Arts & Humanities

Identifying Mrs Meeke

By Simon Macdonald
During the French Revolution many of the losers in the process of regime change found their property, including their private papers, snapped up by the new authorities. For historians, some of the richest pickings among this material relate to people whose lives, had they not collided with the revolutionary state, might otherwise have gone unrecorded. While exploring these archives a few years ago, I came across a remarkable cache confiscated from an Englishman who had been living in revolutionary Paris.

Responding to Homer: women’s voices

By Fiona Cox and Elena Theodorakopoulos
When George Steiner was musing in 2002 (in his review of Logue’s War Music) on the shapes and forms that responses to Homer seemed likely to take in the new millennium, he welcomed the work of Louise Glück and Jorie Graham as the first shoots of a female reworking of Homer. In Glück’s Meadowlands (1998) we find a lyric Odyssey in the depiction of a modern marriage disintegrating, while in The End of Beauty (1987) Graham’s Penelope delights in unravelling and thereby deconstructing earlier poetic forms. The fact that both writers draw on the Odyssey rather than the Iliad appears to lend substance to Samuel Butler’s conviction, remembered by Steiner, that the Odyssey is ‘woman’s work.’

A feminist reading list from Oxford World’s Classics

By Kirsty Doole
March is International Women’s History Month, so what better time to suggest some feminist-friendly classics from our Oxford World’s Classics series? Below you’ll find a mixture of fiction, politics, and religion, and while some will probably be familiar, I’ve thrown in a couple of less conventional choices for a feminist list. Agree with these choices? Disagree? What have I missed out? Let us know in the comments.

The Academy Awards (as seen from the other Academy)

By Lucy Fischer
During my childhood, there were only two “award” shows that I watched religiously. One was the Miss America Pageant (I am, after all, “of a certain age”) and the other was the Oscars. I abandoned the former long before its demise (as a card-carrying feminist) but the latter has remained on my viewing schedule.  In fact, it is often one of the few programs I still watch “live” given that my TV viewing is entirely DVR-dependent.

Five women songwriters who helped shape the sound of jazz

By Ted Gioia

The songwriting business offered few opportunities to women in the early 20^th century.  And jazz bandleaders, despite their own experiences with discrimination, were hardly more tolerant of female talent. Although audiences expected the leading orchestras to showcase a ‘girl singer’, women were rarely allowed to serve in other capacities, either on the bandstand or writing arrangements and compositions.

Can art forgers be artists too?

Art forgeries are often decried for crime, but could they be considered art? Many young artists learn to copy old master before refining their own work, and contemporary artists often play with ideas of authorship. So can an art forger be considered a legitimate artist? Do they want to make a statement? What motivates art forgers to commit forgery? We spoke with Jonathon Keats, author of Forged: Why Fakes are the Great Art of Our Age. – See more at: https://blog.oup.com/2013/03/art-forgers-artists/?preview=true&preview_id=36324&preview_nonce=600140b224#sthash.OZRHQ9Ow.dpuf

The connection from physical to mental

By Robert Kirk
Physicalists like me think everything in the world is ultimately physical, and that the physical facts provide for all the facts, including consciousness. But how should we conceive of the link between physical and mental?

Bestsellers: a snapshot of an age

To celebrate World Book Day this week, we take a look at what John Sutherland thinks about why we read bestsellers and what they say about the age in which they were published, in his Very Short Introduction to Bestsellers.

Controlling the fable-makers

Along with Plato, Aristotle (384–322 bc) was one of the two greatest philosophers of antiquity, and in the view of many he was the greatest philosopher of all time. His Poetics is the most influential book on poetry ever written and is a founding text of European aesthetics and literary criticism. We present a brief extract from Republic, Books Two and Three.

Diary of a string time teacher

By Kathy Blackwell
A friend once asked if I ever get bored teaching the violin and doing the same thing year after year. He was surprised when I said “It’s anything but dull and boring!” I have always enjoyed the unique character and style of each student, and it’s a privilege as a teacher to see them develop over the years.

Descartes’ dogs

By Robert V. McNamee and Daniel Parker
It is well known in the history of psychology that Descartes was an early thinker on what we would now call classical conditioning or Pavlovian conditioning, which he referred to as “reflex”. However, an early epistolary reference seems generally to be missed: his letter to his friend Marin Mersenne, 18 March 1630.

A conversation with Chet Raymo on White-crowned Sparrows and other matters

By Douglas E. Christie

Does the world have a voice? Do particular places have a distinctive vocabulary, grammar, and syntax all their own? Can we learn this language, learn to attune our ears to its music and perhaps in this way come to inhabit the world with more care and feeling? These are not new questions, nor are they original to me.

The Beatles record “From Me to You,” Tuesday 5 March 1963

By Gordon R. Thompson

With Northern Songs (their publishing company) established, the Beatles needed a song for their next single and, flushed with the success of “Please Please Me” and the emerging ecstasy at their performances, they again brought together elements from different songs in their repertoire to create something new and fresh. George Martin scheduled a recording session for Tuesday 5 March, towards the end of their first national tour when they served as a warm-up act to British singer Helen Shapiro.

Patsy Cline… 50 years on

On 5 March 1963, a plane flying over Tennessee encountered inclement weather and crashed. On board were some of the great country musical talent of the time, including Randy Hughes, Cowboy Copas, Hawkshaw Hawkins, and Patsy Cline. A star of both country and popular music, Cline is remembered as one of the greatest American singers of the 20th century. The following is an extract from The Encyclopedia of Country Music entry on Patsy Cline by Margaret Jones.

My favorite insult

By William Irvine
When friends heard that I was working on a book on insults, I typically had some explaining to do: “It is not a book of insults; it is a book about insults and the role they play in human society.” They would go on to ask whether, in my research, I had come across any good insults. Indeed I had. In the process of doing research, I had not only read every insult anthology I could get my hands on but categorized the insults I found there.

An Oxford Companion to the 2013 Papal Elections

By Kimberly Hernandez
Yesterday Pope Benedict XVI retired from his papal duties with the intention to lead a life of prayer in seclusion. His sudden abdication has left many of the faithful wondering who will step in as his successor. While there are rumors that the next Pope may be from Latin America or Africa, the exact process of how a Pope is chosen is still shrouded in mystery.