The representation of nature is central to Wagner’s Ring cycle on a number of levels.  The Nordic-mythic sources and setting, the role of original or partially re-invented nature deities (Erda, Donner, and Froh, and the three Rhinemaidens) or semi-divine beings linked to the natural world (Valkyries, Norns) inspired a range of sophisticated Romantic musical nature “painting” throughout the score, including some of the best-known passages. Classical-Romantic traditions of pastoral or other imitative nature topics in music of the Classical and Romantic eras play an important role in the development of the network of leitmotifs in the Ring cycle. Readings of the Ring as an allegorical critique of modern industrial capitalism connect the traditional mythography of a lost golden age with a potential parable of environmental degradation driven by the loveless, reckless profit motive of modern capitalism. Alberich’s forging of the Ring from the Rhinegold and Wotan’s violation of the World Ash Tree to create the symbol of his divine legal authority (his spear) project parallel symbols of the transgression of a natural order. Mythographic vs. modern environmental readings of the apocalyptic conclusion of the cycle are also discussed.

"English occupies a paradoxical position in multilingual South Africa. It is the language of government, the judiciary, business, and academia, and is often portrayed as a lingua franca that enables communication across South Africa’s varied cultures. This chapter provides an overview of the position of the English language in relation to multilingualism in South Africa; early dictionary development in South Africa; and the research and development of the Dictionary of South African English on Historical Principles. It concludes with a brief indication of the future directions of this dictionary.

This chapter traces the sequence of smaller and larger dictionaries published in Australia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, drawing attention to the particular aspects of Australian language, society, culture, and environment that they document, and their association with the major phases in the evolution of Australian English. The earlier specialised dictionaries were compiled during the exonormative phases of Australian English, when Australians still deferred to British English as their main linguistic authority. In contrast, the comprehensive national dictionary (Macquarie Dictionary, 1981) benchmarks the endonormative phase, and becomes the reference point for Australian English as it achieves its linguistic independence. Meanwhile, the compilation of the Australian National Dictionary on Historical Principles (1988), through its association with Oxford University Press, has ensured that many Australianisms are registered in the second and third editions of the Oxford English Dictionary and acknowledged as elements of world English. Australian neologisms, especially informal words ending in –ie, have probably contributed to their greater use in northern hemisphere Englishes, and perhaps to the increasing colloquialisation of English worldwide.

Noah Webster’s first dictionary, A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language (1806) was the first significant dictionary by an American. His blue-backed speller, The American Spelling Book (1783) was already, after the Bible, the most popular book ever published in America. So his authority and reputation on matters linguistic were already firmly established in the public mindset by the time he published An American Dictionary of the English Language in 1828. It became a blueprint for how Americans might embrace their linguistic differences from Britain and use them to define a national identity. Webster’s dictionary beckoned a new era in national dictionaries beyond British shores. In addition, his lexicographic practice pioneered innovations in methodology that anticipated mainstream dictionary practice in twentieth-century America. This essay investigates Webster’s important contribution to English lexicography and the standardisation of American English, and compares it with the work of his competitor Joseph Worcester whose Comprehensive Pronouncing and Explanatory English Dictionary (1830) sparked vehement accusations of plagiarism in what became known as ‘the dictionary wars’. The chapter highlights the contribution of other American lexicographers such as Isaac Funk and Edward L. Thorndike, Willian Dwight Whitney, William A. Craigie, Calvert Watkins, Mitford M. Mathews, Frederic G. Cassidy, and Philip Gove.

For the last century, probably no region has contributed more rhythmic vitality to the global soundscape than Latin America and the Caribbean. More than any other musical element, it has been the uniquely compelling rhythms that have driven the early twentieth-century Parisian vogue of the tango, the transnational spread of salsa and Cuban dance music, and the current global appeal of Jamaican reggae and dance hall. Much of this rhythmic dynamism is a product of the development of syncretic idioms drawing from African as well as European roots. This ongoing and endlessly creative process has generated a great variety of rhythmic styles, and is supplemented by other vital music genres, such as northern Mexican conjunto music and Trinidadian tassa drumming, that owe little or nothing to African influence.

Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language (1755) has long had a reputation as the ‘first English dictionary’, despite the dozens of dictionaries that had appeared in the century and a half before Johnson’s. There are few ways in which Johnson’s book can be truly considered a ‘first’, since nearly all his contributions to dictionary-making had precedents in classical and European lexicography. He did, however, introduce some innovations in English lexicography, including grounding his wordlist in the works of English authors, discerning subtle shades of meaning in numbered senses, and providing extensive quotations showing the words in context. Together, these qualities made Johnson’s Dictionary, though not a chronological ‘first’, still the first English dictionary to be widely regarded as the standard of the English language.

Although each chapter in this book has a distinct focus, there are many concepts that recur. This is especially true for Chapters 2–12, which explore various aspects of Western music. The present chapter introduces some of these recurrent ideas for readers less familiar with rhythmic terms and surveys significant recent theoretical contributions to the study of rhythm in Western music. The interested reader can find more comprehensive overviews of rhythmic theory in two essays by William E. Caplin and Justin London in The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory.

In modern lexicography, a core distinction has been made between diachronic and synchronic dictionaries, and English dictionaries are no exception. In fact, English dictionaries are at the centre of this debate, since the Oxford English Dictionary, a landmark scholarly undertaking of the nineteenth century, is arguably the most successful exposition of the diachronic approach to dictionary making. While many other historical language dictionaries have modelled themselves on the OED, the development of a more theoretical basis for synchronic dictionaries was largely led by English language learner dictionaries in the late twentieth century. This chapter seeks to explain the distinctions between diachronic, or historical, dictionaries and their synchronic counterparts; how the distinction arose in English lexicography; what it means for those using or writing dictionaries; and, perhaps, why it’s important. While there is some underlying theoretical basis, the story of dictionaries is overwhelmingly one of practice, the findings are based on illustrative examples from English dictionaries throughout. In conclusion, there is an assessment of how meaningful the distinction continues to be today, and what changes we might expect to see in the future.

Following the Second World War, the West – especially the United States – experienced a period of sustained economic growth. In tandem, birth rates peaked such that by the mid-1950s, a strong youth culture began to take shape, fueling a great expansion of mass media. Television, radio, movies, and music became increasingly ubiquitous elements of society as consumers, especially young consumers, sought ways to spend their leisure time and disposable income. This cultural sea change engendered a revolution in musical style, with rock and roll – or simply “rock” as it later became known – emerging as a dominant force in popular music.

The premiere of the Ring and the opening of the Bayreuth Festival in 1876 was the most significant European cultural event of the later nineteenth century. The idea of a festival after the model of classical Greek theatre was integral to the Ring. Performances were to be given free of charge under ideal conditions in a temporary theatre constructed for the purpose in a location away from the corrupting influence of modern industrial civilisation. The festival idea as finally realized was, however, far removed from the utopian ideals of the original conception. The scale and practical demands of Wagner’s enterprise forced him to compromise with shifting political paradigms and harsh economic reality. The first Bayreuth Festival thus became a meeting place not for Wagner’s classless society dedicated to the ideals of art, but of aristocracies and plutocratic elites. The democratic festival, originally conceived in the white heat of revolutionary fervour, became a symbol of artistic hegemony and the aggrandisement of the newly founded German Reich. The resulting artistic, cultural and highly potent political legacy was to extend far beyond the historical context in which the festival first came about.

In the years since its inception, Wagner’s Ring has generated significant commentary and controversy. Critics of the Ring asserted its influence in public discourse (beyond music criticism of the work and its performances) and generated ambitious intellectual and ideological debates about art, society, and politics. This chapter charts some milestones in these debates, including the contributions of well-known thinkers such as Nietzsche, Shaw, and Adorno, but also some of their French, German, or Russian contemporaries whose influence has waned since the fin de siècle. In the twentieth century, seminal musicological approaches emerged that transcend analytical-technical matters, such as Alfred Lorenz’s ideologically charged investigations of Wagnerian form or Richard Donington’s psychoanalytic explanations. More recently the task of interpreting the Ring has shifted from the written word to the operatic stage, where directors explore and expose its various and conflicting layers of meaning. Whether formulated by philosophers, writers, musicologists, or artists, two basic approaches emerge from these interpretations: They either develop a social or political interpretation from the Ring outward, or they insert the tetralogy into a preexisting worldview.

This chapter gives an overview of the development of lexicography in New Zealand before and after the publication of the landmark Dictionary of New Zealand English in 1997. Attention is given to the importance of the Maori language in New Zealand English and the ways in which slang has been over-emphasised as a characteristic of this variety of English. As well as monolingual English dictionaries, the chapter includes some discussion of dictionaries in New Zealand's two official languages, Maori and New Zealand Sign Language.

The specters of Nazism and the Holocaust loom over Wagner’s Ring cycle. In the first half of this chapter, I consider whether Wagner’s anti-Semitism is present in the Ring – whether the Nibelung dwarves Alberich and Mime are meant to be caricatures of Jews. I conclude that the Nibelungs’ physical appearance, behavior, language and music took on aspects that Wagner found repellent about Jews, but that our deep unease about the relationship between the Germanic hero Siegfried and the dwarf Mime has much to do with our post-Holocaust symbolic landscape. In the second half of the chapter, I examine the Ring’s broader role in the Third Reich. Hitler was a committed Wagnerite, and the Nazi regime made plentiful use of Wagnerian music, motifs and stagecraft, but the connections between Wagner, Hitler, and Nazism are not straightforward, and must be traced back to the Wagner cult amongst German speakers at the turn of the twentieth century. Wagner’s Ring was not the ideological wellspring of Nazism, yet I argue that the impact of the composer’s work on Hitler did play a role in shaping the Führer’s – and thus Germany’s – political destiny.

In early modern Europe, international communication in Latin was increasingly counterbalanced by the growth of language contact and exchange among Europeans who favoured the vernacular languages over the classical ones. Not surprisingly, this resulted in the production of dictionaries, initially bilingual and polyglot, and later monolingual, of a large number of languages. Given this context, this chapter studies how the English language and English lexicography were slowly involved in the development of the European tradition of dictionary-making. A number of polyglot, bilingual, and trilingual dictionaries are surveyed in order to show their reciprocal influences and the Continental impact on English dictionaries: in fact, polyglot dictionaries grew out of bilingual ones, bilingual dictionaries were made into trilingual ones, the wordlists of monolingual dictionaries were sometimes taken from bilingual ones, etc. It will also be shown how a few monolingual English dictionaries were related, directly or otherwise, to Continental sources. The chapter will finally focus on Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary in order to highlight how it was influenced by Continental models and how, in turn, it exerted its influence on European lexicography.

One of the defining aspects of music is that it exists in time. From clapping to dancing, toe-tapping to head-nodding, the responses of musicians and listeners alike capture the immediacy and significance of the musical beat. The Cambridge Companion to Rhythm explores the richness of musical time through a variety of perspectives, surveying influential writings on the topic, incorporating the perspectives of listeners, analysts, composers, and performers, and considering the subject across a range of genres and cultures.

The only “dose of theoretical study” swallowed by the young Richard Wagner was “about half-a-year’s formal training in harmony and counterpoint in the ‘strict style,’” administered in 1831–2 by Theodor Weinlig of Leipzig’s Thomaskirche. Earlier, “instruction in the fundamentals of harmony from a member of the Leipzig theatre orchestra. Gottfried Müller, achieved little, as the pupil was too much immersed in the fantastic musical realm of E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Kapellmeister Kreisler and the Fantasiestücke to submit to the sober rigors of conventional theory.”