The Beggar's Opera, often referred to today as the first musical comedy, was the most popular dramatic piece of the eighteenth century -- and is the work that John Gay (1685-1732) is best remembered for having written. That association of popular music and satiric lyrics has proved to be continuingly attractive, and variations on the Opera have flourished in this century: by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, by Duke Ellington, and most recently by Vaclav Havel. The original opera itself is played all over the world in amateur and professional productions. But John Gay's place in all this has not been well defined. His Opera is often regarded as some sort of chance event. In John Gay and the London Theatre, the first book-length study of John Gay as dramatic author, Calhoun Winton recognized the Opera as part of an entirely self-conscious career in the theatre, a career that Gay pursued from his earliest days as a writer in London and continued to follow to his death. Winton emphasizes Gay's knowledge of and affection for music, acquired, he argues, by way of his association with Handel.Although concentrating on Gay and his theatrical career, Winton also limns a vivid portrait of London itself and of the London stage of Gay's time, a period of considerable turbulence both within and outside the theatre. Gay's plays reflect in varying ways and degrees that social, political, and cultural turmoil. Winton's study sheds new light not only on Gay and the theatre, but also on the politics and culture of his era.

In 1489 Johan Hurus printed the first collection of fables in Spain, Lavida del Ysopetconsusfabulas hystoriadas. Illustrated with nearly 200 woodcuts, this work quickly became the most-read book in Spain, beloved of both children and adults. Reprinted many times in the next three centuries and carried to the New World, it brought to Spanish letters a cornucopia of Aesopic fables, oriental apologues, and folktales that were borrowed by such writers as Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and especially the fabulists Iriarte and Samaniego. John Keller and Clark Keating now present the first English translation of this important literary work.The Latin and German lineage of La vida was significant, for it placed Spain in the mainstream of European fable lore. The highly fictitious life of Aesop, the misshapen Greek slave who reached the highest social level, contributed to the development of medieval romance and the picaresque novel. The book is thus important to students of comparative literature, literary history, and the development of the Spanish language.Of equal value are the woodcuts, which depict the daily life of medieval Europe and contribute to a better understanding of fifteenth-century art history, bookmaking, natural history, and the visualization of narrative. La vida del Ysopet thus constitutes one of the finest concordances of text and illustration in European literary history.

Much criticism has posited an all-powerful patriarchy that effectively marginalized and disempowered women until well into the nineteenth century. In a startling revisionist study, Mona Scheuermann refutes these stereotypes, finding that the images presented by eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century novelists are of functioning, capable women whose involvement with the getting, keeping, and investing of money provides a ubiquitous theme in the novels of the period.Her Bread to Earn focuses on the images presented by the major novels of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, those works that form the core of the canon or that define an important trend at a particular time. Moving through Defoe through Richardson, Fielding, Holcroft, Godwin, Bage, Inchbald, and Wollstonescaft to Austen, Scheuermann demonstrates that novelists of this period depicted women as relatively independent persons, many of whom managed property, shaped and directed events, and controlled their own destinies. These are intelligent women, eager to learn, and ready, sometimes aggressively ready, to act.Scheuermann's eighteenth-century women is drawn in the grays of reality, not in the black and white of ideology. The images she presents go far beyond the patriarchal prison into which modern criticism has sometimes forced the female characters. Certain to spark controversy, this book marks a major shift in received opinion.

In 1986 a national opinion poll indicated that over half of Irish voters favored an upcoming referendum to remove the constitutional ban on divorce. Yet, after nine weeks of vigorous debate during which forces on both sides of the issue presented their cases to the public, the amendment was defeated.In Debating Divorce, Michele Dillon uses the divorce referendum debate in Ireland as a base from which to explore the long-standing sociological preoccupation with how societies decide questions of values. Focusing on culture and moral conflict, she examines the stances adopted by the major players in the debate: the government and the political parties, the Catholic church, women, the print and broadcast media, and activists,on both sides.Although the issues of moral conflict that Dillon discusses have special relevance in demarcating Irish cultural values, they also apply to how people in general reason about morals and values. The author highlights the nature of moral discourse, the use of contradictory arguments in moral reasoning, the difficulty of trying to shift moral paradigms during non-revolutionary times, and the impossibility of keeping facts and values distinct as people grapple with conflicting moral claims.Examining the divorce question within historical themes of economic insecurity and Catholic identity, Dillon argues that the discourses articulated during the debate illustrate a universal tension between the forces of tradition and those of modernity. She dissects Irish opposition to divorce in terms of current challenges to rationality and its association with progress and goodness.Debating Divorce will appeal to sociologists and scholars of Irish studies, communication, culture, and religion, as well as to general readers with an interest in Ireland or moral discourse.

From 1826 to 1829, John Bradford, founder of Kentucky's first newspaper, the Kentucky Gazette, reprinted in its pages sixty-six excerpts that he considered important documents on the settlement of the West. Now for the first time all of Bradford's Notes on Kentucky -- the primary historical source for Kentucky's early years -- are made available in a single volume, edited by the state's most distinguished historian.The Kentucky Gazette was established in 1787 to support Kentucky's separation from Virginia and the formation of a new state. Bradford's Notes deal at length with that protracted debate and the other major issues confronting Bradford and his pioneering neighbors. The early white settlers were obsessed with Indian raids, which continued for more than a decade and caused profound anxiety. A second vexing concern was overlapping land claims, as swarms of settlers flowed into the region. And as quickly as the land was settled, newly opened fields began to yield mountains of produce in need of outside markets. Spanish control of the lower Mississippi and rumors of Spain's plan to close the river for twenty-five years were far more threatening to the new economy than the continuing Indian raids.Equally disturbing was the British occupation of the northwest posts from which it was believed the northern Indianraids emanated. Not until Anthony Wayne's sweeping campaign against the Miami villages and the signing of the Treaty of Greenville in 1794 was tension from that quarter relieved. Finally, the Jay Treaty with Britain and the Pinckney Treaty with Spain diplomatically cleared the Kentucky frontier for free expansion of the white populace.John Bradford's Notes on Kentucky, now published together for the first time, deal with all of these pertinent issues. No other source portrays so intimately or so graphically the travail of western settlement.

All but forgotten except as a part of nostalgic lore, American canals during the first half of the nineteenth century provided a transportation network that was vital to the development of the new nation. They lowered transportation costs, carried a vast grain trade from western farms to eastern ports, delivered Pennsylvania coal to New York, and carried thousands of passengers at what seemed effortless speed. Along their courses sprang up new towns and cities and with them new economic growth. Canals for a Nation brings together in one volume a survey of all the major American canals. Here are accounts of innovative engineering, of near heroic figures who devoted their lives to canals, and of canal projects that triumphed over all the uncertainties of the political process.

Understanding of the respiratory control system has been greatly improved by technological and methodological advances. This volume integrates results from many perspectives, brings together diverse approaches to the investigations, and represents important additions to the field of neural control of breathing.Topics include membrane properties of respiratory neurons, in vitro studies of respiratory control, chemical neuroanatomy, central integration of respiratory afferents, modulation of respiratory pattern by peripheral afferents, respiratory chemoreception, development of respiratory control, behavioral control of breathing, and human ventilatory control. Forty-seven experts in the field report research and discuss novel issues facing future investigations in this collection of papers from an international conference of nearly two hundred leading scientists held in October 1990. This research is of vital importance to respiratory physiologists and those in neurosciences and neurobiology who work with integrative sensory and motor systems and is pertinent to both basic and clinical investigations.Respiratory Control is destined to be widely cited because of the strength of the contributors and the dearth of similar works.

Despite the homogenization of American life, areas of strong regional consciousness still persist in the United States, and there is a growing interest in regionalism among the public and among academics. In response to that interest ten folklorists here describe and interpret a variety of American regional cultures in the twentieth century. Their book is the first to deal specifically with regional culture and the first to employ the perspective of folklore in the study of regional identity and consciousness. The authors range widely over the United States, from the Eastern Shore to the Pacific Northwest, from the Southern Mountains to the Great Plains. They look at a variety of cultural expressions and practices -- legends, anecdotes, songs, foodways, architecture, and crafts. Tying their work together is a common consideration of how regional culture shapes and is shaped by the consciousness of living in a special place. In exploring this dimension of regional culture the authors consider the influence of natural environment and historical experience on the development of regional culture, the role of ethnicity in regional consciousness, the tensions between insiders and outsiders that stem from a sense of regional identity, and the changes in culture in response to social and economic change.With its focus on cultural manifestations and its folkloristic perspective this book provides a fresh and needed contribution to regional studies. Writ¬ten in a clear, readable style, it will appeal to general readers interested in American regions and their cultures. At the same time the research and analytical approach make it useful not only to folklorists but to cultural geographers, anthropologists, and other scholars of regional studies.

Karagiozis -- a form of comic folk drama employing stock puppet figures -- was immensely popular in Greece until recent years, when newer forms of entertainment have virtually eclipsed it. Derived from ancient Byzantine and Greek sources, it takes its name from the principal puppet character, the clever, humpbacked fool-hero Karagiozis, who appears in many guises, surrounded by a cast of folk caricatures from all walks of life.Kostas and Linda Myrsiades present here a tripartite view of Karagiozis: a translation of a typical text taken directly from a live performance; interviews with one of the last master Karagiozis puppeteers; and an analysis of the place of this indigenous genre in Greek life and culture. The first part of the book examines critical issues concerning the context of Karagiozis performance: its place as an expres¬sion of an unofficial social world, as a gender statement that reveals the split vision of its culture, as an expression of a pluralistic society, and as an indigenous event shaped by economic, geographic, political, and social forces.The second portion offers insights from interviews with Giorgos Haridimos, until his retirement Greece's preemi-nent Karagiozis player, and a translation of his classic text "Karagiozis Baker" reflecting an actual performance by Haridimos. Through novel verbal and typographic devices, Kostas Myrsiades succeeds in preserving the full flavor of his oral source -- its rhythms and intonations, its linguistic nuances, and even audience reactions -- to convey the actual experience of the theatergoer. This unique translation thus establishes a model for collecting and disseminating oral theatrical tradition.Folklorists, cultural historians, and students of theater will appreciate this introduction to an ancient but little known folkloric form.

A moving personal memoir of Mississippi in the 1920s and the bitter harvest of racial repression. As the story opens, six-year-old Buster Briggs boards a Pullman car headed south over the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, and we embark with him on what will become his journey from childhood into adolescence. Bus Briggs is a white boy from Indiana who spends his summers and Christmases at his grandparents' Mississippi homeplace -- Riverside. Travel with him on this journey of discovery. Join Bus and his cousins as they string popcorn and chinaberries for the yule tree, savor ice cream made from rare Mississippi snow, eat cornbread crumbled in buttermilk, enjoy all-day suckers and dill pickles at the general store. Meet the extended family that lives at Riverside -- Buster's grandparents Mammy and Pappy, his aunt Allie and uncle Cally, and his cousins -- as well as their black neighbor Mattie Riley and her son Leroy.At the heart of this story lies Buster's strong and sustaining friendship with Leroy. From his Pullman window, Buster first sees Leroy sitting on a stile near Riverside waving at the passing train. Leroy soon becomes Buster's fellow explorer, fishing instructor, and best friend. Before Leroy waves goodbye to Buster's departing train for the last time, an unbreakable bond is formed with the gift of a pocketknife -- and what happens because of that gift. Even so, the racial prejudices of the time dictate that the paths of their lives diverge.Wallace Briggs set out to write a memoir of his family and of his own youth, but he has shaped a story that is far more than a personal recollection. Its themes are among the most powerful in literature -- love and death, family dynamics, the innocence and selfishness of childhood, the struggle with cultural mores. What Briggs has produced is a work of great power and many pleasures, as finely constructed as a novel or stage play. His prose is crisp, cool, and sweet, like a slice of the watermelon chilling in the artesian well-water at Riverside.

In the late 1940s, Janice and Henry Giles moved from Louisville, Kentucky, back to the Appalachian hill country where Henry had grown up and where his family had lived since the time of the Revolution. With their savings, the couple bought a ramshackle house and forty acres of land on a ridge top and set out to be farmers like Henry's forebears.To this personal account of the trials of a city woman trying to learn the ways of the country and of her neighbors, Janice Holt Giles brings the same warmth, humor, and powers of observation that characterize her novels. Enlightening and evocative, personal and universally pertinent, this description of a year of "backaches, fun, low ebbs, and high tides, and above all a year of eminent satisfaction" will be welcomed by Janice Holt Giles's many readers, old and new.Janice Holt Giles (1905-1979), author of nineteen books, lived and wrote near Knifley, Kentucky, for thirty-four years. Her biography is told in Janice Holt Giles: A Writer's Life.

Laura Clay was the daughter of abolitionist Cassius Marcellus Clay and an important and controversial figure in the woman's rights movement. Paul E. Fuller traces this remarkable woman's career, from her early successes in Kentucky to her emergence as the most prominent southern suffragist. He devotes particular attention to the problems encountered by the suffragists in organizing the South, to the strategy of their alliance with the Woman's Christian Temperence Union, and the to peculiar dilemma of southern suffragists and race. Clay's many important contributions to the struggle for women's rights have been overshadowed by her brief apostasy, when in the final months of the suffrage struggle, her states' rights convictions caused her to withdraw from NAWSA and support state rather than federal enfranchisement. Though she remained active in politics until her death in 1941, she is remembered most for her participation in the attempt to block ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920. This new edition balances the record on Laura Clay and her accomplishments.

Southern-style politics was one of those peculiar institutions that differentiated the South from other American regions. This system -- long referred to as the Solid South -- embodied a distinctive regional culture and was perpetuated through an undemocratic distribution of power and a structure based on disfranchisement, malapportioned legislatures, and one-party politics. It was the mechanism that determined who would govern in the states and localities, and in national politics it was the means through which the South's politicians defended their region's special interests and political autonomy. The history of this remarkable institution can be traced in the gradual rise, long persistence, and ultimate decline of the Democratic Party dominance in the land below the Potomac and the Ohio.This is the story that Dewey W. Grantham tells in his fresh and authoritative account of the South's modern political experience. The distillation of many years of research and reflection, is both a synthesis of the extensive literature on politics in the recent South and a challenging reinterpretation of the region's political history.

This is an account of a Native American family in central Kentucky in the year 1585. Fishes-With-Hands, his wife She-Who-Watches, and their family grind corn, make cooking pots, and build their homes while in their summer village. In autumn, they attend the funeral and mourning feast of Masked-Eyes. Then they move to their winter hunting camp, where they process nuts, make arrows, and hunt and butcher animals in preparation for the winter. Readers will soon realize that their lives and experiences in many ways parallel those of this family from Kentucky's not-so-distant past.

In the novel Hannah Fowler, Janice Holt Giles created a pioneer woman who would, In Giles's words, "endow her own physical seed with her strength and courage, and her own tenderness and love." First published in 1956, this work is the second in Giles's series of historical novels on Kentucky, which includes The Kentuckians and The Believers.Samuel Moore and his daughter Hannah set out for the border country with a party led by George Rogers Clark but left to follow the Kentucky River to Boones' Fort. As the story opens, Hannah is nursing her father, injured when an axe slips and cuts his leg. By the time Tice Fowler, on his way to Logan's Fort, stumbles upon them alone in the wilderness, Samuel is dying from blood poisoning.When Samuel dies, Tice takes Hannah to the fort, where women are scarce, and Hannah finds herself besieged by suitors. Only with Tice, as silent and downright as herself, does Hannah feel at ease. Finally, she turns to the bashful Tice and asks him to marry her and take her away from the crowded fort. Together, they take their claim to land, build a cabin, and start a family. They endure the harsh frontier life, the threat of hungry wolves, a killing blizzard, and Indian raids.Hannah is an unforgettable character -- tall, physically and psychologically strong, the epitome of frontier womanhood -- brought to life by a woman who knew and loved the Kentucky people and setting about which she wrote.Janice Holt Giles (1905-1979), author of nineteen books, lived and wrote near Knifley, Kentucky, for thirty-four years. Her biography is told in Janice Holt Giles: A Writer's Life.