Ashgate Publishing Co.

Aesthetics, imagination, and the unity of experience.

Elliot enjoys the reputation of being one of the most influential late twentieth-century aestheticians, a master in combining analytic and continental traditions, a formidable task he accomplished in this collection of papers drawn from their numerous journals and anthologies from 1967 to 1981. Editor Paul Crowther (International U., Bremen) offers Elliot's work in the unity of Kant's Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, his two articles on imagination (in the experience of art and as a magical faculty), aesthetic theory and the experience of art, poetry and truth, the critic and the lover of art, the aesthetic and the semantic, Bell's theory and critical practice, Wittgenstein's speculative aesthetics and its ethical context, Socrates and Plato's cave, and aestheticism, imagination and schooling. Crowther includes a bibliography of Elliot's work. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Alfred Gilbert's aestheticism; Gilbert amongst Whistler, Wilde, Leighton, Pater and Burne-Jones.

Edwards (art history, U. of York) examines the life and work of Gilbert and his theories' place among those of the luminaries of the Victorian art world. In a time when Wilde faced trial, Gilbert experimented with issues of masculine identity and eroticism and moved with precision though the literature, art and music communities in Victorian Britain, commenting on those he found there as they commented on him. In fact, those comments led to both deathless friendships and open spats, with Gilbert keeping an eye on both sides. Edwards's very close reading of primary sources illuminates this complex and ambitious man and his times. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Arab-Byzantine relations in early Islamic times.

Designed to serve as a one-stop resource containing both classic studies and more recent scholarship, this collection contains 14 articles reprinted in facsimile and one presented in English translation. The articles date from 1901 — Julius Wellhausen's "Die Kämpfe der Araber mit den Romäern...," translated by Bonner into English — to a 2003 article by David Woods — "The 60 martyrs of Gaza...." Other articles include Oleg Grabar's 1964 "Islamic art and Byzantium," John Meyendorff's "Byzantine views of Islam" from the same year, and Hugh Kennedy's 1992 "Byzantine-Arab diplomacy in the Near East...." The volume will interest scholars and graduate students in the history and art history of the eastern Mediterranean from the 7th-10th centuries. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The art of the sublime; principles of Christian art and architecture.

Homan's (religious studies, U. of Brighton, UK) examination of Christian art through the ages reevaluates conventional aesthetics and its application to religious art. Arguing that taste and aesthetics are shaped by morality and belief, the author presents a text centered around the moral, theological, and liturgical principles ingrained in Christian philosophical reflections on beauty, assessing Christian art not according to its place in art history but rather its place in Christian faith. Coverage includes analysis of pilgrimage art, puritan art, the tension of Gothic and Classical, church architecture and the language of worship, and ethics and art appreciation. Illustrated with b&w reproductions and photographs. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Cabinets for the curious; looking back at early English museums.

Arnold (The Wellcome Trust) examines the role played by museum makers and keepers in the production of factual knowledge during the scientific revolution. Focusing on the seventeenth century in England, Arnold describes the cultural history of museums as they operated within the context of science and establishes an intellectual framework to make new sense of questions museums ask even today, such as the role of the objects within them and the broader social function of the museum. He examines the narrative tradition of the early modern museum, including Robert Plot's philosophical histories and the concept of "learned treasures," the functional tradition, such as in medicinal chemistry and trade, and the taxonomic tradition, including the transforming idea of wonder quite apart from the idea of resolving disbelief. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Collaboration in the arts from the middle ages to the present.

The 14 essays are from a recent sitting of the Leicester-Pisa Colloquium, which alternates between the two universities; not surprisingly many of the contributors are from one or another of them, but many others from elsewhere in Europe. They explore collaboration in such areas as church murals in Medieval England, sociability in German Romanticism, Italian immigrant literature, and landscape archaeology in Pisa and the POPULUS project. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The cutting edge; fashion from Japan.

Including garments that look like paper lanterns or that function as vending machines, the work of the 19 designers represented in this volume feature technical ingenuity and a vibrant aesthetic. The illustrated essays by Louise Mitchell (curator of decorative arts and design, Powerhouse Museum), Akiko Fukai (art and design theory, Queensland College of Art, Griffith U., Brisbane) and Bonnie English (director, chief curator, Kyoto Costume Institute) examine the rise of Japanese fashion; the influence of Japan's textile tradition and advanced technology; the development of a new fashion aesthetic and its impact on Western fashion; and Japanese fashion as art. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Defining the holy; sacred space in medieval and early modern Europe.

How and where one had access to the divine in medieval and early modern Europe defined both private and private life. In this collection of 15 articles drawn from an April 2003 conference held at the U. of Exeter, contributors describe their research on private spaces, including a survey of domestic space and devotion in the middle ages and studies of The Netherlands in the fifteenth century, monasteries in Hapsburg Spain, forbidden sacred spaces in Reformation England and the private chapels of the Cecil family. Papers on relatively public spaces include such topics as spatial geometry of a convent that invoke Jerusalem, material culture and liturgical use that defined holy space, rites of consecration of space, reformed spaces, disputed spaces, and the politics of sacred space on the eve of the French Revolution. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Digital applications for cultural and heritage institutions.

The volume collects recent papers from Electronic Imaging and the Visual Arts (EVA) conferences, where leading international practitioners in electronic imaging help art organizations incorporate multimedia technologies in their displays. The papers cover subjects applicable to both large and small institutions, such as virtual reconstruction of destroyed buildings; digital image archiving; 2D and 3D digitization projects; virtual archaeology; handheld interactive visitor support; and summaries of international research and technology development. The editors, who are active in EVA, provide a concluding survey of the articles, along with a projection of future trends. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Domestic mandala; architecture of lifeworlds in Nepal.

In the autumn of 2001, while most of the world was suffering various paroxysms, Gray (anthropology, U. of Adelaide) was having tea with friends and colleagues in Kathmandu, discussing their parallel but separate research into high caste Hindus. The outcome is this study of how domestic architecture and lifeworlds intersect in a Chhetri clan living in the village of Banaspati in the southern reaches of the Kathmandu Valley. The Chhetri is a caste that supplies most of the civil service and army in the kingdom of Nepal. He considers such aspects as materials, design, and orientation; living in the domestic mandala; and ritual appropriation of domestic space. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The Dublin-Belfast development corridor; Ireland's mega-city region?

The two cities dominate the urban landscape of the island, and the distance between them is shrinking, not because of sprawling suburbs, but because highways and rail service have reduced the time and effort it takes to from one to the other. Irish urban and regional planners here contribute to the debate about the potential for treating Dublin and Belfast as a single unit in planning and economic strategy in order to increase the prosperity of both. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

E.T.A. Hoffmann's musical aesthetics.

Chantler examines the aesthetic of German composer and writer of fantastic tales and music criticism Hoffmann (1776-1822) within the context of the history of ideas during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and the relationship between his musical aesthetics and his compositional practice. She considers art, religion, his romantic poetry and musical hermeneutics, romantic musical historiography, romantic opera, and music taste and ideology. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The enraged musician; Hogarth's musical imagery.

Barlow, a scholar of English popular music of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, studies the musical references in the paintings of William Hogarth (1697-1764). He first describes the context of British musical life during the eighteenth century, and what spawned Hogarth's interest in music. What follows is a consideration of musical iconography in his paintings, particularly issues in using them for making conclusions about performance practice. Barlow analyzes burlesque music as well as the influence of solo fiddlers, ballad singers, and Samuel Butler's Hudibras on Hogarth's satirical style. Two works, The Beggar's Opera and The Enraged Musician, are detailed in the final chapters. Incorporated in the text are b&w images of sketches and paintings, photos of instruments, and an annotated index of works where they appear. Text and musical examples related to Hogarth's works are provided in the appendices, including a facsimile from John Gay's The Beggar's Opera. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The European city and green space; London, Stockholm, Helsinki, and St. Petersburg, 1850-2000.

Although they are all considered fine examples of European cities, in fact these four are quite different in how they were conceived and developed and how they are used today. In this collection of articles covering 150 years of development, 16 contributed articles describe the changes in London's green space and its social construction just before the Second World War, the politics and ideology within the issue of open space in London from 1939 to 2000, Stockholm's urban parks as meeting places and social contexts from 1860 to 1930 and from 1900 to 1939, the model for the building of the city in parks from the 1930s to the 1960s, the formation of national urban parks as a Nordic contribution to sustainable development, the role of nature in Helsinki from 1917 to 1960 and public conflict over it from 1950 to 2000, and St. Petersburg's parks before and during communism. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Evaluation in planning; evolution and prospects.

Scholars and practitioners in urban planning, most of them European, summarize the evolution of theory and practice in evaluating the potential profitability of a prospective planning project, sample current best practices, and suggest directions for the future. Their topics include the ethics behind evaluation, pitfalls in planning and plan evaluation, values and effects of preserving local identity, and the impact assessment of trans-European networks on area development. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Faith in film; religious themes in contemporary cinema.

Deacy (applied theology, U. of Kent) reminds us that the boundaries of what constitute religion are not fixed and often change with society. He argues that the film industry has taken on many of the secular functions historically associated with religion, and that scholars should pay more attention to what viewers think about what they see on the screen in terms of how films fulfill their heretofore "religious" needs. Deacy analyzes the effects of Christian tenets in film, compares escapism with some of the functions of religion, and gives seven case studies of instances when films such as Raging Bull, Groundhog Day and Fight Club addressed issues once thought to be the concerns of organized religion. He also describes the passage of certain movie celebrities into the status of gods and goddesses. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Fashioning childhood in the eighteenth century; age and identity.

These essays reexamine conventional ideas about the history of childhood, exploring the child's increasing prominence in 18th-century discourse and the establishment of the category of age as a marker of social distinction, alongside race, class and gender. The contributors, who represent the disciplines of history, literature and art, compare British, German and French conceptualizations of childhood and demonstrate the mutual influences of the Continent and Great Britain. The essays cover a wide range of subjects from scientific and educational discourses and controversies over children's legal status to the child as artist and consumer. Additionally, articles on visual cultural show how 18th-century discourse on childhood is reflected in representations of the child by illustrators and portraitists. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

From Constantine to Charlemagne; an archaeology of Italy, AD 300-800.

Presenting a detailed review and analysis of recent discoveries by archeologists, historians, art historians, numismatists and architectural historians, Christie (archeology, U. of Leicester) identifies the changes in Italy brought about by the Church and by the occupations of Ostrogoths, Byzantines and Lombards. Christie covers the adoption of Christianity and the emergence of Rome as the seat of Western Christendom, focusing on human settlement and changes in urbanism, rural exploitation and defense. His analysis of recent discoveries from archeological excavations makes a significant contribution to the ongoing reassessment of the period previously mislabeled as the "Dark Ages." (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Hermaphrodites in Renaissance Europe.

Long (romance studies, Cornell U.) explores how images and accounts of hermaphrodites interacted with the notions of natural and cultural divisions between the sexes in Renaissance Europe, mostly France. Among her topics are the cultural and medical construction of gender, hermetic hermaphrodites, gender and power in the alchemical works of Clovis Hesteau de Nuysement, and Henri III of France as the royal hermaphrodite. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

History's beauties; women in the National Portrait Gallery, 1856-1900.

This study is the first to examine the women included in the British National Portrait Gallery, who were granted the honor based on their significance to the "civil, ecclesiastical and literary history of the nation." Perry (art history, U. of Brighton) reframes the Victorian fascination with women's domestic and sentimental presence by locating it within a Parliament-centered national culture. She discusses the Gallery Trustees' governance through three themes: the cult of legitimacy in antiquities and in national identity; the educated woman as a model of domestic and national cultivation; and the role of female beauty in defining social and artistic power in 19th-century Britain. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)