir that's ‘the thing’. We could ill spare the institution that created the brilliant constellation to surround such a glorious central orb.’

Since the last Three Choirs Festival had been held in Gloucester in 1913, it was the turn of Worcester to lead off after the war – but the choral members in each of the three cities were all keen to accept the challenge. On the third Saturday in January 1919, Lord Coventry presided over a meeting of the Worcester Executive Committee. Four questions had been submitted to the Deans and Chapters and Festival Committees of Worcester, Hereford and Gloucester: (1) Should the Festivals be revived; (2) if so, what should their form and character be; (3) what should be the limit of expenditure incurred; and (4) where should the next Festival be held?

ROME TO RENAISSANCE

In the humanist Republic of Letters the kiss was the foremost attribute, almost the aegis, of the Roman poet Catullus, who had kisses and sparrows as St Catharine had her wheel. Sannazaro, in his epigram ‘On the correction of Catullus, to Gioviano Pontano’, imagines that if the learned (‘doctus’) Catullus were to return from Elysium, he would be so grateful for Pontano's emendations of his corrupted texts that he would give the Neapolitan poet fond embraces and—what else but kisses? (‘oscula grata’). Later, when the Secundan basium genre had become a formal kind, Bonnefons would refer to ‘Catullus pater osculationum’, ‘the father of osculations’. It was by that time usual for basial poets to allude to Catullus both implicitly and explicitly; and in the Secundan kiss-poem, if any ancient poets are to be named, Catullus is sure to be first in rank.

Several of the carmina of Catullus deal with kissing, but the ones that proved most popular with imitators were poems 5 and 7. With these, Catullus bequeathed to posterity the enduringly popular theme of ‘counting kisses’. Here is carmen 5, composed in a metre that will feature very prominently in the kiss-poetry of the Renaissance, and so also in this book, the Latin hendecasyllabic or phalaecean:

Thus far in this study I have explored themes of transformation, creation, accountability and control, looking at the physical nature of objects and their environment and how the natural world is employed by humans. In this final chapter, I discuss the riddle collection's programme of resistance to anthropocentrism by exploring the depiction of human wisdom and its failure in the face of the vastness and complexity of creation. Previous studies of wisdom in Old English literature have focused on categorising, defining and understanding the role and nature of wisdom poetry, whilst the riddles have received notably less attention for what they have to say about the subject. Here, I turn to the representation of the natural world in wisdom literature and to the understanding that humanity's exhibition of its own wisdom or intelligence is ‘the quintessential anthropocentric act of appropriation’. It has been argued that, according to Anglo-Saxon thinking, the employment of human intelligence was perceived as a demonstration of mastery over the natural world, and, furthermore, that early medieval riddles endorsethis concept. Drawing on the Old Testament's book of Job, with its ecocentric proclivities, I argue that Riddles 1, 2, 3 and 84 challenge humanity's belief in the supremacy of its wisdom and endorse a more ecological view of wisdom and knowledge.

The Earth Bible Team has done much to improve our understanding of the non-human perspective in the biblical wisdom tradition, with a volume dedicated to an ecological approach to these texts. The questions the Team set out to answer include ‘where is the voice of the Earth and the Earth community [in wisdom literature]’? and ‘is the voice of Earth silenced, suppressed and ultimately dominated by the wise who have an anthropocentric view of the world?’ Certain wisdom texts, write Habel et al., offer us a typically anthropocentric view of the world. For example, in the Proverbs, especially Proverbs 10–21, ‘Human beings – not Earth, creation, or Earth community – are central’. The focus, it is argued, is on ‘social relations, human behaviour and communal justice’ and the few references to domestic animals ‘do not highlight the wonders of creation but the instrumental value of these animals for humans’.

Like many ostensibly secular institutions in Nigeria, the Federal Polytechnic of Ede is a space that is in reality highly contested between two religions: Islam and Christianity. The institution operates within a predominantly Muslim town, but a large proportion of its staff and students are Christian. In the educational space of the Federal Polytechnic, religious contestation is often expressed through truth-claiming rhetoric from different sides. However, there is a strong commitment within the institution to ensure that such claims do not lead to conflict. A senior member of staff in the institution explained that, ‘a Christian will tell you that […] what I believe is supreme, a Muslim will also say […] what I believe is supreme, but what is important is how you pursue these claims’.

The role of religious rhetoric in shaping the construction of the other in educational contexts has been given some attention in the literature. Aware of the potential problems associated with intense competition, the leadership of the Federal Polytechnic has taken an active approach towards preventing conflict by controlling both Muslim and Christian activities through integration into the institutional hierarchy. This chapter explores the forms of religious coexistence and tolerance produced by this institutionalised incorporation of Islam and Christianity at the Federal Polytechnic.

Reflecting local ideas of authority in relation to the ownership of social and physical space, the leadership of the Federal Polytechnic has established clear rules for the management of the mutually exclusive claims of Muslims and Christians on campus. In line with more generally held ideas about religious neutrality as equal treatment or at least a lack of disadvantage (see chapters 2 and 3), the institution conceives of Muslims and Christians as equal counterparts linked into the university hierarchy in parallel ways. All Muslim and Christian groups and individuals are automatically part of a community associated with their respective religion and led by university staff. Thus the institution both creates cohesive Muslim and Christian communities and maintains control over their activities. In this context, good relations, and indeed tolerance, between Muslims and Christians are based on the premise that Islam and Christianity are equivalent religions with internally cohesive practices and clearly circumscribed boundaries.

BORROWING THE WORDS of Rainer Nagele, “Zu sagen, dass Heiner Mullers Theater ein politisches Theater ist, mag als eine Banalitat erscheinen—oder als eine fragwurdige Verallgemeinerung” (to say that Heiner Muller's theater is a political theater may seem to be a banality— or a questionable generalization). Taken in his own right or, at the very least, given his generally accepted status as Bertolt Brecht's “most adept successor,” to think of Heiner Muller as anything other than a political playwright would do him no justice at all. But Nagele is equally right in finding the epithet of “political” both banal and too loose. Genia Schulz's assessment of Muller in 1980 as the “politisch wie theoretisch strengste und anspruchsvollste Dramatiker im deutschsprachigen Raum” (both politically and theoretically the most rigorous and challenging dramatist in the German-speaking world) gives perhaps some indication of why so much scholarly time and effort has been dedicated to the politics of Heiner Muller. Decades of research into Muller's works on the page and the stage has identified him as a major player in post-Brechtian theater, whose radical politics led him to experiment with theatrical forms that would both challenge the limits and find new ways of doing theater politically. But whether Muller's dramaturgical practice and philosophical outlook allow us to see him as a socialist playwright, or indeed as a communist playwright with conservative leanings, in the light of the differences between his plays and the changes in the political landscape to which he was responding, finding a single descriptor for his politics has not been quite so straightforward.

This book attempts to tie down the politics of Muller's theater. That is not to say that it argues for a static notion of what Muller's politics was. Rather, here I shall set out to describe Muller's theater as a form of democratic theater and shall argue that, even as Muller's practice as a playwright and director developed and reality around him posed new political questions, Muller's theater seeks to place the question of democracy in the foreground and to render the theater (including its audience) a democratic space.

Given its magnitude and indefinite duration, the ENS has affected, directly or indirectly, every aspect of Eritrean society's economic, social, cultural and political life. Nevertheless, in any socially and economically differentiated society, where power is concentrated on an unelected personal ruler and a few of his cronies, none of whom is accountable to citizens, and where actual and perceived levels of corruption are rife (Chapter 7), the impact of an open-ended national service on various sectors of society is likely to be highly differentiated.

Drawing on the experiences and perceptions of the respondents and the key informants, who served on average six years before fleeing the country, and supplemented by data derived from studies conducted by United Nations agencies, the International Monetary Fund (2003), the World Bank (2002b), the African Development Bank and independent analysts, this chapter assesses the overarching impacts of the national service on all aspects of Eritrean society. As expected, the conscripts, notwithstanding their shared experiences throughout the time they served in the national service in a variety of capacities, do not speak with a single voice. The ENS has profound impacts on the social fabric of the country. Here these impacts are documented and examined in detail. The incidence of sexual violence perpetrated by military commanders and military trainers against female conscripts is also discussed briefly. The question of sexual violence perpetrated by male conscripts against female servers is beyond the scope of the book. (On sexual violence see Kibreab 2017). The chapter also discusses the level of militarisation and securitisation of the educational system in the country. The plight of conscripts who suffer at the hands of ruthless traffickers and smugglers while en route to Israel via eastern Sudan and the Sinai desert, as well as to the EU+ countries through Ethiopia, Sudan, the Sahara desert, Libya and the Mediterranean Sea are discussed very briefly in the chapter.

THE IMPACT OF THE ENS ON THE COUNTRY

Since one of the main aims of the ENS is to (re)construct the war-torn economy of the country, the respondents were asked to assess the impact of the ENS on Eritrea's economy.

THE Monday evening concert at Hereford in 1979 began with a powerful performance of John Ireland's choral cantata These things shall be, and Ireland's song cycle The Land of Lost Content was the central work in a recital by Ian and Jennifer Partridge on Tuesday afternoon, both marking the centenary of the composer's birth. In These things shall be the soloist was Stephen Roberts, accompanied by the CBSO under Donald Hunt, taking over from John Sanders, who had been prevented by illness from appearing at the Festival.

Also on Monday evening, Roy Massey conducted the cantata This Worlde's Joie by William Mathias, with Janet Price, Kenneth Bowen, Stephen Roberts, Robert Green (organ), the choristers of the three cathedrals, the Festival Chorus and the CBSO. Contemporary British music was again well represented in the Tuesday morning recital by the three cathedral choirs: an Easter Sequence by Kenneth Leighton, Two Carols by Richard Rodney Bennett, and Geoffrey Burgon's At the Round Earth's Imagin'd Corners.

Donald Hunt beckoned the Festival to France on Monday evening, conducting Poulenc's last major work, Sept Répons des ténebres. The soloist was Honor Sheppard, who also sang in the symphonic poem King David by the French-born Swiss composer Arthur Honegger, joining Margaret Cable and David Johnston, the Festival Chorus and CBSO under Roy Massey. The part of the Witch of Endor was taken by Elizabeth Evans, and the performance was further distinguished by the familiar voice of the popular broadcaster Richard Baker as the Narrator.

Of greater rarity was Hymnus Amoris by Carl Nielsen, given on Thursday evening by Julie Kennard, admirable in her first Three Choirs appearance, Brian Burrows, Stephen Roberts, David Thomas, the Festival Chorus and RPO conducted by Roy Massey. This was followed by the premiere of John Joubert's Herefordshire Canticles, a Festival commission repeated at Hereford in 1991 with the same soloists – Julie Kennard and Stephen Roberts, and again conducted by Massey.