Death and the Royal Succession in Scotland, c.1214-c.1543
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Illuminates how the ceremonial dimension of death and the succession reflected both Scottish royal identity and a broader culture of ceremony.
To date, scholarly attention to royal ceremony in Scotland from the Middle Ages into the early modern period has been rather haphazard, with few attempts to explore how these crucial moments for the representation of royal authority. This monograph provides a long durée analysis of the ceremonial cycle of death and succession associated with Scottish kingship from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, including the final century of the Canmore dynasty, the crisis of the Bruce-Balliol conflict, and the emergence and consolidation of the Stewart family up to the funeral of last monarch buried in Scotland, James V, in 1543. Using a broad range of primary sources, including financial records and material culture, many of them previously untapped, it addresses key questions about kingship and power, the function of ceremony in legitimising royal authority, its significance in relation to the practical exercising of power, and evidence for Scottish similarities and distinctiveness within wider European contexts.
Dr Thomas O'Donnell
Medieval French Interlocutions
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Specialists in other languages offer perspectives on the widespread use of French in a range of contexts, from German courtly narratives to biblical exegesis in Hebrew.
French came into contact with many other languages in the Middle Ages: not just English, Italian and Latin, but also Arabic, Dutch, German, Greek, Hebrew, Irish, Occitan, Sicilian, Spanish and Welsh. Its movement was impelled by trade, pilgrimage, crusade, migration, colonisation and conquest, and its contact zones included Muslim, Jewish and Christian communities, among others. Writers in these contact zones often expressed themselves and their worlds in French; but other languages and cultural settings could also challenge, reframe or even ignore French-users' prestige and self-understanding.
The essays collected here offer cross-disciplinary perspectives on the use of French in the medieval world, moving away from canonical texts, well-known controversies and conventional framings. Whether considering theories of the vernacular in Outremer, Marco Polo and the global Middle Ages, or the literary patronage of aristocrats and urban patricians, their interlocutions throw new light on connected and contested literary cultures in Europe and beyond.
James Ross
Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford and Duke of Ireland (1362-1392)
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The first full-length study of one of the most controversial figures of later fourteenth century England.
Robert de Vere was a close friend of the young King Richard II. He was accused of a wide range of political crimes and private vices by his opponents, the Lords Appellant. Defeated by them at the battle of Radcot Bridge in 1387, he died abroad in exile aged only 30. He was, in the eyes of many contemporaries - most notably the hostile chroniclers Walsingham and Froissart - and modern historians, a typical royal favourite: unmartial, immoral, self-seeking, and promoted and enriched far beyond what he deserved.
But what was a royal favourite, and what were the accusations made against them? This book investigates these questions across late medieval England, and assesses de Vere against contemporary criteria. Based on extensive archival research, this book shows there was more to de Vere than a grasping courtier. He had been Earl of Oxford since the age of nine, heir to a large landed estate, and had twice served in foreign wars. He also made a serious attempt to govern the English lordship in Ireland given to him by Richard. The findings here show him to be a far more rounded and complex figure than previously assumed.
Thomas McGeary
The Cultural Politics of Opera, 1720-1742
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Explores the intersection of the world of opera, literature, and partisan politics to show how Italian opera was put to use in the 'culture wars' of the day.
This last of a trilogy of books on opera and politics in Britain examines the cultural politics of opera during the ministerial reign of Sir Robert Walpole from 1720 to 1742. The book explores the intersection of the world of opera, literature, and partisan politics to show how Italian opera - with its associations with the court, ministry and Britain's social-political elite - was put to use in the 'culture wars' of the day: how Italian opera was used for partisan political advantage; how political work could be accomplished by means of opera. It shows that attacks on opera had ulterior targets.
The book surveys a range of often overlooked verse and prints to show how critique or satire of opera were a means for oppositional writers to delegitimize the Walpole ministry. Polemicists framed opera as a consequence of the corruption, luxury and False Taste generated by Walpole's ministry.
It closes in the watershed year 1742: Handel had produced the last of his Italian operas the previous year, Walpole fell from power, and Alexander Pope published the last book of his Dunciad project.
Markand Thakar
On the Principles and Practice of Conducting
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A practical manual for building musical understanding and physical skills, intended for conductors at all stages of development.
This book is a practical manual for anyone who stands on a podium helping an ensemble make music. The four main chapters address the major obligations of the conductor: (1) bringing the musical tones to life in the most beautiful, most moving way possible; (2) freeing the mind to fully absorb all the tones; (3) freeing the body of unnecessary tension; and (4) effectively using the freed mind and body to influence the sounds. Each chapter begins with a summary of the underlying principles, presents real-life applications, and offers exercises for developing skills. Video demonstrations of the exercises as well as downloadable scores and parts are available on a companion website. The parts, in multiple transpositions, allow for hands-on experience where standard instrumental complements are unavailable.
Markand Thakar, music director of the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra, is an internationally renowned pedagogue of conducting. A protégé of the legendary Sergiu Celibidache and former assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic, Thakar is author of Looking for the "Harp" Quartet: An Investigation into Musical Beauty (University of Rochester Press, 2011) and Counterpoint: Fundamentals of Music Making (Yale University Press, 1990).
Priscilla Layne
The Marriage of Maria Braun
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A new reading of Fassbinder's most popular film that highlights the roles of race and gender.
The Marriage of Maria Braun is the most popular film by the enfant terrible director Rainer Werner Fassbinder, the leading exponent of the "New German Cinema" of the early sixties to early eighties. It exemplifies his use and abuse of the genre of melodrama. Set in the immediate postwar period and centered around a strong female protagonist, Maria Braun (1978) was the first film in a trilogy that attempts to work through West Germany's fraught past and the legacy of Nazi Germany through the eyes of characters marginalized by their gender, race, sexuality, or (dis)ability. Maria attempts to navigate the poverty and sexism of the immediate postwar years by making her relationships with men, including the Black American G.I., Bill, as beneficial as possible. In the end, she discovers she has been a pawn in a power game between her husband, Hermann, for whom she has been pining while he has been in prison, and her lover, the industrialist Oswald. Yet Maria is also complicit in racism and white patriarchy, a fact that scholarship on the film has barely registered. In her new reading, Priscilla Layne draws on archival research, Critical Race Theory, Black Feminist Thought, and Critical Whiteness Studies to expand on the role of race and gender in the film.
Stephen Gould, with F. Peter Philips; foreword by Katharina Wagner
Performing Wagner
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Offers a unique perspective in to what it takes to perform Richard Wagner's operas.
Performing Wagner studies each of the iconic Wagnerian heldentenor roles from the unique perspective of the performer. Stephen Gould studied and acted them hundreds of times in scores of productions around the world prior to his passing in 2023. In this thoughtful book, he offers insights to building a character, understanding the dramatic arc of each role, analysing each scene for cogency and dramatic structure, and finding the clues embedded in the music and the words. His intelligence and eloquence offer perspectives that only a performer can experience.
The book is unique in opera literature. Neither a memoir nor a musical analysis, Performing Wagner is a practical guide to preparing for, and performing, these roles. Stephen Gould hoped to share his experiences with enthusiasts of Wagner's works, as well as opera audiences more generally who seek to learn what singing actors do in performance. It is invaluable to young artists approaching this repertoire and to scholars studying Wagner's dramaturgy. More broadly, this volume speaks to the condition of every opera fan who has ever been floored by a great performance and wondered, 'how did they do that?'
A chapter is devoted to each role, and a foreword is provided by Katharina Wagner, the composer's great-granddaughter and Director of the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth, Germany.
Georgina Hughes
Evelyn Glennie: Sound Creator
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A case study of a pioneering musician and an interdisciplinary appraisal of the larger social role of the artist.
Dame Evelyn Glennie (b.1965) is the world's first full-time solo multi-percussionist, a sound creator and expert listener whose work continues to expand and diversify the remit of the contemporary performer in the twenty-first century. This book presents the first comprehensive study of Glennie's contribution to the evolution of an eclectic, experimental and fascinating instrumental discipline which wilfully eludes standardization.
Glennie's sound journey also resonates in contexts extending beyond the discipline of music. She is a prominent female role model, an entrepreneur, a business and brand, a philanthropist and a profoundly deaf performer who has reframed discourse on what it means to truly listen. This book is both a case study of one pioneering musician and an interdisciplinary appraisal of the larger social role of the artist. An important reference source for percussionists, it is also intended to serve as a means of allowing the interested reader to engage with a medium that has become the heartbeat of contemporary culture.
Adrian Pettifer
Scottish Castles
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Gazetteer of over 500 hundred surviving Scottish Castles.
Discover the castles of Scotland, from early "motte and bailey" earthworks and impressive walled enclosures to the many tower houses that dot the landscape. Castles were built in increasing numbers from the 14th to the 17th century, as residences for the Scottish nobility. Some are still proudly occupied; others are well-maintained ruins; many others slowly decay in fields and farmyards.
Here, Adrian Pettifer provides a brief account of every Scottish castle to survive in a reasonable state of preservation, including such iconic sites as Edinburgh, Glamis and Cawdor. Each of the more than five hundred main entries provides a brief history and description of a castle, followed by advice on accessibility, sources for further reading and cross-references to related sites. An introduction supplies the historical background, while a glossary covers all aspects of Scottish castles in some detail. Ordnance Survey references are given in the index.
Barbara Gentili
Italian Opera Singing at the Time of Verismo
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Connects discussions of vocality and operatic culture with broader aesthetic and cultural shifts in society.
In the decades that span the turn of the twentieth century, the Italian tradition of operatic singing became 'modern'. This book identifies and explores the formative elements of this multifaceted 'modernity', and its connections with the emergence of verismo, a realistic trend that affected every aspect of creative and intellectual life in fin-de-siècle Italy. Thisnovel approach to artistic representation meant that singers had to redefine the operatic voice, exchanging the bel canto ideal of 'pure' vocal quality with an irreversible gendered connotation and an erotically charged expressive force. Pivotal to this shift was the gradual development of a homogeneous vocal colour through the compass, an aesthetic principle that was alien to the voice culture of the previous centuries. Star singers such as Enrico Caruso, Titta Ruffo, Emma Carelli and Eugenia Burzio were instrumental in this radical transition.
The book explores how and why modern singers consciously pursued a new vocal expressivity, illuminating the ways in which the changes they introduced in their vocal techniques yielded novel stylistic gestures, and ultimately shaped operatic culture.Through a comparative analysis of early vocal recordings and late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century vocal methods and drawing on archival research in London, Milan, Rome and Buenos Aires, the book connects discussions of vocality and operatic culture with broader aesthetic and cultural shifts in society. Italian Opera Singing at the Time of Verismo, will be of interest to scholars and students of opera history, performance studies and recording history, as well as voice coaches and professional singers.
Aimée Fox
The Military Papers and Correspondence of Major General Guy Dawnay, 1915–1919
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Major General Guy Dawnay (1878-1952) was a man of complexity and contradiction. Though passionate about the profession of arms, he set aside a promising military career to pursue business ambitions. Rejoining the British Army on the outbreak of war, he served in several staff appointments across four different military theatres. In 1915, he joined the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force's headquarters, planning the April landings and the ill-fated August offensive. Following the evacuation of Gallipoli, he served on the staff in Egypt and Palestine as part of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force. It was here that he masterminded the plan for the Third Battle of Gaza. In early 1918, he was appointed to Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig's staff where he oversaw important changes to training and doctrine on the Western Front. Based on the Dawnay papers at the Imperial War Museum and material in private hands, this volume offers important insights on contrasting theatres of war, the challenges of planning operations, and Dawnay's relationships with key politicians and commanders. The volume reveals a passionate, introspective officer who, according to T.E. Lawrence, was 'the least professional of soldiers, a banker who read Greek history, a strategist unashamed, and a burning poet with strength over daily things'.
Christopher R. Conz
Environment, Knowledge, and Injustice in Lesotho
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Shows that a fraught historical process was at work in which Basotho drew on local and global sources of knowledge and how this small nation surrounded by South Africa can serve as a valuable case-study for wider conversations about 'progress' and 'modernization' in the Global South.
Both place-based environmental history and global intellectual history, this book explores the politics of environment, agriculture, poverty, development, and science in Lesotho. Drawing on diverse experiences with this landlocked, mountainous nation, and based on bilingual archival and oral history research in Sesotho and English, the book examines how Basotho intellectuals, farmers, migrant workers, chiefs, experts, and politicians formed vernacular ideas of tsoelopele (progress) amid the structural violence of colonialism and capitalism in southern Africa. Rather than a unidirectional flow of 'enlightened' knowledge from Europe to Africa, the study shows that a fraught historical process was at work in which Basotho drew on local and global sources of knowledge, from ancestral agricultural practices to colonial soil science and from African American missionaries to African nationalists in Ghana. Basotho ideas about tsoelopele, it is argued, informed the many political, social, and environmental innovations that enabled survival within a sea of white supremacy and that underpin approaches to development in independent Lesotho. Throughout, the book shows how this small nation surrounded by South Africa can serve as a valuable case-study for wider conversations about 'progress' and 'modernization' in the Global South.
Ralph Ottey
A Jamaican in Lincolnshire
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Ralph Ottey's memoir provides fascinating detail about his life, from his birth and childhood in Little London, Jamaica to his wartime years in the RAF and his post-war career in Lincolnshire. The first part of the book describes the details of his life, social activities, family networks and education in Little London in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1944, Ralph joined the RAF and the second section of this work describes his experience of training and serving in the forces in England during the war and the way in which he was prepared for 'civvy street' at the end of the war. The final section of the book describes his life and work in Boston Lincolnshire since 1948, including his family, his experience of working with businesses large and small over forty years, and his passion for cricket.
William Poole
The Life, Poems, and Letters of Peter Goldman (1587/8-1627)
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Reconstructs the life of Peter Goldman and presents a full edition and translation of his surviving poems and letters.
The Dundonian physician Peter Goldman, one of an immigrant family of merchants, was the first Scot to take a medical degree from Leiden; he then undertook research in Oxford, London, and Paris, before resettling in Dundee. An important figure in contemporary Scottish literary culture, he maintained a wide correspondence with significant intellectual figures and influenced two landmark Scottish publishing projects: the Delitiae poetarum Scotorum (1637) and the Blaeu Atlas of Scotland (1654). However, his major literary achievement was his Latin poetry, which establishes him as a unique voice of his time. His longest and most prominent work is an elegy on the deaths of four of his brothers, strikingly narrated in the voice of their lamenting mother.
This book reconstructs and provides a study of Goldman's life, career and writing. It also offers a full edition and translation of his surviving poems and letters, with accompanying commentary. Appendices provide an edited list of his remarkable library and a transcript of his testament.
Niamh Pattwell with John Scattergood
The Index of Middle English Prose: Handlist XXV
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Handlist to manuscripts in Trinity College Dublin, covering all 79 Middle English prose manuscripts and indexing more than 539 separate items
The manuscripts in Trinity College Dublin are predominantly from the library of Archbishop James Ussher (1581-1656). A well-known bibliophile of the sixteenth century, he was also primate of All Ireland and fellow and professor of Trinity College. Following some movement of the collection, it was eventually returned to Trinity College after the Restoration, at the behest of Charles II.
It is a significant collection, both in national and international terms, with over 600 manuscripts, 79 of which contain Middle English prose. Among the manuscripts in the collection are several Wycliffite Bibles, and collections of sermons and tracts, some of them unique copies. The collection also contains writings by Richard Rolle, Walter Hilton and William Flete, and copies of Thomas à Kempis's Imitation of Christ, as well as the Pore Caitif and The Cloud of Unknowing, both of which are anonymous. There are several copies of the Brut chronicle, two of which (MSS 489 and 505) are illuminated, translations of Giraldus Cambrensis's Expugnacio Hibernica, and a copy of Robert Bale's Chronicle of London, 1189-1461. Also of note are the various collections of recipes - medical, culinary and alchemical. Dictionary-style items demonstrate the trilingual nature of the Medieval period, with single words being offered in English alongside Anglo-Norman and/or Latin words, or as marginal glosses. Fifteenth-century instructions for the coronation of a King or Queen, hidden among some later material, as well as other unidentified heraldic pieces, suggest that some of the manuscripts may be associated with the office of the Ulster King of Arms.
The current handlist covers 79 manuscripts, and indexes more than 539 separate items, offering a significant contribution to the understanding of the cultural world of the Medieval period.
Florentius Volusenus
Florentius Volusenus: Christian Humanist
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Study and translation of the religious and philosophical work by this Scottish-born, France-based Renaissance humanist and educator.
The Commentatio quaedam theologica of Florentius Volusenus (c.1504-c.1557) is a religious and philosophical work of the Renaissance, cast in the form of rhetorical aphorisms. Volusenus was an admirer of Erasmus, tutored the son of Cardinal Wolsey, and was close to the circles around Sir Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell. In Paris he received patronage from prominent humanist ecclesiastics, as also from bishop Jacopo Sadoleto at Carpentras. A colleague at Lyon of the poet Barthélemy Aneau, he taught Sebastian Castellio, who later broke with Calvin. Volusenus, an eirenic Catholic, favoured Church reform before the Reformation became irreversible.
Captain Jeremy Stocker
The Postwar Fleet
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The book begins in January 1944, the point at which serious thought started to be given to the size and shape of the future Navy. Postwar retrenchment meant the Admiralty needed to reduce spending on the Fleet and release manpower for the civilian economy, but also to adjust to the appearance of nuclear weapons and the incipient Cold War with the Soviet Union. Repeated financial crises upset plans almost as soon as they were made. The volume concludes with the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950, which upset many previous planning assumptions and initiated a short-lived rearmament programme.
Subsequent volumes will continue the story through the 1950s and beyond.
Ionuț Epurescu-Pascovici
Human Agency in Medieval Society, 1100-1450
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Argues the case for the individual as autonomous moral agent in the later Middle Ages.
"Of fundamental importance for any discipline dealing with past societies and cultures. One of the most wide-ranging, sophisticated and imaginative books on medieval history that I have read in a very long time. The way in which the author defines, traces and analyses agency is stunningly original. It will make an immensely important contribution to our understanding of high and late medieval Europe." Professor Björn Weiler, University of Aberystwyth
What did it mean to be an autonomous agent in European medieval society? This book aims to answer that fundamental question, via an examination of a mosaic of case studies drawn from the literate urban middle strata and the lower and middle-rank aristocracy.
The social imaginary that informs individual conduct, the patterns of strategic action, and the individuals' sense of effectiveness in the world are reconstructed from "ego-documents", a broad category that includes first-person charters, autobiographical insertions in chronicles, private registers, and memoirs. These range from the better-known, such as the Ménagier de Paris and the histories of Galbert of Bruges and Salimbene of Parma, to the equally fascinating but more seldom explored French livres de raison and Italian ricordanze.
The book's larger aim is to historicise the autonomous moral agent. Neither belief in divine intervention nor feudal relations inhibited individuals' social agency. The emphasis on hierarchy and order in medieval normative texts is shown in a different light, as part of the effort to restrain social subalterns, whose potential for agency caused anxiety. Whereas power is often structural, an effect of institutions which, however, were only just developing, the book argues that agency is a more apposite construct for capturing the salient medieval concerns with the possibilities and effects of individual and collective action.
Ole J. Benedictow
The Complete History of the Black Death
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A truly definitive work, this magisterial study draws on the latest evidence from across Europe to show in exhaustive detail the nature of the disease, its origin, spread, mortality, and its profound impact on history.
The Black Death was a disaster of huge magnitude, shaking medieval Europe and beyond to its economic and social core. Building upon his acclaimed study of 2004, Ole Benedictow here draws upon new scholarship and research to present a comprehensive, definitive account of the Black Death and its impact on European history. The medical and epidemiological characteristics of the disease, its geographical origin, its spread across Asia Minor, the Middle East, North Africa, Europe and Russia, and the mortality in the countries and regions for which there are satisfactory studies, are clearly presented and thoroughly discussed. The pattern, pace and seasonality of the spread of the disease reflect current medical work and standard studies on the epidemiology of bubonic plague. Benedictow's findings make it clear that the true mortality rate was far higher than had been previously thought: some 60% of Europe's population. In the light of those findings, the discussion of the Black Death as a turning point in history takes on a new significance.
Hollie L.S. Morgan
Beds and Chambers in Late Medieval England
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First full-length interdisciplinary study of the effect of these everyday surroundings on literature, culture and the collective consciousness of the late middle ages.
The bed, and the chamber which contained it, was something of a cultural and social phenomenon in late-medieval England. Their introduction into some aristocratic and bourgeois households captured the imagination of late-medievalEnglish society. The bed and chamber stood for much more than simply a place to rest one's head: they were symbols of authority, unparalleled spaces of intimacy, sanctuaries both for the powerless and the powerful. This change inphysical domestic space shaped the ways in which people thought about less tangible concepts such as gender politics, communication, God, sex and emotions. Furthermore, the practical uses of beds and chambers shaped and were shaped by artistic and literary production. This volume offers the first interdisciplinary study of the cultural meanings of beds and chambers in late-medieval England. It draws on a vast array of literary, pragmatic and visual sources, including romances, saints' lives, lyrics, plays, wills, probate inventories, letters, church and civil court documents, manuscript illumination and physical objects, to shed new light on the ways in which beds and chambersfunctioned as both physical and conceptual spaces.
Stephen Bennett
Elite Participation in the Third Crusade
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The motivations behind those who went on the Third Crusade examined through close investigation of their social networks.
The Third Crusade (1189-1192) was an attempt by Latin Christendom to reconquer the Holy Land, following the capture of Jerusalem by the Ayyubid sultan Saladin in 1187. Tens of thousands responded to a call for a crusade by Pope Gregory VIII and the efforts of his preachers at mass cross-taking ceremonies, rallying to the expedition's leaders - Frederick Barbarossa, Philip Augustus, and Richard the Lionheart. This book analyses the communal and cultural factors that influenced nobles from north-western Europe who embarked on the Third Crusade, bringing out the motives, dynamics, and extent of their participation, and placing that participation in the broader social and geographical context of crusading and medieval life. It shows that significant numbers of them were themselves descended from crusaders, and that the majority of them travelled to the Levant in the company of friends, family, and neighbours, as well as through membership of a military household. It also highlights the role of key individuals - both male and female - who influenced the decision to undertake the crusade, and identifies the significant role played by particular religious institutions in the diffusion of crusading ideology.
Alex W. Barber
Radical Ideas and the Crisis of Christianity in England, 1640-1740
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Examines the evolving relationship between Church and State, the character of radical thought in Enlightenment England, and the nature of that Enlightenment itself.
A tribute to the work of the late Justin Champion, this volume explores the radical religious and political ideas of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England which were at the heart of Champion's intellectual contributions. Drawing on the debates and upheavals that dominated the period from the British Civil Wars to the mid-eighteenth century, the essays in this collection interrogate the challenging relationship between politics and religion which prompted what Champion called a 'Crisis of Christianity'.
Diverse perspectives on that crisis are reconstructed, encompassing the experiences of republicans and radicals, philosophers and historians, atheists and clergymen. Through these individuals, a complex discourse which defies easy categorisation is recovered, but which speaks to central discussions concerning the evolving relationship between Church and State, the character of radical thought in Enlightenment England, and indeed the nature of that Enlightenment itself.
Ana P. Sánchez-Rojo
Music and Modernity in Enlightenment Spain
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By showing how music intersected with wider cultural affairs, such as philosophy and criticism, this book connects music and the modern in eighteenth-century Spain within the context of Enlightenment thought.
Histories of modern Europe often present late eighteenth-century Spain as a backward place struggling to keep pace with modernity. During the reign of Charles III (1759-1788), Spain pushed for economic and cultural modernization, but encountered resistance from members of the public and the elite alike. They viewed the modern as a passing fad that would, in time, show its fragility, and believed Spain would withstand the collapse thanks to its firm grounding in the pillars of monarchy, religion, and traditional forms of knowledge. One source of this solid foundation was the long-established musical knowledge based on the rules of counterpoint. In contrast, modernizers argued that Spain could be true to its essence, yet simultaneously modern and cosmopolitan: they favoured cosmopolitan genres, such as Italian opera, and artistic expression over counterpoint rules. At times this led to more creative uses of music, such as reinterpreting pastoral and sentimental topics to accommodate reformist political trends.
Music was considered crucial to the integrity of the Spanish nation by both sides. Whether and how Spain became modern would in many ways be defined and reinforced by the kinds of music that Spaniards composed and witnessed on stage. Through the study of press debates, opera reception, and musical theatre productions, this book shows how music intersected with wider cultural affairs, such as philosophy and criticism, medicine and the human body, civilization, Bourbon policy and sentimentality. Music and Modernity in Enlightenment Spain for the first time connects music and the modern in eighteenth-century Spain within the context of Enlightenment thought.
Léa Lacan
Forest Politics in Kenya's Tugen Hills
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Forests are a changing environment, impacted as much by people and politics as by the species-rich diversity they contain. This book explores human-sylvan relations in the Katimok forest, Baringo highlands, Kenya, and asks us to rethink the forest beyond questions of access and control of natural resources, as a habitat where forest politics and human lives are inextricably intertwined.
Tracing the development of the Katimok forest from colonial times to the present day, the author shows how - as with many forests in Africa - it has become constructed as a category and territory of nature under state control: an area both to be protected and turned into exploitable resources. For those living within and on the boundaries of the forest, this social-ecological transformation has had a significant impact. Despite now being settled outside Katimok itself, dispossessed by administrators heedless of local management practices, many former residents continue to maintain a close connection with the forest, not only to sustain their livelihoods, but also to maintain their intimate links with ancestral lands, where their stories and memories are materially inscribed and powerfully invoked. Intimate connections to the forest are revealed to be as political as the use of its resources, culminating in local claims for redress of historical dispossessions.
Professor A. S. G. Edwards
Medieval Manuscripts and their Provenance
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Essays about the creation, circulation, and collection of medieval manuscripts.
The essays collected here celebrate the work of Barbara Shailor, the distinguished scholar of medieval manuscripts. They explore various aspects of their provenance. The subjects addressed range from studies of the history of individual manuscripts, to the evidence afforded by the understanding of their textual traditions, to the significance of the identification of fragments, to the roles of individual scholars and collectors. As a whole the volume contributes to a wider understanding of how the history and ownership of medieval manuscripts can be fruitfully examined, a flourishing area of interest in the field.
Professor Angela Jane Weisl
Medievalisms in a Global Age
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Discusses contemporary medievalism in studies ranging from Brazil to West Africa, from Manila to New York.
Across the world, revivals of medieval practices, images, and tales flourish as never before. The essays collected here, informed by approaches from Global Studies and the critical discourse on the concept of a "Global Middle Ages", explore the many facets of contemporary medievalism: post-colonial responses to the enforced dissemination of Western medievalisms, attempts to retrieve pre-modern cultural traditions that were interrupted by colonialism, the tentative forging of a global "medieval" imaginary from the world's repository of magical tales and figures, and the deployment across borders of medieval imagery for political purposes. The volume is divided into two sections, dealing with "Local Spaces" and "Global Geographies". The contributions in the first consider a variety of medievalisms tied to particular places across a broad geography, but as part of a larger transnational medievalist dynamic. Those in the second focus on explicitly globalist medievalist phenomena whether concerning the projection of a particular medievalist trope across borders or the integration of "medieval" pasts from different parts of the globe in a contemporary incarnation of medievalism. A wide range of topics are addressed, from Japanese manga and Arthurian tales to The O-Trilogy of Maurice Gee, Camus, and Dungeons and Dragons.
Professor Marloes Janson
Religious Plurality in Africa
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Grounded in ethnographic and historiographic research and taking a cross-regional approach, this book explores the complex dynamics of similarity and difference, rapprochement and detachment, and divergence and competition between practitioners of Christianity, Islam, and African religious traditions.
Across Africa, Muslims, Christians, and practitioners of African religious traditions live in shared settings, demarcating themselves in opposition to one another and at times engaging in violent conflicts, but also being entangled in complex ways and showing unexpected similarities and mutual cross-overs. However, while encounters and entanglements of African religious traditions with either Islam or Christianity have long been a central research issue, the configuration as a whole has barely been taken into account, even though Muslims, Christians, and practitioners of African religious traditions have long co-existed - and still co-exist - more or less peacefully in many settings in Africa. Building on recent interventions to move beyond the compartmentalization of the study of religion in Africa, this edited volume will spotlight why and how an integrated approach to Islam, Christianity, and African religious traditions is important. Bringing together stimulating case studies from Kenya, Nigeria, Zanzibar, Ghana, and Mozambique that offer new directions for ethnographic and historical research, the volume will not only shed light on an important phenomenon out there in the world - the long-overlooked ways in which Muslims, Christians and practitioners of African religious traditions interact with one another in various majority-minority configurations - but will also engage with a critical rethinking of the study of religion in Africa (and beyond).
Christine Weder, translated by Robert Vilain
Intimate Relations
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A fresh historical perspective on the transformative relationship between sexuality and the arts around 1968
In the late 1960s and early '70s, sexuality and the arts entered into a remarkably intimate and mutually beneficial relationship: on one hand, scientific theories of sexuality and their pop-psychological counterparts incorporated elaborate reflections on art movements and literary texts, since artistic media were understood as crucial to the project of inventing radically new modes of human living and loving. On the other hand, the aesthetic ambitions that informed new conceptions of sexuality had their mirror image in the varying forms of sexual obsession that characterized contemporary aesthetic theories. Approaches as diverse as those of Theodor W. Adorno, Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag, Leslie A. Fiedler, Peter Gorsen, and Herbert and Ludwig Marcuse all contributed to a dramatic eroticization of the arts.
Christine Weder's interdisciplinary study explores this largely neglected relationship, providing a dual insight into an era of profound transformation: she demonstrates how and why the engagement with art and literature was essential to the programmatic theories of the new Eros. At the same time, she offers a fresh historical perspective on aesthetics around 1968. Whereas aesthetic developments in the late sixties have conventionally been conceived in terms of politicization, Weder demonstrates that the sexualization of the arts was no less profound, and in doing so contributes to a fundamental reframing of this tumultuous period.
Jane McLeod
Print, Politics and Trade in the French Atlantic
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The epic histories of the French Revolution, Enlightenment, and colonialism in the West Indies, told through the history of one family.
The Labottières were the largest printing and bookselling dynasty in eighteenth-century Bordeaux. From the 1680s to the sale of their business in 1794 three generations of this family acted as major cultural brokers in this booming Atlantic port, serving the rapidly expanding commercial and legal sectors with books, pamphlets, and newspapers.
The lives and businesses of this family are heavily entwined with the histories of the Enlightenment, French colonialism in the West Indies, and the French Revolution. We find the final generation, welcoming the Revolution, printing a pro-revolutionary newspaper that framed the revolts in Haiti and Martinique in pro-revolutionary terms. They would come to establish their shop as a Jacobin centre and, along with their workers and journalists, navigated the forces of popular censorship and state control. However, despite these activities, the Labottière printing and bookselling enterprise would, eventually, be destroyed by the very Revolution it had supported.
Through this lively microhistory of the Labottières, Jane McLeod presents the important role played by the flourishing Atlantic port economy in supporting the expansion of printing and bookselling. Furthermore, from McLeod's extensive archival research into over thirty members of the Labottière family, emerges a new understanding of the role played by printers and booksellers in the spreading of the ideas and concerns that underpinned some of the landmark social, cultural and political changes of the eighteenth century.
Ralph Moffat
Medieval Arms and Armour: A Sourcebook. Volume III: 1450-1500
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Authoritative reference guide, using the documents in which arms and armour first appeared to explain and define them.
Medieval arms and armour are intrinsically fascinating. From the smoke and noise of the armourer's forge to the bloody violence of the battlefield or the silken panoply of the tournament, weapons and armour - and those who made and bore them - are woven into the fabric of medieval society. This sourcebook will aid anyone who seeks to develop a deeper understanding by introducing and presenting the primary sources in which these artefacts are first mentioned. Over seventy original documents are transcribed and translated, including wills, inventories, letters and chronicle accounts, from a period which saw rapid advances in military technology. The book also includes an extensive glossary, and is lavishly illustrated with images of both extant armour and weapons from the period, and contemporary artistic depictions from illuminated manuscripts and other sources. This book will therefore be of interest to a wide audience, from the living history practitioner, crafter, and martial artist, to students of literature, military history, art, and material culture.
Karolina May-Chu
Border Poetics in German and Polish Literature
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Examines how contemporary German and Polish novels reimagine borderlands as cosmopolitan spaces by engaging in border poetics, a narrative practice that relates political borders to figurative boundaries.
Globalization notwithstanding, we live in an age of borders, as the ongoing conflict at Europe's eastern edge reminds us. Borders are meant to protect, but they more often divide and exclude. This book, however, focuses on literature that pushes back against the divisiveness of borders, advocating for transborder connections and criticizing exclusionary boundaries. It examines novels that reimagine past and present German-Polish borderlands as cosmopolitan spaces. Novels by Nobel Prize winners Olga Tokarczuk and Günter Grass are discussed alongside works by authors less well known internationally: the Polish Inga Iwasiów, the German Tanja Dückers, and the German-Polish Sabrina Janesch.
The book utilizes and elaborates the concept of border poetics, a narrative and cultural practice that places political borders in relation to less concrete borders such as those of gender, ethnicity, or class, as well as in relation to epistemological and ontological boundaries: of language, knowledge, even reality. Because border poetics rests on the same productive tension between the particular and the universal that drives contemporary notions of cosmopolitanism, the book argues for the practice as an expression of what sociologist Gerard Delanty has termed "cosmopolitan imagination." The richly contextualized analysis is framed within transnational German Studies and draws on border studies, cosmopolitanism, European literature, and world literature.
Meg Twycross
Medieval English Theatre 45
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Newest research into drama and performance from the Middle Ages and the Tudor period.
Medieval English Theatre is the premier journal in early theatre studies. Its name belies its wide range of interest: it publishes articles on theatre and pageantry from across the British Isles up to the opening of the London playhouses and the suppression of the civic religious plays, and also includes contributions on European and Latin drama, together with analyses of modern survivals or equivalents, and of research productions of medieval plays.
This volume offers new perspectives in three important areas. It opens with an investigation of the tantalising image of the Black Tudor trumpeter, John Blanke, in the Westminster Tournament Roll. Complementing the assessment of the documentary evidence for his employment in our last volume, it uncovers the surprising complexity of how Islamic dress was represented at the court of Henry VIII. Two essays engage with the challenging Croxton Play of the Sacrament, discussing very different issues of bodily integrity. The first revealingly brings together medieval and posthumanist theory, proposing how in performance the play can move to obliterate the distinction between Jewish and Christian bodies. The second considers the play in the light of modern disability theory, before examining the often contrasting evidence of lives lived, and performances informed, by actual disabled performers.
The final contributions focus on twentieth- and twenty-first-century performances of medieval material, and how it can be adapted for later times and sensibilities. Investigation of an almost unknown 1924 London performance of a fifteenth-century French nativity play reveals much about early twentieth-century views of medieval drama. Meanwhile, the 2023 coronation of King Charles III prompts an analysis of a spectacular ceremony balanced between asserting its medieval origins and demonstrating its modern relevance. Finally, a review of a story-telling performance assesses how the problematic material of The Seven Sages of Rome might be addressed to modern audiences and preoccupations.
Joseph Kasule
Islam in Uganda
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Examines the historical, political, religious, and social dynamics of Muslim minority status in Uganda, and important themes of pre- and post-colonial political community, religion and national identity.
Between 2012 and 2016 several Muslim clerics were murdered in Uganda: there is still no consensus as to who was responsible. In this book Joseph Kasule seeks to explain this by examining the colonial and postcolonial history of the Muslim minority and questions of Muslim identity within a non-Muslim state. Challenging prevalent scholarship that has homogenized Muslims' political identity, Kasule demonstrates that Muslim responses to power have been varied and multiple. Beginning with the pre-colonial political community in Buganda, and Muteesa I's attempted Islamization of the country using Islam as a centralizing ideology, the author discusses how the political status of Islam and Muslims in Uganda has been defined under successive regimes. Muteesa I's Islamization faltered when Christianity entered Buganda in the latter half of the 19th century, resulting in division between Muslim and Christian sections. The colonial period created a new type of political project that defined the Muslim question as one of representation, and Kasule discusses how this laid the foundation for a politics of Muslim containment within a predominantly Christian power. He examines contrasting urban-based Muslim organizations and rural expressions of Islam; tension between representative claims of Muslim leaderships within the demand for Muslim autonomy; and the rise of new reform groups. As these splits turned violent, 'new' Muslim 'publics' emerged around opposing centres of Muslim power which sought different resolutions to their minority situation.
East Africa (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi): Makerere Institute of Social Research
Monica A. Hershberger
Women in American Operas of the 1950s
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Feminist analysis of some of the most performed works in the American-opera canon, emphasizing the voices and perspectives of the sopranos who brought these operas to life.
In the 1950s, composers and librettists in the United States were busy seeking to create an opera repertory that would be deeply responsive to American culture and American concerns. They did not break free, however, of the age-old paradigm so typically expressed in European opera: that is, of women as either saintly and pure or sexually corrupt, with no middle ground. As a result, in American opera of the 1950s, women risked becoming once again opera's inevitable victims.
Yet the sopranos who were tasked with portraying these paragons of virtue and their opposites did not always take them as their composers and librettists made them. Sometimes they rewrote, through their performances, the roles they had been assigned. Sometimes they used their lived experiences to invest greater authenticity in the roles.
With chapters on The Tender Land, Susannah, The Ballad of Baby Doe, and Lizzie Borden, this book analyzes some of the most performed yet understudied works in the American-opera canon. It acknowledges Catherine Clément's famous description of opera as "the undoing of women," while at the same time illuminating how singers like Beverly Sills and Phyllis Curtin worked to resist such undoing, years before the official resurgence of the American feminist movement. In short, they ended up helping to dismantle powerful gendered stereotypes that had often reigned unquestioned in opera houses until then.
Gillian Selikowitz
Sebald’s Jews
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This first sustained exploration of W.G. Sebald's engagement with Jews and Jewishness provides new insights into controversial tropes and stereotypes in his narrative prose.
German writer W. G. Sebald (1944-2001) has been hailed, together with Primo Levi, as the "prime speaker of the Holocaust," a breathtaking claim that casts Levi, survivor of Auschwitz, and Sebald, progeny of the German perpetrator generation, in an unlikely pairing that confirms Sebald's status as the preeminent German writer concerned with the Jewish experience in recent history. Recipient of a Koret Jewish Book Award for his "extraordinary evocation of the last century's greatest trauma," Sebald has been widely valorized for restoring individuality to the Jewish victims he portrays.
Sebald's Jews challenges Sebald's position as the moral conscience of a nation struggling to repair the German-Jewish relationship. It argues that despite the varied and quasi-documentary life stories of the Jews who people his narrative prose, and despite his intentions, Sebald's elaborate figural writing fashions Jewish characters as tropes for the conflicts that troubled his generation, allegories that vitiate Jewish individuality and evoke age-old and malign Jewish stereotypes. The book provides new insights into Sebald's ambiguous engagement with Jewishness by revising the notion that he restores individuality to Jewish lives and avoids the generalized treatment of Jews he excoriated in the writing of his German peers. The study reflects a shift in Sebald research that reassesses his revered position by examining controversial aspects of his oeuvre. It provides a much-needed broadening of Sebald scholarship.
Sarah B. Rodriguez
Female Circumcision and Clitoridectomy in the United States
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An engaging and surprising history of surgeries on the clitoris, and what these tell us about American medical ideas concerning the female body and female sexuality.
From the late nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century, American physicians treated women and girls for masturbation by removing the clitoris (clitoridectomy) or clitoral hood (female circumcision). During this same time, and continuing to today, physicians also performed female circumcision to enable women to reach orgasm. Though used as treatment, paradoxically, for both a perceived excessive sexuality and a perceived lack of sexual responsiveness, these surgeries reflect a consistent medical conception of the clitoris as a sexual organ. In recent years the popular media and academics have commented on the rising popularity in the United States of female genital cosmetic surgeries, including female circumcision, yet these discussions often assume such procedures are new. In Female Circumcision and Clitoridectomy in the United States: A History of a Medical Treatment, Sarah Rodriguez presents an engaging and surprising history of surgeries on the clitoris, revealing how medical views of the female body and female sexuality have changed -- and in some cases not changed -- throughout the last century and a half.
Sarah B. Rodriguez is lecturer in medical humanities and bioethics and in global health studies at Northwestern University.
Andrzej Panufnik
Composing Myself – A New Edition
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First volume of a gripping collection of the writings of one of the twentieth century's finest composers, the Anglo-Polish Sir Andrzej Panufnik (1914-91), consisting of a new edition of his 1984 autobiography Composing Myself, his complete programme notes on his own compositions, his essays and articles and his interviews.
Sir Andrzej Panufnik used to say that he communicated in music, not words. But his literary legacy is substantial, as this anthology demonstrates. Its first volume consists of a fully annotated new edition of Composing Myself, the autobiography he wrote in 1985, long since a collector's item. It provides a graphic account of an often dramatic life. Panufnik's early success in pre-World War II Poland was soon eclipsed by the horrors of the Nazi occupation. Composing Myself documents in striking detail the desperate circumstances in which Panufnik repeatedly found himself - and the personal courage with which he responded. Post-War Poland then progressed from the overt terrors of Nazism to the deadening hand of Communism, and Panufnik charts the methodical attempts of Party orthodoxy to stifle independent thought. In spite of the success he enjoyed as a conductor, Panufnik was unable to compose under such restrictions, feeling he was being suffocated. Though a patriot to his bones, he boldly decided that escape to the west was the only option, and his account of his defection - in 1954, at the height of the Cold War - reads like a le Carré thriller. Safe in England, he was able to rebuild his career, overcoming official neglect of his music to become one of Britain's best-respected composers - and to be greeted as a national hero when he finally managed to return to his beloved Poland, free at last.
Ben Jones
The Fleet Air Arm in the Second World War, Volume II, 1942-1943
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Readers of this book will gain a clear appreciation of the growing importance of the aircraft carrier during World War Two and proposals thereafter for the future composition of Royal Navy's surface fleet together with the nature of the Fleet Air Arm's expansion programmes. This second book of three focuses on the Fleet Air Arm during the middle years of the Second World War. It covers the transitional period moving from a small number of carriers to a naval air arm with modern aircraft types capable of operating a number of Fleet Carriers in the Pacific Ocean following Japan's entry into the War in December 1941. The struggle in the Mediterranean continued and reached its peak with the efforts to relieve the siege of Malta in the summer of 1942 and the subsequent landings in North Africa and Italy. The increasing role played by the Fleet Air Arm aircraft operating from Escort Carriers and Merchant Aircraft Carriers in the Battle of the Atlantic during 1943 is also apparent. The aim of these volumes is to present an insight into the major planning and policy issues of concern to the Admiralty and extensive coverage of naval air operations. Difficulties of operating aircraft at sea, the nature of air combat and the complexities involved in expanding an organisation such as the Fleet Air Arm under wartime conditions are discussed.
Matthew S Seligmann
The Naval Route to the Abyss
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This publication is an essential volume for any serious student of naval policy in the pre-First World War era. The intense rivalry in battleship building that took place between Britain and Germany in the run up to the First World War is seen by many as the most totemic of all armaments races. It has been blamed by numerous commentators during the inter-war years as a major cause of the Great War.'The Great Naval Race' has never been examined from the viewpoint of both of its participants simultaneously and equally. This volume will fill this gap. It draws on documents both English-language and German, and will therefore make the German role in this conflict accessible to an English speaking audience for the very first time. The book addresses the build up of the German Navy and it's threat to Britain. All in all, crucial documents leave no doubt that the Imperial German Navy deliberately challenged the Royal Navy. Tirpitz certainly did not want a war before the navy was ready, which he hoped it would be in the 1920s.
Marianne R.E. Czisnik
Nelson's Letters to Lady Hamilton and Related Documents
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This fascinating book by Marianne Czisnik aims at critically reviewing Nelson's letters to Lady Hamilton by bringing together important letters of theirs that have only been published in parts over the last 200 years. In doing so it is possible to assess their relationship and to obtain insights into Nelson's personality and his morality that are not revealed in his official correspondence. Lady Hamilton was so obviously lacking in the subservience and passivity expected from women in that era that authors started to exclude her public sphere of influence by reducing her to a private weakness of Nelson's, who could be successful at sea, where he was far away from the enthralling influence of a manipulating woman. The letters in this edition testify how Admiral Nelson's life at sea was not exclusively public nor was Lady Hamilton's life ashore solely private. It also shows how the two supposedly separate spheres of male and female lives were connected. This scholarly edition of the primary material consists of about 400 letters that Nelson wrote to Lady Hamilton during the last seven years of his life and about a dozen letters of her to him that have survived.
Ben Jones
The Fleet Air Arm in the Second World War:
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This volume will appeal to everyone interested in how the Royal Navy adapted to the use of air power in the Second World War and provides a new and vital perspective on how Britain fought the War. This is the first of three volumes detailing the history of the Fleet Air Arm, the Royal Navy's aircraft carriers and naval air squadrons, during the Second World War. It deals with the formative period between 1939 and 1941 when the Fleet Air Arm tried to recover from the impact of dual control and economic stringencies during the inter-war period while conducting a wide range of operations. There is in depth coverage of significant operations including the Norwegian campaign, Mediterrranean actions such as the attack on the Italian Fleet at Taranto and the Battle of Cape Matapan, and the torpedo attacks on the German battleship Bismarck. Incidents involving the loss of and damage to aircraft carriers, including the sinking of Ark Royal, one of the most famous ships in the early years of World War Two, are also reported. Of major importance are key planning and policy issues. These include the requirements for aircraft carriers, the evolving debate regarding the necessary types of aircraft and attempts to provide sufficient facilities ashore for naval air squadrons.
Rebecca Merkelbach
Story, World and Character in the Late Íslendingasögur
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Argues for new models of reading the complexity and subversiveness of fourteen "post-classical" sagas.
The late Sagas of Icelanders, thought to be written in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, have hitherto received little scholarly attention. Previous generations of critics have unfavourably compared them to "classical" Íslendingasögur and fornaldarsögur, leading modern audiences to project their expectations onto narratives that do not adhere to simple taxonomies and preconceived notions of genre. As "rogues" within the canon, they challenge the established notions of what makes an Íslendingasaga.
Based on a critical appraisal of conceptualisations of canon and genre in saga literature, this book offers a new reading of the relationship between the individual, paranormal, and social dimensions that form the foundation of these sagas. It draws on a multidisciplinary approach, informed by perspectives as diverse as "possible worlds" theory, gender studies, and social history. The "post-classical" sagas are not only read anew and integrated into both their generic and socio-historical context; they are met on their own terms, allowing their fascinating narratives to speak for themselves.
John Bulaitis
The Tithe War in England and Wales, 1881-1936
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Brings to life a fascinating page of history in a scholarly but highly readable account of the "tithe war".
During the 1930s, farming communities waged a campaign of "passive resistance" against Tithe Rentcharge, the modern version of medieval tithe. Led by the National Tithepayers' Association, farmers refused to pay the charge, disrupted auctions of seized stock and joined demonstrations to prevent action by bailiffs. The National Government condemned their "unconstitutional action", ruled out changes in the law and mobilised police to support the titheowners. Meanwhile, the Church of England and lay titheowners - including Oxford and Cambridge colleges, public schools and major landowners - sought to vindicate their right to tithe; in a particularly shameful episode, the Church established a secret company to buy taken produce and remove it from farms.
This "tithe war" was fought outside farms, in the courts, in the press and in the wider arena of public opinion. It posed problems for the Church, legal system, and every political party; split the National Farmers' Union; and provided opportunities for the British Union of Fascists and other sections of the extreme right to cause disturbance.
Drawing on extensive archival research, accounts in local newspapers, and private papers, John Bulaitis traces the evolution of what has been described as this "curious rural revolt", from the late nineteenth century to its climax in 1936, when the Tithe Act brought an end to this form of tax.
Edited by Sarah Vandegrift Eldridge and Eleanor ter Horst
Goethe Yearbook 31
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This year's volume features a special forum on imperialism and race as well as articles and book reviews concerning Goethe and other writers of his age.
This year's volume features a special forum section that stems from the discussions of the Goethe Society's virtual reading group on "Race and Imperialism in 18th-and 19th-Century Literature and Philosophy." Individual members of the reading group contribute essays that combine scholarship with personal reflections on their engagement with issues of race and imperialism over the course of their academic careers.
The volume also presents several more traditionally scholarly articles that offer new approaches to and interpretations of texts by Goethe and other writers and thinkers of the period. Elizabeth Powers reads Goethe's methods of reworking text and life in autobiography, drama, and poetry. Alberto Merzari examines Goethe's and Hegel's differing engagements with the Persian poet Ǧalāl al-Dīn Rūmī as a way of exploring the differences in their philosophical thought. Malte Meyer takes up Jochen Berg's drama Im Taurerland as a rewriting of Goethe that engages with questions of cultural imperialism, female agency, and sexuality. And Brian Tucker reads the acoustic dimensions of Eichendorff's poetry to develop a more complex understanding of the poet's relationship to Romanticism. These articles highlight the breadth of scholarship on the Age of Goethe and how differing approaches-detailed close readings, comparative studies, and more-explore its continued relevance. The volume concludes with book reviews reflecting the diversity of recent scholarship in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century German studies.
Edited by Sarah Vandegrift Eldridge and Eleanor Ter Horst. Contributors: Frederick Amrine, Claire Baldwin, Matthew Childs, Sally Hatch Gray, Joseph A. Haydt, Peter Höyng, Steven R. Huff, Waltraud Maierhofer, Catriona MacLeod, Alberto Merzari, Jennifer Mensch, Malte Meyer, Carl Niekerk, Michael Olson, Saurabh Pal, Elizabeth Powers, Daniel Purdy, Michael Saman, Patricia Anne Simpson, Margaret Strair, Michael Swellander, Brian Tucker, Christian P. Weber, David E. Wellbery.
Translated and with an introduction by Brian Murdoch
Three Political Tales from Medieval Germany
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Accurate and entertaining translations of three texts that reveal much about medieval political thought and remain relevant to today's political systems
Recent political events around the world, not least January 6, 2021, have shown that political systems long thought to be resilient can be surprisingly at risk. This edition offers an introduction to and prose translations of three texts that demonstrate just how precarious things can be even in a rigidly structured society (here the medieval Holy Roman Empire).
The texts, the anonymously authored Duke Ernst, Konrad of Würzburg's Henry of Kempten, and Heinrich's Reynard the Fox, are also literary works, designed to entertain. Two of them are adventure stories, but carry a message about the care needed to prevent the escalation of violence; the third is a bleak warning against unscrupulous advisors. As works of literature they are varied.
The first moves from recognizable history to develop into an early fantasy novel, as the central character goes boldly to distant places outside the known world and meets, fights with, and learns from strange and alien creatures, before returning to the "real" world. The second, a novella, is ostensibly about chivalric bravery, but it is set in a pre-chivalric period, and shows how (then as now) a trivial incident can escalate towards disaster. The third is an animal fable, part of the extensive tradition of Reynard the Fox, initially familiar, but developing into a violent and dark tale that ends with the death of a king.
Nicholas Rogers
Maritime Bristol in the Slave-Trade Era
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Explores the maritime history of Bristol, a leading slave port in the eighteenth century
Delves into the hazards of the slave trade, its recruitment of seamen, its fractious labour relations and mutinies, and how these were resolved by law. One chapter examines in detail how a shipwright sought redress for his ill-treatment aboard a slave ship and how sensitive the merchant elite were to insider criticism; another reveals how partial the Admiralty courts were to captains as sovereigns of their ships.
The book also tracks the chequered fortunes of a New York/Bristol merchant family during the American war, the patterns of investment in mid-century privateering, which illustrate how money from slave-trade activities was mobilized for this speculative enterprise, and how naval impressment was used for political purposes.
The book concludes with a chapter on why Bristol failed to emulate other culturally vibrant towns and cities in opposing the slave trade in the first phase of abolition. In the wake of the Edward Colston controversy, this book contributes to the ongoing debate as to how slavery has shaped British society.
Agustin Guimerá
Sailors, Statesmen and the Implementation of Naval Strategy
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Explores the varied relationship between political leaders and naval experts, from the 16th to 21st centuries
The shaping of national defence strategies is particularly difficult in the case of navies. Few political leaders have naval experience, in contrast to the case of armies where political leaders and army commanders have often shared similar social and professional backgrounds. Bringing together historical examples from Britain, the United States, Spain and France, the book provides insights into this key relationship.
The authors highlight factors which have made for successful relationships between political leaders and naval experts, showing how changing circumstances have affected the dialogue and underlines the importance of good exchange of knowledge, expertise and understanding for successful policy making and strategic outcomes. Sea power continues to be crucial in the present world's increasingly unstable geopolitical situation, the mutual exchange of expertise between naval experts and political leaders is as important as ever, and the risk of political 'sea blindness' remains high. This book's historical examples provide good guidance on how to manage the relationship between political leaders and naval experts well.
Victoria Flood
Medieval Welsh Literature and its European Contexts
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Situates Celtic languages and literatures in relation to European movements, in the tradition of Helen Fulton's groundbreaking research.
Professor Helen Fulton's influential scholarship has pioneered our understanding of the links between Welsh and European medieval literature. The essays collected here pay tribute to and reflect that scholarship, by positioning Celtic languages and literatures in relation to broader European movements and conventions. They include studies of texts from medieval Wales, Ireland, and the Welsh March, alongside discussions of continental multicultural literary engagements, understood as a closely related and analogous field of enquiry. Contributors present new investigations of Welsh poetry, from the pre-Conquest poetry of the princes to late-medieval and early Tudor urban subject matters; Welsh Arthuriana and Irish epic; the literature of the Welsh March - including the writings of the Gawain-poet; and the multilingual contexts of medieval and post-medieval Europe, from the Dutch speakers of polyglot medieval Calais to the Romantic poet Shelley's probable ownership of a Welsh Bible.
Nicolás J. F. Puyané
Liszt Recomposed
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Explores Liszt's compositional processes and methods of revision as the product of the composer's interactions with a large variety of social, cultural, personal and political forces.
Franz Liszt (1811-86) is mostly known for his virtuosic piano works, but his compositional achievements in the genre of song have so far been neglected. Many of Liszt's Lieder exist in multiple versions, sometimes radically altered, and many with equal claims to 'authenticity'. This has sometimes been viewed as a barrier to performance and a hindrance to scholarly scrutiny. Nicolás Puyané now redresses this imbalance and draws attention to this rich and varied corpus of works.
Liszt's songs contain a myriad of intertextual links, not just with the songs of other composers, but also with Liszt's own works in other genres and his own revisions. By focusing on the multi-version songs, the book uncovers how these intertextual relationships have evolved over time. Introducing the concept of "textual fluidity", the book explores Liszt's compositional processes and methods of revision, interpreting the work as being the product of the composer's interactions with a large variety of social, cultural, personal and political forces: for instance, the contemporaneous reception of Liszt's early Lieder, or the change in Liszt's performing and compositional environments from his virtuoso to his Weimar years. The book then offers close readings of selected songs, including the Goethe and Schiller Lieder, by applying the concept of textual fluidity. Its findings will impact the way in which we see Urtext editions, arguing instead for an online fluid-text edition as an ideal resource with which to study Liszt's multi-version compositions.
Rachel M. Petrocelli
Transactional Culture in Colonial Dakar, 1902-44
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Examines Dakar's transformation from a small colonial capital to a dynamic city, highlighting how its resourceful residents challenged French control by forging adaptive economic relationships.
During a transformative era in the first half of the twentieth century, Dakar—former capital of French West Africa and present-day capital of Senegal—evolved from a small colonial capital meant to serve the French administration to a dynamic city shaped not solely by colonial planners but also by its resourceful inhabitants. In this important book, historian Rachel Petrocelli introduces the concept of transactional culture, a set of norms and practices forged by Dakar's residents to navigate life under colonial rule. A central element of that culture was transience, a defining feature permeating various facets of life in Dakar, from commerce and employment to housing and interactions with the state.
The book uncovers a central dynamic: economic relationships in Dakar were continually molded by the ebb and flow of diverse individuals, each pursuing their own objectives despite the relentless efforts of the French state to exert control. Both Europeans and Africans embraced adaptability in Dakar over fixed residence, while immigrant communities implanted themselves and became integral to the city's transactional culture. In this examination based on court records and other sources, Petrocelli shows that as the French colonial state sought to shape and control Dakar, it enacted policies to intentionally limit city dwellers' resources. Strategies like pawning possessions and taking out credit, creatively devising housing, and mobilizing identities and affiliations emerged as a result, integrating Dakarois of every background. These practices persisted long after French rule ended, underscoring the enduring impact of Dakar's colonial history.
Andrew H. Weaver
Narrative and Robert Schumann’s Songs
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Featuring 28 music examples this book takes an innovative approach to analyzing and interpreting nineteenth-century German song, offering new perspectives on Robert Schumann's Lieder and song cycles.
Robert Schumann's Lieder are among the richest and most complex songs in the repertoire and have long raised questions and stimulated discussion among scholars, performers, and listeners. Among the wide range of methodologies that have been used to understand and interpret his songs, one that has been conspicuously absent is an approach based on narratology (the theory and study of narrative texts).
Proceeding from the premise that the performance of a Lied is a narrative act, in which the singer and pianist together function as a narrator, Andrew Weaver's groundbreaking study proposes a comprehensive theory of narratology for the German Romantic Lied and song cycle, using Schumann's complete song oeuvre as the test case. The theory, grounded in the work of narratologist Mieke Bal but also drawing upon recent work in literary theory and musicology, illuminates how music can open up new meanings for the poem, as well as how a narratological analysis of the poem can help us understand the music.
Weaver's book offers new insights into Schumann's Lieder and the poetry he set while simultaneously proposing a methodology applicable to the analysis and interpretation of a wide range of works, including not only the rich treasury of German Lieder but also potentially any genre of accompanied song in any language from the Middle Ages to the present day.
Prof Rachel Hammersley
Civil Religion in the Early Modern Anglophone World, 1550-1700
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Civil Religion - a tradition of political thought that has argued for a close connection between religion and the state - made an important contribution to the development of religious and political thought at key moments of early modern British political and colonial history. As this volume shows, it was at work not just during the Enlightenment, but within a much wider periodical framework: the Reformation, the rise of the Puritan movement, the conflict over the Stuart state and church, the English Revolution, and the formation of key American colonies in the eighteenth century. Advocates of Civil Religion tried to reconcile a national church with religious toleration and design a constitution capable of preventing the church from interfering with affairs of state.
The volume investigates the idea of Civil Religion in the works of canonical thinkers in the history of political thought (Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau), in the works of those who have been recognized as shaping political ideas (Hooker, Prynne et al.) during this period, and in the advocacy of those perhaps not previously associated with Civil Religion (William Penn). Although Civil Religion was often posited as a pragmatic solution to constitutional and ecclesiological problems created by the Reformation and the English Revolution, they also reveal that such pragmatism was not at odds with religious conviction or ideals. Civil Religion certainly enhanced citizenship in this period, but it did so in ways which depended on the truth claims of Protestantism, not on their domestication to politics.
Allan Kennedy
Life at the Margins in Early Modern Scotland
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An exploration of the diverse lived experiences of marginality in Scottish society from the sixteen to the eighteenth century.
Throughout the early modern period, Scottish society was constructed around an expectation of social conformity: people were required to operate within a relatively narrow range of acceptable identities and behaviours. Those who did not conform to this idealised standard, or who were in some fundamental way different from the prescribed norm, were met with suspicion. Such individuals often attracted both criticism and discrimination, forcing them to live confirmed to the social margins.
Focusing on a range of marginalised groups, including the poor, migrants, ethnic minorities, indentured workers and women, the contributors to this book explore what it was like to live at the boundaries of social acceptability, what mechanisms were involved in policing the divide between "mainstream" and "marginal", and what opportunities existed for personal or collective fulfilment. The result is a fresh perspective on early modern Scotland, one that not only recovers the stories of people long excluded from historical discussion, but also offers a deeper understanding of the ordering assumptions of society more generally. Specific topics addressed range from the marginalisation of people with disabilities in the domestic sphere to female sex workers, and the place of executioners in society.
Richard Stone
Bristol and the Birth of the Atlantic Economy, 1500-1700
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Analyses data from the Bristol Port Books to rewrite the history of trade in Bristol, including the city's early involvement with the slave trade.
The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were a transformative period for global commerce, with the principal focus of England's trade shifting away from trade with Europe, primarily in woollen cloth, to a new Atlantic system, with trade in a diverse range of commodities. Based on the fantastically detailed Bristol Port Books, previously thought impenetrable, and using new computer technology to analyse the vast amount of data, this book provides the first long duration history of a major Atlantic port in this period.
It rewrites the history of Bristol's trade, overturning much established thinking, for example showing that trade flourished in the late Tudor and early Stuart period, demonstrating that Bristol was involved in the slave trade much earlier than was previously thought and charting the growth of commerce with North America and the Caribbean from nothing to three quarters of Bristol's imports in the short period from the 1630s to the 1650s. Overall, the book represents a major contribution to understanding how the Atlantic economy worked and how it developed in this crucial period.
Kelly DeVries
Journal of Medieval Military History: Volume XXII
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"The leading academic vehicle for scholarly publication in the field of medieval warfare." Medieval Warfare
The articles in volume 22 of the Journal of Medieval Military History range widely, not only in chronology but also in geography and approach. Sven Ekdahl looks at the big picture of the role of Swedish castles in the north; L. J. Andrew Villalon focuses on the very particular and culturally significant rewards given by the Catholic Kings to two noble families to celebrate minor victories on the borders of Granada in the far south. Subjects include fighting at the tactical level (the unexpectedly substantial tradition of mounted archery in England, the Low Countries and France, revealed by Sanders Goevarts), the operational level (Emperor Louis II's logistics in Italy, treated by Elijah T. Wallace), and the strategic level (King John's employment of naval power, analyzed by Adam M. McNeil). Vladimir Aleksić and Damnjan Prlinčević consider military, political, geographical, demographic, and economic factors to contextualize the military history of the rich mining town of Novo Brdo in Serbia as it faced the rising tide of Ottoman conquest in the last century of the Middle Ages. Three contributions draw on the rich resources of the English royal archives to illuminate the material and technological tools of medieval warfare: individual weapons (most significantly both longbows and short bows) described with exceptional detail in a murder case of 1315 (Clifford J. Rogers); the horses of Henry V in the Agincourt campaign of 1415 (Gary P. Baker); and the military equipment stored at Dover Castle as described in inventories dating from 1320 to 1437 (Dan Spencer).
Nathalie Arnold Koenings
Mystical Power and Politics on the Swahili Coast
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Traces changing visions of mystical power and authority on the island of Pemba, whose people's reputed resistance to outside rule has shaped the national narratives of both Zanzibar and Tanzania.
For two centuries, Pemba, the second largest island of Zanzibar, has been known by East Africans and outsiders alike as rich in dangerous knowledge. Despite Pembans' reputation for piety and deep Islamic knowledge,uchawi- 'mystical work and power', sometimes termed 'magic', 'witchcraft', or 'sorcery' - has long featured in diverse visions of their identity and as key to worldly power. Today, as traditional methods of securing agency are called into question and new ways proliferate, the mystical world is an intensely conflicted realm where the nature of power, ethical action, and reality itself is continually reframed.
This luminous ethnography follows Pemban notions of invisible and worldly power through the Zanzibar Revolution of 1964, the trials of multiparty democracy, the rise of Islamic revival, and intensifying neoliberalism. Through an exploration of rural imaginings of power, it argues that nations and the grammars that underwrite them are made in and by their peripheries, which give 'the centre' shape. Highlighting the intersections of mystical practices, religion, and politics-as-such on the Swahili Coast, the book contributes new perspectives to studies of the imagination, power, and religious transformation in Africa, the Indian Ocean, and the larger Islamic world.
John R. Near
Autobiographical Recollections of Charles-Marie Widor
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The last of the Romantics, Widor narrated his recollections in 1936, bringing to life his diverse experiences from the time of Louis Philippe to the cusp of World War II.
Widor's Toccata is the most famous organ piece composed in the past three hundred years—since Bach's ubiquitous Toccata in D Minor. Linked inseparably with the organ through his ten seminal organ symphonies and legendary sixty-four years as organist at Saint-Sulpice, Widor drew crowds of doting admirers from all walks of life around himself and Cavaillé-Coll's great organ of one hundred stops. It is apparent throughout these "Autobiographical Recollections" that Widor was well-connected, moving with ease among the intelligentsia, presidents, politicians, royalty, nobility, patrons, and artists. A keen observer and a man of sophistication and extraordinary erudition, Widor was an all-embracing musician and notable historical figure who led an active life beyond his famous organ gallery. As permanent secretary of the Academy of Fine-Arts, he was the cultural ambassador of France for more than twenty years. Few musicians of any era have had a broader experience, wider sphere of influence, and greater number of significant and varied accomplishments.
Preceded by a comprehensive Preface, these "Autobiographical Recollections," narrated in the last months of Widor's life, are translated into English for the first time, meticulously edited, and profusely annotated. The persons, political details, and historical events that Widor spoke of with great fluency are identified in notes that give the reader a full understanding of the narrative. Several appendixes and a trove of hitherto unpublished photos illuminate the text.
Megan G Leitch
Arthurian Literature XXXIX
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"Delivers fascinating material across genres, periods, and theoretical issues." TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
This volume is a special issue dedicated to Professor Elizabeth Archibald, who has had such an impact on, and made so many significant contributions to, the field of Arthurian Studies. It maintains its tradition of diverse approaches to the Arthurian tradition - albeit on this occasion with a particular focus on Malory, appropriately reflecting one of Professor Archibald's main interests.
It starts with the essay awarded this year's D.S. Brewer Prize for a contribution by an early career scholar, which considers the little-known debt owed by early modern sailors to Arthurian knighthood and pageantry. The essays that follow begin with a wide-ranging account of manuscript decorations and annotations in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia, before turning to the Evil Custom trope in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Further contributions explore the formalities of requests and conditions in Malory's '"Tale of Gareth", emotional excess and magical transformation in several scenes across the Morte Darthur, tensions between public and private and self and identity in Malory's "Sankgreal", and friction between the (external and imposed) law and (internal and subjective but honourable) code of chivalry, especially apparent in Malory's final Tales. The last article examines the ways in which Mordred's origins in modern Arthurian fiction build on Malory's false, or forgotten, promise to relate Mordred's upbringing. The volume closes with a short tribute to Elizabeth Archibald, highlighting her leadership in the field and her encouragement of scholarly collaboration and community.
Albrecht Classen
Der Niederrheinische Orientbericht, c.1350
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Translation and detailed commentary of a fourteenth-century Low-German work about the Near and Middle East.
That extensive travel took place during the Middle Ages has long been established, via such accounts as, for example, Marco Polo's Devisement du Monde; but there remains a relative paucity of documents or narratives confirming and dealing with this phenomenon. Der Niederrheinische Orientbericht ("An Account of the Middle East"), composed around 1350/55 by an anonymous author in Low German, is powerful evidence of international relations between east and west during this period; it provides extensive information, dealing with such matters as the local culture, fauna and flora, and offers spectacular insights into the co-existence of many different religions and peoples. It is therefore an important source for our knowledge; but it has hitherto been neglected by scholars, not least because of the difficulty of its language.
This volume offers the first translation into English, thereby making the work available to a wider audience; it is accompanied by a detailed commentary on its historical, religious, military, architectural and political elements, elucidating the narrative fully. The volume also contains a contextual introduction, considering what can be known of the author, and the manuscript tradition.
Shreya Roy
State, Law and Gender
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A critical analysis of marriage law in India from the late nineteenth to early twentieth century
In State, Law and Gender, Shreya Roy highlights how Indian law has been implicated in women's subordination. It explores the ideological expectations that underpin women's legal regulation, as well as the traditions in which law subjugates women - the multifaceted and elusive ways wherein law validates profoundly gender-based suppositions, relationships, and characters. The book demonstrates that the correlation of moral precepts and legal norms is associated with the broader history of the age of marriage of girls in India, and it has also shown how history includes diverse alternatives to understanding and addressing the problem of child marriages that do not rely on liberal legal frameworks.
The book critically analyzes and evaluates the social and legislative history of the period focusing particularly on three significant pieces of legislation - Act III of 1872, the Age of Consent Act of 1891, and the Child Marriage Restraint Act of 1929. It traces the history of the legal changes related to the age of marriage in India after Independence, and links this issue with the present-day concern and the Government's initiative for raising the age of marriage of girls.
Tim Dowdall
Max Stirner and Nihilism
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A reassessment of the controversial, yet still influential nineteenth-century German philosopher that explores the contentious issue of whether he was, as his critics frequently claim, a nihilist.
Max Stirner (1806-1856) is often regarded as an enfant terrible of nineteenth-century German philosophy, but he has continued to exert an influence despite his marginalization as a nihilist. This study is the first to tackle head-on the question of whether Stirner can indeed reasonably be described as a nihilist. Although he is not known ever to have used the word "nihilism" or any of its derivatives, he was first accused of being a nihilist immediately after the publication of his magnum opus Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (translated in most English editions as The Ego and His Own) in 1844. Since then, the allegation has been repeated by well over a hundred writers and critics, with the result that it has become something of a truism. The book aims, first, to establish a clear understanding of the many meanings of the term nihilism; second, to examine the accusations leveled at Stirner in the light of those meanings; and third, to assess not only the fairness and accuracy of the imputation of nihilism but also its usefulness in understanding Stirner as a thinker. It thus provides new insights into Stirner's thought, challenges the orthodox view of him as a philosophical pariah, reassesses his ideas and their place in the history of philosophy, and addresses the recurrent issue of his contemporary relevance.
Alice Jorgensen
Emotional Practice in Old English Literature
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An examination of how emotions were practised and performed through Old English texts.
Scholarship is increasingly interested in investigating concepts of emotion found in Old English literature. This study takes the next step, arguing that both heroic and religious texts were vehicles for emotional practice - that is, for doing things with emotion.
Using case studies from heroic poetry (Beowulf, The Battle of Brunanburh and The Battle of Maldon), religious poetry (Christ I and Christ III) and homilies (selections from the Vercelli Book, Blickling Homilies and the works of Wulfstan), it shows via detailed close readings that texts could be used to act out emotional styles, manage the emotions arising from specific events, and negotiate relationships both within social groups and with God. Meanwhile, a chapter on the Old English Boethius explores how the control of unruly emotions is theorized as the transfer of attachment from the things of this world to the things of the divine.
Overall, the volume offers new angles on the social functions of genres and questions of reception and performance; and it gives insight into how early medieval people used emotions to relate to their world, temporal and eternal.
Edited by Maurits S. Hassankhan; Narinder Mohkamsingh; Goolam Vahed; & Radica Mahase
Localization and Globalization of Religions
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Explores the adaptation of Hinduism and Islam in diasporic settings and inter-religious relations in the Girmit diaspora.
Archival research, micro-biographies, and ethnographic studies shine light on the development of Hindu and Muslim communities around the world, and the relationships between them, to deliver new insights into the history of indentured labour and its impact on the formation of religious heritage and identity. Twelve chapters cover regions including the Southern Pacific, Indian Ocean, and the Caribbean.
Part I examines Hinduism in Mauritius, South Africa, Fiji and the Caribbean, while Part II considers the Muslim diaspora. Importantly, Part III looks at the relationships between these two religious groups within the Girmit diaspora, including interreligious cooperation and the experiences of religiously mixed families.
Includes perspective from historians, sociologists, anthropologists, linguists and others. Features contributors based in Australia, France, Fiji, Mauritius, the Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa, Suriname, Trinidad & Tobago and the USA.
Ernest N. Emenyonu
ALT 33 Children's Literature & Story-telling
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Contributors analyse the theories behind children's literature, its functions and cultural significance, and suggest the new directions this literature is taking in terms of its craft, themes and intentions.
Africa's encounter with the West and its implications and consequences remain far-reaching and enduring in the craft and thrust of its creative writers. The contributors to ALT 33 analyse the connections between traditional stories and myths that have been told to children, as well as the work of contemporary creative writers who are writing for children in order that they understand this complex history. Some of these writers are developing traditional myths, folk tales, and legends and are writing them in new forms, while others focus on the encounter with the West that has dominated much modern African literature for adults. The previous neglect of the cultural significance, study, criticism and teaching of children's literature is addressed in this volume: How can the successes and/or failures of stories and story-telling for children in Africa be measured? Are there models to be followed and whatmakes them models? What is the relationship between the text and the illustration of children's books? What should guide the reader or critic of children's literature coming out of Africa - globalism, transculturality or internalregionalism? What problems confront teachers, students, publishers and promoters of children's books in Africa?
Ernest Emenyonu is Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Michigan-Flint, USA; the editorial board is composed of scholars from US, UK and African universities.
Reviews Editor: Obi Nwakanma
HEBN: Nigeria
Surinder Singh
Situating Medieval India
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Explores state formation, social fabrics and cultural mores of medieval India from 1200-1800.
The states of medieval India operated under a ruling class that was largely Muslim, colouring our understanding of the history of the period. Increased availability of Persian chronicles, emergence of a class of professional historians and progressive forces emanating from the anti-colonial movement have led to new approaches to the period.
Situating Medieval India covers more than 6 centuries, from the Delhi Sultanate to the arrival of Europeans. Topics covered include approaches to exercise of sovereign power in medieval states and the social identity of government officers, Dulla Bhatti's revolt against the Mughal State, modes of resistance in the state of Punjab, and religious diversity in Agra. The author also examines scientific and technical innovations, and the artworks of Mushtaqi, Jahangir and Bhandari.
The book opens up medieval India in all its complexity and richness.
W. Mark Ormrod
Winner and Waster and its Contexts
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Full-length analysis of one of the most politically and socially engaged medieval poems
The late fourteenth-century English poem Winner and Waster narrates a debate between the forces of avarice (Winner) and generosity (Waster); it ranges widely over a number of major issues in the political life of England during Edward III's reign.
This book sets out to re-date the poem from the 1350s to the 1360s, and in so doing to question whether its principal message really revolves (as so much earlier scholarship has insisted) around the state of public order and the costs of warfare in the 1350s. Instead, it proposes that the poem echoes debates about Edward III's ability to maintain concord between the members of his household, to manage the extravagance in clothing that prompted the sumptuary laws of 1363, and to run his peace-time finances of the 1360s in such a way as to guarantee the solvency of the crown.
Drawing extensively on the records of parliament and on contemporary chronicles, this volume sets Winner and Waster within the wider context of other complaint literature of the fourteenth century, and characterizes it as one of the most politically - and socially - engaged works of the period.
Edited by Carine Alders and Eleonore Pameijer; foreword by Michael Haas
Suppressed Composers in the Netherlands
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An edited collection that assesses the music of 34 Dutch composers who were persecuted by the Nazis during World War Two.
German occupation during the Second World War destroyed the careers of many Dutch composers. Some of them fled or went into hiding; many were murdered. In the Netherlands alone, at least 35 composers were persecuted, and most were then forgotten. Among them were Jewish composers like Daniël Belinfante, Dick Kattenburg, Leo Smit and Rosy Wertheim, but there were also figures from abroad who had sought refuge in the Netherlands, like Hans Lachmann and Ferenc Weisz, as well as those who had to go into hiding or were incarcerated because of their resistance activities, like Jan van Gilse and Marius Flothuis. What music had these men and women composed in the Netherlands during the interbellum? What did the survivors write with the return of peace? And what damage to the fabric of Dutch musical history was done by the Nazi tyranny?
Patrick Outhwaite
Christ the Physician in Late-Medieval Religious Controversy
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A consideration of the allegory of Christ the Divine Physician in medical and religious writings.
Discourses of physical and spiritual health were intricately entwined in the Middle Ages, shaping intellectual concepts as well as actual treatment. The allegory of Christ as Divine Physician is an example of this intersection: it appears frequently in both medical and religious writings as a powerful figure of healing and salvation, and was invoked by dissidents and reformists in religious controversies.
Drawing on previously unexplored manuscript material, this book examines the use of the Christus Medicus tradition during a period of religious turbulence. Via an interdisciplinary analysis of literature, sermons, and medical texts, it shows that Wycliffites in England and Hussites in Bohemia used concepts developed in hospital settings to press for increased lay access to Scripture and the sacraments against the strictures of the Church hierarchy. Tracing a story of reform and controversy from localised institutional contexts to two of the most important pan-European councils of the fifteenth century, Constance and Basel, it argues that at a point when the body of the Church was strained by multiple popes, heretics and schismatics, the allegory came into increasing use to restore health and order.
Edited by Carrie Churnside
Transitions in Mid-Baroque Music
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Featuring 102 music examples, this edited collection features contributions by leading scholars from the UK, United States, Australasia and Europe on what characterized the period.
This collection focusses on the stylistic and cultural interchange that characterizes the musical period of the mid-Baroque (c.1650-1710). The idea of musical transition during this period is evident in two principal ways: geographical and chronological (the two often overlap). Chapters examine geographical transition by tracing the exchange of regional and national styles, while considering chronological evolution from the perspective of music theory, performance practice, source studies or specific repertoires. Studies range across instrumental and vocal music, both sacred and secular, and encompass some of the main European traditions prevalent at the time: Italian, German, French and English. The collection features contributions by leading scholars from the UK, the United States, Australasia and Europe.
James Barnaby
Religious Conflict at Canterbury Cathedral in the Late Twelfth Century
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Documents a long-running dispute between the archbishops and monks of Canterbury throughout the 1180s and 1190s.
For fifteen years the monks of Christ Church Canterbury waged a war against their archbishop, over a plan to build a church to provide funds for their administration, dedicated to Thomas Becket. Fearing the loss of their most beloved (and lucrative) saint to this new institution, the monks embarked on a course of action which saw rioting in the streets of Canterbury, their excommunication, and the cathedral placed under siege by the archbishop.
Although at first glance an internal dispute between the archbishop and his cathedral chapter, it had a wide-ranging impact. The monks travelled thousands of miles in support of their cause, enlisting the backing of popes, cardinals, and the elites of Europe. In England, the kings during the period took a personal interest in the dispute, sometimes attempting to resolve it and sometimes hindering any chance of peace.
This book, the first full account of the conflict, draws on the huge collection of letters it provoked (one of the largest compiled in the twelfth century), alongside other sources such as monastic culture, to offer a detailed narrative of this complicated feud between Archbishops Baldwin of Forde, Hubert Walter and their cathedral monks; it also considers the continuations of the dispute in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In addition, it analyses the key themes of the conflict: the role of royalty, travel, and the deployment of Thomas Becket.
Richard Cassidy
The Great Roll of the Pipe for the Forty-Third Year of the Reign of King Henry III Michaelmas 1259: (Pipe Roll 103)
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Critical insights into the period of baronial reform and rebellion in England (1258-67) and the evolution of parliament.
This new edition of the 1259 pipe roll sees the Pipe Roll Society returning to its roots by publishing the financial records of the English crown. The decision to publish this particular roll reflects the importance of the year 1259 in English constitutional and political history, at a critical juncture in the period of baronial reform and rebellion in England (1258-67) and the evolution of parliament. In 1258, a group of baronial reformers had imposed a council of fifteen on the king and attempted to regulate the workings of royal government and correct the misgovernment of both the centre and the localities.
The contents of this pipe roll cover the first full year of the operation of this baronial government. It contains accounts for most of the counties of England and offers valuable insights into government finance and how royal administration productively functioned during this period. In particular, it provides detailed information about the sources of royal revenues and how these revenues were spent in the counties. The information within the roll, and within its ancillary records, sheds new light on the relationship between the central government and the sheriffs, the crown's chief local agents, which had been radically altered in 1258,with the appointment of new sheriffs by the reforming council as custodians, who were expected to account for the traditional income from the counties. Dr Cassidy's analysis of the pipe roll, analysed in the introduction to his new edition, demonstrates that the reformers' efforts to control the financial administration and reform Exchequer procedures met with success, in the beginning.
Tully Potter
Adolf Busch
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Monumental biography of one of the major musicians of the twentieth century.
Revised edition: Adolf Busch (1891-1952) was an all-round musician and a moral beacon in troubled times. As first violin of the Busch String Quartet, founded in 1912, he was the greatest quartet-player of the last century and he led a famous conductorless orchestra, the Busch Chamber Players. He was also the busiest solo violinist of the inter-War years, regularly performing major concertos with such conductors as Nikisch, Toscanini, Weingartner, Walter, Furtwängler, Boult, Wood, Barbirolli and his elder brother Fritz. He was, moreover, an outstanding composer whose works enjoyed performances in Germany and further afield. Frequently he appeared as soloist and composer in the same concert.
His courageous decision to boycott his native country from April 1933 - despite Hitler's efforts to persuade 'our German violinist' to return - drastically reduced his income and damaged his career as soloist and composer. In 1938, because of Mussolini's race laws, he imposed a similar boycott on Italy, where he was wildly popular. The following year he emigrated with his quartet colleagues to the United States, where he was not fully appreciated, although he had many successes with a new chamber orchestra and founded the Marlboro summer school.
This biography, based on more than thirty years' research, examines Busch's exemplary behaviour in the context of a tumultuous era. Volume One traces his progress from childhood in Westphalia, through friendships with Fritz Steinbach, Donald Tovey and Max Reger, early triumphs in Berlin, London and Vienna, years of maturity and fulfilment, rejection of Hitler's Germany and close bonds with British musicians and concert-goers in the 1930s. It ends just before his move into American exile. Volume Two follows Busch through the Second World War, his return to give concerts in Europe in the late 1940s and his founding of the Marlboro summer school in Vermont shortly before his untimely death. A series of appendices consider Busch as violinist, violist and teacher, his taste and repertoire, his interpretations, his colleagues, his celebrated recordings and his compositions.
This revised edition now features full colour covers and additional photographs added to the generous quantity presented in the first edition. Information from Scottish composer, Erik Chrisholm, which has come to light since the first edition gives a delightful picture of Busch and his colleagues in the early 1930s. The appendices and indexes have been thoroughly updated and the discography has been overhauled to reflect the large number of fresh reissues of Busch's recordings as well as new recordings of his compositions.
William E. William E. Fredeman
The Correspondence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti: set [10 volume set]
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Cordelia Warr
Medieval Clothing and Textiles 18
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The best new research on medieval clothing and textiles, drawing from a range of disciplines.
The essays collected here continue the Journal's wide-ranging and eclectic tradition. Topics include literary evidence for linen armour; serial production in late medieval silks; the inventory of Isabella Bruce's bridal goods; the depiction of women textile workers in the frescoes of the Salone of the Palazzo della Ragione in Padua, Italy; ideal female beauty in the Middle Ages and the means used to attain and assess it; and social status as evidenced by clothing and textiles in the Scottish royal treasurer's accounts of the mid-sixteenth century.
Nigel Bryant
The Book of the Deeds of the Good Knight Jacques de Lalaing
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Contains detailed, eyewitness accounts of the most memorable exploits of a man fit to be memorialised as a model of ideal knighthood.
'My honoured lord, I am sending you certain recollections of the high and admirable deeds of arms performed in the lists by your late son Jacques de Lalaing... But they are small memories in relation to the greatness of his deeds.'
So begins a letter that Lefèvre de Saint-Remy, 'King of Arms' of one of the grandest orders of chivalry, the Burgundian Order of the Golden Fleece, wrote to Jacques's father following the young knight's dramatic death. It contains detailed, eyewitness accounts of many of his most memorable exploits, and leaves little reason to doubt that Jacques de Lalaing was a genuinely exceptional knight, fit to be memorialised as a model of ideal knighthood.
This letter is just one of several components of the fascinating Book of the Deeds of the Good Knight Jacques de Lalaing. Not a biography by a single hand but a herald's compilation of existing documents - Lefèvre's letter, the records of other heralds and a previously lost section of Lefèvre's fine chronicle - the book traces Lalaing's career in absorbing detail.
It is a remarkable story. After serving in the Burgundian conquest of Luxembourg, Lalaing set out across Europe, challenging and jousting wherever he went from Portugal to Scotland. Most famous of all was his elaborately staged deed of arms called the Fountain of Tears. Here, on a river island in Burgundy, he stood and fought all comers for an entire year in 1449-50. With grim irony Lalaing, as glamorous in his time as any sporting hero of today, was then killed by an unglamorous cannon ball in the Ghent War of 1453.
Compiled largely from the work of heralds whose prime concern was accuracy, this book holds rich seams of information to be mined, offering invaluable insights into the behaviour and thinking of the nobility in the late Middle Ages.
The Book of the Deeds of Jacques de Lalaing follows Nigel Bryant's previous translations of chivalric biographies from earlier centuries - those of William Marshal, Bertrand du Guesclin and Geoffroi de Charny. It shows that the ideals of chivalry - including even a commitment to crusade - were still very much alive even as the nature of warfare changed, and Jacques was a complete model of those ideals, a model which remained real, attainable and absolutely relevant.
Mark McFarland
The Musical Relationship between Claude Debussy and Igor Stravinsky
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Stravinsky's influence on Debussy in 1910-13, rarely discussed, is demonstrated here in the many modernistic features of such works as the Preludes Book II, Khamma, and Jeux.
This book reassesses the relationship between Debussy and Stravinsky, two of the most important composers of the early twentieth century. When the Russian composer traveled to France in 1910 to attend the premiere of his first ballet, The Firebird, he was invited to dine at the French composer's house, and a photo of the two commemorates the beginning of their friendship. Stravinsky was already acquainted with many of Debussy's earlier works, and Debussy was introduced to the Russian composer's first three ballets between 1910 and 1913.
Stravinsky's early works contain Debussy-like passages, as in the opening measures of his opera The Nightingale, which echoes the opening measures of Debussy's "Nuages." As author Mark McFarland here shows, however, the adoption on Debussy's part of characteristics from Stravinsky's style is, perhaps surprisingly, no less substantial. Debussy borrowed motifs from both The Firebird and Petrushka as well as the Russian tradition of Leitharmony in his little-known ballet Khamma, and Stravinsky's ballets, including The Rite of Spring, seems to have sparked an exploration into octatonic harmony in Debussy's second book of piano preludes.
McFarland's close analysis of parallel passages and usages in works of the two composers also reveals that Debussy eventually distanced himself from Stravinsky, perhaps fearing to seem like an acolyte rather than an innovator. His borrowings from Stravinsky (and Russian style) gradually disappear, as McFarland demonstrates by close attention to passages in some of the late works, which move in the direction of a neoclassicism that Stravinsky himself would soon adopt and expand further.
Rolf Norsen
Clément Janequin
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Clément Janequin's spectacular entertainment chansons jump-started French music printing, spread his fame across sixteenth-century Europe, and earned him lasting success with vocal ensembles and audiences around the world.
Clément Janequin was the musical poster boy for the Valois kings of France, a bestseller for the fledgling sixteenth-century music-printing industry and, notwithstanding his status as an ordained priest, a major supplier of hymn-style harmonizations of Huguenot melodies. Ever since the sixteenth century, vocal ensembles have embraced his barking dogs, chirping birds, and thundering horse hoofs, and then moved beyond the bird and battle songs to a repertory rich in lyric beauty and Rabelaisian wit.
This first in-depth biography looks at Janequin's revolutionary approach to entertainment music, his pioneer status in the developing music-printing industry, and his contributions to sacred music in the turmoil that followed the Reformation (including the first known hymn-style harmonization of what became known as Old One Hundredth). It traces his early life in Bordeaux, Luçon, Auch, and Angers during the period when Pierre Attaingnant made Janequin a central name in early French music publishing, and subsequently the composer's transition to Paris, where, as the first composer to make the attempt, he put his revenues from music printing (from the firms of Nicolas Du Chemin and Le Roy & Ballard) at the core of his economic-survival strategy. Recounted with both scholarly detail and Janequinian humor, the volume includes an extensive selection of musical examples.
Ben Cowell
The British Country House Revival
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British country houses have experienced a renaissance since the early 1970s. A new accord is needed today, recognising the increasingly contested contribution of country houses to British cultural life.
Fifty years ago, the future for country houses in Britain looked bleak. The Victoria & Albert Museum's exhibition The Destruction of the Country House, which opened in October 1974, charted the loss of over a thousand country houses in the preceding century. The makers of the exhibition warned that history could be "about to repeat itself" because of the threats besetting mansion properties, principally from higher taxation. Houses faced the prospect of having to be stripped of their collections and sold for use as offices, hotels, or hospitals, with their parks and gardens turned into golf clubs. Government might afford to save just a handful of the most significant of these places, working in tandem with charities such as the National Trust. The rest would be consigned to history.
This book traces the history of country houses in Britain, from the Destruction exhibition to the present day. The wave of country house losses anticipated in 1974 never actually happened. Instead, over the next five decades Britain's country houses experienced a renaissance. Fiscal rules changed in the mid-1970s to make it easier for owners to hold on to their assets. Economic improvements in the 1980s and 1990s allowed many houses and estates to develop profitable commercial businesses. All of this was achieved only after dedicated campaigning from heritage organisations in support of the country house cause. The book argues that a new accord is needed today, to recognise and value the ongoing, if increasingly contested, contribution of country houses to British life and culture in the twenty-first century.
La correspondencia de César Vallejo es la mejor puerta de entrada documental a su biografía. Esta edición recoge todas las cartas que se conocen escritas por Vallejo y dirigidas a él; además, esta se enriquece con notas aclaratorias que permiten adentrarse en el universo de César Vallejo.
Estos volumenes recogen las cartas escritas entre 1910 y la muerte del poeta. Se incluyen, entre otras, misivas hasta ahora inéditas dirigidas a Tristan Tzara, Xavier Abril, José Eulogio Garrido y Juan Larrea y se incorporan a la correspondencia el total de las solicitudes que envió Vallejo, durante su estadía en la cárcel de Trujillo, solicitando su libertad y fragmentos de las cartas que le dirigió a quien sería su esposa, Georgette Philippart.
César Vallejo's correspondence offers a unique insight into his life story. These volumes collect the letters written between 1910 and the death of the poet. They include previously unpublished letters addressed to Tristan Tzara, Xavier Abril, José Eulogio Garrido and Juan Larrea, requests Vallejo sent during his stay in the Trujillo prison, requesting his freedom, and fragments of the letters that he addressed to his wife Georgette Philippart. The text is enriched with explanatory notes that allow us to delve into his universe.
Nicholas H. Bennett
The Register of Richard Fleming Bishop of Lincoln 1420-1431: III
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This volume completes the edition of the register of Bishop Fleming. The general memoranda include licences and dispensations familiar in such registers: letters dimissory permitting clerks to seek ordination in other dioceses; licences to clergy to celebrate anniversaries, to preach or to be non-resident, usually for the purpose of study; licences for oratories in private chapels; licences to hear confessions. Some clergy are reprimanded: the vicar of North Mimms is deprived for non-residence; a chaplain of Dingley is reported to have buried a suicide in consecrated ground. Wills and other probate documents are transcribed in full. There are commissions appointing vicars-general when the bishop was absent overseas. On four occasions the bishop ordered special prayers to be said in all archdeaconries: for the king and his army at war overseas, for the soul of King Henry V, for the soul of the bishop's sister and for the bishop's journey overseas on the king's business.
Sishuwa Sishuwa
Party Politics and Populism in Zambia
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Analysis of the political history of Zambia through a study of Michael Sata. It shows the interaction between party politics and populism since the 1950s, the nature and competitiveness of electoral politics in single or dominant party regimes, and the importance of individual political leadership to the success of opposition parties in Africa.
Javier Milei in Argentina, Donald Trump in the United States, Giorgia Meloni in Italy, Narendra Modi in India, Julius Malema in South Africa - populist leaders are thriving in party politics across the world. Structural changes like the globalisation of the economy, rising inequality, and increased voter detachment from traditional parties have given rise to distinct social grievances on which the populist leader feeds. But how does such a leader emerge? This book uses the study of Michael Sata, former president of Zambia and one of the most intriguing political figures of modern African history, to provide insight into the origins and personality of the populist. It argues that three factors - the structural, the economic and, importantly, the personal - are needed to understand when and how populism develops.
Based on exclusive interviews with Sata, as well as with his friends, allies, opponents, and journalists, and on newspapers, archives, personal correspondence, and participant observation, Sata's election to the Zambian presidency in 2011 is explained as the culmination of a political journey spanning the late colonial period (1953-1964), the years of one-party rule (1973-1991), and the era of multiparty democracy (since 1991). The book explores the nature and style of his political strategy, the grievances that he articulated and played on, the constituencies he targeted and mobilised, the policy appeals around which he rallied support, and the language with which he expressed those appeals. At the same time, it uses the prism of Sata's political life to examine the growth of populism in Zambia and its practice in party politics since the 1950s. As well as providing new insights into the long shadow of late colonialism on the country's contemporary politics, this book illustrates the evolution of political ideas and populist strategies.
Dr Carlos Fernández
César Vallejo. Correspondencia
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La correspondencia de César Vallejo es la mejor puerta de entrada documental a su biografía. Esta edición recoge todas las cartas que se conocen escritas por Vallejo y dirigidas a él; además, esta se enriquece con notas aclaratorias que permiten adentrarse en el universo de César Vallejo.
Este primer volumen recoge las cartas escritas entre 1910 y 1928. Se incluyen, entre otras, misivas hasta ahora inéditas dirigidas a Tristan Tzara y Xavier Abril, y se incorpora a la correspondencia el total de las solicitudes que envió Vallejo, durante su estadía en la cárcel de Trujillo, solicitando su libertad.
César Vallejo's correspondence is the best documentary gateway to his biography. This edition collects all the known letters written by Vallejo and addressed to him. In addition, it is enriched with explanatory notes that allow us to delve into the universe of César Vallejo.
This first volume collects letters written between 1910 and 1928. It includes, among others, unpublished letters addressed to Tristan Tzara and Xavier Abril, and all of the petitions Vallejo sent from his time in the Trujillo prison, requesting his release.
Jack Taylor
African Migration and the Novel
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Examines how current novels dealing with African migration address social issues, immigrant subjectivity, and the politics of migration.
African Migration and the Novel: Exploring Race, Civil War, and Environmental Destruction explores pressing social and political issues such as racial identity, environmental devastation, human trafficking, and political violence through the lens of novels of African migration. The book details how authors such as Chika Unigwe, Chris Abani, Dinaw Mengestu, In Koli Jean Bofane, Boubacar Boris Diop, and others develop "the migratory imagination": the creative means mobilized within their novels to expose the reader to contemporary social issues. Drawing on and synthesizing a multitude of theoretical frameworks including ecocriticism, postcolonial theory, genre studies, Black studies, paratextual reading, and political economy, the book argues for the flexibility of the migration novel as a genre.
African Migration and the Novel traces migratory routes such as Nigeria to London and Belgium, Congo to Paris, Ethiopia to Washington, DC, and internal migration resulting from environmental destruction in Sierra Leone, while paying deep attention to the historical and political conditions described in the novels. The subjectivities and livelihoods of immigrants, refugees, those living in exile, and asylum seekers are all represented in the migration novels under discussion. Ultimately, this work demonstrates the promise of the African migration novel to awaken a sense of justice in the reader.
Edited by Shimelis B. Gulema, Hewan Girma and Mulugeta F. Dinbabo
The Global Ethiopian Diaspora
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A comprehensive historical, geographic, and thematic analysis of the multidimensional and dynamic migration experience of Ethiopians within and beyond Africa.
Ethiopia is one of the largest African sources of transnational migrants, with an estimated two to three million Ethiopians living outside of the home country. This edited collection provides a critical examination of the temporal, spatial, and thematic dimensions of Ethiopian migration, mapping out its scale, scope, and destinations. The thirteen essays here (plus an introduction and conclusion by the volume's editors) offer a discussion of the state of knowledge and current debates on the diaspora and suggest alternative frameworks for interrogating and understanding the Ethiopian migration and diasporic experiences. Key time periods and literatures are identified to study Ethiopian transnational migration, moving from a survey of patterns in pre-twentieth-century Ethiopia and on to changing trajectories in the imperial period and under succeeding postrevolutionary regimes.
Geographically, the contour of the Ethiopian diaspora is outlined, identifying key destinations and patterns of return. In particular, the volume seeks to correct the traditional tendency to conflate the Ethiopian diaspora with North America and Europe by including areas that have long been marginalized, such as inter-Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. The objective is not to construct a simple cartography of migration but a critical analysis of national and global issues, policies, trends, and processes that shape the roots and routes of the migration dynamic. Thematically, this book aims to challenge the existing boundaries of Ethiopian migration and diaspora studies and raise important concerns about representation, ghettoization, and perpetuation of inequalities.
Edited by Shimelis Bonsa Gulema, Hewan Girma, and Mulugeta F. Dinbabo. Contributors: Alpha Abebe; Amsale Alemu; Tekalign Ayalew; Kassaye Berhanu-MacDonald; Elizabeth Chacko; Marina de Regt; Mulugeta F. Dinbabo; Peter H. Gebre; Hewan Girma; Mary Goitom; Shimelis Bonsa Gulema; Tesfaye Semela; Nassise Solomon; and Fitsum R. Tedla.
Edited by Katie J T Herrington
Victorian Artists and their World 1844-1861
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The diaries and letters of siblings Joanna and George Boyce, and Joanna's husband Henry Wells (published as The Boyce Papers in 2019) give us a rare insight into the working practices and milieu of Victorian artists active in the mid-nineteenth century.
Reflecting on that rich source, this multifaceted volume provides a valuable set of case studies on topics that are not often treated on their own, but which are vital contexts of Victorian art. By addressing the artistic work, practices and social circles of all three artists it reminds us that there is much more to this period than the Pre-Raphaelites, and that other styles and movements (such Aesthetic painting, to which Joanna and George Boyce contributed) flourished in their shade.
The experiences of Victorian artists and the realities of their world are brought to life as we follow the three painters' travels to continental European cities and their artistic training in Britain and France. We see them explore differing paint mediums and processes, become a part of the art market (its studios, clubs and societies), form relationships with patrons and take on other roles within the British artworld. We learn about the progress of women artists, as reflected in Joanna Boyce's career. George Boyce's unique vision is readdressed and the book also includes the first, full study of the career of Henry Wells, including his active involvement with the Royal Academy, taking us into the later decades of the nineteenth century.
By virtue of their differing artistic journeys the Boyce family artists provide a broad and multi-angled view of the mid-nineteenth century British art world. The essays by writers with a rich range of expertise - in art history, curation, materiality and life writing - explore Victorian artists' significant contributions to and interactions within their world.
Dr Alexandra Lester-Makin
Textiles of the Viking North Atlantic
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An examination of the uses, meanings, and social impact of Viking Age textiles.
This volume offers the first full study of archaeological fabrics and their decoration found in the North Atlantic region and dating broadly from the Viking or Norse period. With contributions from both academic scholars and practitioners, it shows how approaching early medieval textiles from archaeological, historical and literary contexts, and through the processes of learning and employing the traditional skills of making them, brings about a more nuanced understanding of early medieval cloths: their creation, use and meanings within their respective societies.
The book is divided into two parts. The first, "Textiles and their Interpretation", takes the reader on a journey from how wool was processed in the Viking Age, and the conservator's role in preserving and interpreting archaeological textiles, to different types of analyses that researchers use to understand and explain textiles from across the wide area of the Viking-influenced North Atlantic region. The second, "Understanding through Replicating", investigates the results of practical experiments in the reconstruction of surviving medieval fabrics and the resulting empirical conclusions that can be made about their manufacture and wider cultural implications.
Harriet Cornell
Agriculture, Economy and Society in Early Modern Scotland
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Showcases the latest research on Scotland's rural economy and society.
Early modern Scotland was predominantly rural. Agriculture was the main occupation of most people at the time, so what happened in the countryside was crucial: economically, socially and culturally. The essays collected here focus on the years between around 1500 and 1750. This period, although before the main era of agricultural "improvement" in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, was nevertheless far from static in terms of agrarian development. Specific topics addressed include everyday farming practices; investment; landlords, tenants and estate management; and the cultural context within which agriculture was "imagined". The disastrous famine of 1622-23 is analysed in detail. The volume is completed by a comprehensive survey of recent historiography, setting agricultural history in its broader context.
Alfred Thomas
The Czech Legend of St Catherine of Alexandria
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The first complete translation of a fascinating piece of Czech literature.
The virgin martyr St Catherine was one of the pre-eminent and most popular saints in the Middle Ages, her legend spreading far and wide throughout Europe. A Bohemian version of her Vita was written in the second half of the fourteenth century, probably for the court of Emperor Charles IV in Prague; it is a fascinating account of her life and passion, with many unique features. However, partly because of the language barrier, it has received relatively little attention.
This book provides the first complete translation of this important text. It is accompanied by a full, interdisciplinary introduction, which places the legend in its cultural and historical context, and emphasizes both the importance of the Dominican friars as court writers and the prominence of royal and noble women as patrons and consumers of their work. It also highlights the numerous representations of Catherine in contemporary art. Meanwhile, elucidatory notes to the translation illuminate its most important features.
Gloria Allaire
Italian Literature IV: Il Tristano Riccardiano, MS 1729 (Parodi’s siglum ‘F’)
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A critical edition with facing-page English translation of the fourteenth-century Il Tristano Riccardiano, MS 1729.
The French prose Roman de Tristan circulated widely in medieval Italy as attested by numerous translations and adaptations in different dialects. Two of these, preserved in Florence's Biblioteca Riccardiana, reveal important links amongst the extant Italian Tristans. The longer version, Tristano Riccardiano, MS 2543, has been edited, re-edited and translated into English. However, its shorter sister, found in the fourteenth-century MS Ricc. 1729, has suffered almost complete critical neglect, perhaps due to its amateur production traits, complex amalgam of regional dialects and idiosyncratic script.
While its contents (Tristan's birth, early adventures, love affair with Yseut) largely correspond to MS 2543, there are noteworthy variants. For example, the famous three-day tournament, conserved in the Tristano Panciatichiano and constituting the bulk of the Tristano Corsiniano, does not appear. MS 1729 also preserves the final episodes (Tristan's fatal wounding, the lovers' deaths, lamentation at Camelot), which are not found in MS 2543.
This volume offers the first critical edition of this Italian exemplar, permitting further linguistic analysis; it is accompanied by a facing-page English translation, which will open the text to a wider audience. The full introduction considers the manuscript itself, looking at such matters as its dating, illustrations, watermarks and contents, and comparing it with other redactions, whilst notes, a bibliography and index of proper names complete the apparatus.
Karl Fugelso
Studies in Medievalism XXXIII
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Essays on the post-modern reception and interpretation of the Middle Ages.
Though Studies in Medievalism has hosted many essays on gender, this is the first volume devoted specifically to that theme.
The first part features four short essays that directly address manifestations of sexism in postmedieval responses to the Middle Ages: gender substitutions in a Grail Quest episode of the 2023 television series Mrs. Davis, repurposed misogyny in the last two episodes of Game of Thrones (2011-19), traditional gender stereotypes in Capital One's credit card commercials from 2000 to 2013, and "shaggy" medievalism in Robert Eggers' 2022 film The Northman.
The second part contains ten longer essays, which collectively continue to demonstrate the ubiquity of gender issues and the extraordinary flexibility of approaches to them. The authors discuss the misogynistic sexualization of Grendel's mother in Parke Godwin's 1995 fantasy novel The Tower of Beowulf, in Graham Baker's 1999 film Beowulf, in three episodes from the television series Xena: Warrior Princess, and in Robert Zemeckis's 2007 film Beowulf; gender substitution in David Lowery's 2021 film The Green Knight and in Kinoku Nasu's and Takashi Takeuchi's anime series Fate (2004-); female authorship of three early-nineteenth-century plays about court ladies' medieval empowerment; extraordinary violence in medievalist video games; nationalism in fake nineteenth-century medievalist documents and in contemporary online fora; racial discrimination in video gaming and in Jim Crow literature; and the condemnation of racism in Maria Dahvana Headley's 2018 novel The Mere Wife.
Denise Parkinson
The Great Sea Floods of 1953
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John Trist, "Mr. Agriculture" to Suffolk's farming community, was a crucial figure after the East Coast Sea Flood, orchestrating agricultural land recovery. His dedication earned him an OBE. Presented here for the first time, transcriptions of Trist's own story, diary, and notes for an official report that was never made public, are enhanced by sixteen meticulous maps. Join Trist on a turbulent aerial survey of lost landscapes, touring flooded farms on Suffolk coastal, river marshes. Read how wildlife, crops, livestock suffered in the North Sea assault, and farmers mobilised workers in a 'battle of the breaches', alongside river board engineers. Delve into statistics and recovery policies to learn how farming was rescued and revived, amid fears for post-war national food security. Trist's heartfelt writing, astute observations and reflections, on this historically significant event reveal resilience and raise questions about governmental and personal responsibilities in climate crises.
Thomas W. Smith
Rewriting the First Crusade
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An exploration of the letters from the First Crusade, yielding evidence for a number of reinterpretations of the movement.
The letters stemming from the First Crusade are premier sources for understanding the launch, campaign, and aftermath of the expedition. Between 1095 and 1100, epistles sustained social relationships across the Mediterranean and within Europe, as a mixture of historical writing, literary invention, news, and theological interpretation. They served ecclesiastical administration, projected authority, and formed focal points for spiritual commemoration and para-liturgical campaigns.
This volume, grounded on extensive research into the original manuscripts, and presenting numerous new manuscript witnesses, argues that some of the letters are post hoc "inventions", composed by generations of scribe-readers who visited crusading sites from the twelfth century on, adding new layers of meaning in the form of interpolations and post-scripts. Drawing upon this new understanding, and blurring the distinction of epistolary "reality", it rewrites central aspects of the history of the First Crusade, considering the documents in a new way: as markers of enthusiasm and support for the crusade movement among monastic clergy, who copied and consumed them as a form of scribal crusading. Whether authentic letters or literary "confections", they functioned as communal sites for the celebration, commemoration and memorialisation of the expedition.
Angus J.L. Winchester
Common Land in Britain
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An authoritative survey of the history of common land in Great Britain from the medieval period to present day.
More than a million hectares of Britain has the status of common land, most of it consisting of semi-natural environments of mountain, moorland, wetland or heath. Formerly much more extensive, common land was, and in many places remains, an integral part of the pastoral economy. Even where it is no longer used by farmers, it plays an increasingly important role in modern life, as recreational space and for its value for nature conservation.
This book provides for the first time an authoritative survey of the history of common land across all three nations of Great Britain from medieval times to the present day. It charts how commons have been viewed and valued across the centuries, how they have been used, and how their vegetation has changed, highlighting parallels and differences between the histories of common land in England, Scotland and Wales.
It traces the distinctive legal status of common land and the management regimes which regulated the exercise of common rights; considers the role of commons as spaces for communal gatherings and as a resource for the poor; charts the loss of common land (but also its persistence) during the era of enclosure in the century 1760-1860; and explores the changing conceptions of the value and right use of commons since the nineteenth century, and the impact this has had on their ecological character. Eight case studies of individual commons illustrate the richness of common landscapes and their history at local level. They include crofters' common grazings in Sutherland, mountain commons in the Lake District and Snowdonia, lowland commons in Co. Durham, Herefordshire and the New Forest, turbary allotments in Lincolnshire, and the urban commons of Wimbledon and Putney Heath.
William C. Lubenow
Secular Foundations of the Liberal State in Victorian Britain
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Examines the entanglement of secularity and liberality in the foundation of the modern state in Britain.
"Modern" Britain emerged from the outcome of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. The rather standard Whig account of the long nineteenth century is one of growing stability, progress and improvement. And yet nothing was preordained or inevitable about the period's stability. Ruling elites felt the constant anxieties of revolutionary terrorism. As Lubenow argues, it was a period of disorganization seeking organization. The great nineteenth-century reform acts against religious monopoly were aspects of this process of political organization. While religion did not disappear, these political actions gradually changed the constitutional position of religion.
As a result, a political vacuum was created which was then filled by a secular "clerisy". These "fit and proper persons", educated in the reformed universities, qualified by success in competitive examinations, began to fill positions in the Civil Service and in the professions. The effect was to replace the eighteenth-century system of confessional loyalties with a liberal political culture based on merit. Lubenow's latest study examines the work of these intertwining nineteenth-century secular-liberal processes. Steeped deeply in archival research, this book considers biographical characteristics such as education, political connections and social associations, but it is equally conceptually guided by categories such as liberalism and secularism. It fills an important gap in the political history of nineteenth-century British liberalism by taking up the question of entanglement of secularity and liberality in the foundation of the modern state.
Hannah Ryley
Re-using Manuscripts in Late Medieval England
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Explores the practices and processes by which manuscripts were crafted, mended, protected, marked, gifted and shared.
During the "long fifteenth century" (here, 1375-1530), the demand for books in England flourished. The fast-developing book trade produced them in great quantity. Fragments of manuscripts were often repurposed, as flyleaves and other components such as palimpsests; and alongside the creation of new books, medieval manuscripts were also repaired, recycled and re-used.
This monograph examines the ways in which people sustained older books, exploring the practices and processes by which manuscripts were crafted, mended, protected, marked, gifted and shared. Drawing on the codicological evidence gathered from an extensive survey of extant manuscript collections, in conjunction with historical accounts, recipes and literary texts, it presents detailed case studies exploring parchment production and recycling, the re-use of margins, and second-hand exchanges of books. Its engagement with the evidence in - and inscribed on - surviving books enables a fresh appraisal of late medieval manuscript culture in England, looking at how people went about re-using books, and arguing that over the course of this period, books were made, used and re-used in a myriad of sustainable ways.
Beatrice Moring
Women in the Factory, 1880-1930
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A rich and detailed picture, across Britain and many other European countries, of the nature of women's factory work, the problems which arose and how women factory inspectors understood and reacted to the problems.
Based on extensive original archival research both in Britain and in many European countries, this book is a comparative study of the large numbers of women who were engaged in industrial work in the western world in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century, that is at a time when the industrial revolution was established and the problems caused by industrial work had become part of political debate and social discourse worldwide. It analyses the scope of female factory work, what the conditions were in such work, and what the motivations were for women to enter such employment. It reveals the composition of the female workforce as to age and marital status.
In addition, it considers the first generation of female industrial inspectors, outlining the background of these inspectors, assessing to what extent were they were capable of taking on the role of protectors of women in manual work, and discussing the actions and attitudes of the female inspectors as recorded in inspection reports, biographies and contemporary discourse. Overall, the book presents a rich, detailed, comparative picture of women's factory work, contributing much to the understanding of the history of gender and class.
Edited by Frank C. Sharp and Jan Marsh
The Collected Letters of Jane Morris
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Presents 570 newly discovered letters from Jane Morris to diverse correspondents, which radically revise the popular view of a silent, discontented invalid and instead portray her as an independent thinker following her own causes. The vast majority of the letters are unpublished, and are fully annotated.
Jane Morris [1839-1914] was a famous Pre-Raphaelite model, wife of William Morris and one of the Victorian age's most enigmatic figures.
Her long love affair with Dante Gabriel Rossetti has become the stuff of legend. Later she had a romantic relationship with the adventurer Wilfrid Scawen Blunt. Through her daughter May, she had a contentious interaction with George Bernard Shaw. The greater fame of husband and lovers caused her to be overlooked, but she has always aroused historical interest and partisan debate. Like other women in history her emergence from mute image into speaking subject has come about through feminist scholarship, but is of wide appeal.
The editors of this volume have discovered more than 500 letters from Jane to many and diverse correspondents, which radically revise the popular view of a silent, discontented invalid and reveal the range of her interests and opinions.
The majority of the letters are unpublished and are fully annotated. They reveal Jane's involvement in many of Morris's endeavours, such as the family firm Morris & Co., the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, the 1882 Icelandic Relief Committee, and the Kelmscott Press, and offer new insights into the life of the Morris family.
An independent thinker, Jane was politically engaged, although voteless, and her letters are informed by theturbulent events of the 1880s. She did not follow Morris into the Socialist movement, but retained Liberal allegiances and became an ardent supporter of Irish Home Rule.
Jane Morris's letters complement those of her husband William Morris [edited by Norman Kelvin] and her lover Dante Gabriel Rossetti. In addition to the texts, the book includes a selection of the portraits and paintings through which Jane became a Pre-Raphaelite icon and archetypal femme fatale.
James Titterton
Deception in Medieval Warfare
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First full-length study of the use and perception of deceit in medieval warfare.
Deception and trickery are a universal feature of warfare, from the Trojan horse to the inflatable tanks of the Second World War. The wars of the Central Middle Ages (c. 1000-1320) were no exception. This book looks at the various tricks reported in medieval chronicles, from the Normans feigning flight at the battle of Hastings (1066) to draw the English off Senlac Hill, to the Turks who infiltrated the Frankish camp at the Field of Blood (1119) disguised as bird sellers, to the Scottish camp followers descending on the field of Bannockburn (1314) waving laundry as banners to mimic a division of soldiers. This study also considers what contemporary society thought about deception on the battlefield: was it a legitimate way to fight? Was cunning considered an admirable quality in a warrior? Were the culturally and religious "other" thought to be more deceitful in war than Western Europeans?
Through a detailed analysis of vocabulary and narrative devices, this book reveals a society with a profound moral ambivalence towards military deception, in which authors were able to celebrate a warrior's cunning while simultaneously condemning their enemies for similar acts of deceit. It also includes an appendix cataloguing over four hundred incidents of military deception as recorded in contemporary chronicle narratives.
Kirsten Stirling
Picturing Divinity in John Donne's Writings
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A new approach to the visual arts in the work of John Donne
The five known portraits of John Donne and the many artworks bequeathed in his will bear witness to his interest in painting. His interest in art is also evident in his writings, with poems and sermons including many references to pictures and engravings, painters and sculptors. However, Donne never used his familiarity with painterly techniques to produce a simple ekphrasis or description in his writings. This book offers a new approach to Donne's rich and nuanced presentation of the visual arts in his writing, arguing that even his explicit allusions to pictures are less concrete than they may first appear.
Although Donne was familiar with contemporary treatises on art, many of his most compelling references to paintings and painterly techniques come from his reading of theology, including works by Nicholas of Cusa and Martin Luther.These previously unidentified sources for Donne's painterly imagery help us to understand how the plastic arts become his tool to reveal the limits of representation, and thus to point beyond the material realm towards the unrepresentable and unknowable divine.
This study provides new insights on some of his best-known poems, both secular and religious, and extends our appreciation of John Donne as an artist constantly exploring the limits of his own practice as a poet - and preacher - as he confronts the relationship between the human and the divine.
On publication this book is available as an Open Access eBook under the Creative Commons license: CC BY-NC.
Anna McKay
Female Devotion and Textile Imagery in Medieval English Literature
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Uncovers the female voices, lived experiences, and spiritual insights encoded by the imagery of textiles in the Middle Ages.
For millennia, women have spoken and read through cloth. The literature and art of the Middle Ages are replete with images of women working cloth, wielding spindles, distaffs, and needles, or sitting at their looms. Yet they have been little explored.
Drawing upon the burgeoning field of medieval textile studies, as well as contemporary theories of gender, materiality, and eco-criticism, this study illustrates how textiles provide a hermeneutical alternative to the patriarchally-dominated written word. It puts forward the argument that women's devotion during this period was a "fabricated" phenomenon, a mode of spirituality and religious exegesis expressed, devised, and practised through cloth. Centred on four icons of female devotion (Eve, Mary, St Veronica, and - of course - Christ), the book explores a broad range of narratives from across the rich tapestry of medieval English literature, from the fields of Piers Plowman to the late medieval Morte D'arthur; the devotions of Margery Kempe to the visionary experiences of Julian of Norwich; Gervase of Tilbury's fabulous Otia Imperialia to the anchoritic guidance literature of the Middle Ages; and the innumerable (and oft-forgotten) lives of Christ, prayers, legends, and miracle tales in between.
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