Review of Faith Binckes and Carey Snyder, eds, Women, Periodicals, and Print Culture in Britain, 1890s–1920s: The Modernist Period (2019)

Review of Faith Binckes and Carey Snyder, eds, Women, Periodicals, and Print Culture in Britain, 1890s–1920s: The Modernist Period (2019)

Mediating Medieval Mystical Literature in Interwar Belgium: The Histoire Croisée of Hadewijch’s ‘First Vision’ in the Periodical Hermès (1933–39)

In a context in which various artistic groups resorted to periodicals to stage their public appearance, the editors of the Brussels-based magazine Hermès: Revue trimestrielle d'études mystiques et poétiques (1933–39) mobilized Middle Dutch mystical literature to carve out a space for themselves in the cultural scene of interwar Belgium. Drawing on methods and concepts of transfer studies and research into ethos construction, this article analyses the transfer strategies underpinning the publication of the French translation of the ‘First Vision’ of the Middle Dutch mystic Hadewijch (c. 1240), with which Hermès programmatically opened its inaugural volume. The analysis uncovers a complex histoire croisée which involved confrontations, both collaborative and conflictual, between Hermès and two very different groups of cultural actors: the circle of Brussels Surrealists, with whom the editors of Hermès shared a history, and the Catholic philologists of the Ruusbroecgenootschap [Ruusbroec Society], who equally sought to disseminate Middle Dutch mystical texts to a wider public, albeit with very different goals.

Review of David Finkelstein, ed., The Edinburgh History of the British and Irish Press: Expansion and Evolution, 1800–1900 (2020)

Review of David Finkelstein, ed., The Edinburgh History of the British and Irish Press: Expansion and Evolution, 1800–1900 (2020)

Le Génie du Nord: Sélection and the Advocacy of a Cosmopolitan Northern Culture

The article discusses the francophone review of art and literature Sélection published in Brussels (1920–22) and Antwerp (1923–33), Belgium, by André de Ridder and Paul-Gustave van Hecke. It takes as its point of departure the concept Le Génie du Nord [The Genius of the North], which was the title of a 1925 book published in Antwerp by De Ridder. The book mainly consists of essays previously published in Sélection between 1923 and 1924. De Ridder argues that France should not claim autonomy in the field of cultural production since throughout the centuries Nordic influence played a central role in its evolution. Although the book attracted little attention from the contemporary press, it offers a novel approach to the Nordic idea through the anticipation of a new classical order that distinguished itself from Southern classicism. While German expressionism is equally renounced, the book proposes a synthetic style — similar to the one that marked the gothic period — that also found expression in the art presented in Sélection. This style furnished a visual model for the invention of a new classical order stemming from the successful mingling of French rationalism with Flemish expressionism, a ‘constructive expressionism’ that became the precondition for a universal Nordic culture. The magazine was supportive of those French and Belgian artists who achieved a combination of the two styles — an ‘eclectic dualism’, in the words of Edmond Picard. Taking the origins of Gothicism and the Nordische Gesellschaft as case points of ideological complexity, the Génie du Nord concept forms an alternative discourse which intervenes in an ongoing art-historical and cultural debate that defines the identity of Sélection.

Individual Responsibility for the Common Cause? Everyday Preservationism in the Interwar Russian Émigré Newsmagazine Illyustrirovannaya Rossiya

This article considers the approach of the popular Russian émigré newsmagazine Illyustrirovannaya Rossiya [Illustrated Russia] to so-called preservationism — simply put, the tendency to preserve prerevolutionary Russian culture in exile. More specifically, this article studies preservationism in the everyday life of the Russian interwar diaspora. Due to its long run, broad scope, and large readership, the magazine is a unique and invaluable document, offering significant insight into the social and cultural life of Russian émigrés. In order to gain an understanding of preservationism in Illyustrirovannaya Rossiya, a close reading of the periodical will be conducted, centred around questions such as whether the magazine covered any aspects of prerevolutionary Russian culture at all, and, if so, which and how? Focusing on three key elements of Illyustrirovannaya Rossiya’s editorial content, this article demonstrates that preservationism in popular and everyday culture as presented in this periodical differs markedly from its high-culture counterpart (such as highbrow literature and visual arts, for example). What stands out in Illyustrirovannaya Rossiya’s approach is that prerevolutionary Russian life and culture are rarely covered and, more importantly, never truly glorified. Instead, coverage of the Russian émigré community itself makes up a central part of the magazine’s content. When it comes to preserving Russian culture and identity, Illyustrirovannaya Rossiya pleads for finding a middle ground between preserving the home culture and adapting to the host culture. In doing so, the magazine frequently stresses readers’ individual responsibility to seek connection with their Russian identity instead of relying on leading émigré figures and institutions.

An Impossible Task? Reconciling Europeanism and National Popular Culture in Caliban (1947–51)

A kind of hybrid between high-profile political and literary periodicals and successful popular book digests targeted at a mass audience, the French magazine Caliban (1947–51) both tried to adjust to a fast-changing global marketplace and to defend a form of cultural legitimacy based on national claims against globalist domination. This article traces the evolution of the magazine’s editorial venture in relation to questions connected to the issues of modernity and mobility. In particular, it aims at examining Caliban’s implacable ‘anti-digest’ stance.

The Past Contains a Promise of Regeneration: Narratives of Ireland’s Future in Early-Twentieth-Century Juvenile Periodicals

This article investigates the popular periodicals for juveniles Our Boys, Fianna, Young Ireland, and St. Enda’s, which were cherished by Irish nationalists as home-grown substitutes for the alienating British story papers in the Ireland of the early twentieth century. With Ireland still under British rule, these periodicals were concerned about the role of youths in the context of nation-building and my contention is that the people involved in such editorial enterprises viewed them as potentially transformative forces of society, which not only harnessed the power of the idea of political upheaval, but also forged the agents who were to build the envisioned free Irelands. Contributing to the definition of an appropriate ‘post-independence’ national identity, they thus offered to the young visions of the future nation that predicated its legitimacy upon an appeal to the past and the appreciation of traditions. At the same time, young readers were presented with exemplary models of Irish citizenship drawn from Irish heritage of myths and histories. Hence, through the close scrutiny of primary texts from the crucial 1914–23 years, my objective is to show how the future Irelands first imagined and narrated in the periodicals would find their roots in the past and draw energies and strength from the nation’s cultural heritage.

Review of Joanne Shattock, ed., Journalism and the Periodical Press in Nineteenth-Century Britain (2017/2019)

Review of Joanne Shattock, ed., Journalism and the Periodical Press in Nineteenth-Century Britain (2017/2019)

The Global Dialogics of the New Age

The London-based weekly the New Age, edited by A. R. Orage from 1907 to 1922, was known for promoting spirited debates on politics, literature, and the arts. Scholars have been attentive to what Ann Ardis terms the magazine’s ‘unusual commitment to […] Bakhtinian dialogics in the public sphere’, but less so to the role that the letters column played in facilitating these often contentious, often transnational debates. This essay argues that the letters column functioned as a forum for linking not only individual readers and contributors from around the world, but also wider discursive and periodical communities. A case study of global dialogics, the essay focuses on an eleven-month debate that unfolded in New Age correspondence concerning the so-called black peril — the purported epidemic of black men attempting to rape white women in South Africa, which historians today regard as a moral panic fuelled by a desire to reinforce white supremacy. The flames of the panic were stoked by the Umtali case of 1910, in which Lord Gladstone commuted the death sentence of an Umtali native convicted of attempted rape to life imprisonment. This decision sparked mass protests and petitions among the white community in South Africa and a heated discussion about race and racism that reverberated throughout the empire, including in the columns of the New Age. The letters column served as an international forum, drawing in white settlers from Johannesburg, Crisis editor and NAACP founder W. E. B. Du Bois, Sudanese-Egyptian writer Dusé Mohamed Ali, and British suffragette Emily Wilding Davison, among others. This essay examines the gendered and racial politics of this debate and how it was shaped by its specific periodical context and by the national and ideological contexts of its interlocutors.

Review of Evanghelia Stead, Sisyphe heureux. Les revues artistiques et littéraires, Approches et figures (2020)

Review of Evanghelia Stead, Sisyphe heureux. Les revues artistiques et littéraires, Approches et figures (2020)