Tentoonstellingscatalogus.

In this innovative study, Carol Thysell provides an in-depth examination of Marguerite de Navarre's Heptameron. While this collection of tales is traditionally considered to be secular in nature, Thysell argues that Marguerite de Navarre used it as a vehicle for a constructive theological programme.

Samuel Johnson was concerned with young people's susceptibility to misleading models drawn from fiction: himself brought up on chivalric romance, he remained "immoderately fond" of it through his life, and this study traces the effects of such un-privileged popular literature on both Johnson's writing and on its biographical context. The first chapter categorizes elements in romance, and illustrates them from romances Johnson knew well. A biographical chapter follows, showing chronologically the evidence for Johnson's involvement with romance. This evidence includes his work on the Harleian collection, his sense of himself as an "adventurer" of literature, and as a Quixote, and his use of Cervantean, or mock-romantic, material in all his fiction. We see his collaboration with such medievalists as the Wartons, Collins and Percy, and his remarkable use of romance quotations in the Dictionary. We consider the ambivalence of his response to romantic elements in literature, above all in Shakespeare, and end by briefly pointing out Johnson's pleasure in romantic landscapes and ruins. Johnson's most striking romance imagery of, for instance, quest journeys, sieges, tyrants, dungeons, enchanters, phantoms, and disappearing castles, is found in the periodical essays. Moreover, networks of specifically romance connotations can often be supported by illustrations from the Dictionary. The opening landscape of the Vanity of Human Wishes is a perfect example, and is demonstrably linked to a passage in Palmerin of England. Chapter four expands the Quixote theme: Johnson was unusual in his sympathy for Quixote, and clearly identified with him. Whether exploring the seductive delusions of imagination, or actual madness, whether satirizing through mock-romance and mock-pastoral, or otherwise using the pattern of heroic aspiration followed by bathetic fall, the Vanity of Human Wishes, the periodical essays, and Rasselas are pervaded by Cervantean themes. The popular persona of Johnson as a reductive empiricist is challenged by exploring his powerful response to romance images in every kind of literature. Criticism cannot systematize the transgressive "enchantresses of the soul" that attract the reader against his better judgment in the "illustrious depravity" of Dryden's hero Almazor, in Eloisa, Pope's erotically gothic nun, or in the "licentious variety" which makes Shakespeare irresistible. Johnson spells out his dilemma, in describing "the power of the marvelous, even over those who despise it." In Scotland, Johnson found the remains of the lost feudal world of Macbeth, of abbeys, hermitages, castles and arbitrary power, of violence and luxury, and, in a riot of romantic role-playing, concluded that "the fictions of romantick chivalry" had their basis in history. Throughout his writing, however, Johnson is always ambivalent about romance, and it is his prudent rejection of its seductive dangers that has tended to be stressed by successive generations of critics. This study aims to redress the balance.

Niet alleen het nieuws verandert steeds, ook de manier waarop het vorm krijgt in de krant. In 1970, na de fusie tussen NRC en het Handelsblad, was de krant zwart-wit met loodgezette letters. Inmiddels ligt er een full-colour, digitaal geproduceerd medium, dat ook op internet, e-reader en iPad te lezen is. Sinds 2006 is er bovendien nrc.next met een eigen formaat, beeldtaal en lay-out. Scherpe Letters schetst de veranderende vorm van de krant en diverse bijlagen, de ontwikkeling van techniek en nieuwe manieren waarop lezers informatie tot zich willen nemen. Met veel illustraties en een korte historie van de bekendste NRC-strips: Ollie B. Bommel, Kamagurka en Fokke en Sukke. In oktober-december zal over dit onderwerp een tentoonstelling te zien zijn in museum De Lakenhal in Leiden. Het jubileum krijgt ruim aandacht in NRC Handelsblad.

Adelaide Proctor (1825-1864) is one of the most important 19th-century women poets to be assessed by literary critics in recent years. She was a significant figure in the victorian literary landscape. A poet (who outsold most writers bar Tennyson), a philanthropist and a Roman Catholic convert, Procter committed herself to the cause of single, fallen and homeless women.

This volume is the catalog to an exhibition to be held at the Staedtische Galerie Dresden, which will feature Penck's works from a large private collection. It features nearly 500 illustrations from the 1950s when Penck first began his artistic career to 1980 when he emigrated from East Germany. Born Ralf Winkler in 1939, Penck witnessed the bombing of his hometown of Dresden in 1945. The shockwaves of that experience can be sensed through his dramatic and bold works. For years Penck practiced his art "underground," away from the intrusive eyes of the Communist regime that were sensitive to the artist's use of symbolism and archetypes. As these restrictions loosened in the 1980s, Penck allowed himself to create larger, more gestural and figurative paintings. This evolution, from the "unspoken" to the overt, becomes evident in this volume, which includes beautifully reproduced images of his paintings, drawings, and prints, and provides audiences with a fuller understanding of the underlying themes of this highly regarded artist.

Discusses the fight to free an American student who has been imprisoned for six years in a Peruvian jail after being charged as a leader of a terrorist group, convicted improperly, and sentenced to life with no chance of parole. Foreword by Noam Chomsky and afterword by Ramsey Clark. With a new epilogue.