Donat's vast expertise provides unique insight into the history and genesis of key works in the chamber music repertoire.
This is the first full-length study in English of an important area of Beethoven's output that has seldom been explored in detail. The principal compositions covered are the violin sonatas, cello sonatas and piano trios of the composer's maturity, ranging chronologically from the three piano trios op.1, to the two cello sonatas op.102 which stand on the threshold of his last period. The repertoire includes some of Beethoven's most famous chamber pieces, among them the 'Spring' and 'Kreutzer' violin sonatas, and the 'Ghost' and 'Archduke' piano trios.
The works are analysed in detail with the help of copious music examples, and are placed in their historical context through extracts from letters and contemporary reviews. The book provides performers, music students and music lovers with an insight into the history and genesis of some of the greatest works in the chamber music repertoire.
Paolo Broggio
Criminal Justice and Peace-making in Early Modern Italy
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An exceptional study of private peace pacts in early modern Italy that challenges earlier notions of the place of these private agreements in the development of the courts and state.
Private settlements were among the most prominent yet least conspicuous aspects of justice in early modern Europe. Traditionally seen as incompatible with our notions of judicial modernity, these settlements reflected a deeply ingrained culture of negotiation and transaction-one that often viewed resolution by litigation with extreme scepticism. However, rather than existing in opposition to sovereign justice, this practice of private settlement coexisted with the implacable authority of rulers who alternated between exemplary punishments and royal pardons to maintain social harmony.
In this English translation of his seminal study, Governare l'odio. Pace e giustizia criminale nell'Italia moderna (secoli XVI-XVII), Paolo Broggio shows how private settlements were far from being a purely benevolent mechanism of reconciliation, often carrying unsettling similarities to institutional coercion and even acts of revenge. Judicial authorities are revealed as not only tolerating these private agreements but shown to have actively facilitated and manipulated them as a means of exerting their control within a community. Religious justifications further lent these agreements a veneer of moral obligation, masking the underlying pressures at play. Through detailed examples such as proceedings in the Papal States, Broggio explores how courts encouraged settlements not only to manage caseloads but to also reinforce existing social hierarchies and power structures.
This expansive study re-examines the role of peace settlements in early modern justice, revealing them as a fundamental yet coercive tool of governance rather than a simple, private, alternative to judicial authority.
Claire P. Ayelotan
Yoruba Pentecostalism and Child Witchcraft Accusations
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An exploration of Yoruba Pentecostalism's role in child witchcraft accusations, examining migration, leadership, and collective responsibility to address faith-based child abuse globally.
What drives communities to accuse children of witchcraft, and how do religious beliefs and leadership dynamics perpetuate this phenomenon across borders? Claire Ayelotan delves into the involvement of Yoruba (Nigerian) Pentecostal leaders in accusations of child witchcraft in Nigeria and the UK. Using a multidisciplinary approach, her research examines the theological, cultural, socioeconomic, and legal influences that drive such behaviours. Ethnographic studies and interviews with pastors and practitioners reveal how power dynamics, gender roles, and international migration intersect to perpetuate these harmful beliefs. The book uncovers gaps in current literature and presents original insights on the collective responsibility, shared beliefs, and complexities of Pentecostal leadership in this context. By focusing on the global aspects of child witchcraft accusations, it sheds new light on how migration impacts these practices and the negative consequences they have on vulnerable children.
An important read for academics, policymakers, and child welfare professionals, this book challenges assumptions and urges immediate action to combat faith-based child abuse in all its manifestations.
Edited by Mariana Masera with the collaboration of Ana Rosa Gómez Mutio and Omar Xavier Masera
A Companion to Early Iberian Traditional Lyrics
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Accessible and reliable introduction in English to the earliest vernacular lyric poetry in the Iberian Peninsula.
Dating to the tenth century, the earliest vernacular lyric poems in the Iberian Peninsula have been seen as evidence of an even older, oral, folk tradition and attest to the multicultural, multilingual nature of the genre from its very beginning. Primarily preserved in manuscript and printed songbooks, these poems were widely diffused across the Hispanic world.
This Companion offers an accessible, reliable introduction in English to early Iberian traditional lyrics from a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective, paying special attention to their multicultural origins and their complex nature as both oral and written compositions. The opening chapters discuss the importance of understanding this dual essence in studying traditional lyrics today, provide an outline of their structure and formal features, and offer a contemporary overview of the field. The volume then examines the kharjas, the cantigas de amigo, and the tradition of Catalan lyricism before turning to a comparison of popular lyrics with the poetry of the cancioneros and romanceros and the preservation of the tradition in Sephardic ballads. The final chapters examine the survival of popular lyrics into the modern era and explore a new means of interpreting these poems through musical archaeology and musicological studies.
Shaun Evans
Coming of Age Celebrations on Welsh Landed Estates
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The first comprehensive study of gentry coming of age celebrations, offering insights into the social and cultural dynamics of estate communities in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Wales.
"Coming of age" celebrations were landmark events in the annals of gentry families and for local society, marking the occasion when the heir or heiress to an estate attained their majority at the age of twenty-one, with an assumption that they would eventually inherit the land together with all the privileges and responsibilities attached to its proprietorship. Hundreds of these lively dynastic occasions were celebrated in Wales from the late eighteenth through the "long" nineteenth century, involving masses of participants in an array of public festivities; they provide fascinating evidence for understanding the social and cultural dynamics of estate communities in a rapidly changing environment.
This book provides the first comprehensive study of these events, examining their development, purpose and significance. It considers the role that gentry and aristocracy played in their communities, why landed estates were an integral part of Welsh society, and how they contributed to the character and experience of place, landscape and landowner-tenant relations. Overall, it offers a reassessment of still-prevalent interpretations of an anglicised, alien and absentee landowning elite bearing no connection with or consideration for Welsh communities, culture and consciousness in the two centuries prior to the mass sale and breakup of their country houses and estates in the early-mid twentieth century.
Daniel Anlezark
Constructing the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles
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Offers insights into sources and inspirations, authorship and authorial style, and patterns of separation and convergence across versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is one of the most important documents to survive from early medieval England. Written in Old English, it was first created during the reign of King Alfred the Great (871-899). Up to Alfred's reign, and then in multiple continuations extending into the twelfth century, the Chronicle versions often provide a unique record of events, at times reported in the barest style, at others with passionate commentary.
This book is the first to tell the story of how the Chronicles came to be, providing a clear but detailed account of the development of its various versions. It starts with an examination of the textual and manuscript evidence, then explores the work of the two chroniclers first responsible for the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle's creation in the late ninth century, arguing that the first made a set of annals from disparate sources. The author then contends that a later reviser aligned with the Alfredian political programme wrote the annals for Alfred's reign, and at the same time also revised earlier entries, including the famous story of Cynewulf and Cyneheard. This book also sheds new light on the annals of Æthelred the Unready, arguing that Archbishop Wulfstan of York is likely to have authored some these, together with some tenth-century annals. Its final chapter provides the first comprehensive study of all the Chronicles' poetry.
Brigid Ehrmantraut
Classical Myth in Medieval Ireland
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Explores medieval Irish interest in Classical mythology and historiography and how it could be situated it within the framework of Christian salvation history.
From allusions to the Olympians in seventh-century glosses to twelfth and thirteenth-century vernacular adaptations of the epics of Vergil, Lucan, and Statius, Irish authors creatively re-imagined Greco-Roman mythology throughout the Middle Ages. They developed many strategies for situating the Classical deities within medieval Christian historiography, but rarely did they downplay or eliminate them. Some of these strategies, as this study reveals, reflected wider medieval European trends in Classical reception and mythography, whilst others were strikingly original and paralleled the ways in which Irish authors imagined the supernatural beings of their own pre-Christian past.
This book examines why Irish authors were interested in the history and mythology of the ancient Mediterranean, and how Classical polytheism influenced their ideas about their own pagan past. It explores the ways in which depictions of Irish Otherworldly characters both shaped and were shaped by the gods and supernatural figures of the Classical adaptations. Based on close readings of texts such as the Irish version of Lucan, In Cath Catharda, this book argues that Classical scholarship in medieval Ireland was closely tied to medieval ideas about salvation history. Ultimately, it concludes that medieval Irish authors and audiences applied the same interpretive tools used for biblical exegesis to characters and events from Greco-Roman mythology, history, and literature, and to the supernatural inhabitants of pre-Christian Ireland alike.
Malcolm Miller
Boundaries, Space and Register in Beethoven’s Piano Music
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Develops a new theory of space and register which will be essential reading for the music analyst, while offering radical new interpretations of canonical repertoire for the pianist, Beethoven scholar and informed listener.
This is the first book to demonstrate the significance of registral structure and spatial narrative in Beethoven's oeuvre across his stylistic evolution. Introducing a far-reaching new analytical method and theoretical framework to a substantial corpus of piano music including sonatas, variations and bagatelles, the book extends conventional notions of register, Beethoven's handling of the highs and lows of pitch, to the broader concepts of pitch boundaries and the shaping of sonic space. Tracing theories of register from Schenker to the present-day, Miller moves beyond these approaches in his discussions of what he terms "spatial analysis". Proceeding from simple to more complex forms in a broadly chronological sequence, the author describes 'spatial narratives' of each work by means of cutting-edge computational diagrams and close-to-the text commentary.
This book shows how linear patterns at extreme boundaries correlate with structural highpoints and divisions within musical forms, for instance sonata structures, forming striking large-scale connections within, and between, individual movements. Analysed are interactions of high and low boundaries through gestures such as registral bridges, registral shifts, and the distribution of climatic peaks and wide-spans. Equally central to Miller's study is the survey of keyboard instruments of Beethoven's day, keyboard choreography, and spatial expansion and contraction, reflecting pianistic virtuosity and expression. The mediation of structural and expressive aspects culminates in the physicality and spirituality of the late works interpreted with metaphorical symbolism.
Linda A. Pollock
Affective Authority: Passions, Morality and Governance in Early Modern England
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Throws new light on the history of emotions, as well as on cultural norms and elite governance in early modern English society.
This book investigates the intimate connection between emotion and morality in the landed ranks in England from 1580 to 1700, reintegrating the artificially separated spheres of emotions and ethics. It argues that, long before the "modern" eighteenth century, emotions lay at the core of early modern ethics: virtues and passions were fused and affect underpinned authority. Passions, affections, and ethics were intertwined and must be understood together: feelings enabled and constituted ethical conduct and were often mandated obligations, while cultural norms were based on affective concepts. Through a detailed analysis of four key affective values - love, gratitude, repentance and obedience - the book throws new light on the history of emotions, as well as on cultural norms and elite governance in early modern English society. The book merges social, cultural and intellectual history. It explores how ideals and concepts were practiced in daily life, emphasizes the importance of the domestic, familial world for the understanding and exercise of public authority and governance, and insists on the centrality of the passions and affections to early modern morality. It contributes to the history of emotions by reconnecting affect and ethics, advances the history of English society by showing how authority was based on affect, thus demonstrating the relevance of emotion to larger historical issues.
Kathryn A. Smith
The Painted Histories of the Welles-Ros Bible (Paris, BnF Fr.1)
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A lavishly illustrated study of the Welles-Ros Bible, exploring its provenance, ownership, design and production.
At some point between c.1366 and 1373, the noblewoman Maud de Ros, widow of the Lincolnshire baron John de Welles, commissioned what is now the earliest surviving entire translated Bible from England. The Welles-Ros Bible contains the most complete edition of the Anglo-Norman Bible - a close, often literal translation of the Vulgate into insular French - as well as 82 narrative, highly personalized illustrations.
As this first long-form study of the manuscript argues, Maud commissioned the Bible to serve as a mirror, guide, family archive, dynastic chronicle, and source of spiritual instruction and consolation for her youthful son, John, 5th Baron Welles (1352-1421). Moreover, Maud played a key role in the production of the text edition and the design of many of the images. This book analyzes the manuscript, its text, and its vivid illuminations in the context of rich traditions of medieval biblical translation, production, and illustration, offering fresh insights into the roles of images in shaping and mediating scripture and religious experience. Adding to our understandings of life among the lower nobility in later fourteenth-century England, this cultural history of a major artefact also expands our picture of the cultural patronage and creative agency of laywomen, as well as medieval strategies of memorialization, responses to the Plague, and ideas about gender, identity, sexuality and the emotions.
Edited by Emilio Sáenz-Francés
Foes to Friends. Spain, the United States and the United Kingdom from the Civil War to the Cold War
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Was Franco's Spain really a pariah in the Anglosphere?
This book examines pro-Francoism and the significant influence of a "Spanish lobby" in shaping US and British policy towards Spain during the Second World War and the years leading up to the Pact of Madrid in 1953. This lobby included not only pressure groups but also legislators and members of the executive as well as the armed forces, who shared economic and strategic interests and ideological sympathies in the growing anti-Communist atmosphere of the First Cold War.
The first two chapters provide the historical background to this rapprochement, examining monetary and credit policies in the United States and Spain during the 1930s and 40s, focusing in particular on the key roles played by American financial and business sectors, including Chase National Bank, to further the clandestine economic activities of US state companies and agencies in Spain during the Second World War. The book then turns to the role of the Spanish lobby in post-war US-Spanish diplomatic relations, looking at American individuals directly courted by the Spanish embassy in Washington as well as pro-Francoist congressmen who favored a closer relationship with Spain. The next chapter moves from Washington and New York to the West Coast to analyze local Spanish consular efforts to 'normalize' Spain in the eyes of the United States. Finally, the book turns to British relations with Spain during and after the Second World War and shows how the government's dependency on the US led to Britain becoming the junior partner in the formulation of Western policy towards Franco.
Marco Barducci
The Crisis of the English Mind, 1650-1750
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Places the central intellectual and religious debates of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England in a refreshing transnational perspective.
Between 1650 and 1750 the intellectual and religious landscape of England underwent profound transformations, shaped by an unprecedented engagement with Dutch and French books and ideas. Works by Descartes, Grotius, Spinoza, Bayle and others introduced new modes of thought, prompting English thinkers to reimagine the relationship between scripture, reason, ethics and scholarship. These texts, circulating in Latin, French and English, challenged traditional authority and invited scholars to reconcile Christianity with history, philosophy and the emerging natural sciences.
Marco Barducci presents a detailed exploration of how these imported ideas catalysed key conceptual shifts. This book shows how scripture was read as a cultural artifact; metaphysics was disentangled from natural philosophy; the church's role was reframed to prioritize social cohesion; and human agency was increasingly viewed through a worldly lens. By viewing these changes as part of a transnational framework of writers, the book highlights how intellectual exchanges between England and the Continent shaped English responses to crises of faith, scholarship, and epistemology.
Combining intellectual and book history, this study not only reframes the notion of an "English Enlightenment" but also interrogates broader questions of secularization and modernity. It offers fresh insights into the interplay of ideas, books, and society, while examining how England adapted-and transformed - Continental thought.
Thomas C. Sawyer
The Making and Meaning of a Medieval Manuscript
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Develops a method for placing book-historical evidence in dialogue with literary meaning through a detailed investigation of a MS Bodley 851.
How do you read a medieval book? And what is the relationship between the study of manuscripts as material artifacts and the study of their textual contents? This book develops a method for placing book-historical evidence in dialogue with literary meaning. Medieval manuscripts do not simply witness the texts they contain: through the process of their making, they preserve and generate knowledge about literature itself.
Central to the expression of method in this study is a detailed investigation of an immensely complex composite manuscript, Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodley 851. This manuscript survives as an important representative of textual cultures popular in late-medieval England: it attests the work of at least eight scribal agents and contains an infamous scribal version of Piers Plowman (Z-text), the sole surviving copy of Walter Map's De nugis curialium, and an array of satirical Anglo-Latin poetry, including the Apocalypsis goliae episcopi, the Speculum stultorum, and the Bridlington Prophecy. Close attention to the production of Bodley 851 underpins critical examinations of fragmentary misogamy, the construction of literary sequences, and the extent of pseudonymous authorship in the manuscript record.
Chih-Hsin Huang
Conduct Literature and the Politics of the Stage Controversy
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Examines the struggle between factions debating the morality and impact on public behaviour of the theatre following the Glorious Revolution, and the political significance of public feeling around this controversy.
In 1698 the Jacobite clergyman Jeremy Collier published his famous pamphlet in which he attacked a number of prominent playwrights on the grounds that their work contained profanity, blasphemy and indecency, and therefore was undermining public morality. He called for the closure of the stage, and in so doing sparked vigorous public debates that lasted for three decades. This book investigates the relationship between this Stage Controversy and the period of political instability evident in Britain in the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution.
Instead of adopting the definition of the Stage Controversy as a pamphlet war and as a literary or moral event, Huang argues that in both pamphlets and plays, especially reform comedies, the discussions of conduct were employed to make political points. The book characterizes this controversy as a competition for public opinion and support, in which the stage controversialists sought to convince the audiences of the rightness of their interpretations of behaviour in drama. Contributing to debates about the nature of post-revolutionary political thinking and action, this work will be of great interest and use to scholars and students of the political, social and cultural history of late seventeenth-and early eighteenth-century England.
Roger Morriss
Samuel Bentham, Inspector General of Naval Works, 1796–1807, Letters and Papers
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Enlightened reformer or dangerous maverick? This book examines the controversies created by Samuel Bentham, who fought to enhance the performance of the British navy during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.
Samuel Bentham, Inspector General of Naval Works, 1796-1807, built successful ships, advocated non-recoil gunnery and introduced steam powered machinery into the royal dockyards. The facilities he created at Portsmouth remain as a memorial to his ambition. As a technologist and ideologue, he straddled the 18th and 19th centuries and helped to create the steam navy. Yet, in virtually everything he did, he courted controversy, not least because he attacked vested interest and, like his elder brother, Jeremy, pursued the interest of the public by commitment to the Principle of Utility.
Trained in the royal yards as a shipwright, Bentham went to Russia in 1779 and entered the service of Catherine the Great and Prince Potemkin. There he fostered his talent for invention and innovation, developed the concept of the Panopticon and learned the value of individual responsibility. Having equipped the flotilla of small craft that fought and defeated the Turkish navy in the Black Sea, he returned to Britain in 1791 aged 34 and a Brigadier General.
Attached to the Admiralty from 1795, he aimed to enlarge the capacity and efficiency of the dockyards, as measured by the turn-around speed of ships refitting and undergoing minor repairs. He admired 'mill practice' and developed the Wood and Metal Mills at Portsmouth to demonstrate the ability of the navy to become as productive as private industry. To this end, he aimed to use contemporary science, logical thinking and education to enhance yard productivity. To this end, in 1800 he advanced a programme of administrative reform based on personal accountability, detailed accountancy and central cost control.
Bentham was supported by First Lords Spencer and St Vincent but he aggravated members of the Navy Board by the works he directed at Portsmouth and he aroused their apprehension by his obvious ambition and condemnation of board collective responsibility. In 1805 he was sent to Russia on a mission to build ships for Britain. While he was away, his Admiralty post was abolished and in 1808 he was obliged to accept the post of Civil Architect and Engineer at the Navy Board. In 1812 that post too was dissolved
Samuel Bentham was nevertheless a brilliant man of extraordinary capabilities, a polymath who planted modern ideas in the civil departments of the navy. A challenging character, he has been too little known. His friend, the Mechanist Simon Goodrich, advised him he was regarded as a 'strange creature' at the Navy Board. Yet in 1812 he left a record of Services which became a source of guidance during the post-war rationalisation. The Whig government of 1806 admired his ideas and, in conjunction with those of his brother, they continued to have influence in the nineteenth century when the Whigs returned to power.
Mark Bailey
Manorial Account Rolls and Rentals of Walsham Le Willows 1327 to 1559
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This fourth volume, featuring a good series of manorial accounts and rentals, complements the court roll material by painting a more textured picture of life in late-medieval Walsham.
The Suffolk Records Society has already published three volumes on Walsham Le Willows: 17, the Field Book of 1577 edited by Kenneth Dodd, and 41 and 45, the Court Rolls of 1303-1399, edited by Ray Lock. This fourth volume, featuring a good series of manorial accounts and rentals, complements the court roll material by painting a more textured picture of life in late-medieval Walsham through furnishing further details of its society and economy. These include documents from the small lay manor of High Hall, which was highly typical of medieval English lordships but hardly any sources have survived from such places. The accounts and rentals provide insights into Walsham's agricultural practices, including woodland management for the production of fuel, the balance of crops and livestock, the disposal of produce, the remuneration of workers, the consumption habits of harvest workers and local lords, and the role of women in the management of the manorial estate. There are insights into local tensions following the national political turmoil in the summer of 1450. Yet even these four volumes hardly scratch the surface of the surviving archive. In addition to the published fourteenth-century court rolls there is a long run of rolls from 1399 through to the early twentieth century and there are many more surveys and rentals from the early modern period. Indeed Walsham may reasonably claim to be one of the best documented places in England between 1300 and 1900.
Tim Thornton
The Isle of Man, 1405-1830 - Social and Economic History
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This is the first comprehensive modern account of the history of the Isle of Man, through the years between the establishment of the Stanley lordship early in the fifteenth century and the Revestment of 1830 by which the Island's lordship was returned to the English crown.
Focusing on social and economic aspects, it traces developments in society, economy, religion and the Island church, education and literacy, daily life, arts and culture, and landscape and the built environment. Generously illustrated, it explores demographic changes, charts the growth of trade, and surveys social and cultural change including the changing status of the Manx language. It discusses disputes over land ownership, considers improvements in agriculture and fishing, and examines the encouragement of industry. Throughout the book emphasises the distinctiveness of the Manx experience, connected to, but different from the history of England, and of Scotland and Ireland.
Edited by Alice R. Taylor-Griffiths and Seosamh Mac Cárthaigh
Storytelling in Gaelic from AD 700 to the Present
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Examines common themes and connections in Gaelic storytelling from the Middle Ages to present day.
From the great medieval saga Táin Bó Cúailnge to cautionary folk tales in contemporary Gaeltacht areas, storytelling has remained a cornerstone of Gaelic culture for over a thousand years. Pre-Christian motifs and ecclesiastical influences, with nods to classical literature and poetic devices, provide the framework for many stories that remain familiar today (such as St Patrick's journey across Ireland and the exploits of Finn mac Cumhaill). However, despite this rich tradition, scholarship on Gaelic storytelling that crosses both medieval and modern fields is a rarity; as a result, there is a question mark over what of the early tradition remains in the modern, and what this can tell us about the ecology and the survival of Gaelic storytelling.
This volume presents ground-breaking research from scholars in both areas, providing a dynamic insight into the refractions of Gaelic storytelling across a broad chronological period. Contributors address matters such as composition, style, narrative techniques, audience, and the importance of physical and social landscapes, drawing on a variety of methodologies, including philological, narratological, comparative literature, folkloristic, and translation studies. From seminal research on notions of scél "story" and truth to an exploration of the issues facing a Gaelic translator today, these essays work together to widen and deepen our understanding of how and why stories were so fundamental - and remain so fundamental - to Gaelic culture.
Suzanne Amy Foxley
The American Experience of British Prize Law, 1776-1804
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A detailed examination of one of the key issues for British-American relations, for international trade and for international law.
The taking of prizes, that is the capture of enemy vessels either by the Royal Navy or by private individuals licensed as privateers, was a crucial component of British naval strategy in the eighteenth century. The legality of prize-taking depended on the determination of the nationality or neutrality of both vessel and cargo - a major point of contention between Britain and other powers, including the United States. This book examines the American experience of British prize law from 1776 to 1804, with additional insights up until the 1820s, examining how this branch of international law changed and perpetuated in the wake of the Revolution and the Jay Treaty. It traces the lives of Robert Bayard, a loyalist and New York Vice-Admiralty Judge, Samuel Bayard, US agent for British prize cases in London in the 1790s, and William Bayard Jr., an American economic lobbyist, politician and merchant. Setting these lives in the wider context, it analyses court records held in previously unexplored archival collections, including about 1,600 court actions and 1,150 appeals cases. The book draws new conclusions on an individual, national and international scale and alters our outlook on the impact of prize law on American and British foreign policy, on the lives of maritime and mercantile communities and on the development of American maritime law.
Jonathan Parry
Institutions, Individuals and Modern British History
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This collection of essays celebrates the influence of David Cannadine and examines the place of Britain's political and cultural institutions, and the impact of individuals in their formation and evolution.
The focus of this Festschrift is the steady making and remaking of British political and cultural institutions since 1800, and the importance of individual agency in that process. Such focus reflects the preoccupations of one of Britain's most prominent professional and public historians: Sir David Cannadine. Cannadine has written on the changing public face of the monarchy and on the impact of aristocratic sensibilities on modern British political culture. He has examined some of Britain's most well-established institutions, and interpreted the British empire as a project to sustain and promote social hierarchy. In Cannadine's writings on aristocracy, empire, institutional life and national historical memory, individuals appear as history-makers, but always situated in their social and cultural contexts.
Essays in this volume draw inspiration from all these themes. Among the institutions discussed are Parliament, the Primrose League, the civil service, the London Library, the Institute of Historical Research and the National Portrait Gallery. The role of individuals in context features in essays on Benjamin Disraeli, Henry Drummond Wolff, Winston Churchill, the museum director Roy Strong and the National Park publicists Walter Greenwood and Laurie Lee. Tensions between intellectual work and institutional public service are uncovered in essays on Noel Annan, Geoffrey Crowther and Owen Chadwick. Authority (political, social, cultural) - its construction and re-construction - is the central concern guiding the essays. An introductory section discusses the many-sided work of Cannadine himself, both as a historian and as a servant of institutions.
Edited by Thijs Porck, Kees Dekker and László Sándor Chardonnens
Cultural Connections between the Continent and Early Medieval England
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Essays exploring the literary, material, scholarly and linguistic ties between the Continent and early medieval England.
"Anglo-Saxons were tied to the Continent in many ways", Rolf H. Bremmer Jr once observed. Throughout the early Middle Ages, a crucial phase for Anglo-Continental contact, cultural connections between the English and their neighbours across the North Sea developed in a number of forms, from missionary activities to political contacts, intellectual exchanges and military confrontations, with people, books, texts, artefacts and ideas travelling back and forth. The language and culture of the Anglo-Saxons became once again part of the scholarly exchange between England and the Continent during the early modern period, when philologists from either side of the North Sea laboured on the recovery of Old English and made new connections between Old English, the other Old Germanic languages, and more distant tongues.
This volume investigates these dynamic interactions between Anglo-Saxons and the Continent. Contributors break new ground in shared traditions in runic writing, legal ideas in England and Frisia, moments of transcultural and translingual contact, the influence of continental texts in early medieval England, the manuscripts which provide unique glimpses of the dissemination of texts and ideas, and early modern attempts to apply Old English to novel purposes. They thus form an appropriate tribute to the inspirational scholarship of Rolf H. Bremmer Jr in the field of Old English philology.
Translated by Roger Nichols, edited by Julian Rushton, Introduction by Peter Bloom
Berlioz the Critic
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Hector Berlioz combined writing music with lively and informed music criticism. This collection of articles, engagingly translated by Roger Nichols, covers the middle years of his critical career.
PRESTO MUSIC BOOK OF THE MONTH JUNE 2025
Berlioz's music criticism from 1837 to 1850 covers a period druing which he composed some of his finest works, and travelled abroad to perform them before appreciative audiences in Germany, Russia, and England. Roger Nichols has chosen and translated extracts from fifty-eight articles of particular interest, with commentary and notes identifying people mentioned. Berlioz scholars Peter Bloom and Julian Rushton provide an informative introduction and a comprehensive editorial apparatus.
In the selected articles Berlioz discusses Paris performances of early and modern music, including new operas and revivals, and concerts at the Paris Conservatoire. He comments freely but with understanding on conductors, singers and instrumentalists. The essays demonstrate the composer's concern with innovation in the design of musical instruments and assess the quality of performing venues. Berlioz writes on the musical life of London, France, and Germany, most entertainingly about the inauguration of statues of Beethoven and Rossini. The selection is framed by major articles on "Imitation in Music" and on Gluck's opera Alceste.
Edited by Markman Ellis and Jack Orchard
Bluestockings and Landscape in Eighteenth-Century Britain
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Captures in unprecedented depth the cultural significance of the designed landscape and its relationship with Bluestocking philosophy.
Situated within the broader context of eighteenth-century intellectual and cultural history, this collection redefines the role of the Bluestocking circle in shaping Britain's landscapes and social ideals. Against the backdrop of Whiggish notions of "improvement"-encompassing agricultural innovation, aesthetic refinement, and moral progress-it explores how women such as Elizabeth Montagu, Mary Delany, and Elizabeth Carter navigated the intersections of polite sociability, intellectual production, and estate management. Their contributions reveal a dynamic interplay between cultural critique and practical reform, positioning them as active participants in the period's debates on land, labour, and national identity.
Drawing on insights from the Elizabeth Montagu's Correspondence Online (EMCO) project, these essays uncover the creative and social tensions embedded in iconic estates such as Montagu's Sandleford and Lord Lyttelton's Hagley Hall. They delve into the poetic and philosophical musings of James Woodhouse, the sociable artistry of Mary Delany, and the symbolic landscapes of Wrest Park. By examining correspondence, poetry, visual arts, and cartography, this volume offers an unprecedented exploration of the ways Bluestocking women engaged with and redefined the designed landscape as a site of intellectual and environmental innovation.
This interdisciplinary collection reshapes the historiography of gender, environment, and cultural progress, offering fresh insights into the enduring significance of eighteenth-century landscapes and the intellectual communities that shaped them.
Jon Banks
Hungarian “Gypsy-Band” Music in Vienna, 1850-1914
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A detailed investigation, based on extensive study of press reports and early recordings, of the popular Hungarian bands in Vienna who influenced Brahms and other composers.
It has long been recognized that Viennese composers, especially Brahms, were profoundly influenced by Hungarian "Gypsy bands." Furthermore, the style hongrois repertory and style in which these bands specialized has been identified as important in its own right. The bands themselves, however, are generally relegated to the status of being part of an unknowable oral tradition, of which nothing remains apart from some highly exoticized literary hyperbole. Jon Banks's pathbreaking Hungarian "Gypsy-Band" Music in Vienna, 1850-1914 redresses this imbalance by presenting a detailed account of these "other" musicians and their interactions with the mainstream of Western classical music. To do so, it analyzes thousands of advertisements, news reports, and anecdotes in the Viennese press relating to "Gypsy bands" (whose members were often but not always Romani) and builds a detailed picture of who the musicians were, where they played, and how the conditions of their employment affected their lives and their music-making. The press notices are collated with evidence from contemporaneous Hungarian sources as well as an analysis of the hundreds of recordings that these bands made in the first decade of the twentieth century. In undertaking this first systematic examination of these different kinds of materials, Jon Banks's book provides a reanimation of some extraordinary personalities and careers in the light of their own achievements as well as their influence on others.
Edited by Dorsey Armstrong and K. S. Whetter
Studies in Arthurian and Chronicle Traditions in Memory of Fiona Tolhurst
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Essays examining Arthurian and Chronicle texts, contexts and reception, in honour of Fiona Tolhurst's contributions to Arthurian Studies.
In her all-too-short but ground-breaking academic career, Fiona Tolhurst made significant contributions to the discipline of Arthurian Studies, advancing, amongst much else, understanding of Geoffrey of Monmouth, Arthurian Women, the English Mortes, and modern Arthuriana, including cinematic versions of the legend. The essays assembled here reflect her commitment to explication of Arthurian and Chronicle texts and contexts. Several engage with Geoffrey of Monmouth, examining, among other topics, the depiction of women in his narrative of British origins; the function of giants and significance of landscape and geography in his writings; the contrast between Geoffrey's Trojan-British empire and the Graeco-Egyptian foundation narratives of Scottish and Irish chronicles; and the reception and use of his writing from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries. Other contributors consider characterization and politics in the Brut tradition and Malory; the puzzling dualities of the alliterative Morte; the reception of Malory's "Trystram"; continuities between medieval and modern readings of the Morte Darthur; and the uses, adaptation, and appropriation of Arthurian themes and ideals in the twenty-first century.
Henry Sharpe
The Journals of Henry Sharpe
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Henry Sharpe's journals are an early-Victorian treasure-trove, rich with observations about the great political and social concerns of the time, as well as the ups and downs of family life and raising children.
Henry Sharpe's journals are an early-Victorian treasure-trove. This remarkable document is rich with observations about the great political and social concerns of the time, with an extraordinary range of ideas and depth of discussion on literary, artistic and philosophical matters. He reveals detail about historic events not mentioned elsewhere, expanding our knowledge of Hampstead and of wider London history.
Sharpe's great passion was for education. He spent much of his spare time teaching in local schools and setting up Reading Rooms and evening classes for working men. His accounts of the ups and downs of family life and raising children are both touching and amusing, putting Victorian fatherhood into a new light. His trenchant views, especially on political and religious matters, are often startling, contradicting the usual stereotype of the Victorian middle classes.
Joanne Cusack
Women in Irish Traditional Music
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Traces the position, experiences and reception of women in Irish traditional music through detailed ethnographic and statistical findings.
This book is the first of its kind to engage with the larger subject of women in commercial Irish traditional music. It considers the experiences of performers in the various commercial arenas of the tradition, while also engaging in critical discussions of choice, agency, feminism and sexualisation. It reveals how the commercial music industry and Celtic music label continues to place women within a stereotypical idealised role or occupation.
The book provides new insight into the legacy of women-led bands and compilations as well as their impact on Irish traditional music over five decades. Its findings on commercial dance shows are equally significant. While these shows had a positive impact on performers, at the same time they enforced gendered, racial and heteronormative expectations.
Drawing on extensive ethnographic and statistical research, the book finds strong evidence that women and other marginalised practitioners continue to face greater challenges and different expectations when maintaining a professional career and participating in Irish traditional music. It also uncovers characteristics and dynamics related to the recreational and commercial spaces of the Irish traditional music and Irish dance scene that enable harmful and predatory behaviour.
The author's findings support understandings and aid future legislation for creating a safe, inclusive and equitable performance space for all.
Cover artwork by Claire Prouvost
Thomas Mann; edited and translated by Jeffrey L. High, Elaine Chen, and Hans Rudolf Vaget
Thomas Mann’s Antifascist Radio Addresses, 1940–1945
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First complete English translation of Mann's uncannily insightful wartime anti-Nazi radio addresses, once again urgently topical in the context of the current worldwide rise of anti-democratic movements.
Upon Hitler's rise to power in 1933, the great German writer Thomas Mann, 1929 Nobel Prize laureate on the strength of his monumental novels Buddenbrooks and The Magic Mountain, chose exile, eventually moving to the United States in 1938. An early critic of National Socialism, he gave over 150 public lectures with titles such as "The Coming Victory of Democracy." From 1940 to 1945, he authored and narrated a series of anti-Nazi radio addresses that were broadcast to Germany by the BBC; German listeners risked severe punishment.
Mann's radio addresses constitute his most sustained contribution to the Allied war effort. In them, he comments on the progress of the war, contrasts fascism with democracy, measures Hitler against Roosevelt, and counters German propaganda with international consensus, lies with facts. After initially encouraging the Germans to resist the Nazi regime, Mann prepares them for the consequences of defeat, but also instills hope in them for future reconciliation with the community of nations.
Today, when democracy is again endangered in much of the world, Mann's antifascist radio addresses have once again acquired urgency. This edition presents for the first time English translations of all of Mann's 58 radio addresses, with a foreword by Mann's grandson Frido Mann, an introduction by leading Mann scholar Hans Rudolf Vaget, careful annotations and a selection of photographs.
Nathanial Eli Gardner
A Companion to Latin American Photography
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How can photography enrich our knowledge of Latin America?
Photography provides unique insights into Latin America. It acts as a witness, agent, and archive - containing a wealth of knowledge about the continent, its social classes, and its multiple ethnicities. This companion introduces the reader to the role that photography plays in Latin America, offers ways in which it can be studied, and reveals how this medium can promote a deeper awareness of the region.
It reviews the history of photography in Latin America; ways in which the technology transmits distinctive information; the influence of specific photographers and their relationships with patrons, mentors, and students; the role of institutions in promoting photography; and the developing Latin American canon. The Companion to Latin American Photography also explores how the medium can shape Latin American narratives and cultural identities; assert or question power; serve as testimony and memory; and represent and empower women, children and youth, as well as marginalized groups such as the disappeared.
The study is intended not only to provide an overview of Latin American photography (including dozens of images from a vast array of photographers over the past two centuries), it also discusses innovative work taking place there. Above all, this book can be viewed as a guide to the ways in which photography can enhance and expand a viewer's knowledge of Latin America.
Harry White
Fieldwork: Essays on the Cultural History of Music in Ireland
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An absorbing study of the development and reception of musical culture in Ireland by a pioneering and deservedly renowned author.
This volume is a collection of fourteen essays on the history and reception of Irish music and music in Ireland. It addresses three prevailing themes: the historiography of Irish music, the influence of music on Irish writing (and vice versa), and the cultural identity and reception of Irish music both domestically and in the world at large. Its principal protagonists include Thomas Moore, W. H. Grattan Flood, George Moore, Edward Martyn, Charles Villiers Stanford, James Joyce, Dora Pejačević, Ina Boyle, Aloys Fleischmann and Jennifer Walshe. These essays also identify and interrogate key questions underpinning a general crisis of reception in relation to Irish music, and particularly art music, within the domain of Irish studies. Fieldwork examines this crisis in the aftermath of The Encyclopaedia of Music in Ireland (published in 2013) and a major retrospective of Irish art music, Composing the Island (curated and presented in 2016). It thereby engages closely with contemporary Irish art music and the challenges which this music has faced in the early decades of the twenty-first century.
This well-conceived and beautifully written work testifies to Harry White's central place in the shaping of the discourse surrounding the cultural history of Irish music over the last 40 years. White's gift for expression and memorably poetic turns of phrase allows the complexity of ideas and range of historical and literary knowledge examined in these essays to be deftly excavated and evaluated. Curiosity, provocativeness, imagination and literature are threaded through his exploration of how Irish history and experience have been imagined musically.
Edited by Nancy P. Pope
NLW MS Brogyntyn ii.1
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The first full examination of a fascinating manuscript, Brogyntyn ii.1, a Middle English miscellany with a little Latin, compiled in the 1460s for an audience of low-ranking gentry.
Its 57 texts include the romance Sir Gawain and the Carl of Carlisle, practical information, almost every genre of verse, and many items in prose, two of which were adapted from poetic versions by their scribes. More than half of these items are either unique to this manuscript or have been uniquely altered from their sources and analogues.
The essays here offer both a comprehensive and foundational understanding of the manuscript. They consider the intended readers' social class, analyse the scribal handwriting, and for the first time identify the dialectal provenance of all the scribes who wrote in English. Further chapters consider specific texts (The Siege of Jerusalem in Prose and a life of St. Katherine of Alexandria), while four others look closely at the variety of lyrics, different kinds of practical texts and their parodies, and sequences of poems with thematic connections. It also includes editions of four previously unpublished items.
Edited by Sarah Vandegrift Eldridge and Eleanor Ter Horst
Goethe Yearbook 32
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This year's volume features special sections on gambling in the Age of Goethe and on Goethe and music, as well as book reviews, a translation of Lenz's "Zerbin" and other essays on the period.
The Goethe Yearbook is a publication of the Goethe Society of North America, showcasing North American and international scholarship on Goethe and other authors and aspects of German literature and culture of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In volume 32, Joanna Raisbeck analyzes two recently discovered sonnets by Karoline von Günderrode, uncovering an a priori pessimism that anticipates nineteenth-century thinkers. This is followed by Brian Donarski's scholarly introduction to and translation of Lenz's Zerbin, or Recent Philosophy-the first time this text has appeared in English. Ethan Blass reads surprising similarities in staging and visual language between Goethe's Die natürliche Tochter and Hitchcock's film Marnie, arguing that Goethe's theatrical innovations are protocinematic. The next four articles, by Claire Baldwin, Austen Hinkley, Jürgen Overhoff, and William H. Carter, offer an exploration of the theme "Gambling in the Age of Goethe." These essays touch on both canonical and forgotten figures to illuminate a rich discourse around chance, coincidence, risk management, and play that connects with key aspects of historical discourse and literary representation in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The final two pieces, by Jonathan Guez and Matthew Poon, treat musical responses to Goethe's works by Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann. A collection of book reviews that offer a comprehensive view of new work in the wider field closes the volume.
Damascus Kafumbe
Interpreting Court Song in Uganda
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A critical interpretation of essential Kiganda royal court songs that examines how the meanings of their lyrics enter into dynamic dialogue with contemporary national politics in Uganda.
Lyric interpretation, which Damascus Kafumbe defines as a process of creative renewal that infuses vitality into songs, enables interpreters and analysts to derive a multiplicity of meanings from songs instead of being limited to a single literal narrative. As he and his research collaborators demonstrate, the process extends the life of a song by allowing it to generate new versions, meanings, and relevance. Kafumbe examines how lyric interpretation serves to renew the lives of twenty-one songs from the repertoires of royal court musicians of the Kingdom of Buganda, arguing that the meanings of these songs are not singular, static, and monolithic but rather dynamic and multivalent. Through extensive research within past and present contexts, Kafumbe presents a series of unique perspectives on the ways Kiganda court songs reflect varied kinds of power relations. These meanings, which surface via lyric interpretation, come from daily interactions among citizens and between leaders and subjects. This interpretive process helps illuminate truths and clarify myths about the power dynamics that shape political life in present-day Uganda, highlighting the relevance of court song lyrics to contemporary national contexts. By engaging with the book's wide range of voices, readers will learn to appreciate these songs, their historical and contemporary contexts, and their composer-performers' stories and interpretations more fully.
This book is available as Open Access under the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND.
Edited by Emmeline Garnett and Sarah Rose, with contributions by Christopher Donaldson, Fiona Edmonds and Angus J. L. Winchester
Victoria County History of Westmorland I
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This long-awaited volume, the first installment in the Victoria County History of Westmorland, covers the 13 townships of scenic and historic Lonsdale Ward from prehistory to the near present.
This landmark book is the first Victoria County History publication for the historic county of Westmorland and the 250th volume in Red Book series. It provides an account of the 13 townships comprising Lonsdale Ward, one of the four ancient divisions of the county of Westmorland, parts of which now lie in the Yorkshire Dales National Park. Most of these townships belonged to the parishes of Burton-in-Kendal and Kirkby Lonsdale, both centres of pre-Conquest worship. Kirkby Lonsdale developed as a market town at a major crossing of the River Lune. The medieval Devil's Bridge has long attracted visitors and tourists to the town, as has the view from St Mary's churchyard, which was immortalised by J.M.W. Turner and John Ruskin. Lying on a major north-south route, Burton was a significant corn market from the late 17th century. With a largely rural upland landscape, agriculture was the chief occupation in the area for centuries. An exception was Holme, where a flax mill and industrial settlement developed in the 1800s. A lack of industry helped to preserve the historic character of Kirkby Lonsdale and Burton-in-Kendal, where many Georgian buildings survive.
Rhys Kaminski-Jones
Welsh Revivalism in Imperial Britain, 1707-1819
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Reframes the study of Welsh cultural revivalism, highlighting transnational and imperial contexts.
In the long eighteenth century, as Britain grappled with the aftermath of the 1707 Acts of Union and consolidated a global empire, Welsh 'Cambro-Britons' developed a movement of cultural awakening, reinventing their traditions for a new age. Amid profound local, national and imperial transformations, Welsh authors and activists sought to reimagine their history, language and literature, claiming a place for Wales and the Welsh diaspora in the British imperial order. Far from being an insular phenomenon, this revival intersected with key debates of the era, from enlightenment science and radical politics to colonial expansion, transatlantic abolitionism and metropolitan sociability.
This study reframes Welsh cultural revivalism, revealing its fundamentally international and archipelagic dimensions. Nationally significant Welsh authors like Lewis Morris, David Samwell, Thomas Pennant, and Iolo Morganwg are placed in their transnational, imperial, and global contexts. Examined alongside Thomas Gray's British bardism, William Jones's Orientalism, and the imperialism of Cook's voyages, their writings demonstrate how Welsh thinkers engaged with - and shaped - shifting ideas of Britishness, empire, race, and identity. Drawing on new archival research, and giving equal attention to Welsh - and English - language texts, Rhys Kaminski-Jones challenges traditional narratives of Welsh cultural nationalism as a simple precursor to modern Welsh nationhood, instead positioning the revival as central to transatlantic intellectual currents. With its pathbreaking bilingual and interdisciplinary approach, this book offers fresh insights into the complexities of nationhood, empire, and cultural memory.
Jim Harris
Children’s Health and Urban Ecology in England, 1885–1919
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Analyzes public health efforts to reduce infant mortality and improve children's health in three large English cities: Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester.
While English public health efforts had reduced the threat of infectious diseases and improved sanitation by the end of the Victorian era, soaring infant mortality rates brought children's health to the forefront of public health concerns. Efforts to understand the causes of infant mortality and improve children's survival required attention to the environments where infant mortality was often highest, i.e., in the cities.
Children's Health and Urban Ecology in England, 1885-1919 examines the history of urban public health campaigns in three of the largest English cities, Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester. It considers how local environments impacted children's health by creating ecological conditions ripe for the spread of disease, as well as opportunities for improvements and interventions. Between 1885 and 1919, English public health leaders began to establish increasingly localized approaches to public health that included interventions in households and at schools. This work was conducted by new types of public health professionals, including health visitors to new mothers and school medical officers. While these programs emerged from local environmental conditions, two imperial military conflicts (the Second Anglo-Boer War and the First World War) drew national attention to the importance of children's health. In examining the effects of these conflicts as well as the urgent response to local environmental conditions, Children's Health and Urban Ecology highlights how the epicenter of public health shifted from cities to the state by the end of the First World War.
Chris Walton
Music and Desire among the Austro-German Romantics
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Investigates the composition and reception of works by key Romantics such as Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Wagner and the Schumanns with attention to the role of sexual desire in the composers' lives and music.
Scholars have for several decades been devoting increasing attention to aspects of sexuality and desire in the music of the Austro-German Romantics. Undertaking a close analysis of the sources, the four chapters of this book show how our assumptions about what those composers desired are often in fact contingent on what we, their commentators, have wanted them to desire over the course of reception history. Beethoven's Fidelio and Schubert's Winterreise tend to be regarded as a hymn to freedom, on the one hand, and an interior monologue of an alienated lover, on the other, though in neither case does such a view correspond to what the composer intended. In contrast, Richard Wagner dismissed his own opera The Ban on Love as a youthful indiscretion extolling the "free love" of the Young German movement; but he was reinterpreting an early work to align it with his later aesthetic.
The final chapter examines the chronology of the friendship of Robert and Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms in order to discern the likely truths about their triangular relationship before and after Robert Schumann's incarceration in a mental asylum. By adhering to the sources and placing them in the social, linguistic, and geographical contexts of their time, author Chris Walton grants all these protagonists a greater agency of desire than has hitherto been the case.
Edited by Sean Franzel and Michael Swellander
Cultural Journalism in Germany, 1815–1848
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The first critical anthology of major programmatic texts of cultural journalism from the crucial period known in Germany as the Vormärz, the time before the March Revolutions of 1848.
Cultural journalism-a broad category of periodical writing encompassing criticism, reporting on the arts, popular culture, politics, and society-was one of the most dynamic fields of German intellectual activity in the nineteenth century, particularly during the crucial period in Germany's history known as the Vormärz, leading up to the March revolutions of 1848. Many of the most prominent German writers, among them Heinrich Heine, Ludwig Börne and Goethe, were active in cultural journalism during this period of increasing nationalism and clamor for a unified, democratic Germany on one hand and absolutist repression, including censorship, on the other.
This critical anthology is the first collection, in English or German, of major programmatic texts of German cultural journalism from the period. It provides complete texts or excerpts, many for the first time in English, along with critical introductions to each text by a leading scholar in German Studies or a related field. It reveals the richness and dynamism of the period's discussion of the status and function of journalism and its significance for politics, aesthetics, historiography and philosophy. Of interest to scholars in German Studies, media and book history, and those working on the history of political journalism, the book is also well suited for undergraduate and graduate courses on European literature, history and media studies.
Professor Philip Swanson
A Companion to Latin American Crime Fiction
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The first integrated overview in English of Latin American crime fiction, a flourishing genre with unique perspectives and characteristics.
Latin American crime fiction has a long and rich history, and this volume offers the first integrated overview in English of a flourishing tradition with unique perspectives and characteristics. Featuring contributions from leading scholars of a multifarious genre often shortened to neopolicíaco or neopolicial, this Companion explores noir literature in Latin America. The first part looks at the history of the novela negra and its manifestations in Mexico, Argentina, Cuba and Brazil. The second part examines patterns and trends including literary crime fiction, the narconovela, a concern for increasing racial and sexual diversity and the phenomenon of true crime. In the third part, expert analyses are given of four leading authors and their work: Paco Ignacio Taibo II, Leonardo Padura Fuentes, Claudia Piñeiro and Rubem Fonseca. The book closes with a chapter on screen adaptations of crime fiction for film and television. Overall, the Companion provides a clear and authoritative account of Latin American crime fiction, showcasing its variety, fluidity and adaptability.
Edited by Philip Williamson, Natalie Mears, Stephen Taylor and Alasdair Raffe
National Prayers: Special Worship since the Reformation
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A history of the annual British and Irish state and religious anniversaries and occasions of special worship from the sixteenth century to the present.
Since the sixteenth century, the governments and established churches of Britain and Ireland have summoned their nations to special acts of public worship during crises, wars and times of celebration, or for annual days of commemoration and remembrance. These special prayers, special days of worship and religious anniversaries were national events, reaching into every parish. They had considerable religious, ecclesiastical, political, ideological, moral and social significance, and they produced important texts: proclamations, council orders, addresses and - in England and Wales, and in Ireland - prayers or complete liturgies which temporarily supplemented or replaced the services in the Book of Common Prayer, and most recently in Common Worship. National Prayers. Special Worship since the Reformation in four volumes, provides the edited texts, commentaries and source notes for over 900 occasions of special worship and for each of the annual commemorations.
The final volume, Anniversary Commemorations, Additional Material and Indices, 1533-2023, describes the orders and services for the nine early modern state anniversaries, including Accession day, Gowrie day, Gunpowder Treason day, Restoration day, and commemoration of Charles I's execution and the Great Fire of London, and for the modern state anniversaries of Armistice day and Remembrance Sunday. It includes materials on particular occasions of special worship for 2016-23, including the Covid pandemic, commemoration of Prince Philip, platinum jubilee and funeral of Elizabeth II, and coronation of Charles III. Appendices provide supplementary material for the whole period of the edition, including extensive additions to the list of particular occasions of special worship observed from 1533 to 1660. An index of biblical references and a general index are provided for all four volumes of the edition.
Edited by Scott Mandelbrote
Music, Politics and Religion in Early Seventeenth-Century Cambridge
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This major study of the famous seventeenth century music manuscripts at Peterhouse sets them in the context of the religious and political movements leading to the Civil War.
The Peterhouse partbooks constitute a unique resource for studying two periods of English choral music. Their witness to musical trends at the time of the Henrician Reformation has attracted much attention since their assimilation into scholarly accounts of English music in the mid-nineteenth century. Less has been written, however, about what the collection can tell us about music on the eve of the English Civil War, in the period when the partbooks were brought together and when much of their music was composed. This volume considers the music of the partbooks as part of the broader cultural, intellectual, and material history of the 1630s. It breaks new ground in describing the institutional context for the creation of the partbooks and in providing an account of the materials used in them, as well as analysis of the scribal cultures from which they originated. For the first time, it properly situates the partbooks within the developing ecclesiology of the Church of England and investigates the influence of local and personal commitments on the liturgy and practice for which they were compiled.
Local and personal factors shaped the implementation of national political and religious change in the 1630s and this volume shows how these forces came together in short-lived and contentious innovation in cultural and intellectual life. Contributions consider the extent to which musical renewal formed part of a conscious programme of architectural, artistic, literary, and liturgical change whose purpose was to redirect the education and formation of future generations of priests and patrons within the Church of England. While exploring the mechanisms of change, they also consider the force of reaction to and dissatisfaction with novelty and the resulting turmoil, iconoclasm, and exile that transformed the careers of the protagonists in the story of the partbooks. Although particular in focus, the volume demonstrates how political, intellectual, and religious dispute infiltrated the lives of individuals and communities and generated conflicts that proved impossible to control. The story of the Peterhouse partbooks provides an unusually rich opportunity to review a critical period of British history through the prism provided by a remarkable example of musical and cultural survival.
Phyllis Weliver
Reading Texts in Music and Literature of the Long Nineteenth Century
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This collection offers students a practical guide to understanding the ways music and literature intersect and the influence of each on the other, as well as developing methods of study.
This is the first coursebook to help students explore the many types of relationship that exist between music and literature when studied in historical or aesthetic contexts. It fosters interdisciplinary study among students in these subject areas and helps to break down the barrier of music as seeming "impenetrable" to students outside musicology. Chapters each discuss music/text relationships via an important social, aesthetic or cultural theme that maps onto key preoccupations of the long nineteenth century.
Each chapter presents a case-study text first, followed by a short summary that sets out the challenges of approach and interpretation involved. A section on background then places the featured case-study in historical or aesthetic context, leading to a detailed discussion. The book offers a learning experience combining the methodological in music/text relationships with the substantive or thematic.
Contributors: Charlotte Bentley, Philip Burnett, Alisa Clapp-Itnyre, Elicia Clements, Jeremy Coleman, Sarah Collins, Katharine Ellis, Daniel M. Grimley, Elizabeth Helsinger, Fraser Riddell, Emma Sutton, Shafquat Towheed, Phyllis Weliver, Christopher Wiley
Christine Slobogin
Putting Plastic Surgery on Paper
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An interdisciplinary approach to medical history that shows the key role that drawings and photographs had in shaping the material, professional, emotional and aesthetic parameters of plastic surgery.
Plastic surgery in twentieth-century Britain was a medical discipline with deep ties to art, artists and art history. It was also a field still in the process of creating its reputation and its archives. Putting Plastic Surgery on Paper examines these archives, focusing in particular on the works on paper held within these collections by two artists: Diana "Dickie" Orpen and Percy Hennell. Plastic surgeons depended upon the drawings and photographs made by these and other medical illustrators to craft certain narratives about their field and their surgical practice.
In addition to telling an art history of plastic surgery during this period, Putting Plastic Surgery on Paper engages with the affective parameters of archival objects, and with what working as a historian involves when done within potentially traumatic spaces. Paying particular attention to the emotional dimensions and effects of this visual culture and the ways in which it is archived and framed by the discipline of plastic surgery - then and now - Putting Plastic Surgery on Paper explores not only what it meant to make art in a surgical space but also what it means to study these affecting paper objects in the archive today. This book is available as Open Access under the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND.
David Brodbeck
Brahms Patriotic and Political
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Offers a historical context in which to understand how Brahms's three most intensely political and nationalistic works interact with questions of German patriotism, liberalism and nationalism.
Johannes Brahms rarely composed music that engaged the national-political issues of the day. Three of his works, though, do precisely this: the Fünf Lieder für Männerchor; the Triumphlied for eight-part chorus and orchestra; and the Fest- und Gedenksprüche for eight-part chorus a cappella. In Brahms Patriotic and Political, David Brodbeck challenges notions that Brahms's political music evinces embarrassing anticipations of later Prussian militarism and German chauvinism. Instead, he provides a thick historical context in which to read these works and offers a more nuanced understanding of the intersections of Brahms's music and questions of German patriotism, liberalism, and nationalism than has been customary in the field of historical musicology.
In particular, Brodbeck relates the Männerchor-Lieder to the debate over how and in what form a German nation-state might be achieved; he relates the Triumphlied to the euphoria but also the solemnity that attended the foundation of the German Reich; and he relates the Fest- und Gedenksprüche to the necessary work of instilling in the diverse German people a genuine sense of national belonging. At the same time, he traces Brahms's changing attitude toward Otto von Bismarck, the "Blacksmith of the Reich," whom he originally loathed but, in time, came to venerate. Brahms Patriotic and Political will appeal to readers with interests in both nineteenth-century German music and Central European history.
Tobias Boes
A Reader's Guide to Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus
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Provides the English-speaking reader with the tools needed to appreciate Thomas Mann's most ambitious novel, one of the greatest literary works of the twentieth century, now timely once again.
In 1938, the great German author and Nobel Prize winner Thomas Mann emigrated to the United States. There, he became a figurehead for the intellectual opposition to Nazism, giving more than 150 public lectures and recording more than fifty anti-Nazi radio addresses that the BBC broadcast into Germany. His political activities also left a profound mark on his fiction, most importantly on the 1947 novel Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkühn as Told by a Friend. Ostensibly the biography of a fictional modern composer, Doctor Faustus also serves as a post-mortem of Nazism and a reckoning with five centuries of cultural history that led to dazzling heights but failed to prevent Germany's ultimate fall.
Doctor Faustus is an astonishingly complex novel, both because of the range of its intellectual references and because of its stylistic inventiveness, which has provoked comparisons with Joyce. And yet, at a time when democracy around the world once again seems in retreat and the forces of irrationalism are in advance, it is also an extremely timely book. This guide will equip English-speaking readers with all the tools necessary to appreciate one of the greatest literary works of the twentieth century.
This book is available as Open Access under the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND.
Anne Morddel
Napoleon's American Prisoners
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Tells the story of the 1,500 or so common seamen of the American merchant marine who were held as prisoners of war in France during the Napoleonic Wars.
Based on extensive original research, this book tells the story of the 1,500 or so common seamen of the American merchant marine who were held as prisoners of war in France during the Napoleonic Wars. Although the United States was neutral, Napoleon interpreted neutrality narrowly, and included among the enemy merchants doing business with the enemy and seamen working on enemy vessels. Drawing on remarkably full source material in French, American and British archives, including the seamen's letters, their pleas for help to the consuls, the correspondence about them between the French authorities and the US diplomatic service, and the British Admiralty lists of prisoners, the book reveals a great deal about who these seamen were, and about their vastly different experience in French prisons. It contrasts their fate with that of British seamen and officers, discusses the labyrinthine maritime laws that ensnared the seamen and how their nationality, in an era before passports, was determined, charts the establishment of the US consular service, first established at this time to help "distressed American seamen", and relates the American seamen's experiences to the wider scholarly literature. Throughout, the book includes fascinating case studies of the adventures and misadventures of individual seamen.
Hannes Ziegler
Coastal Policing in Eighteenth-Century Britain
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The first comprehensive study of Britain's coastal policing and administration across the long eighteenth century.
Throughout Britain's past its coast has presented security concerns. Despite this long history of raids, smugglers and warfare, consistent, designated and permanent coastal enforcement bodies were only established in England in the 1690s. Initially a reaction to the threats of the Nine Years' Wars, their creation spoke to a new understanding of "The Coast" as a politically distinct and liminal space - a region neither land nor sea - with its own issues and social dynamics that had to be controlled through new, more sophisticated, methods.
This study explores the circumstances that both necessitated a formalised policing of coastal areas and influenced the subsequent development of these enforcement bodies, showing how their missions and practices fluctuated in relation to key political events and economic policies across the century. In doing so, the book encompasses a long eighteenth century, starting with political developments in the run-up to the Glorious Revolution and ending with the overhaul of coastal bureaucracies in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars.
In conjunction with this larger historical sweep, through extensive archival research, the book reveals the failures in coastal policing, arguing that these shortcomings stemmed not from the cunning of smugglers or bureaucratic inefficiency but from inherent contradictions in Britain's imperial ambitions. In highlighting the complexities of this watery borderland, Hannes Ziegler sheds new light on the inner workings of Britain's fiscal-military enterprises and state-building challenges of its evolving imperial identity.
Professor Qinna Shen
Charting Asian German Film History
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Provides a diachronic view of Asian German film history from early Orientalism to increasing collaboration as well as exploration of difference and alternate forms of national and cultural belonging.
From re-creating seedy opium dens and Hindu temples on set to capturing dazzling sights of Tokyo's neon-lit streets and Berlin's bustling Dong Xuan Center on location, cinema has provided German-speaking audiences a window into the "exotic" cultures of Asia since the early 1900s. Over time, unilateral German imaginings of Asian cultures and people increasingly gave way to collaboration with Asian countries and more variegated portrayals of the diasporic experiences of Asians in Europe, though Orientalist tropes have not been fully mitigated.
The present volume embraces several understudied regions of Asia as well as Austria and Switzerland. It incorporates archival research, close scene analyses, and genre overviews that elucidate the production and reception histories of individual films, drawing on the knowledge of film historians, cultural studies scholars, and Germanists based in North America, Europe, and Asia. The volume approaches film history by observing three distinct phenomena: early German cinematic imaginings of Asia, co-productions shot on location, and representations of the Asian German diaspora. The book aims to chart unwritten chapters of film history by pitching new readings of old masterpieces, exploring lesser-known works of prolific directors, and uncovering the roles of Asian collaborators from the early twentieth century to the new millennium.
Rasheed Oyewole Olaniyi
Migration and Diaspora Identity in Northern Nigeria and Ghana, 1900–1970
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This book uncovers the driving forces and mechanisms through which Yoruba migrant communities in Kano, the largest commercial and administrative city in northern Nigeria, and Tamale, the largest commercial and administrative city in northern Ghana, forged diaspora identities and grappled with the challenges of social inclusion and exclusion. Drawing on fieldwork interviews and archival research in particular, it analyses how socio-economic forces and power relations shaped the very different experiences of the two communities as well as how they sustained ties with the homeland in southwestern Nigeria. By contrasting Yoruba diaspora identity in northern Nigeria and Ghana, this book closely examines how citizenship and belonging, used as a form of political control during colonial rule, was further developed in the post-colonial era and furthers discourses on transnationalism and homeland politics.
Jelmer Vos
Coffee and Colonialism in Angola, 1820-1960
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A new perspective on Angolan colonial and labour history in the 19th and 20th centuries, which explores how the cultivation of coffee, the country's most significant export, shaped one of the oldest commercial frontiers in sub-Saharan Africa.
After the Second World War, Angola became one of the world's largest coffee producers, supplying robusta beans that formed the backbone of popular blends and soluble products consumed by millions worldwide. But each cup of coffee made with Angolan robustas carried with it a legacy of land expropriation and coerced labour. Coffee and Colonialism delves into the systematic exploitation of black workers on white settler plantations in Angola, where labour practices often evoked memories of slavery.
This book traces the origins of Angola's coffee trade to the early nineteenth century, examining how the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade gave rise to a new export-driven economy. As global demand for coffee surged, Portuguese colonizers transformed a thriving peasant economy into a settler-dominated system that, while highly productive, was profoundly exploitative and inefficient. Drawing upon extensive archival research, this work provides a compelling analysis of the intersections between colonialism, labour, property, and global trade, uncovering the political economy underpinning one of Africa's most enduring commodity frontiers.
Edited by Stephanie Carter and Simon D.I. Fleming
The Music Trade in Regional Britain, 1650–1800
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Explores the breadth, diversity and significance of the commercial music trade and its communities across Britain during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Adding to the existing scholarship on music publishers and instrument makers, mostly based in London and the university cities, the collection challenges this historiography by offering the first collective narrative for the commercial trade in musical goods and services - including the printing, publishing and sale of printed music, the sale of manuscript music, musical instruments and related wares, and the tuning and general maintenance of musical instruments such as organs and pianos.
Contributions draw on evidence from across the country of the trade's activities, networks and communities, and recognize the significance of small cities, market towns and regional hubs in cultural dissemination. The Music Trade in Regional Britain therefore contributes to a growing body of work offering a nationwide account of musical culture. It foregrounds a trade that was far more geographically dispersed, economically significant and culturally broad than has previously been acknowledged.
CONTRIBUTORS: Stephanie Carter, Simon D.I. Fleming, David Griffiths, Nancy A. Mace, Martin Perkins, Christopher Roberts, Roz Southey, Matthew Spring, Robert Thompson
Edited by Karl Fugelso
Studies in Medievalism XXXIV
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The themes of tribalism and medievalism unite this wide-ranging collection of essays.
Essays address queer medievalisms in and around Gwen Lally's historical pageants and Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness; Robert Glück's 1994 novel Margery Kempe; and forms of gender tribalism in and around Josephine Butler's Catharine of Siena: A Biography. Gender is further explored alongside the central theme, with surveys of tribal gendering of masculinity in C. S. Lewis's Prince Caspian and its film; tribalism in medievalist bandits beyond Robin Hood and his "merry" band; and tribal gendering of femininity in the films Brave and Sleeping Beauty. There are also contributions on colonialist tribalism in the staging of Camelot in Richard E. Grant's film Wah-Wah; nationalistic tribalism in German pride, refracted through American frontier attitudes towards Native Americans; tribal perspectives of Native Americans in Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionavar Tapestry; the death of Optimus Prime in Transformers: The Movie as an act that stirs fans' tribal passions; and Carolingian legends as both reflecting and superseding tribal affiliations in twentieth-century America.
Joseph-Paul Gaimard
A Scientific Voyage in the Southern Hemisphere and Around the World
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The aims of the expedition of the French corvette Uranie, which left Toulon for a planned global circumnavigation in September 1817, were scientific. Gravity and magnetic fields were to be measured, natural history specimens were to be collected and primitive societies were to be studied. There were, however, no professional scientists on board. Instead, the ship's officers were made responsible for physical science and the medical staff for natural history. The junior surgeon, Joseph-Paul Gaimard, kept a diary in a large official notebook that had been issued to him. The first entries were of instructions and stores related to his medical duties and for his auxiliary role as a zoologist and anthropologist. The narrative section that follows, which ends with the vessel leaving Guam and headed for Hawaii, is a disordered but fascinating mix of straightforward accounts of events and medical interventions, lists of samples collected, results of measurements on peoples encountered and extracts from material located in colonial libraries.
Peter Holman, Bryan White
The Purcell Compendium
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Ground breaking and comprehensive reference volume covering an extensive range of Purcell studies, including his life and works, his milieu and the reception of his music to the present.
In the 30 years since the Tercentenary of Purcell's death in 1995 research into him and the musical culture of Restoration England has developed rapidly. Even the most authoritative books published then are now seriously out of date, and no-one since then has attempted to cover the whole range of Purcell studies. The book is largely taken up with A-Z dictionary entries, preceded by an up-to-date biography and followed by a work-list and bibliography. The dictionary includes entries for many of Purcell's works; the genres he contributed to; the titles and terms he used; the instruments he wrote for; the most important manuscript and printed sources of his music; and some pressing performance practice issues.
Important threads are devoted to people associated with Purcell, including earlier composers who influenced him; his fellow composers; his pupils and followers; those who provided him with texts to set; his patrons and employers; the most important copyists, publishers and instrument makers associated with him; and those contemporaries who wrote about him. The book breaks new ground by giving particular emphasis to his performers, including the most prominent singers and dancers he worked with; and the individuals and institutions responsible for maintaining (or sometimes altering) his legacy up to the present.
Edited by Craig M. Nakashian and Peter W. Sposato
Journal of Medieval Military History: Volume XXIII
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"The leading academic vehicle for scholarly publication in the field of medieval warfare." Medieval Warfare
This volume examines the diverse ways in which medieval European cities, towns, and other urban communities engaged with warfare. For northern Europe, articles consider how subterfuge and betrayal were deployed to capture strongholds, the role of urban communities (large and small) in English warfare in the eleventh through the thirteenth centuries, how morale was maintained (or undermined) during a siege, how Scottish cities and towns supported efforts to resist English invasion, the military agreements with magnates used by Rhineland cities to promote peace, and what economic evidence can show us about the contribution of French cities to war efforts in the later Middle Ages.
Moving south, essays explore the nature of warfare in twelfth and thirteenth century Lombardy, the actions of the Angevin royal family in Tuscan urban warfare and politics, the composition of Italian armies (gleaned from cavalry musters from Bologna), the importance of the city of Murcia during the War of the Two Pedros, and the creation of chivalric spaces out of Andalucian cities.
Gautam Bhatia
Transformative Constitutionalism and Kenya
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A key book about rights, separation of powers and the State, which assesses a decade and a half of transformative constitutionalism in Kenya through the lens of landmark constitutional judgments, discussing their international import and suggesting new pathways towards democratic constitutionalism.
In 2010, after more than two decades of struggle, Kenya's new Constitution was born. Widely accepted to be "transformative" in nature, in the decade and a half since it was enacted, the Constitution has been at the centre of national discourse. And in that time, the country's courts have been confronted with crucial and high-stakes constitutional disputes, which are both distinctively Kenyan in nature, but also, are disputes that have long been common to constitutional democracies around the world: they include issues around constitutional change, federalism, imperial presidencies, the role of the legislature, election disputes, land rights, and horizontality, among others. Drawing comparisons with constitutional jurisdictions globally, which often rely upon precedent from each other's jurisdictions, this book examines transformative constitutionalism under the 2010 Constitution, and shows that while Kenyan courts have been informed by - and been in conversation with - global precedent, they have crafted unique and particular solutions.
The book excavates the engagement of Kenyan Courts with the 2010 Kenyan Constitution to highlight the unique and innovative contributions that Kenyan courts have made to global constitutional problems and to suggest pathways for the future. Showcasing the jurisprudence of the courts in action, this book discusses how and when the power to amend a constitution can be limited or constrained and how constitutional change can be insulated from political interference. It examines issues of parliamentarianism and devolution in the context of the national controversy around constituency development funds, and reveals how Kenya provides a model for understanding constitutional separation of powers. It looks at the process for challenging presidential elections, and details how the Supreme Court has aimed to set out clear legal and evidentiary standards for how a court ought to deal with a pure political dispute - something with which judiciaries around the world have struggled. It explores the evolution of socio-economic rights, including the right to housing, non-discrimination, and equality before the law, as well as the question of how transformative constitutionalism interrogates private power. Placing contemporary Kenyan constitutionalism at its heart, this work of comparative constitutional law asks what the ongoing, global constitutional conversation can learn from the Kenyan experience under its new order.
Edited by Nathalie Joly and Federico D'Onofrio
Farm Accounts in Rural Europe, c.1700-1914
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Analyses how book-keeping and estate accounting transformed attitudes and practices in farm management over three centuries of European history.
From the eighteenth until well into the twentieth century, an ideal model developed of a farmer as accountant, who would record economic transactions meticulously; tidy book-keeping was regarded as the basis of sound management, and only those who accurately dealt with finances would survive and thrive. It is clear that this happened in both theory and practice, with growing numbers of farmers (men and women) keeping increasingly formalized records of their businesses during this period; a wide range of valuable documentation, originating from large estates, small sharecroppers, tenant and owner-farmers alike, has survived.
Drawing on that rich body of sources, this book examines book-keeping and account practices in farm management across Europe, with case studies ranging from Westphalia and the Rhineland to France and Switzerland, over three centuries. It considers who kept these records and their motivations, how practices changed and developed across the period, and in what ways and to what extent accounts and accounting influenced the development of agriculture. It also examines the role of farmers' own organisations and government in encouraging higher standards of accounting.
The Introduction and chapters 7 and 9 are available as Open Access under the Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC-ND.
Edited by Melanie Schuessler Bond and Cordelia Warr
Medieval Clothing and Textiles 19
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The best new research on medieval clothing and textiles, drawing from a range of disciplines.
The essays collected here continue to showcase the Journal's wide-ranging and eclectic tradition. The topics addressed are the sensory perceptions of textiles in Early Medieval Britain; evidence of the global textile trade as reflected in church facades in Lucca, Italy; the ways in which spinning and weaving in late medieval Cologne influenced the presentation of the cult of the Eleven Thousand Virgins within the city; sumptuary legislation in thirteenth-century Montauban, in the Occitan region of Southern France; visual representations of male underwear in northern European art; and the late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century trade in knitted jersey stockings in Norwich and Yarmouth.
translated by Neil Cartlidge and Judith Weiss
Ipomedon
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The first modern English translation of Hugh of Rhuddlan's Ipomedon.
The Anglo-Norman Ipomedon, composed in the late twelfth century by Hugh of Rhuddlan, is a witty, notoriously scabrous romance, set in the Mediterranean. In a version of the Fair Unknown motif, the work's eponymous hero, the son of the king of Apulia, falls in love with the queen of Calabria, conceals his identity and serves in her retinue. He undertakes a number of adventures, including participating in a three-day tournament, each day under different colours, before revealing his true identity and marrying her. Alert to the conventions of Arthurian romance from which it pointedly takes ironic distance, Ipomedon invokes the Continental romans d'antiquité in its protagonists' names and in its surprising claim to be the source material for the chronologically earlier Roman de Thèbes. It was popular amongst its contemporary readers, being translated later into three different Middle English versions.
This book offers the first modern English translation; it also provides explanatory notes, and a full introduction, discussing the author, its audience, dating, sources and analogues, themes, humour and narrative style. It will make this important text, of great interest to medieval romance studies, available to a wider audience.
Edited by Adrian Jobson, Harriet Kersey and Gordon McKelvie
Rebellion in Medieval Europe, c.1000-c.1500
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Essays exploring the dynamics of rebellion across Europe - from Sweden and Slovakia to the Iberian Peninsula and Hungary - over five centuries.
Rebellion was a fundamental part of the political ecosystem of the Middle Ages. Medieval Europe witnessed numerous instances of noble rebellion, popular protest and communal resistance against political authority. However, most scholarship has focused on the causes and/or life cycle of the most famous individual movements, such as the Barons' War in England, the Hussites in Bohemia and the Burgundian-Armagnac conflict in France, and there has been relatively little comparative analysis of political protest across both time and "national" borders. Where it exists, it tends to favour a thematic approach and be narrowly focused in terms of geographical coverage.
Conversely, this book breaks new ground in its wide geographical and chronological range, from twelfth-century Sicily to late fifteenth-century Ireland, exploring the various forms that active resistance could take. Its essays offer fresh perspectives on rebellion: as a political act, its theoretical justifications, the role of language and propaganda, the royal counter-responses that it provoked, and its ramifications, both personal and communal. Together they shine a new light on the complex interrelationship between legal authority, violence and politics, and significantly enhance our understanding of rebellion during this period.
Christina M. Heckman
Work and its Representations in Early Medieval Saints' Lives
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Explores the dynamics of saints' work as represented by their hagiographers.
The lives of many early medieval saints show them working with their hands. Radegund cooks in the kitchen, carries firewood, and cleans privies; Fiacre cultivates a garden; Brigid milks cows and makes cheese; Dunstan shapes metal and constructs buildings. Other saints raise crops, herd cattle, write books, or weave cloth. Equally at home in garden, workshop, and scriptorium, these saints work alongside other people, interacting regularly with livestock, materials, and the land: miracles and other supernatural events are embedded in the habitual, everyday routines of the saints' own communities. Saints exemplify the balance between productive, creative work and the toil or effort required to accompany it, sometimes aligned with penitential labour. But more often, the saints celebrate work as a rewarding result of divine gift, human ingenuity and communal cooperation.
This book examines the representation of work - from arable and pastoral agriculture to textile arts and caretaking - in the vitae of saints who lived in Ireland, Britain, and Francia between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Bringing together close readings of these texts, evidence from archaeology, and anthropological approaches to material culture, it argues that through such work, saints showed others how to survive, thrive, and build a world that promised both physical security and spiritual rewards.
Michelguglielmo Torri
A History of India Volume 3
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Comprehensive and in-depth exploration of one of the oldest civilisations in the world, revealing the dynamic changes of its society, the links to the rest of the world and the underlying forces that led to India's significant role on today's global stage.
This is the third of a three-volume history of India, characterized by three main arguments: (a) Indian history has been crucially conditioned by the connections linking the Indian subcontinent to the remainder of the world; (b) Indian society was never static, but always crisscrossed by powerful currents of change; (c) colonialism caused both the crystallization of a 'traditional' society - which, in that shape, had never really existed before - and, at the same time, the rise of modernity.
This volume examines the political, economic and social evolution of India from independence to the 2014 general election. It argues that the period is subdivided into two main phases; the Longer Nehruvian Era, which extended well after Nehru's death in 1964, and the Neoliberal Age. The book shows that the Longer Nehruvian Era was articulated in two stages. In the first, which ended with Nehru's death, the features which characterized India until the late 1980s and early 1990s came into being. The main ones were a secular democracy, a dominant-party system, and an economy where the state played a crucially important economic role. The second stage of the longer Nehruvian era was characterized by the decline of these characterizing features, which, however, were still in place at the end of the 1980s. The years 1989-1991 - here examined in depth - saw the tumultuous transition to a new historical phase. This new phase, the Neoliberal Age, was characterized by the eclipse of the dominant party system and the implementation of neoliberal economic policies. The neoliberal policies sped up development but, in spite of some governmental efforts to protect the lower social strata, widened social and economic disparities. The Neoliberal Age was also characterized by the rise of Hindutva. Already in power in the years 1999-2004, it made a comeback in the 2014 general election, whose detailed analysis concludes this volume.
Deborah McGrady
Joan of Arc
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Traces contemporary and later reception of Joan of Arc, examining how cultural beliefs and conventions have shaped her story.
Joan of Arc stands out as one of the most recognized historical figures of medieval Europe. Learned writings as well as popular imagination, from the Middle Ages to today, have celebrated her as an exceptional character and hailed her legacy. And yet, there is scant recognition of her enduring status as an icon.
What is one to make of a young, female medieval peasant-turned-warrior-turned-heretic-turned-martyr who has repeatedly been drawn back from oblivion, revived, and made relevant time and again? Unravelling the mystery of this question requires revisiting contemporary and historical accounts, listening anew to Joan's "voice" as seen in her letters and trial documents, and inquiring into the lively debate her afterlife has generated in the arts, from paintings and sculptures to romance, theatre and cinema. To unearth this new story of Joan of Arc, this study focuses on her French legacy, where her continued cultural and aesthetic importance are most vibrant, and it brings this phenomenon into dialogue with modern discussions about gender and class, anachronism and memory, and metafiction, creative time, and the gaze.
Pepe Romero, as told to Walter Aaron Clark
Pepe Romero
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Presents the memories and insights of a great musician-a master of the guitar whose performances and exuberant, caring nature have brought joy to many around the world.
Pepe Romero (b. 1944) has been one of the preeminent exponents of classical and flamenco guitar for over sixty years. He is renowned worldwide for his innumerable concerts and many recordings of a wide variety of repertoire, from solos to concertos and works for guitar duet and quartet. Indeed, Celedonio Romero (1913-96) and his three sons, Celin (b. 1936), Pepe, and Angel (b. 1946), formed the first significant guitar quartet in music history. In this memoir, Pepe conveys his views on a variety of topics pertaining to the guitar, including repertoire, technique, teaching, guitar makers, concertizing and the psychology of performance. He also offers fascinating recollections of his early years in Spain, his family life, and his collaborations and friendships with leading musicians, artists and writers. Though the focus is understandably on Pepe and his immediate circle, the reader also gains insights into the sociocultural context in which he grew up, during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco in the wake of a ruinous civil war. The Romeros moved to Southern California in 1957, a locale that proved very conducive to the success of a quartet of Spanish guitarists and one they still call home. This book will both entertain and inform a wide variety of readers and leave a lasting and reliable record of an extraordinary musician's exceptionally rich life.
Michelguglielmo Torri
A History of India Volume 2
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Comprehensive and in-depth exploration of one of the oldest civilisations in the world, revealing the dynamic changes of its society, the links to the rest of the world and the underlying forces that led to India's significant role on today's global stage.
This is the second of a three-volume history of India, characterized by three main arguments: (a) Indian history has been crucially conditioned by the manifold and two-way connections linking the Indian subcontinent to the remainder of the world; (b) Indian society was never static, but always crisscrossed by powerful currents of change; (c) colonialism caused both the crystallization of a 'traditional' society - which, in that shape, had never really existed before - and, at the same time, the rise of modernity.
This volume examines the history of India from the collapse of the Mughal Empire to the end of colonialism in 1947. It analyses the features of the most important pre-colonial Indian states and the role played by the British colonialism in their destruction or reduction to political irrelevance. Second, the volume highlights the contradictory role of the colonial order in freezing a previously evolving society, causing the coming into being of a 'traditional India' and, at the same time, somewhat unwittingly, triggering the rise of a new modern India. Furthermore, the volume analyses the role of India in supporting the British Empire both economically and militarily, and how the implementation of the liberal economic policy by the colonial rulers resulted in the loss of millions of Indian lives. Finally, the volume closely examines the rise and evolution of Indian nationalism, the reasons that forced the British to end their rule, and, last but not least, the causes of partition and the responsibilities of the parties and political leaders involved.
Michelguglielmo Torri
A History of India Volume 1
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Comprehensive and in-depth exploration of one of the oldest civilisations in the world, revealing the dynamic changes of its society, the links to the rest of the world and the underlying forces that led to its significant role on the global stage.
This is the first of a three-volume history of India, characterized by three main arguments: (a) Indian history has been crucially conditioned by the connections linking the Indian subcontinent to the remainder of the world; (b) Indian society was never static, but always crisscrossed by powerful currents of change; (c) colonialism caused both the crystallization of a 'traditional' society - which, in that shape, had never really existed before - and, at the same time, the rise of modernity.
This volume examines the history of India from the first human settlements in the subcontinent up to the death of Emperor Aurangzeb in 1717. The political, military, economic and social developments are analysed against the backdrop represented by the rise, decline, fall and renaissance of flourishing urban civilizations. While the economy remained mainly agrarian, long-distance trade and pre-modern, but quite sophisticated, manufacturing and service activities rose, declined and rose again. This caused the parallel rise, decline and resurgence of intermediate social strata, later resulting in the formation of a modern bourgeoisie. While the existing religious and cultural strands are analysed, a particular emphasis is placed on the relations between the two main religious traditions, Hinduism and Islam. This volume demonstrates that, despite exceptions, an essentially harmonious coexistence prevailed, which often resulted in cooperation. This coexistence came into being as a result of both Realpolitik and the presence, within both Hinduism and Islam, of surprisingly similar mystical movements extremely influential both at the mass level and at the level of the ruling classes.
E. A. Jones
The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England
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The series has from the beginning been instrumental in sustaining this field of study. JOURNAL OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
The rich tradition of pre-modern mystical writing from England is explored in this collection of essays from the ninth Exeter Symposium. The twelve chapters include studies of Richard Rolle, Walter Hilton, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe and the author of The Cloud of Unknowing. There is work, too, on less familiar authors and texts, from the thirteenth-century Wooing Group to the sixteenth-century Carthusian Richard Methley; the English reception of continental mystics such as Bridget of Sweden and Mechthild of Hackeborn; and writers treading (and sometimes crossing) the line between mysticism and heresy. The authors employ a range of approaches, from detailed manuscript study to mystical theology, and from material culture to comparative mysticism.
Chapters 10 and 11 are available as Open Access under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC-ND.
Jean Dangler
Reading Jaume Roig’s Espill
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What lessons did readers take from the Espill (The Mirror)?
This book examines key marginalia in sixteenth-century printed copies of the fictional, pedagogic tale about the alleged dangers of earthly women composed by Valencian physician Jaume Roig. Written in Catalan verse in approximately 1460, the Espill focuses on two main themes, misogyny and religious material, including the critique of religious personnel but also absolute praise of the Virgin Mary. More than 50 printed copies of the work exist today, an extraordinary number for the period.
The book argues that readers seemed to interpret contrasting secular misogyny and holy topics as harmonious, with the Espill's misogyny synchronizing with its religious message and materials. Readers appear to have considered the Espill as a guide, whether with regard to biblical stories and lessons, women's menstruation, or women's shameful character, and did not demonstrate outrage or perplexity about women's portrayal. The annotative evidence, previously overlooked, sheds light on misogyny's relationship to larger systems of power and on the broader connection between women's depiction in the Espill and in Isabel de Villena's proto-feminist Vita Christi, both of which derived from Valencia's same late fifteenth-century social and professional milieu.
Edited by Kathleen E. Kennedy and Melek Karataş
Medieval Manuscripts in Bristol Collections
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The first complete descriptive catalogue of the medieval manuscripts in Bristol area collections.
Bristol has a rich but unsung body of manuscripts dating from the Middle Ages: an especially precious heritage in a city that lost much of its medieval architecture to the Second World War. Held by several area libraries, including Bristol Central Library, founded in the 1620s and one of the oldest public libraries in the country, and in archives, these volumes stretch from the twelfth to the early sixteenth centuries, and include a copy of John Lydgate's Troy Book, an illustrated guide to surgery, Ricart's Kalendar with its unique illustration of Bristol, c.1480, books of hours owned by Bristol merchants, and more. Together and separately, they offer exceptional insights into local religious practices, book production networks and English book decoration styles and practices.
This book presents the first complete descriptive catalogue of these manuscripts. Entries are grouped within thematic sections, ranging from late medieval devotional culture to sermon preparation materials, each preceded by an introductory essay by an expert in the field. The descriptions provide size, age, script, decoration and a detailed listing of contents.
Allen Shawn
In the Realm of Tones
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A poignant, compelling and clear-eyed memoir of a life in music, with the dogged pursuit of composing at its center.
Perhaps no art form has ever splintered into as many factions, genres, languages, philosophies, and mutually exclusive audiences as the art of music did in the mid-twentieth century. Allen Shawn's memoir fascinatingly evokes this tumultuous time, while weaving together his art and his life, hinting at their unexpected and sometimes paradoxical interconnections. Shawn grew up in an atmosphere of cultural privilege in New York City, the son of New Yorker editor William Shawn. An instinctive composing prodigy at age ten, it took him until the age of thirty to compose music he was proud of.
Shawn sketches his childhood and long apprenticeship, his experiences composing for theater, dance, and concert hall, his forty years as a teacher at Bennington College, and his unexpected emergence as a writer. The book balances an account of his musical evolution, ups and downs, and life choices, offering glimpses into family life and of the many people with whom he interacted, including Leon Kirchner, Earl Kim, Nadia Boulanger, Pierre Petit, Jacques-Louis Monod, J. D. Salinger, John Updike, Benny Goodman, Louis Malle, and Vivian Fine. Along the way, Shawn offers reflections on such issues as social class, aging, loneliness, politics, and music education. In The Realm of Tones: A Composer's Memoir is a unique and touching account of one individual's internal search for self-expression and self-understanding, and of his effort to construct a life around it.
Charles Schaefer
Peace Not War: Traditions of Restorative Justice in Imperial Ethiopia, 1769 - 1960
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Examines one of the few documented early examples of restorative justice from Africa or Latin America.
With a writing system, Ethiopian emperors as well as pretenders to the throne chronicled their exploits including peace-building feats, and this book showcases and analyses historically verified instances, from as early as 1769, where restorative justice modalities were used to resolve conflict and bring peace to the country.
Peace not War traces Ethiopia's evolving understanding of restorative justice from the 'forgive and forget' approach which characterized the Zemene Mesafint (Era of the Princes), where perpetrators were exonerated, allowing them to recoup and build their armies to fight another day, to conditional forgiveness, recorded by the imperial court and dependent on atonement. Ethiopia's long history of experimentation with different forms of restorative justice demonstrates ingenuity, flexibility, and adaptability, but as the twentieth century progressed, workable, indigenous forms of restorative justice were sidelined by Western codified law that emphasized retribution.
Edited by Cesare Santus, Jean-Pascal Gay and Laurent Tatarenko
The Inquisition and the Christian East, 1350-1850
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A groundbreaking volume that radically refocuses our study of early modern Catholicism within a wider geographical and cultural context.
The intricate relationship between the Roman Church and the Christian East has long been underestimated in shaping early modern Catholicism. Similarly, scholarship on the Inquisition has largely overlooked how it interacted with members of the Eastern branch of Christianity. Yet these groups frequently faced the scrutiny of the judges of the faith, who were, in turn, exposed to alternative disciplinary and doctrinal models that questioned Catholic certainties.
This volume delves into the debates surrounding the compatibility of Eastern norms and traditions with the principles of the Counter-Reformation, focusing on Greek, Arab, and Slavic communities, as well as Armenians, Ethiopians, and Syriac Christians from the Ottoman Empire and India, among others. The essays examine topics such as the confessional surveillance of Eastern Christians in Catholic territories and the responses of Roman theologians to thorny questions posed by missionaries around the globe.
Through a meticulous study of rich, untapped archival resources in a wide array of languages, this collection reveals how the interaction with Eastern Christianity exposed some of the contradictions and unresolved problems of Tridentine Catholicism, while providing the Inquisition with a set of cultural tools and interpretive lenses that would eventually be applied in the missionary and theological controversies that shook the Catholic world from the seventeenth century onwards.
Chapters 1, 2, 7 and 12 are available here as Open Access under the Licence CC BY-NC-ND
Edited by Elizabeth Allen and Catherine Sanok
Language, Linguistics and Middle English Literature
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Explores the intersections between two fundamental approaches to medieval literature, shedding new light on texts ranging from The Canterbury Tales to LeMorte Darthur.
This volume identifies new methods and questions for language-based approaches to medieval English literature and literature-based approaches to Middle English by identifying philology as a cross-disciplinary practice shared by literary scholarship and linguistics. How can late medieval cultural perception and social participation be illuminated by literary language? What can language forms tell us about the experience of England's multilingual landscape? Contributors trace the relay between imaginative literature and an expanding Middle English lexicon, the literary affordances of phonological and morphological features of Middle English, and the way that medieval literature engaged with its multilingual sources. Essays also consider how social authority is negotiated in language, with a particular focus on highly charged words such as "corruption", "instability", and "treason" and highly charged phenomena such as language contact, allusion, and genre experiments. Together, they show that literary and linguistic approaches may inform each other to open new avenues of research on a wide variety of texts - including Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde, Malory's Le Morte Darthur, Gower's Confessio Amantis, Lydgate's Reson and sensuallyte and Hoccleve's Regement of Princes. The volume thus pays tribute to the influence on both fields of distinguished medievalist Karla Taylor.
Laura L. Gathagan
The Queenship of Mathilda of Flanders, c. 1031-1083
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The first full-scale scholarly treatment of Mathilda of Flanders (d. 1083), duchess of Normandy and post-Conquest queen of England.
In Norman England, Mathilda's unique practice of queenship was robustly public. It was characterized by an unapologetic embrace of both new and traditional institutions: military lordship, royal justice, monastic foundation and ecclesiastical reform, documentary initiatives and cultural networks. Although she may appear only glancingly in the chronicle "story sources" of her day, she is everywhere else: governing in documents and charters, articulating her identity in architecture, expressing her authority through innovative custom-made liturgies, handing down juridical sentences and participating in the most fundamental theological issues of her day. However, unlike her husband William "the Conqueror", her impact and influence have not ensured her a place of centrality in modern memory. This book redresses that imbalance. Moving away from the traditional chronological approach to a woman's life, its thematic chapters use the metaphor of Mathilda's body to center her actions, creations and speech, showing how Mathilda embodied power in a world often construed as primarily masculine. It thus brings back into focus the policies she championed, the strategies she pursued and the shape of her authority.
Edited by Tim Thornton, Harold Mytum and Michael Hoy
The Isle of Man, 1405-1830 - Political and Constitutional History
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This is the first comprehensive modern account of the history of the Isle of Man, through the years between the establishment of the Stanley lordship early in the fifteenth century and the Revestment of 1830.
Focusing on political and constitutional aspects, the book traces developments through the successive lordships of the Stanley Earls of Derby, Thomas Fairfax and the Dukes of Atholl and highlights the evolution of the Isle of Man's distinctive constitution. It includes coverage of the succession dispute within the Stanley family in the period 1594 to 1610 between the sixth Earl of Derby and the widowed countess of his elder brother, the fifth Earl, who had died with daughters but no son. It also covers the troubled civil war period when the seventh Earl of Derby raised troops to fight for the king despite the pro-Parliamentarian sympathies of the bulk of the population and the extensive smuggling activities of the population in the eighteenth century which prompted the British crown to reassert its rule. Throughout the book emphasises the distinctiveness of the Manx experience, connected to, but different from the history of England, Scotland and Ireland.
Robert Pascall
Brahms: Symphonist
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This long-awaited book situates the symphonies in their biographical context, offers text-critical investigations, presents matters of performance practice and gives an analytical overview of each work.
In Brahms: Symphonist, the late Robert Pascall offers new revelations about Brahms symphonies resulting from a life-long pursuit of Brahms scholarship. Completed shortly before his death, Pascall's book brings together four scholarly perspectives. First, it situates the symphonies in their biographical context narrating their genesis, performance history and reception. Second, the book offers text-critical observations, by investigating the relationships between sketches, manuscript sources, publications and arrangements made by the composer or by others in his lifetime. Third, matters of performance practice are presented: how were the symphonies performed in Brahms's lifetime, what performance values did Brahms espouse, what were the practicalities of performance, and what legacy as conductor did Brahms pass on to succeeding generations? Finally, the book gives an analytical overview of each work. One of the book's highlights is a reappraisal of the materials for Brahms's unfinished Fifth Symphony, situating them in relation to the broader question of Brahms's 'retirement' from composition. Brahms: Symphonist will be required reading for students and scholars of nineteenth-century and Romantic music, Johannes Brahms aficionados, as well as those interested in the development of the nineteenth-century symphony.
Jacqueline Waeber
Speaking German Musically: Poetic Recitation in Central Europe, 1760-1820
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Shows how poetic recitation and the interweaving of music and poetry contributed to the advent of a German identity in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Europe.
The art of reciting a text out loud, known as Vortragskunst, be it in a private circle or in a concert hall, originated in German-speaking countries in the 1760s, and by the nineteenth century had become a well-established practice subjected to an artistic blossoming unparalleled in the rest of Europe.
In this book Jacqueline Waeber explains and examines how and why this happened, focusing on the origins of poetic recitation and its development during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a period essential to the development of modern German literature and theatre, bookended by the two main figures who contributed to the theoretical and aesthetical tenets of poetic recitation, the poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724-1803) and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832).
Poetic recitation quickly gained attraction for the Lied and the musical melodrama, both musical genres that were driven by a search for new declamatory styles. As a result, poetic recitation became increasingly 'musicalized' by the frequent addition of a musical accompaniment. As the book shows, this intertwining of music and poetry made a huge contribution to the advent of German identity through the reappraisal of its language.
Edited by Tim Reinke-Williams and Angela McShane
From the Margins to the Centre in Seventeenth-Century England
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Collection of essays showcasing how one of the greatest historians of seventeenth-century England has shaped and continues to influence the direction of studies in early modern society, culture and belief.
This collection of essays showcases how, over an illustrious career spanning more than fifty years, Professor Bernard Capp FBA has shaped and continues to influence the direction of studies in early modern English social and cultural history. Initially influenced by the historiographical agendas set in the 1960s by Christopher Hill and Sir Keith Thomas, over the last five decades Capp has produced important studies of religious radicalism, print culture, gender and sibling relations, the culture wars of the 1650s and the maritime world. Collectively this body of work enabled him not only to recover the experiences of the marginalised, but also to highlight the importance of topics previously deemed (at best) of marginal interest to historians of seventeenth-century England.
The contributions to this volume, produced by a new generation of historians whose doctoral work Capp supervised and examined, are similarly wide-ranging and innovative. Engaging in dialogue with Capp's work, as well as those he has been in dialogue with himself, the authors provide novel studies of hermits, sailors and surgeons, as well as shedding fresh light on topics such as the politics of the parish, the lives of plebeian women, men's emotions, and the cultural worlds of 'Jane' Shore and John Taylor the Water-Poet. Like Capp, the authors use evidence from legal records, life-writings and cheap printed texts to recover marginalised voices and reconstruct the everyday lives of those overlooked and misunderstood by their contemporaries and by historians. By doing so, they demonstrate how one of the greatest historians of seventeenth-century England continues to inspire the production of innovative studies of early modern society, culture and belief.
CONTRIBUTORS: Richard Blakemore, Heather Falvey, Jasmine Kilburn-Toppin, Anu Korhonen, Peter Marshall, Angela McShane, Elaine Murphy, Naomi Pullin, Tim Reinke-Williams
Edited by Elisabeth Krimmer and Maureen Burdock
German Graphic Narratives and Trauma
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This volume explores the representation of political, racial, sexual, and environmental trauma in German-language graphic narratives, which has thus far received little scholarly attention.
In recent decades, as graphic novels have exploded in popularity and have increasingly been engaged with by scholarship, there has been a marked increase in comics that deal with traumatic experiences. These experiences arise variously from warfare, genocide, terrorism, racism, sexual violence, domestic violence, illness, disability, migration, natural disasters, or climate-change, among other causes. Indeed, scholars including Hillary Chute and Gillian Whitlock have argued that graphic narratives are particularly well-suited to portraying traumatic experiences through the lens of individual memories.
This edited volume builds on the emergent body of work on the representation of trauma in graphic narratives, but focuses exclusively on German-language graphic narratives, whose exploration of trauma has so far received little scholarly attention. Essays dealing with theoretical and conceptual concerns are joined by analyses of individual creators of graphic narratives, including Olivia Vieweg and Volker Reiche. In addition, there are transcribed conversations among the contributors to the graphic story compilation But I Live, Miriam Libicki, Gilad Seliktar, and Barbara Yelin, and between Birgit Weyhe, creator of the graphic narratives Madgermanes and Rude Girl, and the Germanist Priscilla Layne, who is the model for the main character in the latter book. A final essay looks back further with a critical appraisal of the poet Rolf-Dieter Brinkmann's sampling of comics in his late 1960s Popliteratur works.
Sebastian Meurer
Administrative Reform in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain and its Empire
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Indispensable for understanding the historical forces that shaped modern governance.
How did Enlightenment philosophy shape the modern bureaucratic state? While thinkers like Adam Smith and David Hume are celebrated for their contributions to political economy, the crucial work of administrative reformers has largely been forgotten-until now. Here, this question is explored through the untold story of the specialists of public administration, such as the Commissioners for Examining the Public Accounts, whose pioneering efforts to translate political economy into practice laid the foundation for contemporary public administration.
This methodologically refined study re-evaluates Britain's administrative reforms of the late eighteenth century. It traces how systematic, resource-oriented administrative rationality replaced patrimonial notions of office, which treated public offices as royal privileges similar to titles of nobility. Sebastian Meurer relates the British reforms to contemporary administrative reform processes in British India and Ireland and reveals their manifold interconnections. Furthermore, the book offers an analysis of the very process, in which new notions pervaded public administration and traces the interrelations of different perspectives and their gradual shift of credibility.
By connecting the rise of public administration with the early social sciences, this monograph illuminates how ideas once confined to philosophical discourse were adapted into the practical realities of governance, reform, and statecraft across the British Empire.
Ernest Cole
Migration and Return in Modern African Literature
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Using close readings of nine novels by African or African-descended novelists, this book examines three phases of African migration: departure, disillusionment and the impulse to return.
The experiences of African migrants in the diaspora are deeply inflected by the condition of living as Black bodies in white spaces. In this work, author Ernest Cole examines closely the narratives of migration and return presented in nine powerful novels by authors who include Chimamanda Adichie, NoViolet Bulawayo, Teju Cole and others. The novels reveal a reversal of expectations that migrants from Africa experience upon arrival in the West, a reversal prompted in part by the racial prejudice they are confronted with as Black individuals. As the author notes, the novels also illustrate the desire to return to the homeland as a better alternative to the precarious life in the West, even though such a move is not without its complications.
The study is divided into three parts with seven chapters. The first two chapters deal with the reasons for the departure of migrants from the continent, the next two depict the experiences of migrants in the West, and the last three focus on contemplations of the return journey home. Collectively, the chapters lay out three phases in the migration process: departure from home, disillusionment in the West, and return to the country of origin. Within this framework, the book uses displacement and dislocation to examine a host of themes—social alienation, alterity and the precarity of Africans in the diaspora.
Translated by Rachel Koopmans
The Passion and Miracles of St. Thomas Becket by Benedict of Peterborough
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The first full English translation of one of the most important sources on Thomas Becket.
Benedict of Peterborough's Passion and Miracles of St Thomas Becket puts the reader in Canterbury on the day of one of the most famous murders of all time, when four of King Henry II's knights killed the archbishop inside his cathedral on 29 December 1170. It reveals how a monk thrust into the role of chronicler attempted to understand the earliest cures at Thomas Becket's tomb and the rapid growth of his reputation as a miracle-worker. With its description of Becket's murder and some 275 miracles, all dating to 1171-1173, Benedict's text, which went on to circulate across Europe, is by far our most important source for the beginnings of the cult that would draw hundreds of thousands of medieval pilgrims to Canterbury.
This book provides the first full English translation of Benedict's Passion and Miracles from the original Latin. It includes an introduction that assesses the relationship of the Canterbury monks to the archbishop, analyses the story of the murder as told in the Passion, and examines the ways in which Benedict gathered material and constructed the Miracles. The translation is also accompanied by full explanatory notes, while two appendices provide biographical information and a translation of the eighteen stories in the Miracles that are also recounted in a slightly later Canterbury collection. This translation will make Benedict's hugely significant text accessible to a wider audience for the first time.
This book is available as Open Access under the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND.
Lourdes Parra Lazcano
Escritora, no hay camino
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Escritora, no hay camino... explores Mexican travel literature -from early nineteenth-century publications to the contemporary era- to reveal how the experiences of six women writers reconfigured perceptions of themselves and the foreign.
From a feminist and transcultural critique, this book delves into how Laura Méndez de Cuenca, Elena Garro, Rosario Castellanos, María Luisa Puga, Esther Seligson and Myriam Moscona confront cultural normativity in their narratives, drawing on their cultural interactions in Spain, Germany, Kenya, England, Israel and Bulgaria, among other countries.
The cross-cultural performativities studied here allow us to analyse how the authors incorporate categories such as sex, gender, class, nationality and ethnicity in their works. The comparative chapters explore themes such as transatlantic intellectual exchanges, the border identities' critique of normativity, and the relationship of genealogy to literary and cultural re-appropriations. This book offers an analytical insight into how Mexican women writers have contributed to travel literature by subverting and reconfiguring their identity and relationship to the world.
Escritora, no hay camino... explora la literatura de viaje mexicana -desde las primeras publicaciones del siglo XIX hasta la época contemporánea- para revelar cómo las experiencias de seis escritoras reconfiguraron percepciones sobre sí mismas y lo extranjero.
Desde una crítica feminista y transcultural, el libro profundiza en cómo Laura Méndez de Cuenca, Elena Garro, Rosario Castellanos, María Luisa Puga, Esther Seligson y Myriam Moscona enfrentan las normatividades culturales en sus relatos, a partir de sus interacciones culturales en España, Alemania, Kenia, Inglaterra, Israel y Bulgaria, entre otros países.
Las performatividades transculturales que aquí se estudian permiten analizar cómo las autoras incorporan categorías como sexo, género, clase social, nacionalidad y etnicidad en sus obras. En los capítulos comparativos se exploran temas como los intercambios intelectuales transatlánticos, la crítica a las normatividades de las identidades fronterizas y la relación de la genealogía con las reapropiaciones literarias y culturales. Este libro ofrece una mirada analítica para comprender cómo las escritoras mexicanas han contribuido a la literatura de viaje, subvirtiendo y reconfigurando tanto su identidad como su relación con el mundo.
Michele L.C. Seah
Financing Queenship in Late Fifteenth Century England
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"Seah's important book richly documents and deftly analyzes the complex household economies of three fifteenth-century queens consort of England who lived during a period of political and economic upheaval. This book, based on impressive meticulous research, is more than just a much-needed methodological model for studying queenly finances that fills a gap in the historiography of queenship. It is a powerful study of the intrinsic worth of a queen." Theresa Earenfight, Professor Emerita of History, Seattle University.
Late medieval queens required considerable economic and financial resources, to enable them to dispense patronage, exercise power and influence, and establish and maintain political and social networks. This book examines the nature and usage of these resources, via an in-depth study of the reigns of three queens consort from the second half of the fifteenth century in England - Margaret of Anjou, Elizabeth Woodville and Elizabeth of York - considering how the queens were supported in material terms, and their impact on the economic landscape of the period. It surveys in detail the economic assets available to these queens, including dower lands, monetary and non-monetary grants, and queens' gold, before moving on to a discussion of two major entities - households and affinities - which they needed to maintain. It both sheds light on individual queens and on broader questions of authority and agency in late-medieval English queenship.
Ann Eljenholm Nichols
Making Books in Fifteenth-Century Cambridge
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Richly illustrated venture into book production in Cambridge.
William Dyngley (Peterhouse, 1393-1441), known for his personal library of at least 29 manuscripts, was primarily an editor. In the second decade of the fifteenth century, he began a major patristic project that ultimately comprised eight volumes of Augustine of Hippo, anthologies of Origin, Ambrose and Jerome, and a patristic miscellany. Dyngley also constructed thirty-five indexes for Augustine's works, which he copied in tandem with his primary text writer, the so called "Fish Scribe".
This richly illustrated monograph considers the people who made the books, the network of Cambridge scribes who copied the texts, the limners who decorated them and the remarkable man behind the project. Dyngley, placed here in the context of contemporary life in a Cambridge college, is shown to be in charge at every stage of production, acquiring exemplars, correcting scribal errors, storing incomplete quires, reassigning texts from one volume, copying and revising tables of content and tallying expenses. The volume also examines the constituent features of the manuscripts themselves, non-verbal cues as well as content. Overall, it sheds considerable new light on manuscript production in the period more generally.
Kate Ash-Irisarri
Rewriting the Past in Scottish Literature, 1350-1550
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Considers how Anglo-Scottish conflict was memorialised, reimagined and embedded by later writers.
The Anglo-Scottish Wars of Independence are often treated in historical and poetical works produced in Scotland between the fourteenth and sixteenth century, from chronicles and hagiographical romances to advisory and commemorative poems. Through an examination of such texts, this book explores how late-medieval writers drew on the memory of the wars to articulate a collective identity; and how literary and historical frameworks were deeply influenced by shifting Anglo-Scottish relations. It covers a range of topics: how borders - textual, geographic, and cultural - became a focus for articulations of national memory; the utilisation of origin myths and royal genealogy; anxieties around failures of memory or deliberate acts of forgetting; and the impact of the Battle of Flodden (1513) on writing about Scottish nationhood. Dealing in particular with Bower's Scotichronicon, Hary's Wallace, The Complaynt of Scotland and Lyndsay's Dreme, this study argues that these writers drew on understandings of the arts of memory to shape selective, and collective, recollections of the past as a response to contemporary concerns, providing an emotive memorialisation of Scotland's history.
Peter Doyle
Roman Catholicism in Bedfordshire 1700-1900
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An account of the revival of Catholicism in Bedfordshire from 1700 to 1900, including a selection of key documents and relevant registers.
This volume draws on a range of evidence to illustrate the revival and growth of Catholicism in Bedfordshire between 1700 and 1900. Active opposition to such a revival was only to be expected in Bunyan's county and the volume tells how this was gradually overcome, so that by the end of the period a number of Catholic churches had been well established across the county. Their growth is illustrated by the detailed baptism, marriage and death registers for Shefford (1770s-1850s), Bedford (1860s-1900) and Leighton Buzzard (1890s-1900), that are included and that provide an invaluable source of information about the make-up of the congregations. The account is also enriched by the inclusion of key original documents, correspondence, visitation reports and newspaper accounts.
We can also see the contributions made to this growth by national and local individuals, from trades people to members of the nobility, who contributed to the building of a number of local churches and the support of the clergy. The county also became the home of a small diocesan theological college and a nationally recognised boys' orphanage and home. The invaluable work of members of the clergy is examined, along with their contribution to reducing the longstanding anti-Catholicism that had existed across the county. Much remained to be done, but much had also been accomplished.
Piet van Cruyningen
Farming the North Sea Coast, 900-2000
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"A brilliant and provocative synthesis of a thousand years of coastal farming." Tim Soens, University of Antwerp, Belgium.
The fascinating story of how the North Sea coast has been farmed is ever changing. Long before the industrial revolution, the inhospitable fens and marshes of the low-lying coastal wetlands on both sides of the Sea had been transformed into one of the most productive agricultural regions in Europe. Agriculture in the coastlands reached its apogee during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as is witnessed by the many impressive farm buildings established then. However, more recently, it has become clear that lowland farming and even the physical existence of the lowlands are in jeopardy, owing to rising sea levels and problems of drainage.
This book offers a history of farming and water management on the North Sea coast, assessing the forces driving - and inhibiting - agricultural progress more broadly. It examines the ways in which farmers in the past dealt with the two main constraints on their decision-making: the natural environment and the human environment of institutional rules and customs regulating behaviour. It looks in particular at how setbacks were overcome, and how farming practices were improved which then raised the money with which to finance the maintenance of dykes, canals, and sluices.
Edited and translated by Constant J. Mews and Seppo Heikkinen
The Letters of Hugh Metel
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Hugh Metel's letters, addressed to some of the most famous individuals of his age are the work of a stylish writer exploring the common concerns of this group.
This volume offers a critical edition and translation of the fifty-five letters of Hugh Metel (c. 1080-c. 1150), an Augustinian canon, which cover a wide range of issues, relating to scripture, theology and canon law. He was also a prolific writer of verse, and he was keen to show how he could combine his interest in the liberal arts with his knowledge of scripture and the Church Fathers. His circle of correspondents included some of the most famous individuals of his age, including Bernard of Clairvaux, Peter Abelard, Heloise and many bishops in his region. The few scholars who mention Hugh Metel have often described his rhetorical style, permeated by literary allusions, especially to Horace, scripture and the Fathers, as 'bombastic'. Nonetheless, Hugh does have a powerful command of Latin and took pleasure in crafting letters to his circle of friends and to those with whom he wanted to share common concerns.
Lucy Brookes
Convention and the Individual in Medieval English Romance
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Offers a nuanced reading of character and subjectivity in medieval romance via an exploration of its conventions.
Medieval romances can be characterised by their formulaic motifs, predictable plots, and "stock" figures and character types. This book offers a fresh perspective on these conventions, arguing that authors used them, and the expectations they generate, as a form of shorthand to interiority. Understanding romance conventions in this way reveals that romance characters' complex and often contradictory inner lives are made available precisely through the genre's narrative structures, shapes, and norms. Drawing upon recent work in the History of Emotions and Affect Theory, the author explores character and subjectivity in a variety of English romance texts from 1100 to 1500 - such as Amis and Amiloun, Le Bone Florence of Rome, The Squire of Low Degree, Sir Orfeo, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Malory's Le Morte Darthur. Through new readings of these texts, the book demonstrates the contribution made by romance to the growing significance of the individual in fiction after the twelfth century by paying particular attention to the ways in which convention, expectation, and genre intersect with character-formation and the representation of identity.
Neil Horsley
Mills Transformed
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Highly illustrated, the book celebrates renovation of textile mills in the North of England. Case studies from interviews with those responsible for these iconic buildings give insights into how other mills may be reused.
Textile mills producing woollen, cotton and silk fabric were the backbone of the industrial revolution, and as much part of our national heritage as churches and country houses. They were responsible for placemaking in the towns and cities of Yorkshire, Greater Manchester, Lancashire and Cheshire, and are still a familiar and prominent part of the landscape of many towns. There are over 650 mills in these counties which are empty or underused, and under threat. But there are many examples of mills being renovated and repurposed for a variety of uses by inspiring people and organisations.
With case studies drawn from extensive interviews with owners, developers and users of these buildings, the book celebrates the repurposing of industrial mill buildings in the North of England. It tells the human story behind many renovations, drawing together common themes, and insights as to what determines successful renovation, and how further schemes can be developed.
James Stevens Curl
Classical Architecture
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Celebration of the classical architectural tradition, spanning 2500 years but widely practised today. Professionals, students and enthusiasts will benefit from the profuse illustrations, including detailed line drawings, demonstrating this rich tradition and its prevailing themes and motifs.
Classical architecture continues to be widely practised today, and this book describes and demonstrates the fundamental principles from its origins in Antiquity and continuous development during the Renaissance, the Baroque and Rococo phases, Neo-Classicism, and survival in various forms into the current century. Heavily illustrated with colour and black and white photography, a particular strength of the book is the many detailed and annotated line drawings for which the author is well-known and a glossary which serves as a dictionary of Classical architecture in itself. The author celebrates the richness of Classical architectural vocabulary, grammar and language, and demonstrates the huge range of themes and motifs found in the subject. The book provides a basis for understanding this rich source of architectural design which has been at the core of Western culture for over 2500 years and continues to be widely studied and practised worldwide. For practicing architects, planners and students, this is the benchmark book for understanding the Classical tradition in architecture and landscape.
Edited and Translated by Theodore Albrecht
Beethoven's Conversation Books Volume 5
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A complete new edition of Beethoven's conversation books, in 12 volumes, now translated into English in their entirety for the first time. Covering a period associated with the revolutionary style of what we call "late Beethoven", these lively and compelling conversations are now finally accessible in English for the scholar and Beethoven-lover.
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) is recognized the world over as a composer of musical masterpieces exhibiting heroic strength, particularly in the face of his increasing deafness from ca. 1798. By 1818, the Viennese composer had begun carrying blank booklets with him, for his acquaintances to jot their sides of conversations, while he answered aloud. Often, he himself used the pocket-sized booklets to make shopping lists and other reminders, including occasional early sketches for his compositions. Today, 139 of these booklets survive, covering the years 1818 up to the composer's death in 1827 and including such topics as music, history, politics, art, literature, theatre, religion, and education as perceived on a day-to-day basis in post-Napoleonic Europe. An East German edition, begun in the 1960s and essentially complete by 2001, represents a diplomatic transcription of these documents. It is a masterpiece of pure scholarship but is difficult to use for anyone who is not a specialist. Moreover, Beethoven scholarship has moved on significantly since the long-ranging genesis of the German edition.
These important booklets are here translated into English in their entirety for the first time. The volumes in this series include an updated editorial apparatus, with revised and expanded notes and many new footnotes exclusive to this edition, and brand new introductions, which together place many of the quickly changing conversational topics into context. Due to the editor's many years of research in Vienna, his acquaintance with its history and topography, as well as his familiarity with obscure documentary resources, this edition represents an entirely new venture in source studies - vitally informative for scholars not only in music but also in a wide variety of disciplines. At the same time, these often lively and compelling conversations are now finally accessible for the English-speaking music lover or history buff who might want to dip into them and hear what Beethoven and his friends were discussing at the next table.
Stuart Taberner
The New German Jewish Literature
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Posits a New German Jewish Literature that has surprising implications for today's German Jewish - and Jewish - identity, including solidarity with others, even after October 7, 2023.
Eighty years after the Holocaust, it is now possible to speak of a New German Jewish Literature. Emerging out of a community that, following the arrival of more than 200,000 people of Jewish ancestry from the former Soviet Union, is now vastly larger, increasingly diverse, and culturally vibrant, German Jewish writers are re-articulating what it means to be Jewish in the "land of the perpetrators." More generally, they are also rethinking Jewish values and Jewish solidarity against the backdrop of global events and trends such as the resurgence of antisemitism, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and growing intolerance toward ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities.
Stuart Taberner's book provides the first comprehensive account of the tension between Jewish particularism and Jewish universalism that characterizes this New German Jewish Literature. To what extent should Jewish identity be focused on the "Jewishness" of the Jewish experience, including the Holocaust? Or does "Jewish purpose" reside in expressing solidarity with persecuted minorities everywhere? Taberner argues that this new literature presents an aesthetically engaging and politically nuanced deliberation on Holocaust memory, on worldliness, and on solidarity - with sometimes surprising and radical implications for modern-day German Jewish and Jewish identity. He also examines authors' responses to the Hamas attack on Israel of October 7, 2023, and speculates about the future of German Jewish writing.
This book is available as Open Access under the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND.
Roger Allen
Arthur Nikisch
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Considers Nikisch as a primary link between the later nineteenth century performance practice, and the twentieth-century 'fetishisation' of the superstar conductor as a commercially driven phenomenon.
The Hungarian-born conductor Arthur Nikisch (1855-1922) was among the first of the new breed of virtuoso conductors who came to prominence in the immediate aftermath of Wagner. As a youthful violinist in the Vienna Court Orchestra, he played under Wagner, Verdi and Brahms; in 1895 he reached the pinnacle of German musical life as Chief Conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus and Berlin Philharmonic Orchestras. His career was, however, by no means confined to Austro-German lands. He spent four seasons in the USA as Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and travelled regularly to conduct in Imperial Russia. His visits to Britain had a significant impact on London's concert life through his associations with the newly opened Queen's Hall, the fledgling London Symphony Orchestra, Covent Garden Opera House and even as piano accompanist at the Bechstein (later Wigmore) Hall. He was also a fervent champion of the music of non-Austro German composers such as the Russian Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and the Englishman Edward Elgar.
This book considers Nikisch's role and influence as a leading musical executant within the declining Habsburg monarchy and the ascendant German Empire. It also examines how the newly established phenomenon of the virtuoso conductor reached across international boundaries at a time when hardening ideologies and shifting political allegiances were leading towards the disintegration of the old Europe in the carnage of the First World War. It considers Nikisch as a primary link between the later nineteenth century performance practice and aesthetics of Wagner and the twentieth century phenomenon of the all-powerful superstar conductor who came to surpass even the composer in importance.
Wilfred Hammond
Catholic Nobles and the Elizabethan State, 1558–1588
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A vivid exploration of how Catholicism endured far longer into the Elizabethan era and continued to shape the very identity of early modern England.
This compelling study delves into the complexities of religious and political power during Elizabeth I's reign, presenting a further, important challenge to the traditional narratives of a swift and uncontested Protestant triumph. Here, Wilfred Hammond explores why Catholic aristocrats, despite wielding significant regional power and Court influence, failed to block or reverse the emerging religious revolution.
Focusing on the Stanley earls of Derby, the dominant noble family in Lancashire - a county described by the Elizabethan government as "the very sink of popery" - the author reconstructs their role in obstructing Protestant reform. Using the State and Cecil Papers, as well as foreign ambassadorial reports , the study re-evaluates the Stuart party-building efforts of Lady Margaret Douglas and Mary, Queen of Scots. Hammond re-examines the context of the papal bull of deposition, and uncovers the Stanley-Gerard conspiracy of 1570 with its links to the Ridolfi Plot.
This richly detailed analysis of the Stanleys positions them at the heart of a network of nobles, including the Percies and Nevilles, who were opposed to the religious change presented by Protestantism. As such, this vibrant case-study unfolds to offer fresh insights into the slow, fraught transformation of England's religious landscape during one of its most turbulent periods.
Edited by Shaun McGuinness
Bangor Episcopal Acta, 1092-1306
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A thorough examination of the acta of the bishops of Bangor in North Wales opens a revealing window into the medieval Welsh church.
This volume provides a first edition of the acta (charters, indulgences, letters, petitions, professions of obedience etc) of the bishops of Bangor in north Wales for the period 1092-1306. A period which witnessed momentous change not only for the prince of Wales but also for the Welsh Church. There are 102 acta in total, 24 of which survive as originals, 6 retaining their original seals. Latin transcriptions of the acta are provided in extenso with English summaries. Textual and historical notes follow the transcriptions, with an explanation of the date ascribed to each document. The volume begins with an introduction to the medieval diocese of Bangor, its geographical extent, structure and the personnel responsible for its administration. There is also an examination of the native Welsh clas, which existed before a chapter was introduced. After brief biographies of the ten bishops who held the see during the period covered by the volume, there is an analysis of the diplomatic of the acta, including sealing arrangements. The volume concludes with the bishops' itineraries.
Kenneth M. Ralston
Thinking Through German Literature with Andrew Jaszi
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Brings to light an important and unconventional teacher of literature whose way of thinking and method are relevant in German Studies and beyond, particularly in view of the present crisis of the humanities.
At a time when enrollment in the humanities is said to be in "free fall" (Nathan Heller, The New Yorker, 2/27/2023), the figure of Andrew Jaszi offers an alternative vision of what a literary education might look like. Jaszi was a Hungarian-born philosopher and literary scholar in the German Department at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1948 to 1985. His accessible, jargon-free approach, a method he developed through analogy with Goethe's unique way of doing science, attracted students of diverse backgrounds and majors to his classes, while also winning acclaim from colleagues who compared him to Wittgenstein and Buber.
Drawing on a set of previously unknown tape recordings of Jaszi's seminars, this book offers readers the opportunity to witness this legendary teacher in action. The book's immediate benefit is the illumination provided by Jaszi's original interpretations of Goethe's Faust and Kafka's "The Judgment." More broadly, it illustrates the transformative, whole-self education Jaszi advocated and himself embodied, one that runs counter to the technocratic imperatives of our time. Ultimately, the book's goal is to make better known an important literary thinker and an unconventional teacher of German Studies, the value of whose work extends beyond a single discipline to humanities education in general, with special bearing on its present crisis and potential future.
Edited by David Roberts
Charles Gildon’s The Life of Mr Thomas Betterton, the Late Eminent Tragedian
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Roberts reveals how Gildon's fusion of biographical study with neoclassical aesthetics and theatrical theory makes The Life an essential text for understanding early eighteenth-century performance.
Charles Gildon's The Life of Mr Thomas Betterton is a landmark text in English theatrical biography. First published in 1710, it not only commemorated the death of Thomas Betterton, the most renowned English actor of his era, but is the first major study in English to focus on an actor's craft rather than his personal life. However, despite its pioneering nature, Gildon's work has long been overshadowed by controversy. With one quarter of the text copied from a French oratorical treatise, many readers and scholars dismissed it as a plagiarized work.
This first modern edition reassesses the value of a text that is part biography, part textbook, and part borrowed from French sources. Here, David Roberts, reframes The Life as an essential resource not only for theatre history and life writing, but also for the study of publishing practices and early theories of plagiarism. Furthermore, as in Gildon's original publication, Roberts presents the Life with Betterton's comedy, The Amorous Widow.
In a comprehensive introduction, Roberts explores Gildon's relationships with both his publishers and with Betterton himself, presenting the Life as a classical dialogue based on a personal knowledge of the actor. It also sheds light on how Gildon exploited early definitions of plagiarism, balancing his unacknowledged borrowings with original insights into acting theory.
With old spelling and detailed annotations, this edition provides a rich foundation for understanding Gildon's impact on theatre, publication, and the evolving standards of intellectual property.
Robert V. Kenny
Monsieur Francisque’s Touring Troupe and Anglo-French Theatrical Culture, 1690-1770
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This deeply accomplished and lively monograph charts the career of a travelling French actor-manager whose impact and significance have been overlooked.
The "inimitable Monsieur Francisque" (François Moylin, c. 1690-1770), was an extraordinary actor-manager and key figure in the early eighteenth-century theatre world of both England and France. Leader of a family of gifted performers, including his niece, the famous dancer-choreographer Marie Sallé, he took them to every corner of France and beyond, playing before Louis XV as well as George I and II of England.
However, despite his fame among his contemporaries, Francisque's career has been largely overlooked. Robert V. Kenny resurrects Moylin from the footnotes of theatre history with this detailed case-study of an entrepreneurial actor-manager, his troupe and their repertory. Following them from the Paris fairs to the courts of Europe, via one of the worst riots in English theatre history, the book showcases the giddying range of activities and performances undertaken by this family and their associates.
Through the careful piecing together of diverse and fragmentary historical records, Kenny reveals the crucial role played by Francisque and his troupe in the conflict between Parisian fairground players and the established theatres, stressing Francisque's major contribution to the development of opéra-comique. This book not only revives Moylin's legacy but enriches our understanding of cross-cultural theatrical exchanges in eighteenth-century Europe.
