Alexander Welsh
Biographic Data
| ID | 3853331 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alexander Welsh |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alexander |
| FAMILY NAME | Welsh |
| SIGNATURE | WELSH A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Pittsburgh |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 17 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1972 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
The Humanist Comedy
For about three thousand years comedy has applied a welcome humanist perspective to the world’s religious beliefs and practices. From the ancient Greek comedies of Aristophanes, the famous poem by Lucretius, and dialogues of Cicero to early modern and Enlightenment essays and philosophical texts, together with the inherent skepticism about life after death in tragicomedies by Plautus, Shakespeare, Molière, and nineteenth-century novels by such as…
Re-embodiments of the Soul, for Seeing Is Believing
Perhaps the most frequent recourse to invisibility by humanity alleviates the certainty of dying. Dead bodies are palpably manifest, but souls or spirits must be invisible. Yet in order to envision an afterlife souls are re-embodied, to imagine what goes on in heaven—or hell. This essay argues that Christian belief in immortality depends far more on Classicle mythology than is usually taught or believed. Homer and Vergil's Aeneid serve as the pri…
Humanist Comedy
Living Happily However After
There are an awful lot of stories out there that treat happiness as an experience, as put off to the end, or as both. So let us review two famous, distant, but related narratives of Western literature, each with a remarkable geometry of its own even though they putatively tell the same story: Homer's Odyssey and James Joyce's Ulysses. When Henry James associates his trade with drawing circles, he invokes more than two millennia of studying Euclid…
State-of-the-Art Impersonations for Comedy and Everyday
Alexander Welsh State-of-the-Art Impersonations for Comedy and Everyday RECENTLY SOCK PUPPETRY HAS BEEN IN THE NEWS. IT IS CURIOUS HOW the latest means offaking identity can take on the names ofage-old—in this instance also childish—games and performances. That nomencla ture helps us understand what is going on, apparently. Puppet theater goes well back in history, and probably few children to this day have not played with a sock puppet of their…
Business is Busyness, or the Work Ethic
Alexander Welsh Business is Busyness, or the Work Ethic " NOW HER SO BISY A MAN AS HE THER NAS," W E READ OF ONE OF CHAUCER'S pilgrims; " And yet he semed bisier than he was." And yet? The logic of these lines seems more than a little mischievous. Nowhere could there be found a man as busy as this, and yet this man seemed busier than he was. If both of these statements are strictly true, most men are not as busy as they seem, and diligence is lar…
A King Lear of the Debtors' Prison
WHILE he spoke, he was opening and shutting his hands like valves; so conscious all the time of that touch of shame, that he shrunk before his own knowledge of his meaning” (1.19.190).1 That picture of the Father of the Marshalsea, as he is called in Dickens’s Little Dorrit, has always stuck in my mind. Only Dickens, perhaps, would think of the man’s shame being betrayed in this way by his hands. The most coherent satire in the same novel feature…
Freud's Wishful Dream Book
Although it is customary to credit Freud's self-analysis, it may be more accurate, this text argues, to say that psychoanalysis began when The Interpretation of Dreams was published in the last weeks of the 19th century. Only by going public with his theory - that dreams manifest hidden wishes - did Freud establish position to defend and embark upon career. That position and career have been among the most influential in the 20th century. In Augu…
Strong Representations
Strong Representations
This text argues that the effort to make the facts of a situation speak for themselves was the single most prominent form of narrative in the late 18th and 19th centuries. Drawing on English literary texts and criticism, the history of common law and natural religion, it characterizes the narrative form of strong representation - the endeavour to use circumstantial evidence to tell of things not seen
Strong Representations
Burke and Bentham on the Narrative Potential of Circumstantial Evidence
N THE COURSE of the long impeachment of Warren Hastings, Edmund Burke clashed with the law judges advising the Lords on the admissibility of evidence. One of the managers of the prosecution brought by the Commons, Burke was not a lawyer himself; such were his powers and the fame of the trial, however, that in the following century his definition of circumstantial evidence was probably more often cited than any other. In this public forum he found…
Imagining the Penitentiary
The Evidence of Things not Seen
Research Article| April 01 1988 The Evidence of Things not Seen: Justice Stephen and Bishop Butler Alexander Welsh Alexander Welsh Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Representations (1988) 22: 60–88. https://doi.org/10.2307/2928411 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Sea…
Reflections on the Hero as Quixote
Opening and Closing Les Misérables
Research Article| June 01 1978 Opening and Closing Les Misérables Alexander Welsh Alexander Welsh Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Nineteenth-Century Fiction (1978) 33 (1): 8–23. https://doi.org/10.2307/2932924 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search…
Lockhart as Romantic Biographer by Francis R. Hart
Book Review| July 01 1972 Lockhart as Romantic Biographer by Francis R. Hart Lockhart as Romantic Biographer. By Hart, Francis R.. Edinburgh University Press, 1971; and Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company. Pp. 299. $12.50. Alexander Welsh Alexander Welsh University of Pittsburgh Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google South Atlantic Quarterly (1972) 71 (3): 456–458. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-71-3-456 Cite Icon Cite Share …
Opening and Closing Les Misérables
Research Article| June 01 1978 Opening and Closing Les Misérables Alexander Welsh Alexander Welsh Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Nineteenth-Century Fiction (1978) 33 (1): 8–23. https://doi.org/10.2307/2932924 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search…
Lockhart as Romantic Biographer by Francis R. Hart
Book Review| July 01 1972 Lockhart as Romantic Biographer by Francis R. Hart Lockhart as Romantic Biographer. By Hart, Francis R.. Edinburgh University Press, 1971; and Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company. Pp. 299. $12.50. Alexander Welsh Alexander Welsh University of Pittsburgh Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google South Atlantic Quarterly (1972) 71 (3): 456–458. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-71-3-456 Cite Icon Cite Share …
Opening and Closing Les Misérables
Research Article| June 01 1978 Opening and Closing Les Misérables Alexander Welsh Alexander Welsh Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Nineteenth-Century Fiction (1978) 33 (1): 8–23. https://doi.org/10.2307/2932924 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search…
Reflections on the Hero as Quixote
Imagining the Penitentiary
The Evidence of Things not Seen
Research Article| April 01 1988 The Evidence of Things not Seen: Justice Stephen and Bishop Butler Alexander Welsh Alexander Welsh Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Representations (1988) 22: 60–88. https://doi.org/10.2307/2928411 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Sea…
Burke and Bentham on the Narrative Potential of Circumstantial Evidence
N THE COURSE of the long impeachment of Warren Hastings, Edmund Burke clashed with the law judges advising the Lords on the admissibility of evidence. One of the managers of the prosecution brought by the Commons, Burke was not a lawyer himself; such were his powers and the fame of the trial, however, that in the following century his definition of circumstantial evidence was probably more often cited than any other. In this public forum he found…
Strong Representations
Strong Representations
This text argues that the effort to make the facts of a situation speak for themselves was the single most prominent form of narrative in the late 18th and 19th centuries. Drawing on English literary texts and criticism, the history of common law and natural religion, it characterizes the narrative form of strong representation - the endeavour to use circumstantial evidence to tell of things not seen
Strong Representations
Freud's Wishful Dream Book
Although it is customary to credit Freud's self-analysis, it may be more accurate, this text argues, to say that psychoanalysis began when The Interpretation of Dreams was published in the last weeks of the 19th century. Only by going public with his theory - that dreams manifest hidden wishes - did Freud establish position to defend and embark upon career. That position and career have been among the most influential in the 20th century. In Augu…
A King Lear of the Debtors' Prison
WHILE he spoke, he was opening and shutting his hands like valves; so conscious all the time of that touch of shame, that he shrunk before his own knowledge of his meaning” (1.19.190).1 That picture of the Father of the Marshalsea, as he is called in Dickens’s Little Dorrit, has always stuck in my mind. Only Dickens, perhaps, would think of the man’s shame being betrayed in this way by his hands. The most coherent satire in the same novel feature…
Business is Busyness, or the Work Ethic
Alexander Welsh Business is Busyness, or the Work Ethic " NOW HER SO BISY A MAN AS HE THER NAS," W E READ OF ONE OF CHAUCER'S pilgrims; " And yet he semed bisier than he was." And yet? The logic of these lines seems more than a little mischievous. Nowhere could there be found a man as busy as this, and yet this man seemed busier than he was. If both of these statements are strictly true, most men are not as busy as they seem, and diligence is lar…
State-of-the-Art Impersonations for Comedy and Everyday
Alexander Welsh State-of-the-Art Impersonations for Comedy and Everyday RECENTLY SOCK PUPPETRY HAS BEEN IN THE NEWS. IT IS CURIOUS HOW the latest means offaking identity can take on the names ofage-old—in this instance also childish—games and performances. That nomencla ture helps us understand what is going on, apparently. Puppet theater goes well back in history, and probably few children to this day have not played with a sock puppet of their…
Living Happily However After
There are an awful lot of stories out there that treat happiness as an experience, as put off to the end, or as both. So let us review two famous, distant, but related narratives of Western literature, each with a remarkable geometry of its own even though they putatively tell the same story: Homer's Odyssey and James Joyce's Ulysses. When Henry James associates his trade with drawing circles, he invokes more than two millennia of studying Euclid…
Humanist Comedy
Re-embodiments of the Soul, for Seeing Is Believing
Perhaps the most frequent recourse to invisibility by humanity alleviates the certainty of dying. Dead bodies are palpably manifest, but souls or spirits must be invisible. Yet in order to envision an afterlife souls are re-embodied, to imagine what goes on in heaven—or hell. This essay argues that Christian belief in immortality depends far more on Classicle mythology than is usually taught or believed. Homer and Vergil's Aeneid serve as the pri…
The Humanist Comedy
For about three thousand years comedy has applied a welcome humanist perspective to the world’s religious beliefs and practices. From the ancient Greek comedies of Aristophanes, the famous poem by Lucretius, and dialogues of Cicero to early modern and Enlightenment essays and philosophical texts, together with the inherent skepticism about life after death in tragicomedies by Plautus, Shakespeare, Molière, and nineteenth-century novels by such as…
Art (14 works) · Literature (12 works) · History (11 works) · Archaeology (7 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Narrative (5 works) · Aesthetics (4 works) · Circumstantial evidence (4 works) · Computer Science (4 works) · Law in Society and Culture (4 works)