From the artistic practice of improvisation to the politics of nationalism, the essays in this volume break new ground and significantly extend our understanding of the relations between British and Italian culture in its analysis of the reception of Dante and Italian literature in British Romanticism.

The essays assembled in this volume grew out of a conference held at Cornell University in November 2001. The goal of the conference was to examine the claim that the city-state of Hamburg had a unique status in the cultural landscape of eighteenth and nineteenth-century Germany, a status based upon the city’s republican political constitution. Hamburg’s independence and its tolerant and cosmopolitan political traditions made it a focal point for progressive cultural developments during the period of the Enlightenment and after. The contributions collected here transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries by giving equal attention to literature, music, and theater, as well as to architecture and city planning. Key essays address the role that figures as diverse as C.P.E. Bach, Lessing, Klopstock, Heine, Brahms, and Thomas Mann played in shaping Hamburg’s exceptional quality as a center of culture. This volume will be of interest not only to scholars doing research on Hamburg, but also to anyone with an interest in the cultural history of eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth-century Germany.

Thomas Paine (1737-1809) was England's greatest revolutionary: no other reformer was as actively involved in events of the scale of the American and French Revolutions, and none wrote such best-selling texts with the impact of Common Sense and Rights of Man. No one else combined the roles of activist and theorist, or did so in the 'age of revolutions', fundamental as it was to the emergence of the 'modern world'. But his fame meant that he was taken up and reinterpreted for current use by successive later commentators and politicians, so that the 'historic Paine' was too often obscured by the 'usable Paine'. J. C. D. Clark explains Paine against a revised background of early- and mid-eighteenth-century England. He argues that Paine knew and learned less about events in America and France than was once thought. He de-attributes a number of publications, and passages, hitherto assumed to have been Paine's own, and detaches him from a number of causes (including anti-slavery, women's emancipation, and class action) with which he was once associated. Paine's formerly obvious association with the early origin and long-term triumph of natural rights, republicanism, and democracy needs to be rethought. As a result, Professor Clark offers a picture of radical and reforming movements as more indebted to the initiatives of large numbers of men and women in fast-evolving situations than to the writings of a few individuals who framed lasting, and eventually triumphant, political discourses.

This volume offers a snapshot of current perspectives on translation studies within the specific historical and socio-cultural framework of Anglo-Italian relations. It addresses research questions relevant to English historical, literary, cultural and language studies, as well as empirical translation studies. The book is divided into four chapters, each covering a specific research area in the scholarly field of translation studies: namely, historiography, literary translation, specialized translation and multimodality. Each case study selected for this volume has been conducted with critical insight and methodological rigour, and makes a valuable contribution to scientific knowledge in the descriptive and applied branches of a discipline that, since its foundation nearly 50 years ago, has concerned itself with the description, theory and practice of translating and interpreting.

Few scholars can claim to have shaped the historical study of the long eighteenth century more profoundly than Professor H. T. Dickinson, who, until his retirement in 2006, held the Sir Richard Lodge Chair of British History at the University of Edinburgh. This volume, based on contributions from Professor Dickinson's students, friends and colleagues from around the world, offers a range of perspectives on eighteenth-century Britain and provides a tribute to a remarkable scholarly career.Professor Dickinson's work and career provides the ideal lens through which to take a detailed snapshot of current research in a number of areas. The volume includes contributions from scholars working in intellectual history, political and parliamentary history, ecclesiastical and naval history; discussions of major themes such as Jacobitism, the French Revolution, popular radicalism and conservatism; and essays on prominent individuals in English and Scottish history, including Edmund Burke, Thomas Muir, Thomas Paine and Thomas Spence. The result is a uniquely rich and detailed collection with an impressive breadth of coverage.