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One of the most persistent narratives about the Romantic period is concerned with the origin of modernity. Several fundamental transformations and events – the American Declaration of Independence, the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the functional differentiation of society, the development of the modern scientific system, and the gradual secularisation of Western society – characterise the Romantic period as an age of transition towards something fundamentally new. Particularly the crisis of religion creates a sense that the concept of history is no longer experienced in terms of eschatology but rather as an immaimmanent trajectory without beginning or end.

Da die historische Sprachwissenschaft ausschließlich über geschriebene Texte als Datenbasis verfügt, wurden insbesondere im Forschungsgebiet der historischen Pragmatik bestimmte Genres identifiziert, die Aufschluss über die Sprechsprachlichkeit vergangener Sprachstufen bieten können. Dem dramatischen Genre der Komödie wird in der sprachhistorischen Forschung eine besondere Nähe zur gesprochenen Sprache zugesprochen. Das Korpus dieser Dissertation umfasst insgesamt 46 Stücke der spätmittelenglischen Mystery Plays, die biblische Episoden von der Erschaffung der Welt bis zum Jüngsten Gericht (komisch) in Szene setzen. Neben der quantitativen und qualitativen Analyse von acht nähesprachlichen Merkmalen (u. a. Anredepronomina, Fragen, Diskursmarker) beinhaltet die Arbeit eine Klassifizierung der komischen Szenen in den Mystery Plays sowie eine Untersuchung der literatur- und kulturhistorischen Kontextfaktoren, die eine Annäherung an Sprechsprachlichkeit in den Texten bedingt haben könnten.:1 Introduction 1.1 Premises and aims 1.2 Outline of the study 2 Comedy play texts as a speech-related genre 2.1 Speech-like genres and 'communicative immediacy' 2.2 Play texts vs. 'real' spoken discourse 2.3 Conclusions 3 'Comedy' in the mystery cycles 3.1 The medieval sense of 'comedy' 3.2 Medieval attitudes to laughter 3.3 Laughter and the comic in the mystery cycles 3.3.1 Humiles personae – sympathetic laughter 3.3.2 Divine triumph over evil – Schadenfreude 3.3.3 Funny games of violence – grim irony 3.4 The potential for 'communicative immediacy' in the mystery 'comedies' 3.4.1 Context and sources 3.4.2 Stylistic guidelines 3.5 Conclusions 4 Speech-like features in the mystery 'comedies' 4.1 Methodological premises 4.1.1 The data 4.1.2 Speech-like characteristics and linguistic features 4.1.3 Challenges and obstacles 4.2 Interactivity in pronominal address – (im)politeness, power and dominance 4.2.1 Second-person pronouns 4.2.1.1 Overall distribution 4.2.1.2 Family relationships 4.2.1.3 'Official' relationships 4.2.1.4 A special case: address in funny games of violence 4.2.2 Summary 4.3 Interactivity in pair structures – cooperation and conflict 4.3.1 Questions 4.3.1.1 Overall distribution 4.3.1.2 Functional analysis 4.3.1.3 Discussion of results 4.3.2 Imperatives 4.3.2.1 Overall distribution 4.3.2.2 Functional analysis 4.3.2.3 Discussion of results 4.3.3 Lexical repetition 4.3.3.1 Overall distribution 4.3.3.2 Functional Analysis 4.3.3.3 Discussion of results 4.3.4 Turn-initial discourse markers 4.3.4.1 Overall distribution 4.3.4.2 Interactional uses 4.3.4.3 Discussion of results 4.3.5 Summary 4.4 Features of sharedness and function – emotion and emphasis 4.4.1 Interjections 4.4.1.1 Overall distribution 4.4.1.2 Emotive-expressive uses 4.4.1.3 A special case: swearing 4.4.2 Vocatives: Terms of endearment and abuse 4.4.2.1 Overall distribution 4.4.2.2 Analysis 4.4.3 Demonstrative pronouns and deictic reference 4.4.3.1 Overall distribution 4.4.3.2 Analysis 4.4.4 Summary 4.5. Discussion: Speech-like features in the Middle English mystery plays 5 Final remarks 6 Bibliography 7 List of abbreviations 8 List of tables 9 List of figures

Jude the Obscure is not only Thomas Hardy´s last but probably also his bleakest novel. Even the epigram on the frontispiece - 'The letter killeth [but the spirit giveth life]' - can be read as having negative forebodings; it can, however, also be interpreted as a commentary on the 'nature' of language and on the absolute necessity of understanding its founding mechanisms such as absence, difference and deferral if one is to lead a happy and meaningful life and if one endeavors to claim the freedom and the responsibility to construct one´s gender identity. This essay thus centers on the extent to which Hardy´s protagonist Jude Fawley, a man who desperately clings to the illusion of a transcendental signified, is able to understand and put into practice Hardy´s epigram when constructing his masculinity. Therefore, the focus of inquiry will be the hitherto largely neglected discursive construction of an ill-fated male gender identity in a discursive universe where 'nobody did come, because nobody does' and where taking words literally has lethal consequences.

With the monograph What is English? – subtitled And Why Should We Care? – Tim William Machan has presented a difficult book. The dust jacket already prepares the prospective reader by stating that “Finding an account that fits the constantly changing varieties of English is, Tim Machan finds, anything but simple”. And this text continues: “But he [i.e. Machan] rises to the challenge, grappling with its elusive essence through episodes in its history.” It is the combination of a tremendous amount of information and the ‘episodic’ form of this monograph that makes this book quite challenging.

Mit seinem vierten Roman And the Land Lay Still hat James Robertson, einer der interessantesten Gegenwartsautoren Schottlands, ein politisches und gesellschaftliches Panorama des Landes seit dem 2. Weltkrieg entworfen, das dem Leser und der Leserin einen intimen und vielschichtigen Einblick in die Komplexität dieser Nation und ihrer neueren Entwicklung erlaubt. In seinem Beitrag bespricht Dietmar Böhnke (Leipzig) das Buch und ordnet es in Robertsons Werk und die schottische Gegenwartsliteratur ein.

The correspondence between Charles Dickens and Bernhard Tauchnitz (1816–1895), founder of the Tauchnitz Verlag in Leipzig, spans almost thirty years, between 1843 and 1870 – Dickens was one of the key authors in the Tauchnitz Edition, a series of books in English for Continental sale initiated in 1841. So far, only 29 of Dickens’s letters to Tauchnitz were known (and printed in the authoritative Pilgrim Edition), and none of the manuscripts could be consulted. In 1991, Gunter Böhnke discovered 34 of the original letters in Leipzig, of which 14 are unknown and seven others only in short extracts. This article briefly sketches the background of the relationship between Dickens and Tauchnitz, and reprints for the first time these 21 letters as transcribed from photocopies of the originals. In the footnotes, the other 22 known letters to Tauchnitz are also listed. As a whole, they illustrate Dickens’s interest in the publication of his works abroad (including payment for this, obviously), as well as his high regard for Tauchnitz. Among the personal information that can be glimpsed from the letters, the most interesting is probably Dickens’s son Charley’s two-year stay in Leipzig in 1853–4.

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Beitrag zum Anglistentag 2006 Halle

Konferenzbeitrag zum Anglistentag 2010 Saarbrücken