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Euphorion's presence carries the act 3,000 years forward, from Helena's ancient Greece and the fall of Troy to the siege of Missolonghi and the present. [...]Euphorion's appearance seems to change as he begins to resemble a warrior. Yet his image never shrinks, Gleam of armor his attire, As of bronze and steel it winks. While his word choice insinuates a mythological sense of warfare, the external strife of battle manifests inwardly and the individual replaces the previously valued nation.

At Nuneaton Museum staff allowed us to view a selection of George Eliot artefacts from their collection. [...]on the homeward journey, delegates were treated to a guided tour of Newstead Abbey, the Nottinghamshire home of Lord Byron. The development of the Gaskell Society website makes staying connected so much easier and we love to hear from members either through the website or our Facebook page. [...]Linsey is happy to pass on emails or post blogs and news items, and we are always looking for suggestions to extend our monthly discussions throughout the winter months.

The tremendous expansion and the differentiation of the neocortex constitute two major events in the evolution of the mammalian brain. The increase in size and complexity of our brains opened the way to a spectacular development of cognitive and mental skills. This expansion during evolution facilitated the addition of microcircuits with a similar basic structure, which increased the complexity of the human brain and contributed to its uniqueness. However, fundamental differences even exist between distinct mammalian species. Here, we shall discuss the issue of our humanity from a neurobiological and historical perspective.

This essay brings together two diverse thinkers, Lord Byron and Hélène Cixous, to explore the ways in which they approach the essential unrecordability of the present moment in writing, and trace further correlations as to how their writing seeks to dismantle familiar constructs of continuity. It takes its cue from Byron’s conception of poetry as an intuitive process connecting the past and the future as a “feeling,” and explores the ways in which Byron highlights the problem of the present as essentially unrecordable. The unrecordability of the present moment in writing presents a highly Romantic aporia, whereby Byron flags the limits of language across his works. These concerns—a shared preoccupation with the limits of language, the recordability of the present, and the pace of living versus the pace of writing—have been explored further in theoretical detail by Cixous. Cixous considers life and writing alike as marked by essential, inescapable lateness, and she frequently tackles the issues of recording the immediacy of life in writing. Notwithstanding the temporal, gender and geopolitical gulf between them, Byron and Cixous, read in tandem, share a remarkable degree of intellectual resonance, both in terms of their preoccupation with conceptualizing the present moment in writing and in terms of the imagery employed to do so.

This article analyses the early eighteenth-century relationship between Ukraine and Muscovy, and the revolt of Hetman Mazepa and the Ukrainian Cossacks against Tsar Peter the Great. It argues that Ukraine enjoyed a rather full autonomy to 1709, but that the stresses of the Great Northern War between Muscovy and Sweden, the threats to Ukraine posed by Peter’s scorched earth policies, and plans to abolish Ukrainian autonomy provoked Mazepa’s revolt. It corrects the stereotype of Mazepa as a barbarous traitor and points out that just as Peter was true to Muscovite interests, so too Mazepa was true to Cossack Ukraine.

Franz Liszt’s 1847 journey to Constantinople is often romantically intertwined with stock Orientalist imagery in music historical sources. This study challenges such portrayals by framing the trip as a routine concert tour and analyzing his image cultivation. By drawing on letters, concert programs, and biographical sources, it critically examines the oriental-traveler stereotype Liszt himself propagated to enhance his cosmopolitan artistic persona and reputation as an international virtuoso. Special focus is given to the Constantinople compositions, including his paraphrase on Donizetti’s Sultan’s March, often read as ‘local color’ yet rooted in European techniques. The essay concludes with a critical reflection on musical Orientalism and nineteenth-century interactions between the Orient and the Occident, while urging a differentiated perspective toward cultural exchange.

Byron was inspired to explore Albanian themes and motifs after his visit to Albania in 1809, as the landscapes, folklore and people of Albania left a lasting impression on him. Not only did he influence many Albanian writers, but he also drew inspiration from the Albanian environment, which he incorporated into his poetic verse. This paper uses qualitative and comparative literary methods to analyze the Albanian themes in some of Byron’s notable works, such as Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, The Bride of Abydos, The Giaour, The Siege of Corinth, Lara, Parisina and Don Juan. The analysis reveals that Byron’s poems glorify the enchanting nature of Albania, the Albanian character, the virtues of Albanian women, national costumes, folklore and historical figures such as Scanderbeg and Ali Pasha, etc. The conclusion is that Byron’s verses were a valuable source of inspiration for patriotic poets during the Albanian National Renaissance, as they exuded a sense of patriotism, heroism and poetic inspiration. Byron’s travels to Albanian lands and his interest in Albania and the Albanians, as well as his writings about them, greatly enhanced and promoted literary and cultural relations between Albania and England. Byron’s admiration for Albania and its people positioned him as a cherished friend, ally and supporter of the Albanian people, earning him great love and honor and making him the Albanians’ favorite and most popular poet.

Southey's \"morning traveller\" spends the day listening to unfamiliar sounds, until, in the evening, he hears a \"distant sheep-bell,\" which teaches him that \"sweetest is the voice of Love / That welcomes his return. \"7 A sheep bell is, of course, a tracking mechanism, facilitating the free movement and eventual return of sheep to a shepherd. Judith Butler has observed that \"my own foreignness to myself is, paradoxically, the source of my ethical connection with others. [...]through the sheer dubiousness of understanding other people, we can achieve a kind of negative shared humanity. Echo, explains Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, is a form of self-knowledge deprived of self-knowledge, a \"mortiferous\" epistemology both disorienting and powerful.10 What the Crimsworths believe to be a Southeyan sheep-bell summons them into an erotics of death and spectrality.