Anglistik und Amerikanistik

English has become the main language in worldwide communication in the last decades, making it the most important lingua franca. Thus, many families decide to enable their children an early introduction of English, some of them even raising their children multilingually, with non-native English as part of their family language policy (FLP), in a monolingual environment. Multilingual child-rearing with a non-native language is a controversially discussed issue and still represents a gap in research. This master's thesis aims to contribute to narrowing this research gap by interviewing families via semi-structured interviews. Four Austrian resident families were interviewed to display possible similarities in motivation, implementation and perceived (dis-)advantages. These findings were subsequently compared to available literature. Resembling literature, in all families, the main motivation for choosing such an FLP was the early introduction to English. Although the implementatio...

This essay analyses two critically acclaimed recent versions of the Sweeney Todd narrative, Stephen Sondheim’s musical (1979) and Tim Burton’s film (2007), both entitled Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, in the light of the original penny dreadful text The String of Pearls: A Romance (1846-47). I argue that rather than adaptations, these are instances of “rebooting” or “reconfiguration” as theorised by Ruth Mayer, i.e. a new medium taking over the narration in order to allow for scrutinising the workings of ideology. Thanks to the malleability of the musical genre and the new possibilities offered by the stage and screen versions, the contemporary Sweeney Todd brings to light a critique of modern consumerism as well as a reflexion on twentieth-century sensibility, and problematizes various types of social change in a Neo-Victorian take that helps us understand and frame the relationship between our Western twentieth- and twenty-first century society and its Victorian past as a dialogue rather than a nostalgic glance backwards.

This article delves into the dismissal of penny bloods and penny dreadfuls as “wastes of print” (Oliphant 1858: 202) on the grounds of public concern for education, and relies on a close reading of an Edward Lloyd unstamped penny publication in order to reassess the relationship between education and the wider world of penny periodicals. The first part examines the upper classes’ attempts to establish an educational environment aimed at the working classes in the first part of the nineteenth century, among which the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, and proposes to reconsider the reasons for the relative failure of such initiatives in relation to popular penny publications. I then draw on Edward Jacobs’s analysis of ‘industrial literacy’ and urban street culture to analyse the rejection of such publications as Edward Lloyd’s, by disentangling the mechanisms to which contemporary critics consistently resort. Finally, in keeping with Louis James’s statement that “periodic...

Cet article analyse deux versions recentes de l’histoire de Sweeney Todd acclamees par la critique : la comedie musicale de Stephen Sondheim (1979), et le film realise par Tim Burton (2007), tous deux intitules Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (a noter que le film est sorti en France sous le titre de Sweeney Todd : Le Diabolique Barbier de Fleet Street). Ces deux versions sont ici mises en relation avec le texte du penny dreadful original, The String of Pearls: A Romance (1846-47, attribue a James Malcolm Rymer). Cette analyse demontre que plutot que de simples adaptations, ce sont des cas de « rebooting » ou « reconfiguration » d’apres la definition de Ruth Mayer, c’est-a-dire l’utilisation d’un nouveau medium afin de permettre la mise en lumiere et l’analyse critique d’une ideologie. Grâce a la malleabilite du genre de la comedie musicale et les nouvelles possibilites offertes par la scene ou l’ecran, le Sweeney Todd contemporain presente la critique d’un consumerism...

This article delves into the dismissal of penny bloods and penny dreadfuls as "wastes of print" (Oliphant 1858: 202) on the grounds of public concern for education, and relies on a close reading of an Edward Lloyd unstamped penny publication in order to reassess the relationship between education and the wider world of penny periodicals. The first part examines the upper classes' attempts to establish an educational environment aimed at the working classes in the first part of the nineteenth century, among which the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, and proposes to reconsider the reasons for the relative failure of such initiatives in relation to popular penny publications. I then draw on Edward Jacobs's analysis of 'industrial literacy' and urban street culture to analyse the rejection of such publications as Edward Lloyd's, by disentangling the mechanisms to which contemporary critics consistently resort. Finally, in keeping with Louis James's statement that "periodicals are cultural clocks by which we tell the times" (1982: 365), I explore the various pieces contained in a full 1846 number of Lloyd's penny publication People's Periodical and Family Library contemporary to the failure of the SDUK, in order to understand the potential dialogue in place with publications and criticism advocating 'useful knowledge'. This article aims to prove that Lloyd's penny publications were, in fact, an undeniable point of contact between the working classes and education.