"There is no question that this book is one of the most important studies of early Welsh literature published in this generation." SPECULUM
The "Stanzas of the Graves" or "Graves of the Warriors of the Island of Britain", attributed to the legendary poet Taliesin, describe ancient heroes' burial places. Like the "Triads of the Island of Britain", they are an indispensable key to the narrative literature of medieval Wales. The heroes come from the whole of Britain, including Mercia and present-day Scotland, as well as many from Wales and a few from Ireland. Many characters known from the Mabinogion appear, often with additional information, as do some from romance and early Welsh saga, such as Arthur, Bedwyr, Gawain, Owain son of Urien, Merlin, and Vortigern. The seventh-century grave of Penda of Mercia, beneath the river Winwæd in Yorkshire, is the latest grave to be included. The poems testify to the interest aroused by megaliths, tumuli, and other apparently man-made monuments, some of which can be identified with known prehistoric remains.
This volume offers a full edition and translation of the poems, mapped with reference to all the manuscripts, starting with the Black Book of Carmarthen, the oldest extant book of Welsh poetry. There is also a detailed commentary on their linguistic, literary, historical, and archaeological aspects.
Colin Partridge
The Channel Islands in Anglo-French Relations, 1689-1918
Regular price
$130.00
Save $-130.00
Examines how the Channel Islands have been crucial to Britain's successful maritime superiority in the English Channel.
The Channel Islands have played a key role in both naval warfare and Anglo-French diplomacy, but this has not always been highlighted sufficiently even though Britain and France were at war for most of the period 1689-1815. This book considers a wide range of maritime subjects where the role of the Channel Islands has been significant, such as intelligence gathering, piracy and privateering, and naval strategy and control of the Channel. It also examines topics in relation to the Channel Islands specifically, such as surveying and hydrography, fortifications, trade and Channel Islands societies. It charts changes over time, including the impact of technological changes, from the wars of Louis XIV and William III, through the many Anglo-French wars of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and includes planning for wars which were anticipated but avoided. Throughout the issues are discussed from the perspectives of Britain, France and the Channel Islands themselves, equal weight being given to all three perspectives. Andrew Lambert is Professor of War Studies at King's College, London and one of Britain's foremost maritime and naval historians. Colin Partridge is a former consultant to the States of Guernsey's 'Fortress Guernsey' programme for the restoration and interpretation of Guernsey's fortifications. Jean de Préneuf is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Lille and Head of the Research, Teaching and Studies Unit at the Historical Branch of the French Ministry of Defence at Vincennes.
Caroline Potter
Pierre Boulez: Organised Delirium
Regular price
$39.95
Save $-39.95
Exploring the emotional and cultural influences on Pierre Boulez's early works as well as the role surrealism and French culture of the 1930s and 40s played in shaping his radical new musical concepts.
Pierre Boulez's (1925-2016) creative output has mostly been studied from an analytical perspective in the context of serialism. While Boulez tends to be pigeonholed as a cerebral composer, his interest in structure coexisted with extreme visceral energy. This book redresses the balance and stresses the febrile cultural environment of Paris in the 1940s and the emotional side of his early works.
Surrealism, in particular, had an impact on Boulez's formative years that has until now been underexplored. There are intriguing links between French music and surrealism in the 1930s and 40s, arising within a cultural context where surrealism, ethnography and the emerging discipline of ethnomusicology were closely related. Potter situates the young Boulez within this environment. As an emerging musician, he explored radical new musical concepts alongside peers including Yvette Grimaud, Serge Nigg and Yvonne Loriod, performing and exchanging ideas with them.
This book argues that authors associated with surrealism, especially René Char but also Antonin Artaud and André Breton, were crucial to Boulez's musical development. It enhances our understanding of his work by connecting it with significant trends in contemporary French culture, refocusing Boulez studies away from detailed musical analysis and towards a broader and more visceral, emotional response to his work.
Edited by Andrew D. Buck, James H. Kane and Stephen J. Spencer
Crusade, Settlement and Historical Writing in the Latin East and Latin West, c. 1100-c.1300
Regular price
$130.00
Save $-130.00
This collection offers a holistic understanding of the impact of both crusading and settlement on the literary cultures of Latin Christendom.
The period between the First Crusade and the collapse of the "crusader states" in the eastern Mediterranean was a crucial one for medieval historical writing. From the departure of the earliest crusading armies in 1096 to the Mamlūk conquest of the Latin states in the late thirteenth century, crusading activity, and the settlements it established and aimed to protect, generated a vast textual output, offering rich insights into the historiographical cultures of the Latin West and Latin East. However, modern scholarship on the crusades and the "crusader states" has tended to draw an artificial boundary between the two, even though medieval writers treated their histories as virtually indistinguishable.
This volume places these spheres into dialogue with each other, looking at how individual crusading campaigns and the Frankish settlements in the eastern Mediterranean were depicted and remembered in the central Middle Ages. Its essays cover a geographical range that incorporates England, France, Germany, southern Italy and the Holy Land, and address such topics as gender, emotion, the natural world, crusading as an institution, origin myths, textual reception, forms of storytelling and historical genre. Bringing to the foreground neglected sources, methodologies, events and regions of textual production, the collection offers a holistic understanding of the impact of both crusading and settlement on the literary cultures of Latin Christendom.
Arata Ide
Localizing Christopher Marlowe
Regular price
$190.00
Save $-190.00
This study punctures the stereotyped portrayals of Marlowe, first created by his rival Robert Greene, and, yet, which still colour our view. In doing so, Ide reveals the social and cultural discourses out of which such myths emerged.
We know next to nothing about the life of the playwright Christopher Marlowe (b.1564 - d. 1593). Few documents survive other than his birth record in the parish register, a handful of legal cases in court records, Privy Council mandates and reports to the Council, the coroner's examination of his death, and a few hearsay accounts of his atheism. With such a limited collection of biographical documents available, it is impossible to retrieve from history a complete sense of Marlowe. However, this does not mean that biography cannot play a significant role in Marlowe studies.
By observing the details of the specific places and communities to which Marlowe belonged, this book highlights the collective experiences and concerns of the social groups and communities with which we know he was personally and financially involved. Specifically, Localizing Christopher Marlowe reveals the political and cultural dynamics in the community of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, into which Marlowe was deeply integrated and through which he became affiliated with the circle of Sir Francis Walsingham, mapping these influences in both his life and works.
Edited by Dan Armstrong, Áron Kecskés, Charles C. Rozier and Leonie Hicks
Borders and the Norman World
Regular price
$170.00
Save $-170.00
Study of the Norman World's borders, frontiers, and boundaries in Europe, shedding fresh light on their nature and extent.
The Normans exerted great influence across Christendom and beyond in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Figures like William the Conqueror and Robert Guiscard subdued vast territories, their feats recorded for posterity by chroniclers such as Orderic Vitalis and Geoffrey Malaterra. Through travel and conquest, the Normans encountered, created, and conceptualised many borders, with the areas of Europe that they ruled and most affected often being grouped together as the "Norman World".
This volume examines the nature, forms, and function of borders in and around this "Norman World", looking at Normandy, the British-Irish Isles, and Southern Italy. Three sections frame the collection. The first concerns physical features, from broad frontier expanses, to rivers and walls that were both literally and metaphorically lines of division. The second shows how borders were established, contested, and negotiated between the papacy and lay rulers and senior churchmen. Finally, the third highlights the utility of conceptual frontiers for both medieval authors and modern historians. Among the subjects covered are Archbishop Anselm's travels across Christendom; the portrayal of borders in the writings of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis, and Gerald of Wales; and the limits of Norman seigneurial and papal power at the edges of Europe. Overall, the essays demonstrate the role that the manipulation of borders played in the creation of the "Norman World", and address what these borders did and whom they benefited.
Seth Peabody
Film History for the Anthropocene
Regular price
$120.00
Save $-120.00
From its beginnings, some of German film's most prominent genres and directors have focused on the natural world and its transformations by humans. Heimat films, "city symphonies," mountain films, and rubble films all blend the boundary between landscape documentary and fiction film. Yet German film studies has been slow to adopt an environmental focus, concentrating (understandably) on its subject matter's political implications. This book reveals critical connections between German film, sociopolitical context, and environment, showing it to have been a creative catalyst for the social and ecological transformation of the Anthropocene.
The book first considers the interplay between German film and environmental history in films and discourses of Heimat. Weimar-era films such as E. A. Dupont's Die Geierwally (1921), Carl Ludwig Achaz-Duisberg's Sprengbagger 1010 (1929), and Phil Jützi's Hunger in Waldenburg (1929) document and create a forum for discussing environmental change. The book then looks at film as a visual archive of and catalyst for infrastructure development, focusing on Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927), the mountain films of Arnold Fanck, and the Berlin films Stadt der Millionen (Adolf Trotz, 1925), Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt (Walter Ruttmann, 1927), and Menschen am Sonntag (1930). Nazi-era and postwar films are also examined. By exploring German film history alongside environmental history and theory, this book provides a case study of the power of film within processes of environmental transformation.
Steven Huebner
Verdi and the Art of Italian Opera
Regular price
$130.00
Save $-130.00
A long-needed and up-to-date overview of the syntax and principles that make Verdi's operas so effective and so beloved today.
Verdi's art emerged from a rich array of dramatic and musical practices operative in the Italy of his day. Drawing the reader into his creative world, this study (translated from the French original by the author himself) begins where Verdi began when it came time to set notes to paper: the libretto. Designed for the non-Italophone reader, Steven Huebner's Verdi and the Art of Italian Opera explains key principles of Italian poetry that shaped his music. From there, Huebner outlines the various musical textures available to the composer, including an exploration of the characteristics of recitative and aria. Working outward, subsequent chapters explore the syntax of Verdi's melodic writing and the larger-level forms that he used. A concluding chapter considers ways of conceiving musical unity in his operas.
Susan Haynes
Charles Bridgeman (c.1685-1738)
Regular price
$130.00
Save $-130.00
An examination of the garden plans of eighteenth-century landscape architect Charles Bridgeman, shedding light on his artistic vision and contributions to English garden history.
Charles Bridgeman was a popular and highly successful landscape architect in the first part of the eighteenth century. He was Royal Gardener to George I and George II, designing the gardens at Kensington Palace for them and working for many of the ruling Whig elite, including Sir Robert Walpole at Houghton Hall in Norfolk. His landscapes were audacious and monumental, but he is barely known outside the world of academic garden history; most of his gardens have disappeared, changed out of all recognition to chime with later tastes shaped by Lancelot Brown's vision of a more "natural" landscape, or buried under housing developments and golf courses; and there is little archaeological or written evidence of his work.
This book aims to redress this injustice and rescue his legacy. It draws on the only significant body of evidence which survived him: an extensive but wildly heterogenous corpus of garden plans. Close examination of them reveals an artistic vision heavily influenced by the late seventeenth-century geometric garden but deeply rooted in the "genius of the place", and working methods that include a proto-business model which prefigures the gentleman improvers who followed him. The volume brings him from obscurity to demonstrate his skill as an artist, a manipulator of space on a grand scale and a consummate practitioner, a deserved member of the canon of famous and revered English landscape gardeners.
Patrick W. Hayes
Ireland’s Sea Fisheries, 1400-1600
Regular price
$130.00
Save $-130.00
This book examines the environmental, political, and economic history of Ireland's marine fisheries from 1400 to 1600.
It combines a wide range of historical sources with innovative digital research methods to provide a comprehensive and systematic overview. Government letters and court documents highlight the diverse range of fishing fleets from across Europe that visited Irish waters in the early sixteenth century, bringing wealth and cultural influence to the native Irish, who developed complex systems to protect and tax the visitors. Furthermore, trade records illustrate that fish was Ireland's premier export in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. However, a range of factors led to the industry's collapse by the end of the sixteenth century: the Tudor conquest which disrupted fishing operations and fundamentally altered who controlled fishing resources; the destabilization of Irish waters resulting from the terrestrial conflict, which allowed pirates to thrive; an influx of cheap cod from the newly exploited fisheries in Newfoundland which changed consumption patterns in Ireland and across Europe; and shifting climatic conditions and decades of over-exploitation which meant fewer fish and poorer catches. Overall, the book reveals that fisheries form a vital part of the broader environmental, political, and economic history of Ireland.
Edited by James Pearce and Ward Risvold
Renaissance Papers 2022
Regular price
$120.00
Save $-120.00
Renaissance Papers collects the best scholarly essays submitted each year to the Southeastern Renaissance Conference. The theme of this year's volume is "sacred places, secular spaces." It begins with a "who is it" mystery, examining two portraits by Raphael that embody the sacred and the profane, respectively. The next essay engages both the sacred and pictorial innovationsin Holbein's predella The Dead Christ; while the following one views the sacred through the critical lens of race, arguing that Northern European churchmen normalized views on race by strategically placing racialized artifacts in their churches. The scene then shifts to 16th century Venice, where the Greek community contended with local authorities over the right to establish a sacred site for interring their dead. The next two essays swing the pendulum toward the secular: an essay on ecocriticism suggests that the early modern period expelled the sacred from nature and presents a Rabelaisian antidote, while an essay on Spenser's The Faerie Queene presents it as a blueprint for colonization. The volume concludes with
Contributors: Julie Fox-Horton, Lorenz A. Hindrichsen, Heather Hirschfeld, Elizabeth Lisot-Nelson, Jesse Russell, Victor Velázquez, John N. Wall, Jennifer Wu. The journal is edited by Jim Pearce of North Carolina Central University and Ward Risvold of Georgia College and State University.
Benjamin Darnell
Maritime Power and the Power of Money in Louis XIV’s France
Regular price
$130.00
Save $-130.00
A detailed analysis of the limitations of the system which relied on intermediaries and private suppliers to finance, build and maintain the French navy.
Although Louis XIV's navy did not "win" in any recognisable sense during the wars of the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, it was nevertheless one of the largest military institutions of the entire early modern world at a key moment in the evolution of the modern state and modern warfare. This book examines how Louis XIV's navy was financed, arguing that the way the state spends money, and the relative efficiency and accountability of that spending, is fundamental to understanding the effectiveness of a military system. It outlines how the French crown depended on fiscal intermediaries and private suppliers, explores how its failure to control the spending and activities of its contractors fundamentally limited France's strategic possibilities at sea, and discusses how these structural problems were progressively and disastrously exposed as the state's financial situation deteriorated. The book sets the activities of the French navy in the wider context of the wars of the period, showing that France necessarily had to give precedence to the funding of its army. Overall, the book highlights the limitations of the contractor state, demonstrating that early modern navies were both too complex and investment-heavy to be entirely outsourced.
Gustav Djupsjöbacka
The Songs of Jean Sibelius
Regular price
$190.00
Save $-190.00
A landmark in Sibelius scholarship, this is the first book that presents all of Sibelius's solo art songs in their musical and aesthetic context. Indispensable for scholars and performers alike.
This is the first book to discuss the complete solo art songs of Jean Sibelius and to locate them in their musical, literary and artistic context. The book is organized around the poets Sibelius set to music and the literary themes associated with them, thus providing invaluable information for the scholar, student and performer. The musical and aesthetic contextualisation of the songs will help to enable new interpretations on the performance stage.
Paul Watt
Music, Morality and Social Reform in Nineteenth-Century Britain
Regular price
$120.00
Save $-120.00
A pioneering work which delves into and reveals the links between music, moral instruction and social reform.
This book discusses the role of music in programmes of personal improvement and social reform in nineteenth-century Britain. The pursuit of morality through music was designed not just to improve personal and communal character but to affect social change and transformation. The book examines the musical education of children, women and men through a variety of literature published for various educational settings including mechanics' institutes. It also considers the role of music in narratives of social programs and community-building projects that sought to promote utility, well-being and freedom from the strictures of Christianity as the dominant moral and cultural force.
The first book to connect the threads between music, moral instruction and social reform across the educational life cycle in nineteenth-century Britain, it shows how these threads are found in unlikely places, such as games, manners books, economics treatises and short stories. It deftly illustrates the links between everyday life, popular culture and discourses of morality and social reform of the period.
Katherine E Calvert
Modeling Motherhood in Weimar Germany
Regular price
$120.00
Save $-120.00
Reveals how socialist discourses and psychoanalytic ideas shaped the modern models of motherhood envisioned by left-wing and socially critical women writers working in the Weimar press and literary spheres.
Women's experiences and opportunities in the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) were shaped by tensions between advances in women's rights and widespread adherence to conservative notions of gender roles and women's maternal duty. This book explores these tensions, which were particularly pronounced on the political left, by analyzing socialist and socially critical women writers' interventions in contemporary debates on gender and women's role in society. For women in Weimar Germany, writing represented a subversive medium through which they could individualize reproductive politics and imagine modern models of mothering.
Relatable and aspirational mothering practices and mother figures feature in the literary and journalistic texts examined in this book. Theoretical and instructional works (by Alice Rühle-Gerstel and Henny Schumacher) and examples from the Social Democratic women's magazine Frauenwelt demonstrate how women writers adopted and adapted emerging psychological ideas to position their texts as modern and authoritative. A close analysis of critically neglected didactic texts (by Hermynia Zur Mühlen, Maria Leitner, Elfriede Brüning, and Else Kienle) and socially critical popular fiction (by Irmgard Keun, Vicki Baum, and Gabriele Tergit) exposes how women writers envisaged models of motherhood and family that were compatible with their political beliefs and modern lifestyles. This book reveals a pragmatic discourse that advocated progressive policies regarding reproductive choice and the rights of single mothers while leaving notions of women's maternal nature and duty largely unchallenged.
Ying Diao
Faith by Aurality in China’s Ethnic Borderland
Regular price
$130.00
Save $-130.00
Illuminates how voice, faith, and hearing become intertwined with technologies of sound reproduction and mobility amid the rapidly transforming religious landscape of China's ethnic borderland.
The twentieth-century expansion of Protestantism among the upland peoples in the China-Southeast Asia borderlands has catalyzed a profound sociocultural change in the region. In Faith by Aurality in China's Ethnic Borderland, Ying Diao finds important sonic evidence for this religious revolution in the rapidly transforming region of northwest Yunnan, presenting a compelling account of the region's Christian minority and highlighting the importance of aurality in this group's response to Christianity and other modernizing projects. Diao documents a range of sounded religious practices by the Lisu, an indigenous yet historically migratory people, to examine how participatory music production, circulation, and consumption become integral to indigenous perception and experience of faith.
Weaving together evidence from multisite fieldwork, archival records, and audiovisual media, Diao demonstrates a nuanced understanding of people of faith at the margins, one centered on the sensual and material dimensions of religion and on the intertwining of local agency and external hegemonic forces. The resulting book provides historical and contextual information that enriches anthropological, ethnomusicological, and historical scholarship on global Christianity while showing how sound can be an ambivalent but fruitful avenue through which ways of faith are constructed in a context where religion remains voiceless.
Mary Bateman
Local Place and the Arthurian Tradition in England and Wales, 1400-1700
Regular price
$130.00
Save $-130.00
The first in-depth study of Arthurian places in late medieval and early modern England and Wales.
Winner of the 2024 Dhira B. Mahoney Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Book in Arthurian Studies
Places have the power to suspend disbelief, even concerning unbelievable subjects. The many locations associated with King Arthur show this to be true, from Tintagel in Cornwall to Caerleon in Wales. But how and why did Arthurian sites come to proliferate across the English and Welsh landscape? What role did the medieval custodians of Arthurian abbeys, churches, cathedrals, and castles play in "placing" Arthur? How did visitors experience Arthur in situ, and how did their experiences permeate into wider Arthurian tradition? And why, in history and even today, have particular places proven so powerful in defending the impression of Arthur's reality?
This book, the first in-depth study of Arthurian places in late medieval and early modern England and Wales, provides an answer to these questions. Beginning with an examination of on-site experiences of Arthur, at locations including Glastonbury, York, Dover, and Cirencester, it traces the impact that they had on visitors, among them John Hardyng, John Leland, William Camden, who subsequently used them as justification for the existence of Arthur in their writings. It shows how the local Arthur was manifested through textual and material culture: in chronicles, notebooks, and antiquarian works; in stained glass windows, earthworks, and display tablets. Via a careful piecing together of the evidence, the volume argues that a new history of Arthur begins to emerge: a local history.
Caroline Anne Metcalfe
The Brewers’ Book, Part 1, 1418-25
Regular price
$105.00
Save $-105.00
The Brewers' Book was compiled by their clerk from 1418-40. This rare survival shines a light upon the craft and fraternity of Brewers of London at a time of change, when ale production faced competition from beer brewers. The clerk declared his intention to use English, as King Henry V did in letters from France, rather than Latin and French, which gives the book a linguistic significance. By 1418, the company had its own hall, in St Mary Aldermanbury parish. The clerk recorded entries to the freedom and the fraternity, annual payments, the men and women who bought livery cloth, and preparations for the annual feast. In 1423 the Brewers created an almshouse for their poor members and listed the building works and costs involved. The Brewers faced criticism and hostility from mayor Richard Whittington, which are documented vividly. The Brewers supplied ale to the household of Queen Katherine and for her coronation. The clerk wrote an account of the funeral processions for King Henry V in 1422 in London and Westminster, noting the role played by the London crafts.
Edited by Cate Gunn, Liz Herbert McAvoy and Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa
Women and Devotional Literature in the Middle Ages
Regular price
$130.00
Save $-130.00
Essays on women and devotional literature in the Middle Ages in commemoration and celebration of the respected feminist scholar Catherine Innes-Parker.
Silence was a much-lauded concept in the Middle Ages, particularly in the context of religious literature directed at women. Based on the Pauline prescription that women should neither preach nor teach, and should at all times keep speech to a minimum, the concept of silence lay at the forefront of many devotional texts, particularly those associated with various forms of women's religious enclosure. Following the example of the Virgin Mary, religious women were exhorted to speak seldom, and then only seriously and devoutly. However, as this volume shows, such gendered exhortations to silence were often more rhetorical than literal. The contributions range widely: they consider the English 'Wooing Group' texts and female-authored visionary writings from the Saxon nunnery of Helfta in the thirteenth century; works by Richard Rolle and the Dutch mystic Jan van Ruusbroec in the fourteenth century; Anglo-French treatises, and books housed in the library of the English noblewoman Cecily Neville in the fifteenth century; and the resonant poetics of women from non-Christian cultures. But all demonstrate the ways in which silence, rather than being a mere absence of speech, frequently comprised a form of gendered articulation and proto-feminist point of resistance. They thus provide an apt commemoration and celebration of the deeply innovative work of Catherine Innes-Parker (1956-2019), the respected feminist scholar and a pioneer of this important field of study.
Theodor Fontane, translated and with an introduction by Rachael Huener
Mathilde Möhring
Regular price
$75.00
Save $-75.00
The first English translation of Fontane's late, posthumously published novel, featuring the eponymous, complex heroine and confronting issues regarding gender roles and marriage that still resonate today.
Theodor Fontane hesitated to publish his late novel Mathilde Möhring because he believed it was too subtle and spare for the popular taste of the day. Published posthumously in 1906, its themes - corrosive economic precarity, the ambivalence of marriage for women, and the burden of work expectations for men - resonate uncannily with readers today. The heroine Mathilde and her mother cling to the underside of the lower middle class by renting out a room in their small Berlin apartment. Their new tenant seems to offer a path to middle-class security, so although marriage is not her first choice, Mathilde applies her shrewd understanding of class mores to pursue it - with results both triumphant and catastrophic. The last among Fontane's powerfully drawn female protagonists, Mathilde is unlike any previous heroine of a German novel: intelligent and energetic but plain and deeply pragmatic. We follow the fearless but flawed Mathilde from the bustling metropolis of Berlin to Woldenstein, a sleepy backwater town she single-handedly transforms, and back. Unknown in the English-speaking world, this compact work has the humor and pathos familiar to readers of Fontane, and is powerfully evocative of the politics of class, gender, and religion in late 19th-century Germany. An introduction, afterword, and extensive endnotes richly contextualize the work for both general readers and students of literature, history, gender studies, and German studies.
Walter E.A. van Beek, Harrie M. Leyten
Masquerades in African Society
Regular price
$170.00
Save $-170.00
Explores the dynamics of African masquerades and mask performances on the continent, linking performative expressions to societal characteristics.
What is the meaning of masks and masquerades in African traditions and how can we understand their role in rituals and performances? Why do we find masks in some African regions and not in others, and what does this 'mask habitat' say about the general dynamics of masquerades in Africa? Though masks are among the most famous art icons of Africa, exploration of their uses and the way in which they articulate social characteristics of African societies has been underexamined. This book takes an anthropological perspective on the phenomenon of masquerades on the African continent to show how mask rituals are an integral part of African indigenous religions and societies, and are informed by and linked to specific types of social and ecological conditions. Having established the commonalities of mask rituals and a mask typology, the authors look at the varieties of mask performances and the types of rituals in which masks function in rites of passage and in rituals of gender, power, and identity. The following chapters focus on different types of rituals featuring masks, from initiation and death ceremonies to secrecy, kingship, law and war. With its broad examination of the use of masks on the continent, from Angola to Burkina Faso, Cameroon, DRC, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, this well illustrated book will stand as an authoritative study of the use of masks, of interest not only to those in African Studies but to anthropologists and ethnographers worldwide.
Iain Quinn
Music and Religion in the Writings of Ian McEwan
Regular price
$120.00
Save $-120.00
This book examines Ian McEwan's ability to discern in his writing sentiments that easily resonate with musicians, explores the value of music in exhibiting McEwan's views on the world, and presents his perspective on religion's role within society.
The majority of characters in Ian McEwan's novels are educated members of the middle class, but without any great private financial means and certainly no great affluence. Despite different occupations, whether scientist (Solar), musician (On Chesil Beach, Amsterdam) or surgeon (Saturday), they are faced with moral, ethical, religious and personal dilemmas that bear resonance to a contemporary audience.
Classical music is present throughout McEwan's writings (including his recent Lessons, 2022), mostly not as an accompanying theme but as a necessary part of life's pleasures and for some, essential needs. The combination of music and the unforgettable narrative moments create a unique space for McEwan to translate his views on the world. The value of music, not least as a complementary presence to silence, is portrayed not just as the source of comfort but as a known presence that is dependable to an individual on a near spiritual level. Within his writings there is also a clear understanding of the role of the Church of England as a societal, cultural and established presence within British society. In the literary descriptions of McEwan and other authors this often extends beyond the immediate theological and ecclesiastical concerns of the day. McEwan's writings demonstrate a perceptive knowledge of the nuances of this highly specific cultural dynamic.
McEwan's ability to discern sentiments that easily resonate with musicians place his contribution to the field of music and literature studies in a singular position among living writers discussing classical music in Britain. This book provokes questions for those who encounter these areas for the first time in McEwan's writings, and it offers a place of sustained enquiry for those who have experienced these fields first-hand, whether as listeners, performers, congregants, audience members or scholars across literary, musical or ecclesiastical fields. Iain Quinn's book will be of interest to scholars and students of contemporary British literature, as well as those interested in words and music studies more generally.
Sarah Kerr
Late Medieval Lodging Ranges
Regular price
$85.00
Save $-85.00
This book draws on architectural and archaeological analysis to consider the form, function, use and meaning of late medieval lodging ranges.
While we know a great deal about most elements of the late medieval great house, we understand very little about their lodging ranges, and even less on their contributions to the lived experience of the household and wider society. Why were lodging ranges built, for example, and how were they used?
It is this gap in our knowledge which the present book aims to fill. It draws on archaeological and architectural analysis of lodging ranges to show that they were some of the finest living spaces within the great house, built as accommodation for high-ranking members of the household. Their low-, even single-, occupancy rooms, accessible via individual doors, were innovatory, showing how the idea of privacy developed. The explicit displays of uniformity upon the lodging ranges' symmetrical facades were juxtaposed with variations within.
Surviving lodging ranges (including Wingfield Manor, Middleham Castle and Dartington Hall) are examined, alongside the lost example of Caister Castle, demonstrating how lodging ranges simultaneously reflected and shaped medieval life; the author argues that their very form and stones, and their manipulation of space, enabled them to have multi-faceted functions, including the representation of multiple and even conflicting identities.
Niamh Thornton
María Félix
Regular price
$130.00
Save $-130.00
María Félix (1914-2002) left her mark on Mexican and European film as well as fashion, art and jewellery design. Cartier created one-of-a-kind pieces; Leonora Carrington and Diego Rivera painted portraits; Carlos Fuentes wrote a play; Agustín Lara, a bestselling song. But she was nobody's muse.
Did Félix really bring baby crocodiles to the Cartier boutique to request lifelike copies in a necklace? The story may be apocryphal, but it perfectly encapsulates her powerful, independent and unconventional persona. This book first examines Félix's life and work, reviewing her films and acting style and considering what they say about gender norms and a woman's place on screen. It then turns to her role as curator and benefactor, exploring how art, literature and song sustained her image. It concludes by exploring the persistent interest in her life story and evaluating her significance for contemporary audiences.
Edited by Rolf J. Goebel
A Companion to Sound in German-Speaking Cultures
Regular price
$130.00
Save $-130.00
Explores sonic events and auditory experiences in German-speaking contexts from the Middle Ages to the digital age, opening up new understandings.
As a sub-discipline of cultural studies, sound studies is a firmly established field of inquiry, examining how sonic events and auditory experiences unfold in culturally and historically contingent life situations. Responding to new questions in sound studies in the context of German-speaking cultures, and incorporating up-to-date methodologies, this Companion explores the significance of sound from the Middle Ages and the classical-romantic period through high-capitalist industrial modernity, the Nazi period and the Holocaust, and postwar Germany to the present digital age. The volume examines how sonic events are represented in literary fiction, radio productions, cinema, newsreels, documentaries, sound art, museum exhibitions, and other media, drawing for this inquiry on philosophy, aesthetics, literary criticism, musicology, art theory, and cultural studies. Each essay is a case study - of persons, events, and sonic, visual, or textual artifacts - situating them in wider contexts of culture, history, and politics. The volume not only revisits well-known topics from new angles, but seeks especially to explore neglected issues on the cultural periphery. It assembles original essays by leaders in the field and emerging scholars from the United States and Europe. Offering an advanced introduction to the topic, the Companion is addressed to anyone interested in how the analysis of sound phenomena opens up new understandings of German-speaking cultures.
Lavinia Griffiths
Personification in Piers Plowman
Regular price
$120.00
Save $-120.00
Published by Boydell & Brewer Inc.
Stephanie Newell
Newsprint Literature and Local Literary Creativity in West Africa, 1900s – 1960s
Regular price
$120.00
Save $-120.00
Groundbreaking examination of literary production in West African newspapers and local printing presses in the first half of the 20th century.
From their inception in the 1880s, African-owned newspapers in 'British West Africa' carried an abundance of creative writing by local authors, largely in English. Yet to date this rich and vast array of work has largely been ignored in critical discussion of African literature and cultural history. This book, for the first time, explores this under-studied archive of ephemeral writing - from serialised fiction to poetry and short stories, philosophical essays, articles on local history, travelogues and reviews, and letters - and argues for its inclusion in literary genres and anglophone world literatures. Combining in-depth case studies of creative writing in the Ghana and Nigeria press with a major reappraisal of the Nigerian pamphlets known as 'Onitsha market literature', and focusing on non-elite authors, the author examines hitherto neglected genres, styles, languages, and, crucially, readerships. She shows how local print cultures permeated African literary production, charting changes in literary tastes and transformations to genres and styles, as they absorbed elements of globally circulating English texts into formats for local consumption. Offering fresh trajectories for thinking about local and transnational African literary networks while remaining attuned to local textual cultures in contexts of colonial power relations, anticolonial nationalism, the Cold War and global circuits of cultural exchange, this important book reveals new insights into ephemeral literature as significant sites of literary production, and contributes to filling a gap in scholarship on colonial West Africa.
Winner: 2024 Gustav Ranis International Book Prize
Carlos Fernández
César Vallejo, Trilce y dadá París
Regular price
$130.00
Save $-130.00
Por razones que aquí se revelan, César Vallejo ocultó la condición vanguardista de Trilce, obra maestra de la lírica hispánica, publicada en Lima en octubre de 1922. Muchos poemas de este enigmático libro dejan, sin embargo, pocas dudas al respecto: estamos ante la cima de este estilo histórico en nuestra lengua. El juego con el lenguaje del afamado poeta peruano incorpora neologismos, innovaciones tipográficas, símbolos e imágenes chocantes que son centrales para un tejido lingüístico que desafía con frecuencia las formas ortodoxas de la coherencia.
Esta monografía examina la organización de Trilce en detalle, sitúa la obra en su contexto literario y en la trayectoria de Vallejo; además, investiga las circunstancias que rodearon la composición de Trilce y produce un análisis de la cubierta, el prólogo y los poemas de la primera edición y sus ascendientes poéticos. El libro argumenta que el encuentro de Vallejo con dadá París tuvo un impacto decisivo en la poética de Vallejo y, por consiguiente, en Trilce. A lo largo de sus páginas, defiende, incluso frente a algunas declaraciones de Vallejo mismo el lugar preeminente de Trilce entre la poesía de vanguardia y, especialmente, entre las obras de filiación dadaísta.
César Vallejo hid the avant-garde status of Trilce, a masterpiece of Hispanic poetry published in Lima in October 1922. Many of the poems in his enigmatic book, however, leave little doubt that it is the pinnacle of this historical style in the Spanish language.
The language games of the famous Peruvian poet incorporate neologisms, typographical innovations, symbols and images that are central to a linguistic texture that frequently defies orthodox forms of coherence.
This book examines the creation of Trilce in detail, setting the work in its literary context and the trajectory of Vallejo's own poetic development. Investigating the circumstances surrounding Trilce's composition and providing a close analysis of the cover, prologue and poems of first edition as well as its filiations, the book argues that Vallejo's encounter with Dada Paris had a major impact on his aesthetics and, accordingly, on Trilce. Throughout, it argues, pace Vallejo himself, for Trilce's pre-eminent place in avant-garde and, especially, Dadaist poetics.
David Jasper and Jeremy J. Smith
Reinventing Medieval Liturgy in Victorian England
Regular price
$130.00
Save $-130.00
In 1879, Canon Thomas Frederick Simmons edited the late medieval poem now known as The Lay Folks' Mass Book creating what remains the standard edition of the text. This volume shows how Simmons' interest in the text was related profoundly to contemporary debates about worship in the Church of England, and how he used his medievalist researches as the basis for the most important attempt at Prayer Book revision between the Reformation and the twentieth century.
Sir John Bellenden of Auchnoull
Personal Correspondence of Sir John Bellenden of Auchnoull and His Circle, 1560-1582
Regular price
$60.00
Save $-60.00
This collection of forty-nine letters, edited in full here for the first time, are addressed to Sir John Bellenden of Auchnoull (1520?-1576) or members of his circle and offer a precious window onto the turbulent and often obscure history of Orkney and Shetland in the sixteenth century as the Northern Isles were subject to increasing intervention from the Scottish mainland. Anderson and Ballantyne provide an extensive contextual introduction and annotate the letters themselves as well as providing a glossary of the more obscure Middle Scots words used. This edition will join previous works by these two authors, including Anderson's monographs on the Stewart earls of Orkney and Ballantyne's Shetland Documents, as an indispensable resource for the early modern history of the Northern Isles.
Professor K. Sarah-Jane Murray
The Medieval French Ovide moralisé [3 Volume Set]
Regular price
$410.00
Save $-410.00
First English translation of one of the most influential French poems of the Middle Ages.
The anonymous Ovide moralisé (Moralized Ovid), composed in France in the fourteenth century, retells and explicates Ovid's Metamorphoses, with generous helpings of related texts, for a Christian audience. Working from the premise that everything in the universe, including the pagan authors of Graeco-Roman Antiquity, is part of God's plan and expresses God's truth even without knowing it, the Ovide moralisé is a massive and influential work of synthesis and creativity, a remarkable window into a certain kind of medieval thinking. It is of major importance across time and across many disciplines, including literature, philosophy, theology, and art history.
This three volume set offers an English translation of this hugely significant text - the first into any modern language. Based on the only complete edition to date, that by Cornelis de Boer and others completed in 1938, it also reflects more recent editions and numerous manuscripts. The translation is accompanied by a substantial introduction, situating the Ovide moralisé in terms of the reception of Ovid, the mythographical tradition, and its medieval French religious and intellectual milieu. Notes discuss textual problems and sources, and relate the text to key issues in the thought of theologians such as Bonaventure and Aquinas.
Francis Young
The Franciscans in Medieval Bury St Edmunds
Regular price
$85.00
Save $-85.00
A volume of translated documents chronicling the conflict between Franciscan friars and Benedictine monks in medieval Bury St Edmunds and the subsequent Franciscan community at Babwell
Between 1233 and 1263 Franciscan friars engaged in a fierce confrontation with one of the most powerful abbeys in western Christendom, St Edmunds Abbey. Bringing together the documents that describe the sometimes violent and destructive conflict, which was litigated in both the royal court and the papal curia, this volume traces the history of the Franciscan presence at Bury St Edmunds both before and after the friars established a permanent home at Babwell Fen outside the town's North Gate in 1265. The controversy created by the arrival of mendicant friars was one of the major religious events of thirteenth-century Europe; the events in Bury are the best evidenced in England, and among the most richly documented mendicant-monastic conflicts in Europe. The volume includes documents produced by the monks of St Edmunds, the royal chancery, the papal curia and the friars themselves, chronicling a mendicant community that continued to challenge and disrupt the authority of the Abbey over Bury St Edmunds.
Edited by S.D. Church
Anglo-Norman Studies XLV
Regular price
$130.00
Save $-130.00
"A series which is a model of its kind": Edmund King
This year's volume is made up of articles that were presented at the conference in Bonn, held under the auspices of the University. In this volume, Alheydis Plassmann, the Allen Brown Memorial lecturer, analyses how two contemporary commentators reported the events of their day, the contest between two grandchildren of William the Conqueror as they struggled for supremacy in England and Normandy during the 1140s. The Marjorie Chibnall Essay prize winner, Laura Bailey, examines the geographical spaces occupied by the exile in The Gesta Herewardi and Fouke le Fitz Waryn. Andrea Stieldorf compares the seals and the coins of Germany/Lotharingia in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries with those made in England, exploring the ideas embedded in the iconography of the two connected visual sources. Domesday Book forms the focus of two important new studies, one by Rory Naismith looking at the moneyers to be found in Domesday, adding substantially to the information gained on this important group of artisans, and one by Chelsea Shields-Más on the sheriffs of Edward the Confessor, giving us new insights into the key officials in the royal administration. Elisabeth van Houts examines the life of Empress Matilda before she returned to her father's court in 1125 throwing new light on Matilda's "German" years, while Laura Wangerin looks at how tenth-century Ottonian women used communication to further their political goals. Steven Vanderputten takes the challenge of thinking about religious change at the turn of the Millennium through the lens of the Life of John, Abbot of Gorze Abbey, by John of Saint-Arnoul. Benjamin Pohl looks at the role of the abbot in prompting monk-historians to embark on their historiographical tasks through the work of one individual chronicler, Andreas of Marchiennes, responsible for writing, at his abbot's behest, the Chronicon Marchianense. And Megan Welton explores the implications of honorific titles through an examination of the title dux as it was attached to two tenth-century women rulers. The volume offers a wide range of insightful essays which add considerably to our understanding of the central middle ages.
Dr Esther Fernández
Tirso de Molina: Interdisciplinary Perspectives from the Twenty-First Century
Regular price
$130.00
Save $-130.00
The first comprehensive study of Tirso de Molina and his work in English
Tirso de Molina (c.1583-c.1648) may not have written El Burlador de Sevilla, but the works of this prolific author, one of the three pillars of Golden Age Spanish theatre, are notable for their erudition, complex characters, and wit. Informed by a multidisciplinary critical perspective, this volume sets Tirso's plays and prose in their social, historical, literary, and cultural contexts. Contributors from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Spain offer a state of the art in current scholarship, considering such topics as gender, identity, spatiality, material culture, and creative performativity, among others. The first volume in English to provide a richly detailed overview of Tirso's life and work, Tirso de Molina: Interdisciplinary Perspectives from the Twenty-First Century grounds the reader in canonical theories while suggesting new approaches, attuned to contemporary interests, to his legacy.
Professor Peter Brown
England and Bohemia in the Age of Chaucer
Regular price
$130.00
Save $-130.00
New essays examining Bohemia as a key European context for understanding Chaucer's poetry.
Chaucer never went to Bohemia but Bohemia came to him when, in 1382, King Richard II of England married Anne, daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles IV. Charles's splendid court in Prague was renowned across Europe for its patronage of literature, art and architecture, and Anne and her entourage brought with them some of its glamour and allure - their fashions, extravagance and behaviour provoking comment from English chroniclers. For Chaucer, a poet and diplomat affiliated to Richard's court, Anne was more muse than patron, her influence embedded in a range of his works, including the Parliament of Fowls, Troilus and Criseyde, the Legend of Good Women and Canterbury Tales.
This volume shows Bohemia to be a key European context, alongside France and Italy, for understanding Chaucer's poetry, providing a wide perspective on the nature of cultural exchange between England and Bohemia in the later fourteenth century. The contributors consider such matters as court culture and politics, the writings of Richard Rolle, artistic style, Troy stories, historiographic writing and travel narrative; they highlight the debt Chaucer owed to Bohemian culture, and the affinities between English and Bohemian literary production, whether in the use of Petrarch's tale of Griselde, the iconography of the tapster figure, or satires on the Passion of Christ.
Mark Goldie
Contesting the English Polity, 1660-1688
Regular price
$130.00
Save $-130.00
What did people in Restoration England think the correct relationship between church state should be? And how did this thinking evolve?
Based on the author's published essays, revised and updated with a new overarching introduction, this book explores the debates in Restoration England about "godly rule". The book assesses some of the crucial transitions in English history: how the late Reformation gave way to the early Enlightenment; how Royalism became Toryism and Puritanism became Whiggism; how the power of churchmen was challenged by virulent anticlericalism; how the verities of "divine right" theory revived and collapsed. Providing a distinctive account of English thought in the era between the two revolutions of the Stuart century, "Contesting the English Polity, 1660-1688" discusses the ideological foundations of emerging party politics, and the deep intellectual roots of competing visions for the commonwealth, placing the power of religion, and the taming of religion, squarely alongside constitutional battles within secular politics.
Nigel Saul
English Medieval Government and Administration
Regular price
$145.00
Save $-145.00
Newly edited documents and commentaries published in honour of one of our foremost historians of English medieval political society
Different from most festschriften, this wide-ranging volume brings together a rich collection of newly edited documents accompanied by commentaries which both set them in context and highlight their importance for historians of medieval England.
Among the many topics covered are the Magna Carta rebellion, the Baronial Wars of the 1260s, the feeding of the royal household, the estates of the thirteenth-century nobility, gentry material culture as revealed by inventories, the workings of the law in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and local political life in Richard II's reign. The volume will be published jointly with the Pipe Roll Society, and the distinguished team of contributors will include both friends and former pupils of the honorand.
Professor John Parham
The Literature and Politics of the Environment
Regular price
$39.95
Save $-39.95
Essays exploring interrelated strands of material ecologies, past and present British politics, and the act of writing, through a rich variety of case studies.
Much as the complexities of climate change and the Anthropocene have queried the limits and exclusions of literary representation, so, too, have the challenges recently presented by climate activism and intersectional environmentalism, animal rights, and even the power of material forms, such as oil, plastic, and heavy metals. Social and protest movements have revived the question of whether there can be such a thing as an activist ecocriticism: can such an approach only concern itself with consciousness, or might it politicise literary criticism in a new way?
Attempting to respond, this volume coalesces around three interrelated strands: material ecologies, past and present British politics, and the act of writing itself. Contributors consider the ways in which literary form has foregrounded the complexities of both matter (in essays on water, sugar, and land) and political economics (from empire and nationalism to environmental justice movements and local and regional communities). The volume asks how life writing, nature writing, creative nonfiction, and autobiography - although genres entrenched in capitalist political realities - can also confront these by reinserting personal experience. Can we bring a more sustainable planet into being by focusing on those literary forms which have the ability to imagine the conditions and systems needed to do so?
Jeffrey Arlo Brown
The Life and Music of Gérard Grisey
Regular price
$130.00
Save $-130.00
The first biography of the composer Gérard Grisey shows how the artist's sensuality and rigor came together to form the musical genre known as spectralism.
The French composer Gérard Grisey (1946-98) changed the course of music history with his small but potent output. Labeled "spectral" music, his compositions looked to the physics of sound and the capacities of human perception for material and inspiration. Born in Belfort, Grisey was the son of a French Resistance veteran turned car mechanic and a homemaker. His first instrument was as humble as his background: the accordion. But Grisey rose from his provincial background to the heights of his profession.
This first biography of Grisey traces his journey from rigid Catholicism to broader mysticism; his studies in Olivier Messiaen's legendary composition class; the development of the first "spectral" works in the 1970s; Grisey's stint teaching at the University of California at Berkeley, during which he suffered severe depression; the development of his late, post-spectral style; and his untimely death at the age of 52, shortly after completing his masterpiece on death, the Four Songs for Crossing the Threshold. Drawing on original archival research, interviews with more than fifty of Grisey's colleagues, friends, and lovers, and the study of previously overlooked sketches, this biography shows the delirium and form at the heart of Grisey's life and art—the structured sensuality that allowed him to revolutionize the music of the twentieth century.
Amy Williams and Bill Niven
National and Transnational Memories of the Kindertransport
Regular price
$130.00
Save $-130.00
The first transnational study of the memory of the Kindertransport and the first to explore how it is represented in museums, memorials, and commemorations.
The Kindertransport, the rescue of ca. 10,000 Jewish children from the Nazi sphere of control and influence before the Second World War, has often been framed as a "British story." This book recognizes that even though most of the "Kinder" were initially brought to the UK and many stayed, it was more than that. It therefore compares British memory of the Kindertransport to that of other host nations (the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand). It is the first book to ask how the Kindertransport is remembered both in the countries of origin, particularly Germany, and in the host nations, as well as the first to analyze how it is represented in museums, memorials, and commemorations. Seeing memory of the Kindertransport in the host nations and in Germany as significantly different, the study argues that the different national memory discourses around the Nazi persecution of Jews shape the respective countries' images of the Kindertransport, and that those images in turn shape the discourses - especially in Britain. Yet while national memory frameworks remain crucial to how the Kindertransport is remembered, the book also documents the increasing significance of transnational memory trends that link the host nations with each other and with the countries from which the children originated.
Edited by Marjorie Roth and Leonard George
Explorations in Music and Esotericism
Regular price
$130.00
Save $-130.00
Scholars explore from many fresh angles the interweavings of two of the richest strands of human culture - music and esotericism - with examples from the medieval period to the modern age.
Music and esotericism are two responses to the intuition that the world holds hidden order, beauty, and power. Those who compose, perform, and listen to music have often noted that music can be a bridge between sensory and transcendent realms. Such renowned writers as Boethius expanded the definition of music to encompass not only sounded music but also the harmonic fabric of human and cosmic life. Those who engage in pursuits called "esoteric," from ancient astrology, magic, and alchemy to recent and more novel forms of spirituality, have also remarked on the relevance of music to their quests. Esotericists have composed music in order to convey esoteric meaning, performed music to create esoteric influences, and listened to music to raise their esoteric awareness.
The academic study of esotericism is a young field, and few researchers have probed the rich interface between the musical and esoteric domains. In Explorations in Music and Esotericism, scholars from numerous fields introduce the history of esotericism and current debates about its definition and extent. The book's sixteen chapters present rich instances of connections between music and esotericism, organized with reference to four aspects of esotericism: as a form of thought; as the keeping and revealing of secrets; as an identity; and as a signifier.
Edited by Marjorie Roth and Leonard George. Contributors: Elizabeth Abbate, Malachai Komanoff Bandy, Adam Bregman, Charles E. Brewer, Benjamin Dobbs, Anna Gawboy, Pasquale Giaquinto, Adam Knight Gilbert, Joscelyn Godwin, Virginia Christy Lamothe, Andrew Owen, Christopher Scheer, Codee Ann Spinner, Woodrow Steinken, and Daphne Tan.
Dr Alessandro Testa
Popular Culture, Identity, and Politics in Contemporary Catalonia
Regular price
$120.00
Save $-120.00
Grounded in ethnographic research, this edited collection examines the intersections between grassroots culture, local identities, and the politics of catalanisme and independentisme from the end of the Francoist period to the present day. Through studies of various cultural manifestations including festivals, human tower-building, gastronomy, and bull-runs, chapters explore how civil mobilisation, women's increasing participation in the public sphere, and issues of gentrification and heritagisation have intertwined with identity politics and nationalist trends. An important consideration is how a popular culture centred on sociability responded to the lockdowns and restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic. More generally, the book reflects on the politicisation of culture and its role in nation-building, problematising such concepts as 'inclusion', 'integration', 'authenticity', 'belonging', and 'identity'.
Performing Arts and Gender in Postcolonial Western Uganda
Regular price
$130.00
Save $-130.00
Focusing on runyege, the main traditional performance genre of the Banyoro and Batooro people, this book explores the entanglement of traditional music, dance, and theater with gender and postcolonialism in Western Uganda.
Drawing on archival research and extensive fieldwork in the regions of Bunyoro and Tooro, Linda Cimardi examines the connection between traditional performing arts and gender in western Uganda. The book focuses on runyege, the main genre of the Banyoro and Batooro people, exploring its different components of singing, instrument playing, dancing, and acting and identifying their complex relationships to gender models and expressions. Today mainly performed at Ugandan school festivals and by semiprofessional ensembles, repertoires like runyege adhere to stage conventions that have developed over several decades. Some of these conventions are powerful devices allowing the actors involved (performers, teachers, students, adjudicators, and audiences) to collectively shape an image of local culture grounded in a gender binary that is perceived as traditional. At the same time, stage conventions are exploited by some performers to negotiate their gender identities and expressions in unconventional ways, thus challenging hegemonic gender models. Moving between analysis of historical recordings, oral accounts, and present-day fieldwork data and experiences, the book engages in a comprehensive analysis of the postcolonial entanglement of arts and gender.
Audio and video recordings presented in the book can be accessed on the book's companion website, http://hdl.handle.net/1802/37373.
Tony McAleavy with Michael Winterbottom
Malmesbury Abbey 670-1539
Regular price
$85.00
Save $-85.00
Malmesbury Abbey was an institution of national significance throughout the Middle Ages and this book is the first full-length study of its history. Drawing upon particularly rich surviving documentary sources, it describes the monastery's evolution from the late seventh century to the Dissolution in 1539. The place was home to two particularly eminent writers: Aldhelm and William of Malmesbury. The Abbey had many royal connections. It housed the mausoleum of Æthelstan, first king of all England, and was effectively re-founded by King Edgar as part of an elite network of Benedictine communities intended to offer prayers on behalf of the royal house of Wessex. Queen Matilda, wife of Henry I, took a close interest in the monastery's affairs. Henry Plantagenet was present when a massacre took place in the Abbey church in 1153. In the 1320s the monks became caught up in the conflict between Edward II and his baronial opponents. The Abbey was also important architecturally. The church was completely rebuilt at the behest of Bishop Roger of Salisbury, chief minister of Henry I, and the surviving south porch contains some of the finest Romanesque sculpture in England.
Previously neglected or unexamined sources are used extensively. The book reveals for the first time the identity of the Malmesbury monk who wrote the chronicle known as Eulogium Historiarum in the 1360s; his name was Thomas of Bromham and he envisaged a messianic role for the Black Prince. New light is shed on the extraordinary careers of abbots such as William of Colerne who transformed the Abbey's economic fortunes and John of Tintern who was accused of murder and arson. The turbulent final years of the Abbey's existence receive considerable attention, including an account of the spectacular breakdown in discipline in 1527 when Abbot Richard Camme was attacked by a gang of rebellious monks.
Robert C. Lagueux
A Liturgical Play for the Medieval Feast of Fools
Regular price
$95.00
Save $-95.00
A newly identified medieval play for the Feast of Fools, with a new English translation and musical edition ready for performance.
Scholars and non-scholars alike have long been fascinated by the medieval "Feast of Fools", the annual celebration on or around the New Year that came to be known for its inversion of established hierarchies, its boisterousness, and its scurrilous, even sacrilegious, clerical behaviour. However, we now know that many of the most obscene and subversive practices associated with the feast were, in fact, the misunderstandings, exaggerations, or even fabrications of overzealous ecclesiastical reformers.
Our most reliable information about the Feast comes from the scant extant liturgical items that clerical communities actually used during their celebrations. This book shows that the twelfth-century Ordo Joseph from Laon, in France - a play long-known to scholars, telling the story of Joseph the patriarch and his brothers -- is in fact a drama for the Feast of Fools, long hidden in plain sight, intended for performance at Epiphany. It situates the play within the context of the cathedral community's history of biblical exegesis under its school-master Anselm of Laon, proposing "performative gloss" as an important new tool for understanding how medieval liturgical dramas generated meaning. It Includes a new Latin edition of the text, accompanied by an English translation, as well as a musical reconstruction that harnesses the music of Laon's liturgy and finally makes possible a performance of this spectacular, newly identified Feast of Fools drama.
John Barbour
Barbour’s Bruce
Regular price
$240.00
Save $-240.00
Barbour's Bruce (c. 1375) is the oldest substantial piece of literature in Older Scots. It narrates in four-stress couplets the feats of Robert Bruce and his supporters, most notably James Douglas and Thomas Randolph. Their heroic activities, including battles against odds and clever out-manoeuvrings as well as open warfare, provide opportunities for discussion of good leadership, the celebration of freedom, and a construction of Scottishness alongside a narrative with enough verifiable historical detail to make it compelling and convincing. Barbour's narrative implicitly locates Bruce and Douglas against European traditions of the Nine Worthies, particularly Alexander, and shows a sophisticated sense of structure in the central placing of Bannockburn and Bruce's speech on freedom.
This edition by McDiarmid and Stevenson, out of print for several years, is now reissued by the Scottish Text Society. In addition to the text, it provides a full introduction, notes and a glossary.
Michael J.P. Robson
Thomas of Eccleston's De adventu Fratrum Minorum in Angliam ["The Arrival of the Franciscans in England"], 1224-c.1257/8
Regular price
$130.00
Save $-130.00
An indispensable guide to the earliest contemporary account of the Franciscan Order in England.
Known as Friars Minor, Franciscans or Greyfriars, the followers of St Francis of Assisi pioneered a new type of religious life, moving beyond the monastic cloister. Their ministry was to bring the Gospel to life through example, preaching, gesture, drama, music and poetry. Founded in 1209, the movement became rapidly popular and spread widely across Europe.
By around 1257 there were 49 communities In England, housing some 1,242 friars. The story of the Franciscans' arrival, and the growth of the Order up until c.1257/1258, is related by the chronicler Thomas of Eccleston In his De Adventu Fratrum Minorum in Angliam. The story is not untroubled: for example, Eccleston does not shy away from the painful controversies of the later 1230s, when there were deep divisions about the exercise of authority in the Order. He was disturbed by some developments in the Order and showed his support for caution in the schools and in relation to building, at a time when friars were exposed to searching criticisms. The chronological account is accompanied by exemplum materials which illuminate the friars' preaching and teaching, and by a gallery of virtuous individual friars.
This book is the first full-length study of the text, examining it in detail, and providing a careful elucidation.
Hary
Hary’s Wallace
Regular price
$240.00
Save $-240.00
Hary's Wallace is a late fifteenth-century poem in twelve books, recounting the deeds of William Wallace, a leader of the Scots in the First War of Independence. It is an extraordinary and sophisticated piece of work which creates scenes of immense sensual and symbolic intensity to underpin a narrative of Wallace's heroism in the face of struggle, disloyalty and betrayal. Hary draws on other Scottish material, particularly John Barbour's Bruce and Walter Bower's Scotichronicon, to structure his hero's activities, and he uses Chaucerian forms, including the five-stress couplet, to enrich his account and appeal to his contemporary audience. While the poem is best known as the ultimate source for the 1995 film Braveheart, it offers a richer and more complex version of Wallace's career and his contribution to the First War of Independence.
This edition, by Matthew P. McDiarmid, now reissued by the Scottish Text Society after several years out of print, is the standard scholarly edition of the poem, and provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction, notes and glossary.
Fergal O'Leary
Ireland and Empire in the Late Nineteenth Century
Regular price
$130.00
Save $-130.00
This book examines the place of imperialism in the cultural, political and economic life of late nineteenth-century Irish society.
It highlights the tensions which arose because Ireland was at the same time both a colonial subject of Britain, yet also shared aspects of the imperial culture which was being formed during this period. It considers how Empire seeped into everyday Irish life, explores how Irish men and Irish women were intimately bound up with British expansionism, with imperial achievements and setbacks enthusiastically covered in many national and local newspapers, and discusses how Irish politicians and students vehemently debated imperial matters in public. It addresses key questions including: What were the similarities and differences with Britain's imperial experience? Was there a general awareness and understanding of the implications of British overseas expansion? How was Ireland's ambiguous role in Britain's imperial enterprise perceived: did the Irish regard themselves as empire-makers, opponents of British national chauvinism, or occupying a more neutral role? Overall, the book provides a nuanced analysis of the impact of the British Empire in Ireland, demonstrating how the Empire was central to Ireland's late nineteenth-century historical experience - for nationalists and unionists alike.
Wale Adebanwi
Democracy and Nigeria’s Fourth Republic
Regular price
$190.00
Save $-190.00
Examines Nigeria's challenges with consolidating democracy and the crisis of governance arising from structural errors of the state and the fundamental contradictions of society in Nigeria's Fourth Republic.
'Today we are taking a decisive step on the path of democracy,' the newly sworn-in President Olusegun Obasanjo told Nigerians on 27 May 1999. 'We will leave no stone unturned to ensure sustenance of democracy, because it is good for us, it is good for Africa, and it is good for the world.' Nigeria's Fourth Republic has survived longer than any of the previous three Republics, the most durable Republic in Nigeria's more than six decades of independence. At the same time, however, the country has witnessed sustained periods of violence, including violent clashes over the imposition of Sharia'h laws, insurgency in the Niger Delta, inter-ethnic clashes, and the Boko Haram insurgency. Despite these tensions of, and anxieties about, democratic viability and stability in Nigeria, has democratic rule come to stay in Africa's most populous country? Are the overall conditions of Nigerian politics, economy and socio-cultural dynamics now permanently amenable to uninterrupted democratic rule? Have all the social forces which, in the past, pressed Nigeria towards military intervention and autocratic rule resolved themselves in favour of unbroken representative government? If so, what are the factors and forces that produced this compromise and how can Nigeria's shallow democracy be sustained, deepened and strengthened? This book attempts to address these questions by exploring the various dimensions of Nigeria's Fourth Republic in a bid to understand the tensions and stresses of democratic rule in a deeply divided major African state. The contributors engage in comparative analysis of the political, economic, social challenges that Nigeria has faced in the more than two decades of the Fourth Republic and the ways in which these were resolved - or left unresolved - in a bid to ensure the survival of democratic rule. This key book that examines both the quality of Nigeria's democratic state and its international relations, and issues such as human rights and the peace infrastructure, will be invaluable in increasing our understanding of contemporary democratic experiences in the neo-liberal era in Africa.
Edited by Jane E. Lavery and Sarah E. L. Bowskill
The Multimedia Works of Contemporary Latin American Women Writers and Artists
Regular price
$130.00
Save $-130.00
In contemporary Latin America, an emerging crosscurrent of pioneering female writers and artists with an interest in transgressing traditional boundaries of genre, media, gender and nation are using their work to voice dissent against pressing social issues including neo-liberal consumerism, environmental degradation, mass migration and gender violence.
Bringing together analyses by scholars from the US, Europe and Latin America with reflections by Ana Clavel, Eugenia Prado Bassi, Eli Neira, Regina José Galindo, Carla Faesler, Mónica Nepote, Pilar Acevedo, Gabriela Golder, Mariela Yeregui, Jacalyn Lopez Garcia and Lucia Grossberger Morales on their own practice, this volume proposes new critical approaches to new forms of expression which encapsulate rich transnational cultural flows and grass-roots political activism. Via an analysis of multimedia interventions and practice, the volume shows how the work of these women draws attention to the constructed nature of all boundaries and borders, be they between nations or people, in an increasingly globalised and digitalised world.
Andrew Spencer
Thirteenth Century England XVIII
Regular price
$130.00
Save $-130.00
Essays exploring and problematizing the idea of an "exceptional" England within Western Europe during the long thirteenth century.
The theme of this volume, "Exceptional England", follows on from that of the previous one, "England in Europe". Both respond to two long-term historiographical trends among British medievalists: to place England and Britain in a wider European context, and, conversely, to emphasise the differences between developments in England and those elsewhere, either explicitly or implicitly. The essays here, in tackling aspects of political, religious, cultural and urban history, are often concerned with shifts that transcend the "national" because they are driven by forces operating on a European, or at least a western European, scale. A number bring developments in England into conversation with those in other regions, turning not only to France, a traditional comparator, but also ranging further, using Poland, Italy, Spain and Hungary as points of comparison. Others problematise England's boundaries by considering the fates of people caught between worlds as English continental possessions shrank. If England emerges in these essays as rather less "exceptional", some of the contributions highlight its unusually rich sources, suggesting ways in which these riches might illuminate the history of Europe in the long thirteenth century more generally. Particular subjects addressed include the fortunes of the knightly class, the dynamics of episcopal election, and models of child kingship, along with new studies of Gerald of Wales and Simon de Montfort.
Lynn MacKay
Women and the British Army, 1815-1880
Regular price
$130.00
Save $-130.00
This book explores the world of women who married, or dealt with British soldiers below the rank of officer during the nineteenth century, including fiancées, wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters, as well as the prostitutes they consorted with. It examines women's experiences over the time cycle of a soldier's service. It considers women's finances, how they struggled to make ends meet and how they appealed to the government for support, including in widowhood and after a soldier's service had been completed. It discusses how soldiers' women were viewed in the press, in literature and in society more widely, highlighting in particular issues concerning morality and independence, and outlines how the Crimean War and its aftermath brought about extensive army reforms and also a sharp revision of the reputation of soldiers' wives. The book includes an exploration of soldiers' relations with prostitutes and how prostitutes were regulated, and a consideration of the impact on soldiers' wives of physical arrangements such as barracks, and overall provides much insight into the nature of plebeian life in the nineteenth century. The women portrayed often emerge as exceptionally resolute, independent and canny.
Edited by Amélia P. Hutchinson, Juliet Perkins, Philip Krummrich and Teresa Amado
The Chronicles of Fernão Lopes
Regular price
$240.00
Save $-240.00
Volume II of the first complete English translation of the chronicles of Fernão Lopes chronicles the reign of Fernando I (1367-1383) including Portugal's involvement in the Hundred Years' War, the military conflicts with Castile, the alliances with England, Aragon and Granada, the king's marriage with Leonor Teles, and the dispute over the succession to the Portuguese throne.'
Until now, the chronicles of Fernão Lopes (c.1380-c.1460) have only been available in critical editions or in partial translations. Comparable to the works of Froissart in France or López de Ayala in Spain, the chronicles provide a wealth of detail on late fourteenth-century politics, diplomacy, warfare and economic matters, courtly society, queenship and noble women, as well as more mundane concerns such as food, health and the purchasing power of a fluctuating currency. Lopes had a keen eye for detail and a perspective especially attuned to the common people, and his chronicles provide an invaluable source for the history of Western Europe in the later Middle Ages.
Edited by M.C. Siraut with Matthew Bristow and Adam Chapman
A History of the County of Somerset
Regular price
$140.00
Save $-140.00
Authoritative and detailed account of the history of important Somerset parishes, from prehistory to the present day.
This volume, the twelfth in the Somerset series, describes the history of the eastern part of Carhampton Hundred. Bounded by the Bristol Channel and Exmoor with steep hills forming a backdrop to a coastal plain, the area is now dominated by the seaside town of Minehead whose port overtook its neighbour, Dunster, from the early 15th century. The picturesque village of Dunster is one of the county's most enduring tourist attractions, with its castle formerly home to the Mohuns and their successors the Luttrells, the area's dominant landowners. Earlier, the royal estate of Carhampton dominated the whole area and in the Iron Age, the uplands were controlled by a grouping of defensive enclosures.
Minehead thrived on trade with Wales, Ireland, Europe and the West Indies and -from the 19th century - tourists, brought to the area first by steamer and from 1871 by the railway. In the early 21st century Minehead, the genteel seaside resort enlarged in 1962 following the construction of its holiday camp, serves as the commercial hub of the area. Carhampton includes the small resort of Blue Anchor and on the higher ground to the south, the parishes of Timberscombe, and most of Rodhuish and Withycombe lie within the boundaries of Exmoor National Park.
Edited by Melissa Ridley Elmes and Evelyn Meyer
Ethics in the Arthurian Legend
Regular price
$170.00
Save $-170.00
An interdisciplinary and trans-historical investigation of the representation of ethics in Arthurian Literature.
From its earliest days, the Arthurian legend has been preoccupied with questions of good kingship, the behaviours of a ruling class, and their effects on communities, societies, and nations, both locally and in imperial and colonizing contexts. Ethical considerations inform and are informed by local anxieties tied to questions of power and identity, especially where leadership, service, and governance are concerned; they provide a framework for understanding how the texts operate as didactic and critical tools of these subjects.
This book brings together chapters drawing on English, Welsh, German, Dutch, French, and Norse iterations of the Arthurian legend, and bridging premodern and modern temporalities, to investigate the representation of ethics in Arthurian literature across interdisciplinary and transhistorical lines. They engage a variety of methodologies, including gender, critical race theory, philology, literature and the law, translation theory, game studies, comparative, critical, and close reading, and modern editorial and authorial practices. Texts interrogated range from Culhwch and Olwen to Parzival, Roman van Walewein, Tristrams Saga, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Malory's Morte Darthur.
As a whole, the approaches and findings in this volume attest to the continued value and importance of the Arthurian legend and its scholarship as a vibrant field through which to locate and understand the many ways in which medieval literature continues to inform modern sensibilities and institutions, particularly where the matter of ethics is concerned.
Nat Rubner
The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights Volume 2
Regular price
$140.00
Save $-140.00
Landmark study of the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights. Documents on one side the international community's inability to foist a human rights system upon Africa and on the other the process within the OAU (now African Union) that eventually brought it into being and determined its content.
The African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACHPR), which was proposed in 1979, adopted in 1981 and came into effect in 1986, was the first non-Western declaration of human rights and the first official statement of an African human rights perspective. With Africa largely absent in 1948 when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted, it stands in stark historical reproach to the Western conception of universal human rights as a pivotal document in the decolonisation of the continent. This book, for the first time, presents a comprehensive account of the development of the ACHPR, which is key to a proper understanding of its fundamental nature. Through documenting its process of construction, it becomes possible to understand how Africans themselves understood the process and the issues involved and how the ACHPR became a political text asserted by African leaders and not a continuum of a so-called universal human rights tradition. The result is a radical repositioning of the underlying context of the ACHPR, one of the most important documents in modern African history, of how it came to be and how it should therefore be understood.
Volume 2 describes the process through which the ACHPR came into being. Analysing the role of Western governments, the UN and NGOs, it shows that, contrary to the prevailing view of African human rights commentators, their influence was limited and at times counter-productive. That, in fact, the formulation of the ACHPR was a profoundly political process that was primarily a product of an African desire to instigate its own human rights perspective as a counter to the human rights universalism advanced by the Western post-war human rights tradition.
Malcolm Graham
Minutes of the Oxford Paving Commissioners 1771–1801
Regular price
$75.00
Save $-75.00
Oxford Town and Gown came together in 1771 as Paving Commissioners, the city's principal local government body. Within thirty years this remarkable collaboration did much to transform Oxford from a medieval to a modern city.
Eighteenth century Oxford was a place of great contrast with the architectural splendour of its university and college buildings set among narrow streets and timber-framed houses. Ancient gates and market stalls obstructed traffic and rubbish piled up in unpaved streets. Neither Town nor Gown could satisfy the growing appetite for urban improvement so they came together after centuries of rivalry in 1771 in a remarkable collaboration to sponsor a Local Act establishing Oxford Paving Commissioners as the city's principal local government body. The commissioners included the vice-chancellor and the mayor, heads of colleges, professors, councillors and local businessmen. A minority of these commissioners used the authority's extensive powers to rebuild Magdalen Bridge and reshape its approaches, abolish street markets, pull down old buildings, and pave, light and cleanse the streets. Some critics regretted these changes, others wanted more, but all could agree that, within thirty years, Oxford had been transformed.
Edited by Ian Convery, Peter Davis, Karen Lloyd, Owen T. Nevin and Erwin van Maanen
The Wolf
Regular price
$190.00
Save $-190.00
New insights into the changing human attitudes towards wild nature through the depiction of wolves in human culture and heritage.
Few animals arouse such strong opinion as the wolf. It occupies a contested, ambiguous, yet central role in human culture and heritage. It appears as both an inspirational emblem of the wild and an embodiment of evil. Offering a mirror to different human attitudes, beliefs, and values, the wolf is, arguably, the species that plays the greatest role in shaping our views on what nature is or should be.
North America and, more recently, Europe have witnessed a remarkable return of the grey wolf (Canis lupus, and its close relative the Eurasian wolf, Canis lupus lupus) to eco-systems. The essays collected here explore aspects of this recovery, and consider the history, literature and myth surrounding this iconic species. There are chapters on wolf taxonomy, including the coywolf, the red wolf, and the many faces of the dingo. We also meet the Tasmanian wolf and encounter Nazi Werewolves from Outer Space. The book explores the challenges of separating fact from fiction and superstition, and our willingness to co-exist with large carnivores in the twenty-first century. Biologists, historians, anthropologists, cultural theorists, conservationists and museologists will all find riches in the detail presented in this wolf collection.
Matthias D. Berger
National Medievalism in the Twenty-First Century
Regular price
$130.00
Save $-130.00
How ideas and ideals of an imagined, protean, national Middle Ages have once again become a convergence point for anxieties about politics, history and cultural identity in our time - and why.
After a period of abeyance, the link forged in the nineteenth century between the Middle Ages and national identity is increasingly being reclaimed, with numerous groups and individuals mining an imagined medieval past to present ideas and ideals of modern nationhood. Today's national medievalism asserts itself at the interface of culture and politics: in literature and television programming, in journalism and heritage tourism, and in the way political actors of various stripes use a deep past that supposedly proves the nation's steady exceptionalism in a hectic globalised world.
This book traces these ongoing developments in Switzerland and Britain, two countries where the medieval past has recently been much invoked in negotiations of national identity, independence and Euroscepticism. Through comparative analysis, it explores examples of reemerging stories of national exceptionalism - stories that, ironically, echo those of other nations. The author analyses depictions of Robert the Bruce and Wilhelm Tell; medievalism in the discourse surrounding Brexit as well as at the Welsh Senedd; novels like Paul Kingsnorth's The Wake; community-based art such as the Great Tapestry of Scotland; and elaborate public commemorations of Swiss victories (and defeats) in battle. Basing his critical readings in current theories of cultural memory, heritage and nationalism, the author explores how the protean national Middle Ages have once again become a convergence point for anxieties about politics, history and cultural identity in our time - and why.
Bill Kibler
Three Preludes to the Song of Roland
Regular price
$130.00
Save $-130.00
The first complete English translation of three chansons de geste inspired by the Romance epic, the Song of Roland.
The success of the eleventh-century Song of Roland gave rise to a series of around twenty related chansons de geste, known collectively as the Cycle of the King. In addition to reworkings of the Song of Roland in Old French and other medieval languages, these poems are devoted to the numerous military campaigns of Charlemagne against the Muslims before and after the tragic Battle of Roncevaux. These texts provide valuable insights into the medieval reception of the Roland material, exemplifying the process of cycle formation and attesting to the diversity of the Romance epic. Far from presenting a simplistic view of the clash of civilizations, these chansons de geste display a web of contradictions, offering both a glorification and a critique of hatred and violence.
This volume offers English translations of the three epic poems whose action directly precedes the events of the Song of Roland. Gui of Burgundy extends the period of time spent in Spain by Charles and his army from seven to twenty-six years, which gives the sons of the Twelve Peers the opportunity to reach adulthood and come to the rescue of their fathers. Roland at Saragossa, composed in Occitan, takes place in the days immediately preceding the decisive defeat and relates in an heroi-comic manner how Roland sneaks into Saragossa at the request of the pagan Queen Braslimonda, who has been enraptured by his strength and beauty. Finally, Otinel tells of a Saracen envoy who comes to Paris to challenge Charlemagne on behalf of the Emir Garsile, who has his capital in Lombardy. The action takes place in France and northern Italy in a lull between the capture of Pamplona and the defeat at Roncevaux.
The translations are presented with notes, and the volume includes an introduction placing the poems in their wider historical and cultural contexts.
David Michael O’Shea
The Choral Foundation of the Chapel Royal, Dublin Castle
Regular price
$130.00
Save $-130.00
The first investigation into the choral foundation of the Chapel Royal, Dublin Castle.
The Chapel Royal, Dublin Castle, was the place of worship of the British monarch's representative in Ireland from 1814 until the inception of the Irish Free State in 1922. It was founded and maintained by the joint efforts of church and state, and thus its history provides valuable insights into how the relationship between religion and politics shaped Irish society and identity.
The Dublin Chapel was established in imitation of the Chapel Royal of St James's Palace, London, and was served by a staff of clergy and musicians. Its musical foundation was a formal and independent entity, with its own personnel and performance traditions. Its distinctive repertoire included music from the English and Irish cathedral traditions, as well as works written by composers associated directly with the Chapel.
This study investigates the Chapel's constitution, liturgy and music through an examination of previously unexplored primary material. Discussion of the circumstances of the Chapel's founding and its governance structures situates the institution in the context of the church-state relationship that existed following the Union of 1800. Further, by exploring architecture, churchmanship and musical style, O'Shea demonstrates how the Chapel was part of a wider aesthetic and liturgical tradition. The choral foundation is brought to life with accounts of the Chapel's clergy, organists, boy choristers and gentleman singers, which provide insights into Dublin's social history during a period of significant change.
This book reflects on the Dublin Chapel Royal's legacy a century after its closure and offers a new perspective into a forgotten corner of Irish cultural, religious and political history.
Nat Rubner
The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights Volume 1
Regular price
$160.00
Save $-160.00
Landmark study of the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, one of the most important documents in modern African history, that positions it within the African Lives Matter struggle to assert an African identity rather than as simply a human rights document. Describes its underlying African origins and how the principles of the OAU influenced its path and content.
The African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACHPR), which was proposed in 1979, adopted in 1981 and came into effect in 1986, was the first non-Western declaration of human rights and the first official statement of an African human rights perspective. With Africa largely absent in 1948 when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted, it stands in stark historical reproach to the Western conception of universal human rights as a pivotal document in the decolonisation of the continent. This book, for the first time, presents a comprehensive account of the development of the ACHPR, which is key to a proper understanding of its fundamental nature. Through documenting its process of construction, it becomes possible to understand how Africans themselves understood the process and the issues involved and how the ACHPR became a political text asserted by African leaders and not a continuum of a so-called universal human rights tradition. The result is a radical repositioning of the underlying context of the ACHPR, one of the most important documents in modern African history, of how it came to be and how it should therefore be understood. Volume 1 outlines the dominant African political and cultural ideas of the time and their symbiotic relationship with the principles and politics upon which the OAU (now African Union) was founded and upon which it functioned. It thereby draws out the path the ACHPR process was obliged to follow and the influence of the existential desire to counter neo-colonialism in all its forms that helped bring it into being and shaped its content.
Edited by Amélia P. Hutchinson, Juliet Perkins, Philip Krummrich and Teresa Amado
The Chronicles of Fernão Lopes
Regular price
$240.00
Save $-240.00
Volume I of the first complete English translation of the chronicles of Fernão Lopes chronicles the reign of Pedro I (1357-67), dubbed both 'the Just' and 'the Cruel', including his dealings with the kingdom of Castile, the war between Castile and Aragon, and the revenge he took on the men who murdered the woman he loved, Inês de Castro.
Until now, the chronicles of Fernão Lopes (c.1380-c.1460) have only been available in critical editions or in partial translations. Comparable to the works of Froissart in France or López de Ayala in Spain, the chronicles provide a wealth of detail on late fourteenth-century politics, diplomacy, warfare and economic matters, courtly society, queenship and noble women, as well as more mundane concerns such as food, health and the purchasing power of a fluctuating currency. Lopes had a keen eye for detail and a perspective especially attuned to the common people, and his chronicles provide an invaluable source for the history of Western Europe in the later Middle Ages.
Edited by Kelly DeVries, John France and Clifford J. Rogers
Journal of Medieval Military History: Volume XXI
Regular price
$130.00
Save $-130.00
"The leading academic vehicle for scholarly publication in the field of medieval warfare." Medieval Warfare
The twenty-first volume of the Journal of Medieval Military History begins with three studies examining aspects of warfare in the Latin East: an archaeological report on the defenses of Jerusalem by Shimon Gibson and Rafael Y. Lewis; a study of how military victories and defeats (viewed through the lens of carefully shaped reporting) affected the reputation, and the flow of funds and recruits to, the Military Orders, by Nicolas Morton; and an exploration of how the Kingdom of Jerusalem quickly recovered its military strength after the disaster of Hattin by Stephen Donnachie. Turning to the other side of the Mediterranean, Donald J. Kagay analyzes how Jaime I of Aragon worked to control violence within his realms by limiting both castle construction and the use of mechanical artillery. Guilhem Pépin also addresses the limitation of violence, using new documents to show that the Black Prince's sack of Limoges in 1370 was not the unrestrained bloodbath described by Froissart. The remaining three contributions deal with aspects of open battle. Michael John Harbinson offers a large-scale study of when and why late-medieval men-at-arms chose to dismount and fight on foot instead of acting tactically as cavalry. Laurence W. Marvin reconsiders the Battle of Bouvines, concluding that it was far from being a ritualized mass duel. Finally, Michael Livingston elucidates some principles for understanding medieval battles in general, and the battle of Agincourt in particular.
Angela Ida De Benedictis
Utopia, Innovation, Tradition
Regular price
$36.95
Save $-36.95
This book, first collection of essays in English on Bruno Maderna, brings the reader closer to one of the greatest European composer and conductor of the last century.
Utopia, Innovation, Tradition: Bruno Maderna's cosmos is the first collection of essays in English dedicated to one of the most multifaceted and interesting musical personalities of the 20th century, a protagonist in the development of new music after World War II. The various essays cover the most important aspects of Bruno Maderna's peculiar compositional approach and, thanks to innovative methodological perspectives based mainly on the study of archival materials, arrive at new and often completely unexpected interpretations.
Alan Argent
The Angels' Voice
Regular price
$85.00
Save $-85.00
Edition of young men's magazines from just before the First World War, presenting a vivid and touching picture of life at the time.
The Angels' Voice was the title given to a magazine which circulated among a group of some 40 or so young men in Brixton between 1910 and 1913, all members of the Young Men's Bible Class of Trinity Congregational Church there. In its pages they teased each other, their sisters and girlfriends in poetry, drawings and witty, innocent articles. We see them playing football, going on country rambles, roller-skating, cycling, smoking (a lot), arguing about politics and women's rights, taking day trips to France and holidays in the Channel Islands, Belgium and Italy, and even working in Switzerland, India and the Canary Islands. This magazine offers an unique insight into life in London in general, and the lives and attitudes of lower middle-class young men in one suburb in particular, on the eve of the outbreak of the First World War, during which many of them were to serve and several of them were to die; its pages depict the world lost in the trenches of France and Flanders. The magazines are presented here with an introduction and full notes, with an appendix providing biographical information on many of those connected with them.
ALAN ARGENT grew up in south London. He is minister of Trinity Congregational Church, Brixton, and Research Fellow at Dr Williams's Library, London. He has written a biography of Elsie Chamberlain, and a history of Congregationalism in the twentieth century.
Edited by Patricia A. Simpson and Birgit Tautz
Goethe Yearbook 30
Regular price
$90.00
Save $-90.00
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 the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Volume 30 seeks to prompt discussion of new directions in eighteenth-century scholarship with special sections on Enlightenment legacies of race and on the robust scholarship that rethinks the eighteenth-century body beyond the human organism. Beyond the two special sections there are articles on Wieland's Alceste, several essays on sex and gender (e.g., on Goethe's Werther; on gender, genre, and authorship in La Roche and Goethe; and on continued gender bias in scholarship on the German eighteenth century), a co-authored article on Goethe's Roman elegies, and an article on performativity and gestures in Kleist. The customary book review section rounds out the volume.
Chassica Kirchhoff
The Thun-Hohenstein Album
Regular price
$170.00
Save $-170.00
The first extensive study of the depiction of the armour in the Thun-Hohenstein Album against the vibrant artistic and cultural contexts that created it.
In late medieval and early modern Europe, armour was more than a defensive technology for war or knightly sport. Its diverse types formed a complex visual language. Luxury armour was fitted precisely to a wearer's body, and its memorable details declared his status. Empty armour could evoke an owner's physical presence, prompting recollection of knightly personae, glittering pageantry, and impressive feats of arms. Its mnemonic power persisted long after the battle had ended, the trumpets had gone silent, and the dust had settled in the tournament arena.
Previously believed to contain preliminary designs sketched by master armourers, the Thun-Hohenstein album is a bound collection of drawings by professional book painters depicting some of the most artistically and technologically innovative armours of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Like a paper version of the princely armories that first formed during the 1500s, the album's images offered rich sites of meaning and memory. Their organization within the codex suggests the images' significance to their compiler. At the same time, the composition and details allow the reader to trace the transmission of recognizable armours, and the memories they embodied, from the anvil to the page.
This book is the first to examine the album, and the armor it depicts, in their vibrant artistic and cultural context. In five thematic chapters, it moves from case studies of these drawings to explore the album's complex intersections with the genres of martial history, material culture, and literature. It also reveals the album's participation in cultures of remembrance that carried mythic, knightly personae constructed around powerful Habsburg princes forward in time from the Middle Ages into the early modern era, from the courts of the Holy Roman Empire to emerging urban audiences.
Edited by Lynne Tatlock and Kurt Beals
German Literature as a Transnational Field of Production, 1848-1919
Regular price
$130.00
Save $-130.00
A collection of new essays bringing into view the push and pull of the national and the international in the German-language cultural field of the period.
The cultural formations of the so-called Age of Nationalism (1848-1919) have shaped German-language literary studies to the present day, for better or worse. Literary histories, German self-representations, the view from abroad - all of these perspectives offer images of a culture ever more concerned with formulating a coherent, nationally focused idea of its origins, history, and cultural community. But even in this historical moment the German-speaking territories were not culturally self-contained; international forces always played a significant role in the constitution of the so-called "German" literary and cultural field. This volume rethinks the historical period with fourteen case studies that bring into view the push and pull of the national and international in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, undertaking a reframing of literary-cultural history that recognizes the interrelatedness of literatures and cultures across political and linguistic boundaries. Viewing even overtly national literary and cultural projects as belonging to an international system, these case studies examine the interrelations, organization, and positioning of the agents, forces, enterprises, and processes that constituted the German-language literary-cultural field, locating these ostensibly national developments within an inter- or even anti-national context.
Edited by Wolfgang Marx
Music and Death
Regular price
$130.00
Save $-130.00
Music gives specific meanings to our lives, but also to how we experience death; it forms a central part of death rituals, consoles survivors, and celebrates the deceased.
Music & Death investigates different musical engagements with death. Its eleven essays examine a broad range of genres, styles and periods of Western music from the Middle Ages until the present day. This volume brings a variety of methodological approaches to bear on a broad, but non-exhaustive, range of music. These include musical rituals and intercessions on behalf of the departed. Chapters also focus on musicians' reactions to death, their ways of engaging with grief, anger and acceptance, and the public's reaction to the death of musicians.
The genres covered include requiem settings, operas and ballets, arts songs, songs by Leonard Cohen and the B-52s, and instrumental music. There are also broader reflections regarding the psychological links between creative musical practice and the overcoming of grief, music's central role in shaping a specific lifestyle (of psychobillies) and the supposed universalism of Western art music (as exemplified by Brahms).
The volume adds many new facets to the area of death studies, highlighting different aspects of "musical thanatology". It will appeal to those interested in the intersections between western music and theology, as well as scholars of anthropology and cultural studies.
CONTRIBUTORS: Matt BaileyShea, Alexandra Buckle, Peter Edwards, Richard Elliott, Nicole Grimes, Mieko Kanno, Kimberly Kattari, Wolfgang Marx, Fred E. Maus, Jillian C. Rogers, UtaSailer and Miriam Wendling.
Jennifer Lofkrantz
Ransoming Prisoners in Precolonial Muslim Western Africa
Regular price
$120.00
Save $-120.00
Examines African debates on captivity, legal and illegal enslavement, and religious and ethnic identity in the era of West African jihads.
In this pioneering study—the first to cover ransoming, or the release of a prisoner prior to enslavement for cash or kind, in African regions south of the Sahara—Jennifer Lofkrantz focuses on a broad temporal and geographical area ranging from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries and including present-day Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and Morocco. The work concentrates particularly on the nineteenth-century jihad era and on the Sokoto Caliphate and the Umarian States. The overall period was a time of intense intellectual debate over the questions of who was and who was not a Muslim, how Islamic law could and should be implemented, what rights and protections recognized freeborn Muslims should have, and what role governments should play in ensuring those rights especially during a time when slavery was legal.
Ransoming discourses and procedures expose Muslim West African answers to these questions as well as providing a lens on broader issues and ideas on slavery, freedom, and religious and ethnic identity. Based on research conducted mostly in Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and France and on Arabic-, French-, and English-language archival sources, treatises, personal correspondence, oral sources and testimony, biographical data, travel reports, and early colonial documents, this study approaches the question of ransoming of captives through an examination, first, of intellectual debates among pre-nineteenth-century West African scholars on issues of ransoming; second, of nineteenth-century policies based on understandings of those intellectual debates in the context of the jihads; and, finally, of West African practices of ransoming in the nineteenth century.
Stephen Brockmann
The Freest Country in the World
Regular price
$130.00
Save $-130.00
Shows that while the GDR is generally seen as - and mostly was - an oppressive and unfree country, from late 1989 until autumn 1990 it was the "freest country in the world": the dictatorship had disappeared while the welfare system remained.
Stephen Brockmann's new book explores the year 1989/1990 in East Germany, arguing that while the GDR is generally seen as - and was for most of its forty years - an oppressive and unfree country, from autumn 1989 until the autumn of 1990 it was the "freest country in the world," since the dictatorship had disappeared while the welfare system remained. That such freedom existed in the last months of the GDR and was a result of the actions of East Germans themselves has been obscured, Brockmann shows, by the now-standard description of the collapse of the GDR and the reunification of Germany as a triumph of Western democracy and capitalism. Brockmann first addresses the culture of 1989/1990 by looking at various media from that final year, particularly film documentaries. He emphasizes punk culture and the growth of neo-Nazism and the Antifa movement - factors often ignored in accounts of the period. He then analyzes three later semiautobiographical novels about the period. He devotes chapters to dramatic films dealing with German reunification made relatively soon after the event and to more recent film and television depictions of the period, respectively. The final chapter looks at monuments and memorials of the 1989/1990 period, and a conclusion considers the implications of the book's findings for the present day.
Michèle Cohen
Changing Pedagogies for Children in Eighteenth-Century England
Regular price
$120.00
Save $-120.00
Using pedagogy as a lens through which to explore issues of gender, social class, power and hegemony, Cohen's study makes a major new contribution to the study of education in eighteenth-century England.
Through a detailed examination of contemporary methodologies, curricula, and practices this book brings together topics often treated separately: the education of boys and girls of the middling and the upper classes. Further, this study widens the scope of our definition of education to include the often-under-valued field of "accomplishments". Indeed, Cohen shows that accomplishments were a formal part of male and female education, with carefully theorised pedagogies, challenging the enduring perception that these subjects were superficial.
Subject specific chapters on Latin and geography pedagogies examine the relations between these subjects and the competitions which shaped and produced them. While Latin pedagogy dominated eighteenth-century education, geography, as a modern subject, had to develop a new normative pedagogy. Cohen shows that girls were not excluded from learning a science like geography, and that the contemporary perception of the inferiority of their education as opposed to that of boys was constructed as part of the classic vs. modern debate. Further, chapters on debates surrounding public and private education, the Grand Tour, and conversation show that pedagogy is the thread linking education, gender, social class and politics.
This book will be essential reading for historians of education, childhood and gender.
Sarah E. Naramore
Benjamin Rush, Civic Health, and Human Illness in the Early American Republic
Regular price
$130.00
Save $-130.00
Benjamin Rush (1745-1813) casts a long shadow over American medicine as well as over the social and political history of the American republic. The Philadelphia physician involved himself in numerous social, political, and scientific projects while maintaining a busy practice and lecturing to thousands of students over his career. As a result, attempts by historians to make sense of Rush and his world have been complicated and contradictory. Nevertheless, it is within that mixed narrative of the social, medical, and political that Rush's story becomes its most compelling.
At the end of the Revolutionary War, new American citizens found themselves in a new country. For Rush and his colleagues, that newness extended beyond a change in political structure. They believed that the physical challenges of growing cities and western expansion and the psychological challenges of new identities came together in ways that could help or hurt American health. From his vantage point at one of the nation's few medical schools, located in its intellectual capital, Rush developed a reputation as America's physician—while mixing social and scientific ideas for the "improvement" of the country as a whole. Putting Rush in this context, Benjamin Rush, Civic Health, and Human Illness in the Early American Republic goes beyond biography to explore his social and scientific networks and their role in the development of a distinctly American medical profession.
Laurence W. Mazzeno
The Critical Reception of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Regular price
$130.00
Save $-130.00
Examines both academic and popular assessments of Conan Doyle's work, giving pride of place to the Holmes stories and their adaptations, and also attending to the wide range of his published work.
Twenty-first-century readers, television viewers, and moviegoers know Arthur Conan Doyle as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, the world's most recognizable fictional detective. Holmes's enduring popularity has kept Conan Doyle in the public eye. However, Holmes has taken on a life of his own, generating a steady stream of critical commentary, while Conan Doyle's other works are slighted or ignored. Yet the Holmes stories make up only a small portion of Conan Doyle's published work, which includes mainstream and historical fiction; history; drama; medical, spiritualist, and political tracts; and even essays on photography. When Doyle published - whatever the subject - his contemporaries took note. Yet, outside of the fiction featuring Sherlock Holmes, until recently relatively little has been done to analyze the reception Conan Doyle's work received during his lifetime and since his death. This book examines both academic and popular assessments of Conan Doyle's work, giving pride of place to the Holmes stories and their many adaptations for print, visual, and online media, but attending to his other contributions to turn-of-the-twentieth-century culture as well. The availability of periodicals and newspapers online makes it possible to develop an assessment of Conan Doyle's (and Sherlock Holmes's) reputation among a wider readership and viewership, thus allowing for development of a broader and more accurate portrait of Doyle's place in literary and cultural history.
Erica Siegel
The Life and Music of Elizabeth Maconchy
Regular price
$130.00
Save $-130.00
The first full-length biographical study of Elizabeth Maconchy (1907-1994).
The British-born Irish composer (Dame) Elizabeth Maconchy (1907-1994) is best known today for her cycle of thirteen string quartets, composed over five decades. And yet, her oeuvre ranges from large scale choral works, to ballets, operas, and symphonic scores. Having studied with Charles Wood and Ralph Vaughan Williams at the Royal College of Music, many of her compositions also garnered accolades from peers and established musical figures such as Gustav Holst, Donald Francis Tovey, and Henry Wood, among others.
With access to a wealth of documentation previously unavailable, this book explores Maconchy's life and music within a greater consideration of the social and political context of the world in which she lived. While the influence of Bartók has been well documented, this book reveals the equally potent influence of Vaughan Williams on Maconchy's musical idiom. This book also discusses Maconchy's foray into administration and her advocacy of young composers through her work as the first woman to be elected Chairman of the Composers' Guild of Great Britain in 1959 and President of the Society for the Promotion of New Music following the death of Benjamin Britten in 1976. It will be required reading for those interested in the lives of women composers, twentieth-century British music, and musical modernism.
Brian Yothers
Why Antislavery Poetry Matters Now
Regular price
$130.00
Save $-130.00
This book is a history of the nineteenth-century poetry of slavery and freedom framed as an argument about the nature of poetry itself: why we write it, why we read it, how it interacts with history.
The poetry of the transatlantic abolitionist movement represented a powerful alliance across racial and religious boundaries; today it challenges the demarcation in literary studies between cultural and aesthetic approaches. Now is a particularly apt moment for its study. This book is a history of the nineteenth-century poetry of slavery and freedom framed as an argument about the nature of poetry itself: why we write it, why we read it, how it interacts with history. Poetry that speaks to a broad cross-section of society with moral authority, intellectual ambition, and artistic complexity mattered in the fraught years of the mid nineteenth century; Brian Yothers argues that it can and must matter today. Yothers examines antislavery poetry in light of recent work by historians, scholars in literary, cultural, and rhetorical studies, African-Americanists, scholars of race and gender studies, and theorists of poetics. That interdisciplinary sweep is mirrored by the range of writers he considers: from the canonical - Whitman, Barrett Browning, Beecher Stowe, DuBois, Melville - to those whose influence has faded - Longfellow, Lydia Huntley Sigourney, John Pierpont, John Greenleaf Whittier, James Russell Lowell - to African American writers whose work has been recovered in recent decades - James M. Whitfield, William Wells Brown, George Moses Horton, Frances E. W. Harper.
Edited by Amélia P. Hutchinson, Juliet Perkins, Philip Krummrich and Teresa Amado
The Chronicles of Fernão Lopes
Regular price
$240.00
Save $-240.00
Volume III of the first complete English translation of the chronicles of Fernão Lopes chronicles the War of Succession (1383-1385), the rise of the House of Avis under João I, and his acclamation by the Cortes in Coimbra.
Until now, the chronicles of Fernão Lopes (c.1380-c.1460) have only been available in critical editions or in partial translations. Comparable to the works of Froissart in France or López de Ayala in Spain, the chronicles provide a wealth of detail on late fourteenth-century politics, diplomacy, warfare and economic matters, courtly society, queenship and noble women, as well as more mundane concerns such as food, health and the purchasing power of a fluctuating currency. Lopes had a keen eye for detail and a perspective especially attuned to the common people, and his chronicles provide an invaluable source for the history of Western Europe in the later Middle Ages.
Andrew Ollerton
The Crisis of Calvinism in Revolutionary England, 1640-1660
Regular price
$130.00
Save $-130.00
This book investigates a puzzling and neglected phenomenon - the rise of English Arminianism during the decade of puritan rule.
Throughout the 1650s, numerous publications, from scholarly folios to popular pamphlets, attacked the doctrinal commitments of Reformed Orthodoxy. This anti-Calvinist onslaught came from different directions: episcopalian royalists (Henry Hammond, Herbert Thorndike, Peter Heylyn), radical puritan defenders of the regicide (John Goodwin and John Milton), and sectarian Quakers and General Baptists. Unprecedented rejection of Calvinist soteriology was often coupled with increased engagement with Catholic, Lutheran and Remonstrant alternatives. As a result, sophisticated Arminian publications emerged on a scale that far exceeded the Laudian era. Cromwellian England therefore witnessed an episode of religious debate that significantly altered the doctrinal consensus of the Church of England for the remainder of the seventeenth century.
The book will appeal to historians interested in the contested nature of 'Anglicanism' and theologians interested in Protestant debates regarding sovereignty and free will. Part One is a work of religious history, which charts the rise of English Arminianism across different ecclesial camps - episcopal, puritan and sectarian. These chapters not only introduce the main protagonists but also highlight a surprising range of distinctly English Arminian formulations. Part Two is a work of historical theology, which traces the detailed doctrinal formulations of two prominent divines - the puritan John Goodwin and the episcopalian Henry Hammond. Their Arminian theologies are set in the context of the Western theological tradition and the soteriological debates, that followed the Synod of Dort. The book therefore integrates historical and theological enquiry to offer a new perspective on the crisis of 'Calvinism' in post-Reformation England.
Stephen K. Roberts
The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1640-1660 [9 Volume Set]
Regular price
$895.00
Save $-895.00
The most comprehensive and complete study ever compiled about the turbulent period of the English and British Civil Wars and their aftermath.
The work of more than thirty years and multiple authors, the long-awaited nine volumes and more than 8,000 pages of The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1640-1660 make up an enormous resource that historians will regard as the most comprehensive collection of information and analysis ever compiled of the politics of perhaps the most critical and dramatic period of English and British history. During it, a political crisis became a civil war in which the Westminster Parliament confronted, and ultimately defeated King Charles I, putting him on trial and executing him in 1649. Over the following eleven years, the struggle to establish a stable and legitimate government saw the young Republic displaced in 1653 by the army under Oliver Cromwell, Cromwell's assumption of the title of Lord Protector, and, after his death a contest for power that ended with the collapse of the revived Republic and the ultimate Restoration of the monarchy under Charles II.
The work's main component is the 1,800 biographies of everyone was elected to the House of Commons between these years, including substantial reinterpretations of the lives of all of the major figures - Cromwell, Pym, Hampden and many others - as well as members of Oliver Cromwell's 'Other House', the second chamber of 1658-9. There are also accounts of the politics and elections of each constituency that returned members to the House of Commons - including the Scottish and Irish counties and towns that did so under the short-lived union constitution of 1653, the Instrument of Government. There are studies of the series of executive committees that were set up by Parliament to manage the enormous tasks of raising money for the war, directing its forces, maintaining its relationships with its allies (especially the Scots), and negotiating with foreign powers. And, finally, there is an introductory survey, summarising and analysing all this material as well as providing an essential political narrative of the period.
These volumes contain huge amounts of previously unknown information about the personalities and backgrounds of those involved in politics, and fresh and authoritative interpretation of their manoeuvrings and motivations. They include the lives of the many lesser-known, lower-status figures who came to prominence and entered national politics through service in the military or administrative roles in the parliamentarian war effort, as well as the grander gentry figures who were more familiar at Westminster. They include the charismatic and powerful men who were the backbone of the parliamentary regime such as Henry Marten, or the younger Sir Henry Vane; front-rank soldier-politicians like John Lambert, Henry Ireton or George Monck; and key polemicists such as William Prynne or Edward Hyde. The committee articles for the first time expose the administrative machinery of Parliament's war effort, together with the factional struggles of those involved. Given the detail and comprehensiveness of the biographies, the work will be vital not only for political historians, but for military, literary, social and economic historians of the period; while the constituency histories make a major contribution to local histories across the British Isles.
The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1640-1660 constitutes an essential resource that will transform the way in which we study and think about the English and British Civil Wars.
George J. Ferencz
The Music for Victory at Sea
Regular price
$170.00
Save $-170.00
This long-awaited study explores the creation of NBC-TV's landmark 1952-53 WWII documentary series, with particular attention to its evocative Rodgers-Bennett score.
Victory at Sea, NBC-TV's innovative 1952-53 WWII documentary, was eventually broadcast to more than 100 million viewers worldwide. Its episodes chronicled the war's conflicts while highlighting the US Navy's contributions, NBC having sourced footage from the military, governments, and newsreel agencies of fourteen nations. Victory's special distinction was its music, with each episode's nonstop score recorded by the acclaimed NBC Symphony Orchestra. The music was credited to Richard Rodgers-then at the height of his fame-as composer, and Robert Russell Bennett as arranger and conductor. In fact, Rodgers composed twelve piano themes; Bennett developed these endlessly for orchestra and, in addition, composed many hours of the score outright.
Part One chronicles Victory's gestation and production at NBC, its reception, the series' afterlife in syndication and home video, and the score's "Gold Record" sales success on RCA records. Part Two examines each episode in turn, focusing on how the Bennett-scored music pairs with screen action. Every transformation of the much-used Rodgers themes is cited, along with the episodes' musical inter-relationships. The hundreds of musical examples generously sample the score's 11½ hours of music.
NBC's Victory has been neglected by Richard Rodgers's biographers and by film historians. As the series celebrates its 70th anniversary, the Rodgers-Bennett score here finally receives recognition for its artistry and power.
Edited by Harriet Lyon and Alexandra Walsham
Nostalgia in the Early Modern World
Regular price
$130.00
Save $-130.00
How can the concept of nostalgia illuminate the culturally specific ways in which societies understand the contested relationship between the past, present, and future?
The word nostalgia was invented in the late seventeenth century to describe the debilitating effects of homesickness. Now widely defined as a sense of longing for a lost past, initially it was more closely linked with dislocation in space. By exploring some of its many textual, visual and musical manifestations in the tumultuous period between c. 1350 and 1800, this volume resists the assumption that nostalgia is a distinctive by-product of modernity. It also forges a fruitful link between three lively areas of current scholarly enquiry: memory, temporality, and emotion.
The contributors deploy nostalgia as a tool for investigating perceptions of the passage of time and historical change, unsettling experiences of migration and geographical displacement, and the connections between remembering and forgetting, affect and imagination. Ranging across Europe and the Atlantic world, they examine the moments, sites and communities in which it arose, alongside how it was used to express both criticism and regret about the religious, political, social and cultural upheavals that shaped the early modern world. They approach it as a complex mixed feeling that opens a new window into individual subjectivities and collective mentalities.
Daniel Trocmé-Latter
The Strasbourg Cantiones of 1539: Protestant City, Catholic Music
Regular price
$130.00
Save $-130.00
Schöffer's Cantiones tell a fascinating story of South-North, Catholic-Protestant co-operation.
The Cantiones quinque vocum selectissimæ (Strasbourg: Peter Schöffer the Younger, 1539) are a collection of 28 Latin five-voice motets by composers including Gombert, Willaert, and Jacquet of Mantua. This was Schöffer's first book of Latin motets as well as his last ever musical publication; he was granted an imperial privilege to print it by King Ferdinand I. The pieces had been sent to Schöffer by Hermann Matthias Werrecore, the choirmaster of the Duomo of Milan. However, this was at a time when no liturgical Latin choral singing took place in Strasbourg, following one of the harshest reformations - musically-speaking - across Europe.
This book comprises a critical study of the anthology in terms of the circumstances of its assemblage and printing, its confessional significance, and the music itself. It considers the nature of the connection between Schöffer and Werrecore, and why a Protestant publisher based in Protestant Germany would try to sell Latin music that was endorsed by a Catholic monarch and emphatically had no chance of being performed in church in its place of publication. In addition, the monograph includes considerations of the motets themselves, brief biographical details of the composers - including the lesser-known ones (e.g. Ferrariensis, Sarton, Billon) - and a full list of all concordant sources. It will be of interest to performers and scholars alike, combining elements of historical research, musical criticism and - via the transcriptions hosted online - performance.
Edited by Amélia P. Hutchinson, Juliet Perkins, Philip Krummrich and Teresa Amado
The Chronicles of Fernão Lopes
Regular price
$145.00
Save $-145.00
Volume V of the first complete English translation of the chronicles of Fernão Lopes, containing the general bibliography and a comprehensive index containing all people and place names mentioned in the chronicles
Until now, the chronicles of Fernão Lopes (c.1380-c.1460) have only been available in critical editions or in partial translations. Comparable to the works of Froissart in France or López de Ayala in Spain, the chronicles provide a wealth of detail on late fourteenth-century politics, diplomacy, warfare and economic matters, courtly society, queenship and noble women, as well as more mundane concerns such as food, health and the purchasing power of a fluctuating currency. Lopes had a keen eye for detail and a perspective especially attuned to the common people, and his chronicles provide an invaluable source for the history of Western Europe in the later Middle Ages.
Helen Finch
German-Jewish Life Writing in the Aftermath of the Holocaust
Regular price
$120.00
Save $-120.00
Shows how Adler, Wander, Hilsenrath, and Klüger intertwine transgressive political criticism with the shadow of trauma, revealing new perspectives on canon formation and exclusion in postwar German literature.
How did German-speaking Holocaust survivors pursue literary careers in an often-indifferent postwar society? How did their literary life writings reflect their postwar struggles? This monograph focuses on four authors who bore literary witness to the Shoah - H. G. Adler, Fred Wander, Edgar Hilsenrath, and Ruth Klüger. It analyzes their autofictional, critical, and autobiographical works written between the early 1950s and 2015, which depict their postwar experiences of writing, publishing, and publicizing Holocaust testimony. These case studies shed light on the devastating aftermaths of the Holocaust in different contexts. Adler depicts his attempts to overcome marginalization as a writer in Britain in the 1950s. Wander reflects on his failure to find a home either in postwar Austria or in the GDR. Hilsenrath satirizes his struggles as an emigrant to the US in the 1960s and after returning to Berlin in the 1980s. Finally, in her 2008 memoir, Ruth Klüger follows up her earlier, highly impactful memoir of the concentration camps by narrating the misogyny and antisemitism she experienced in US and German academia. Helen Finch analyzes how these under-researched texts intertwine transgressive political criticism with the shadow of trauma. Drawing on scholarship on Holocaust testimony, transnational memory, and affect theory, her book reveals new perspectives on canon formation and exclusion in postwar German literature.
Edited by Amélia P. Hutchinson, Juliet Perkins, Philip Krummrich and Teresa Amado
The Chronicles of Fernão Lopes
Regular price
$240.00
Save $-240.00
Volume IV of the first complete English translation of the chronicles of Fernão Lopes chronicles the Battle of Aljubarrota (1385), which secured the throne for João I, his marriage to Philippa of Lancaster, and his reign up to 1411.
Until now, the chronicles of Fernão Lopes (c.1380-c.1460) have only been available in critical editions or in partial translations. Comparable to the works of Froissart in France or López de Ayala in Spain, the chronicles provide a wealth of detail on late fourteenth-century politics, diplomacy, warfare and economic matters, courtly society, queenship and noble women, as well as more mundane concerns such as food, health and the purchasing power of a fluctuating currency. Lopes had a keen eye for detail and a perspective especially attuned to the common people, and his chronicles provide an invaluable source for the history of Western Europe in the later Middle Ages.
Miguel Hué y Camacho
El ferí de Benastepar, o los moros de Sierra Bermeja
Regular price
$130.00
Save $-130.00
Combining a rich depiction of historical customs with genuine admiration for the Muslim legacy of Andalucia, El ferí de Benastepar is a previously unknown novel by Spanish writer José Miguel Hué y Camacho (1803-1841) that relates the doomed romance between Castilian lady Elvira de Castro and the eponymous ferí de Benastepar, Abenamet, a morisco chief.
This book provides an annotated edition of El ferí de Benastepar, based on the two surviving manuscripts of the novel. The introduction provides an up-to-date biographical and critical assessment of Hué y Camacho and contextualises El ferí de Benastepar both as a product of Romantic orientalism - a 'local' orientalism directed by Andalusian writers towards the past of their own lands - and as part of the Romantic revival of the early modern 'Moorish novel' that took place in the first half of the nineteenth century, both in Spain and abroad. Notes provide clarification on lexical issues well as on the medieval and early modern sources of the novel.
El ferí de Benastepar es una novela histórica inédita del escritor español José Miguel Hué y Camacho (1803-1841). El texto combina una rica descripción de usos y costumbres con una admiración genuina por el legado musulmán de Andalucía. La novela relata el malhadado romance entre la dama castellana Elvira de Soto y el caudillo morisco Abenamet -el "ferí" de Benastepar-, con la primera Rebelión de las Alpujarras (1499-1501) como telón de fondo.
Este libro ofrece una edición anotada de El feri de Benastepar, basada en los dos manuscritos que se conservan de la novela. La introducción ofrece una valoración biográfica y crítica actualizada de Hué y Camacho, y contextualiza la novela tanto como producto del orientalismo romántico -un orientalismo "local" dirigido por los escritores andaluces hacia el pasado de sus propias tierras- como en el marco de la recuperación romántica de la "novela morisca" en la primera mitad del siglo XIX, tanto en España como en el extranjero. Las notas aportan aclaraciones sobre cuestiones léxicas y sobre las fuentes medievales y modernas del texto.
Edited by Jerzy Gawronski
Hidden under the Amstel
Regular price
$49.50
Save $-49.50
Urban stories of Amsterdam told through archaeological finds from the riverbed Amstel.
The construction of a new metro line through the heart of Amsterdam in 2003-2018 - the North/South Line - gave us access to a unique archaeological site: the riverbed of the Amstel. Almost 700,000 archaeological finds were made there, all of which are linked with the history of Amsterdam between 1300 and 2000. In 2018, a photographic catalogue of 13,000 finds entitled Stuff was published, telling the visual story of the objects and materials that have been used in Amsterdam over the centuries. This book is a follow-up to Stuff, and adds a narrative element to a selection of those archaeological discoveries. These remains are tangible and they reveal something of the day-to-day reality of the past. In combination with historical accounts and images, they sometimes lead us to actual historical events, buildings and institutions - and on occasion even to specific individuals who lived in Amsterdam in the past. In Hidden under the Amstel, 31 authors - historians, archaeologists, materials experts, journalists, curators and researchers - embark on a historical and archaeological quest that has resulted in 107 different stories, each based on a specific find or group of finds. The result is a richly varied anthology of the many stories behind the archaeological discoveries made during the excavation of the North/South Line. (JG)
Maria Hayward
The Great Wardrobe Accounts of Henry VII and Henry VIII
Regular price
$115.00
Save $-115.00
Accounts providing details of the quantities and cost of clothing and other items manufactured for the first Tudor kings.
By the late fifteenth century the Great Wardrobe, the section of the royal household that supplied the king and his household with clothing and furnishings, was well established in the London parish of St Andrew by the Wardrobe (many of the suppliers of fabric to the Great Wardrobe and many of the individuals who worked for it lived and worked in the city). This volume provides an edition and calendar of the accounts for 1498-99 and 1510-11, as wellas the section of the 1544 account relating to Henry VIII's campaign in France. In addition there are two appendices listing the recipients of livery in the extant Great Wardrobe accounts and warrants and an extensive glossary. The Introduction to the edited texts discusses the patterns of supply to the Great Wardrobe and assesses the significance of a small but influential group of Italian merchants who traded alongside the Londoners.
Professor Maria Hayward teaches in the Department of History, University of Southampton.
Leo Samama
Alphons Diepenbrock
Regular price
$85.00
Save $-85.00
The music of the Dutch composer Alphons Diepenbrock (1862-1921) is one of the glories of European late-Romantic culture, although is hardly known outside his native Netherlands. This translation makes Leo Samama's masterly study of Diepenbrock available to non-Dutch readers for the first time.
The music of Alphons Diepenbrock (1862-1921) is one of the glories of European late-Romantic culture. But it is hardly known outside his native Netherlands - a situation this book hopes to change. Diepenbrock's life and his music are deeply intertwined: self-taught as a composer, he was a classics tutor by profession, a Catholic with a fondness for religious mysticism and one of the leading Dutch intellectuals of his day, with Mahler, Schoenberg and Richard Strauss among his circle of friends. In his 'Overture' to this book Robin Holloway describes Diepenbrock's music - most of which involves the voice - as a 'wondrous fusion of Palestrina and Wagner (with Debussy thrown in, and a dash of Mahler)' and praises its 'visionary serenity'. It is that balance between classical clarity and Romantic passion that gives Diepenbrock's compositions their unique character - and their emotional power. Leo Samama's richly illustrated study of Diepenbrock sets him and his music in the context of their times, this translation opening up an important chapter of European history to non-Dutch-speaking readers for the first time.
Tom Dixon
Music, Nature and Divine Knowledge in England, 1650-1750
Regular price
$170.00
Save $-170.00
During a period of tumultuous change in English political, religious and cultural life, music signified the unspeakable presence of the divine in the world for many.
What was the role of music in the early modern subject's sensory experience of divinity? While the English intellectuals Peter Sterry (1613-72), Richard Roach (1662-1730), William Stukeley (1687-1765) and David Hartley (1705-57), have not been remembered for their 'musicking', this book explores how the musical reflections of these individuals expressed alternative and often uncustomary conceptions of God, the world, and the human psyche. Music is always potentially present in their discourse, emerging as a crucial form of mediation between states: exoteric and esoteric, material and spiritual, outer and inner, public and private, rational and mystical.
Dixon shows how Sterry, Roach, Stukeley and Hartley's shared belief in truly universal salvation was articulated through a language of music, implying a feminising influence that set these male individuals apart from contemporaries who often strictly emphasised the rational-i.e. the supposedly masculine-aspects of religion. Musical discourse, instead, provided a link to a spiritual plane that brought these intellectuals closer to 'ultimate reality'. Theirs was a discourse firmly rooted in the real existence of contemporary musical practices, both in terms of the forms and styles implied in the writings under discussion and the physical circumstances in which these musical genres were created and performed.
Through exploring ways in which the idea of music was employed in written transmission of elite ideas, this book challenges conventional classifications of a seventeenth-century 'Scientific Revolution' and an eighteenth-century 'Enlightenment', defending an alternative narrative of continuity and change across a number of scholarly disciplines, from seventeenth-century English intellectual history and theology, to musicology and the social history of music.
Rebecca Schmid
Weill, Blitzstein, and Bernstein
Regular price
$120.00
Save $-120.00
The first study to explore the crucial influence of Kurt Weill on operas and musicals by Marc Blitzstein and Leonard Bernstein.
Theodor Adorno famously proclaimed that the model of Kurt Weill could not be repeated. Yet Weill's stage works set an inescapable precedent for composers on both sides of the Atlantic. Rebecca Schmid explores how Weill's formal innovations in particular laid the groundwork for operas and musicals by Marc Blitzstein and Leonard Bernstein, although both composers resisted or downplayed his aesthetic contribution to American tradition. Comparative analysis based on Harold Bloom's Anxiety of Influence and other modes of intertextuality reveals that the principles of Weill's opera reform would catalyze an indigenous movement in sophisticated, socially engaged music theatre.
Weill, Blitzstein, and Bernstein: A Study of Influence focuses on works that represent different phases of Weill's mission to renew the genre of opera, evolving from Die Dreigroschenoper to the musical play Lady in the Dark and the Broadway Opera Street Scene. Blitzstein and Bernstein in turn defied formal boundaries with The Cradle Will Rock, Regina, Trouble in Tahiti, Candide, and West Side Story - part of a short-lived movement in mid-twentieth century America that coincided with a renaissance for Weill's German-period works following the premiere of Blitzstein's translation, The Threepenny Opera, under Bernstein's baton. The unpublished A Pray by Blecht, for which Bernstein rejoined Stephen Sondheim and Jerome Robbins, his collaborators on West Side Story, deepens the connection of Bernstein's aesthetic to Weill.
Nigel Bryant
The New Reynard
Regular price
$120.00
Save $-120.00
A translation of three works from the second half of the 13th century: Rutebeuf's Renart le Bestourné, the anonymous Le Couronnement de Renart and Jacquemart Gielée's Renart le Nouvel. These savage and highly entertaining satires are in a league of their own, and Renart le Nouvel contains important music which is reproduced in the text.
Rarely can a medieval work have resonated with the mood of the present as uncannily as do these three satires. Acerbic, raging and finally apocalyptic, these poems from the second half of the thirteenth century, richly entertaining and wickedly comic though they are, express a vision of the world and its descent into corruption and disaster which mirrors our own state of rampant alarm. The animal tales of the 12th- and 13th-century Roman de Renart - the Romance of Reynard the Fox - were immensely popular. Any satire in those original tales was generally light of touch, but the characters created in them, fox and wolf and ass and lion to name but four, were an open invitation to anyone of a more scathing satirical bent. The poet Rutebeuf, in his short but startling Renart le Bestourné ('Reynard Transformed'), deploys the beasts to make a venomous attack on the mendicant orders and on 'Saint' Louis IX of France. The anonymous Le Couronnement de Renart ('Reynard Crowned') then has the Fox crowned king, establishing a reign of every vice. And most ambitiously of all, Jacquemart Gielée in his Renart le Nouvel ('The New Reynard'), gripped by an increasingly pervasive sense of apocalypse, ends his poem with the Fox, the epitome of deceit and lying, not merely crowned king, but seated in permanent, malign control of the world atop a chocked, unturning Fortune's Wheel. The New Reynard is of special interest not only to students of medieval literature but also to musicologists. Music, in the form of numerous songs, plays an important part in Renart le Nouvel's satirical and apocalyptic message, and the poem is renowned as the most abundant source of late medieval refrains. The notations have survived, and the music is edited in this volume by Matthew P. Thomson.
Julie Hotchin
Women and Monastic Reform in the Medieval West, c. 1000 – 1500
Regular price
$130.00
Save $-130.00
New approaches to understanding religious women's involvement in monastic reform, demonstrating how women's experiences were more ambiguous and multi-layered than previously assumed.
Over the last two decades, scholarship has presented a more nuanced view of women's attitude to and agency in medieval monastic reform, challenging the idea that they were, by and large, unwilling to accept or were necessarily hostile towards reform initiatives. Rather, it has shown that they actively participated in debates about the ideas and structures that shaped their religious lives, whether rejecting, embracing, or adapting to calls for "reform" contingent on their circumstances. Nevertheless, fundamental questions regarding the gendered nature of religious reform are ripe for further examination.
This book brings together innovative research from a range of disciplines to re-evaluate and enlarge our knowledge of women's involvement in spiritual and institutional change in female monastic communities over the period c. 1000 - c. 1500. Contributors revise conventional narratives about women and monastic reform, and earlier assumptions of reform as negative or irrelevant for women. Drawing on a diverse array of visual, material and textual sources, it presents "snapshots" of reform from western Europe, stretching from Ireland to Iberia. Case-studies focussing on a number of different topics, from tenth-century female saints' lives to fifteenth-century liturgical books, from the tenth-century Leominster prayerbook to archaeological remains in Ireland, from embroideries and tapestries to the rebellious nuns of Sainte-Croix in Poitiers, offer a critical reappraisal of how monastic women (and their male associates) reflected, individually and collectively, on their spiritual ideals and institutional forms.
Edited by Robin Darwall-Smith and Susan Wollenberg
Music in Twentieth-Century Oxford: New Directions
Regular price
$130.00
Save $-130.00
The first book-length study of musical education and culture in twentieth-century Oxford.
Music has always played a central role in the life of Oxford, in both the city and university, through the great collegiate choral foundations, the many amateur choirs and instrumentalists, and the professional musicians regularly drawn to perform there. Oxford, with its collegiate system and centuries-long tradition of musical activity, presents a distinctive and multi-layered picture of the role of music in urban culture and university life.
The chapters in this book shed light on music's unique ability to link 'town and gown', as shown by the Oxford Bach Choir, the city's many churches, and the major choral foundations. The twentieth century saw the emergence of new musical initiatives and the book traces the development of these, including the University's Faculty of Music and the University Opera Club. Further, it explores music in the newly-founded women's colleges, contrasted with the musical society formed in 1930 at University College, an ancient men's college. The work of Oxford composers, including George Butterworth, Nicola Lefanu, Edmund Rubbra, and William Walton, as well as the composer for several 'Carry on' films, Bruce Montgomery, is surveyed. Two remarkable figures, Sir Hugh Allen and Sir Jack Westrup, recur throughout the book in a variety of contexts.
The volume is indispensable reading for scholars and students of musical life in twentieth-century Britain, as well as those interested generally in the history of Oxford's thriving cultural life.
Edited by John F. H. Smith
Stukeley and Stamford, Part II
Regular price
$85.00
Save $-85.00
A series of drawings of medieval buildings in Stamford, made in the 1730s by William Stukeley, provide important new evidence for the history of the town, while documents relating to the bitterly contested parliamentary election of 1734 demonstrate the contemporary vitality of this Georgian town.
The buildings and institutions of medieval Stamford have long fascinated historians and antiquaries, not least in the light of the claim that the fourteenth-century migration to the town of students from Oxford constituted the establishment of the 'third university of England'. The first history of the town, that of Richard Butcher, was published as early as 1646. So, when in 1730 the antiquary William Stukeley became Vicar of All Saints' Church in Stamford, he found a fruitful field for his historical studies. His manuscript history, 'Stanfordia Illustrata', has recently been published by the Lincoln Record Society. Now in this companion volume, the drawings which he produced to accompany that history, Designs of Stanford Antiquitys, are reproduced in full for the first time. Many of the buildings that Stukeley sketched no longer survive and his drawings form a valuable record of what has been lost. They are accompanied by a detailed commentary, the fruit of many years of research into Stamford and its buildings.
Stukeley was a sociable antiquary and enjoyed the company of like-minded scholars, men such as Samuel Gale and William Warburton, taking them on elaborate tours of historic Stamford. But some of his fellow townspeople were not so friendly. As a Whig in a strongly conservative town, dominated by the Tory Cecils at nearby Burghley House, Stukeley was often involved in local disputes, sometimes over ecclesiastical appointments, such as the wardenship of Browne's Hosital, sometimes even over scientific matters, such as the treatment of gout. A notable struggle occurred over the Stamford election of 1734, both Tories and Whigs throwing mutual accusations of corruption and bribery, culminating in the 'battle of Friary Gate', an attack on the house of the major Whig candidate. Stukeley's account of the election, submitted to Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole, the subsequent Tory counter-petition and other related documents, are published in this volume.
By the 1740s, and the publication of his major works, Stonehenge and Avebury, Stukeley had put such tribulations behind him and had reintegrated himself into Stamford society, eventually leaving the town early in 1748 to seek pastures new in London. The drawings and documents reproduced in this volume help us to see early eighteenth-century Stamford through Stukeley's eyes, providing new insights into an important phase of his life and into the history of a Lincolnshire market town in the reign of George II.
Caitriona McCartney
The Sunday School Movement in Britain, 1900-1939
Regular price
$120.00
Save $-120.00
Demonstrates the vital role Sunday schools played in forming and sustaining faith before, during, and after the First World War for British populations both at home and abroad.
Sunday schools were an important part of the religious landscape of twentieth-century Britain and they were widely attended by much of the British population. The Sunday School Movement in Britain argues that the schools played a vital role in forming and sustaining the faith of those who lived and served during the First World War. Moreover, the volume contends that the conflict did not cause the schools to decline and proposes that decline instead set in much earlier in the twentieth century.
The book also questions the perception that the schools were ineffective tools of religious socialisation and examines the continued attempts of the Sunday school movement to professionalise and improve their efforts. Thus, the involvement of the movement with the World's Sunday School Association is revealed to be part of the wider developing international ecumenical community during the twentieth century.
Drawing together under-utilised material from archives and newspapers in national and local collections, The Sunday School Movement in Britain presents a history of the schools demonstrating their lasting significance in the religious life of the nation and, by extension, the enduring importance of Christianity in Britain during the first half of the twentieth century.
Edited by Ricardo Fernández Romero
Ramón Gómez de la Serna
Regular price
$120.00
Save $-120.00
A celebrity in his own day, who gave lectures dressed as Napoleon or seated on the back of an elephant, Ramón Gómez de la Serna is the most representative writer of the interwar Spanish avant-garde.
This book explores Gómez de la Serna's art and his quest to break down the barriers between literature and life, addressing two elements - already present in his work - of radical relevance in today's cultural debates: the relation of humans to the material world and the reduction of all experience to a singular individuality. Bringing Gómez de la Serna to an Anglophone audience, it reveals him to be the embodiment of a new kind of art on both sides of the Atlantic.
Rosemary Horrox
The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, 1275-1504
Regular price
$170.00
Save $-170.00
A major contribution to the history of Parliament, to medieval English history, and to the study of the English constitution. ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW
The rolls of parliament were the official records of the meetings of the English parliament from the reign of Edward I (1272-1307) until the reign of Henry VII (1485-1509), after which they were superseded by the journals of thelords, and, somewhat later, the commons. This volume contains the only parliament of Richard III - an essential source for his accession in 1483 and for his response to the subsequent rebellion. Henry VII's assertion of his title in 1485 is strikingly different, as is his long act of resumption (a roll in itself) that reveals not only which Yorkist grants he was prepared to continue but also which early grants of his own he was willing to abandon. The1487 parliament shows the new regime continuing to try and establish itself in the face of continuing opposition. The rolls from the period are reproduced in their entirely, complemented by a full translation of all the texts from the three languages used by the medieval clerks (Latin, Anglo-Norman and Middle English).
Dr Rosemary Horrox is Fellow and Director of Studies in History, Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge.