Mr. Pepys and the Turk

Mr. Pepys and the Turk PDF

Author: Andrew C. Rouse

Publisher: SPECHEL

Published: 2014-07-08

Total Pages: 145

ISBN-13: 9630894556

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“Mr. Pepys and The Turk” is SPECHEL’s first inroad into publication. In line with the mission embodied in its name, this book and subsequent publications will be available in ebook and print-on-demand form, making it considerably more accessible than if it were solely a physical object. “Mr Pepys and Turk” tells of English popular notions of the “Turk” through history, centring upon the diary entries of civil servant Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) and the street ballads which he loved to collect. The author’s fascination with this subject stems from his dual life as an academic/folk singer, but also from having lived and worked most of his adult life in Hungary’s only city with two domed mosques, a minaret and other Turkish remains. Hungary is a country where the Turk gets bad press through incomplete and biased formal education and popular conception, yet one of the most charming children’s rhymes of which (included here in the author’s translation) features Mehmet the Turk. Unlike Hungary, England was not invaded by the Turk, unless you count a very brief visit to the Cornish coast, the only surviving trace of which is England’s oldest public house called “The Turk’s Head”. Yet popular misconceptions abound in both cultures through various media, including a seventeenth-century English street ballad about a battle in Hungary between the European forces and the Ottoman Empire. Here, then, is the “Turk”, not a historical man but a popular concept – lustful, terrible, but also poor and innocent as English popular notions fashion and refashion him through time and perspective.

ETHNIC MOBILITY IN BALLADS

ETHNIC MOBILITY IN BALLADS PDF

Author: Andrew C. Rouse

Publisher: SPECHEL Egyesület

Published: 2017-11-30

Total Pages: 139

ISBN-13: 9631292924

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Ethnic Mobility in Ballads is the fourth volume in the new SPECHEL e-ditions series. It comprises studies about ballads that in different ways reflect the movement of ethnic groups, transcending and defying national borders in ways that range from the borrowing of ‘national’ heroes to popular interpretations (and distortions) of ethnicities not one’s own, to the transfer of humour from one ethnicity to another. The studies are the result of the 44th International Ballad Conference of the Kommission für Volksdichtung, held in 2014 in Pécs, a city in Southern Hungary (Cultural Capital of Europe, 2010) which was occupied by the Ottoman Turks after the defeat of the Hungarians at Mohács in 1526 and inhabited by them for over a century, so it is hardly surprising that several of the papers make up a distinct group about balladic Turks of one degree of reality or another, but a study about the Slovenian appropriation of a Hungarian ‘hero’ is also indicative of the spread of the papers.

CHARLES DICKENS 200

CHARLES DICKENS 200 PDF

Author: Andrew C. Rouse

Publisher: SPECHEL

Published: 2015-10-20

Total Pages: 144

ISBN-13: 9630894572

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Charles Dickens 200: Text and Beyond: a commemorative volume is the second volume in the new SPECHEL e-ditions series. It commemorates the two-hundredth anniversary of Dickens’s birth, and for the purpose brings together, in addition to ‘dyed-in-the-wool’ Dickensians, a curious variety of experts from a miscellany of areas of expertise ranging from folksinger to linguist and even magician. The chapters approach Charles Dickens from musical aspects ranging from opera to music-hall song and street ballad, from his role as a family conjuror, to psychological analyses of various of his characters and linguistic analysis of his style. He is regarded through the prism of the Irish literary scene but also through the eye of the Hungarian translator of his work, through operatic and photographic adaptations of his subject-matter. Every new chapter produces an exciting and unexpected new facet of the author, whose birth the volume celebrates.

ACROSS BORDERS AND TIME: JONATHAN SWIFT

ACROSS BORDERS AND TIME: JONATHAN SWIFT PDF

Author: Csaba Maczelka

Publisher: SPECHEL e-ditions

Published: 2022-12-16

Total Pages: 164

ISBN-13: 6150061493

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The volume Across Borders and Time: Jonathan Swift contains the papers delivered at the conference The World of Swift; Swift and his World, which was dedicated to the 350th anniversary of the birth of Jonathan Swift. The conference was held on 24-25 November 2017, at the House of Arts and Literature, Pécs, and jointly organised by the Institute of English Studies of Pécs University and SPECHEL, the latter of which is also the publisher of this volume in its series, SPECHEL e-ditions. It also benefited from the support provided by the Irish Embassy in Budapest. That year also marked the 650th anniversary of Hungary’s first university, founded in Pécs in 1367, and so the conference honoured that event, too. In this, the fifth SPECHEL e-dition, series editor Rouse joins up once again with SPECHEL member Gabriella Hartvig, an internationally respected scholar of the period and colleague at Pécs University, together with Irish Swiftian scholar David Clare. The volume comprises a selection of essays emanating from papers delivered at the conference celebrating the 350th anniversary of the Anglo-Irish writer Jonathan Swift, held in the anniversary year of 2017, and includes a paper delivered by the Irish Ambassador to Hungary that opened the conference. We are grateful to the Irish Embassy for their financial support, as well as to a number of local businesses and the Mayor’s Office of Pécs. The conference was organised by SPECHEL as part of the British and Irish Autumn 2017 series of events, and included a recital of the music of the Irish harper Turlough O’Carolan (1670-1738).

The Coffee-House

The Coffee-House PDF

Author: Markman Ellis

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Published: 2011-05-12

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 1780220553

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How the simple commodity of coffee came to rewrite the experience of metropolitan life When the first coffee-house opened in London in 1652, customers were bewildered by this strange new drink from Turkey. But those who tried coffee were soon won over. More coffee-houses were opened across London and, in the following decades, in America and Europe. For a hundred years the coffee-house occupied the centre of urban life. Merchants held auctions of goods, writers and poets conducted discussions, scientists demonstrated experiments and gave lectures, philanthropists deliberated reforms. Coffee-houses thus played a key role in the explosion of political, financial, scientific and literary change in the 18th century. In the 19th century the coffee-house declined, but the 1950s witnessed a dramatic revival in the popularity of coffee with the appearance of espresso machines and the `coffee bar', and the 1990s saw the arrival of retail chains like Starbucks.

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