The Many-Headed Monster in Henry VI, Part 2
The spectacle of the severed head is so common a feature of Eliza bethan and Jacobean history plays that it invites identification as the emblem (or perhaps fetish) that most prominently characterizes the genre. Visual representations of severed heads occur in a broad range of history plays, including Thomas Lodge's The Wounds of Civil War, George Peele's Edward I, William Shakespeare's Henry VI, Parts 2 and 3, Richard III, and Macbeth, George Chapman's Caesar and Pompey, Thomas Dekker's Sir Thomas Wyatt, and John Fletcher and Philip Massinger's Sir John van Olden BarnaveltThe reasons for the preval ence of the severed head in the history play are not difficult to deter mine. The display of the head serves as a striking, unmistakable image signifying not only the defeat and demise of the victim, but, more crucially, the loss or transfer of political power which is consoli dated through this act of violence.2 The political symbolism of the image is clearly evident in the closing scene of Marlowe's Edward II in which the newly crowned Edward III orders that Mortimer's head be placed on top of the murdered king's hearse. The resulting cere monial tableau not only symbolizes the avengement of murder but also encapsulates the transit of power through the course of the play, from Edward II to Mortimer and finally back to Edward's dynastic line.
Severed heads in Iraqi diasporic visual production: Aleiby, Baldin and Alsoudani
This essay examines the trope of the decapitated, severed head as it appears in a range of works produced by three emigrant Iraqi artists: A ﬁ fa Aleiby, Baldin Ahmad and Ahmed Alsoudani . Drawing on a range of cultural, political and philosophical readings of the severed head by ﬁ gures such as Adriana Cavarero, Julia Kristeva and Francois Debrix, the essay seeks to map the diverse a ﬀ ects, meanings and contexts the severed head takes on in Aleiby, Baldin and Alsoudani ’ s paintings and sculptures from Saddam ’ s dictatorship to the present. What kind of a ﬀ ects – horror, disgust, pleasure, ecstasy – does the spectacle of the severed head generate? How does the ﬁ gure of the head detached from the body become a metonymy or synechdoche for the political state of exile, displacement or alienation? Finally, what function does the representation of the severed head play in the production and articulation of loss, trauma and mourning.
The lights that failed: European international history, 1919-1933
PART I: THE RECONSTRUCTION OF EUROPE, 1918-1929 1. The Hall of Mirrors: Peacemaking in the West 2. Distant Frontiers: Peacemaking in the East 3. Revolution from the Left: The Soviet Union and the Post-War Settlement 4. The Primacy of Economics: Reconstruction in Western Europe, 1919-1924 5. The Primacy of Nationalism: Reconstruction in Eastern and Central Europe 6. Revolution from the Right: Italy, 1919-25 7. The Geneva Dream: The League of Nations and Post-War Internationalism 8. New Dawn? Stabilisation in Western Europe after Locarno 9. Faltering Reconstruction: Cracks in the Locarno Facade 10. Troubled Waters: Uncertainties in Italy, Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union 11. Faltering Internationalism: Disarmament and Security after Locarno Conclusion: Europe Reconstructed? PART II: THE HINGE YEARS, 1930-1933 12. The Diplomacy of the Depression: Economics and Foreign Policy 13. Beyond Europe: The Manchurian Crisis 14. The Poisoned Chalice: The Pursuit of Disarmament Conclusion: The Hinge Years Appendices Select Bibliography