Search

This is Volume Two of a two-volume collection that brings together contributions from cultural and military history to offer an examination of religious rites employed in connection with warfare as well as their transformative and power- and identity-building potential across political communities of medieval Northern, Central, and Eastern Europe. Covering the period ca. 900 and 1500, the work takes theoretical, textual and practical approaches to the research on religious warfare, and investigates the connections between, and significance and function of crucial war rituals such as pre-, intra- and postbellum rites, as well as various activities surrounding the military life of individuals, polities, and corporates. Contributors are Robert Antonín, Robert Bubczyk, Dariusz Dąbrowski, Jesse Harrington, Carsten Selch Jensen, Sini Kangas, Radosław Kotecki, Gregory Leighton, Kyle C. Lincoln, Jacek Maciejewski, Yulia Mikhailova, Max Naderer, László Veszprémy, and Dušan Zupka.

This is Volume One of a two-volume collection that brings together contributions from cultural and military history to offer an examination of religious rites employed in connection with warfare as well as their transformative and power- and identity-building potential across political communities of medieval Northern, Central, and Eastern Europe. Covering the period ca. 900 and 1500, the work takes theoretical, textual and practical approaches to the research on religious warfare, and investigates the connections between, and significance and function of crucial war rituals such as pre-, intra- and postbellum rites, as well as various activities surrounding the military life of individuals, polities, and corporates. Contributors are Robert Antonín, Robert Bubczyk, Dariusz Dąbrowski, Jesse Harrington, Carsten Selch Jensen, Sini Kangas, Radosław Kotecki, Gregory Leighton, Kyle C. Lincoln, Jacek Maciejewski, Yulia Mikhailova, Max Naderer, László Veszprémy, and Dušan Zupka.

Christianus Ravius (Christian Raue, 1613-1677) led a life of remarkable variety, which illustrates many aspects of the career of a scholar in seventeenth century Europe. This biography, the first full-length treatment of him since 1744, covers the first three decades of his eventful career, from the Gymnasium in his native Berlin through Germany, Scandiniavia, Holland, England and the Ottoman Empire. Drawing on much previously unexploited evidence, and on detailed analyses of his numerous published works, it presents a picture of a scholar trying to establish himself in the Republic of Letters, cultivating the acquaintance of many contemporary scholars, including such great names as Hugo Grotius, John Selden, James Ussher, Claudius Salmasius, Johannes Buxtorf II, G. J. Vossius and Jaobus Golius. In the background of his precarious existence looms the Thirty Years'War, which was a cause not only of his parents'early death but also of the devastation of his family's estate and his persistent poverty. Despite his failure to obtain a permanent position in any 0f the universities with which he was associated during this time, he persisted in promoting the study of oriental languages, especially Arabic. This led to his stay of two years in Constantinople and other parts of the Ottoman Empire, where he managed to acquire the remarkable collection of oriental manuscripts which was an important element in his attempts to attain employment and recognition. This study includes an account of the identity and present location of almost three hundred of those manuscripts, and also an edition of many unpublished letters from his extensive correspondence which are relevant to the narrative of his life. Ravius's idiosyncratic theories on linguistic history receive due attention.

In this book, Beñat Elortza Larrea analyses the processes of polity consolidation and military transformation in Scandinavia between the early eleventh and early fourteenth centuries. Based on a plethora of administrative, legal, and narrative sources, this study examines the development of governance and warfare in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, and evaluates to which degree European ideas and institutions shaped the budding medieval Scandinavian realms. In other words – did the formation of these kingdoms stem mostly from European influence, were they a by-product of a purely Scandinavian ethos, or did they largely develop due to historical and geographical circumstances unique to each realm

Winner of the 2023 Early Slavic Studies Book Prize from the Early Slavic Studies Association (ESSA) (Best book) Medieval Moldavia – which was located within present-day northeastern Romania and the Republic of Moldova – developed a bold and eclectic visual culture beginning in the 15th century. Within this networked Carpathian Mountain region, art and architecture reflect the creativity and diversity of the cultural landscapes of Eastern Europe. Moldavian objects and monuments – ranging from fortified monasteries and churches enveloped in fresco cycles to silk embroideries, delicately carved woodwork and metalwork, as well as manuscripts gifted to Mount Athos and other Christian centers – negotiate the complex issues of patronage and community in the region. The works attest to processes of cultural contact and translation, revealing how Western medieval, Byzantine, and Slavic traditions were mediated in Moldavian contexts in the post-Byzantine period. Winner of the 2023 Early Slavic Studies Book Prize, awarded by the Early Slavic Studies Association (ESSA) for the best book published between Sept 1, 2021 and August 31, 2023 in the field of Early Slavic Studies (pre-1800). The awarding committee praised the volume as ‘the first English monograph to provide a comprehensive overview of Moldavia's artistic and architectural landscape during the 15th and 16th centuries, locating the region as a significant facet in the global map of art history.'Official ESSA announcement.

Willing and Understanding elucidates a variety of issues in and approaches to debating the will-intellect interplay in the late Middle Ages. Authored by prominent scholars in the field, the contributions offer different perspectives on the development of late medieval theories of the will. Charting a dense map of voluntarist and epistemological ideas—entrenched leitmotifs of late medieval philosophy, seminal insights sparking original trends, and ephemeral novelties—the volume is a testimony to the conceptual multidimensionality and ethical complexity of the past and present iterations of the debate on the will. Contributors are Pascale Bermon, Magdalena Bieniak, Michael W. Dunne, Riccardo Fedriga, Giacomo Fornasieri, Tobias Hoffmann, Severin V. Kitanov, Monika Michałowska, Riccardo Saccenti, Sonja Schierbaum, Michael Szlachta, Łukasz Tomanek, and Francesco Omar Zamboni.

When Francis of Assisi started to use his family's resources for religious purposes, his father took him to court. It was there that Francis dispossessed himself of everything and began a new life that soon inspired others to follow. Within a century, members of this Order of Friars Minor were among the first to dedicate complete treatises to discussions of buying, selling, and the whole of human exchange that is known as economics. The natural question to ask—and the one proposed here—is whether there might be a connection between the two, between Franciscan poverty and Franciscan economic thought?

How we come to know the external world has intrigued thinkers throughout the history of philosophy. Medieval philosophers understood that a theory of perception requires an account of the categorization of sensory information: to perceive things as being dangerous or beneficial and even as being individuals that belong to certain kinds (e.g., ‘this is a dog'). A key question is whether this requires the intervention of rational cognitive capacities, cooperating with sensory ones in normal instances of perception. The contributions to this volume investigate how thinkers from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries answer this and other related questions about human perception. Contributors are Fabrizio Amerini, Joël Biard, Véronique Decaix, Christian Kny, Lydia Schumacher, José Filipe Silva, and Jörg Alejandro Tellkamp.

Johann Michael Wansleben's Travels in Turkey, 1673–1676 is a hitherto unpublished version of a remarkable description of Istanbul, Izmir, and Bursa by the German scholar traveller Wansleben. Wansleben was in the Ottoman Empire to buy manuscripts, statuary, and curios for the French king, but it is his off-hand observations about Ottoman society that often make Wansleben's account such a valuable historical source. His experiences add to our knowledge of such diverse topics as prostitution in the Ottoman Empire, taxation, and the French consular system. His visit to Bursa is also noteworthy because few Western travellers included the first Ottoman capital in their tours of the East or described it at such length.

The imperial convent of St. Servatius at Quedlinburg (founded in 936) was one of the wealthiest, most prestigious, and most politically powerful religious houses of medieval Germany, subject only to the authority of the emperor and the pope. This is the first English-language volume to provide an introduction to this important female religious community. The twelve essays by a team of international scholars address an array of topics in Quedlinburg's medieval history, with a particular focus on how the Quedlinburg community of learned aristocratic women used architecture and the visual arts to assert the abbey's illustrious history, ongoing political importance, and cultural significance. Contributors are: Clemens Bley, Karen Blough, Shirin Fozi, Tobias Gärtner, Eliza Garrison, Evan A. Gatti, G. Ulrich Großmann, Annie Krieg, Manfred Mehl, Katharina Ulrike Mersch, Christian Popp, Helene Scheck, and Adam R. Stead.

Can we learn from history? A timely problem in the light of the recent dramatic developments in the Middle East and the immanent threat of international terrorism.The from time to time uneasy relations between the Christian West and the Islam originate in the seventh and eighth centuries and took shape in the Renaissance when for the first time in history knowledge of the'Turks'– a synonym of'Muslims'– was growing fast on the basis of first-hand experience, whether as agents of a western power, or as captives of the Turks. Apart from the unhappy but apparently universal tendency to represent one's enemy as the personification of evil, the fifteenth and early sixteenth western characterizations of the Ottomans as the sworn foe of Christianity are still pervading our concepts and terms, and are still formative for our own views.The Shadow of the Crescent is re-issued, because the book is concerned with the image of the'Turk'in the West after the fall of Constantinople till the beginnings of the Reformation and deals with the western attitude toward the Ottomans and the growing importance of the Islam. Certainly the problems were, and still are immense; not exactly the same, but undoubtedly comparable. At least we can learn from this book that there is nothing new under the sun.

This volume is a pioneering study in the theory and history of the imitation of music in fiction and constitutes an important contribution to current intermediality research. Starting with a comparison of basic similarities and differences between literature and music, the study goes on to provide outlines of a general theory of intermediality and its fundamental forms, in which a more specialized theory of the musicalization of (narrative) literature based on contemporary narratology and a typology of the forms of musico-literary intermediality are embedded. It also addresses the question of how to recognize a musicalized fiction when reading one and why Sterne's Tristram Shandy, contrary to what has been previously said, is not to be regarded as a musicalized fiction. In its historical part, the study explores forms and functions of experiments with the musicalization of fiction in English literature. After a survey of the major preconditions for musicalization - the increasing appreciation of music in 18th and 19th-century aesthetics and its main causes - exemplary fictional texts from romanticism to postmodernism are analyzed. Authors interpreted are De Quincey, Joyce, Woolf, A. Huxley, Beckett, Burgess and Josipovici. Whilst the limitations of a transposition of music into fiction remain apparent, experiments in this field yield valuable insights into mainly a-mimetic and formalist aesthetic tendencies in the development of more recent fiction as a whole and also show to what extent traditional conceptions of music continue to influence the use of this medium in literature. The volume is of relevance for students and scholars of English, comparative and general literature as well as for readers who take an interest in intermediality or interart research.

This book addresses typology of Late Antique and Byzantine art and architecture in eight wide-ranging contributions from an international group of scholars. A dialogue between type and its ultimate source, archetype, surpasses issues of formalism and conventional chronological narratives to suggest a more nuanced approach to typology as a systematic and systemic classification of types in the visual landscape of the pagans, Jews, and Christians. Set against the contemporaneous cultural context, select examples of Mediterranean material culture confirm the great importance of type-and-archetype constructs for theoretical discourse on architecture and visual arts. Contributors are Anna Adashinskaya, Jelena Anđelković Grašar, Jelena Bogdanović, Čedomila Marinković, Marina Mihaljević, Ljubomir Milanović, Cecilia Olovsdotter, and Ida Sinkević.

The Scientific Revolution saw the redefinition of many scholastic notions about the nature of the world and its constituent parts, from planets to particles. Wang's book introduces a convincing and wide-ranging narrative of the changing place of ‘occult qualities'in the context of emergent new scientific methods and early modern disciplinary realignments. Through in-depth analysis of the diverse treatments of this notion, whereby it becomes now a hollow phrase, now a touchstone for the superiority of new physics, Wang shows how the transformation of this notion is key to understanding almost every facet of the new physics of the age.

Während des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts sucht die Musikwissenschaft das Gespräch mit anderen Kunstwissenschaften, etwa mit der Literaturwissenschaft. Das Herz dieser die Grenzen der Fachdisziplinen übersteigenden Verbindungen bilden umfassende Fragestellungen der Verhaltensforschung und der Philosophie. Solchen Fragestellungen liegt die Einsicht in den komplexen Zusammenhang kultureller Erscheinungen zugrunde. Infolgedessen wird die Atomisierung der Kunstwissenschaften heutzutage mehr und mehr von einer integrativen Betrachtungsweise abgelöst.Die fließenden Übergänge meinen das fruchtbare Zusammenspiel der einzelnen Kunstdisziplinen und die intensive Zusammenarbeit der Musikwissenschaft mit der Philosophie und der Psychoanalyse. Einige psychoanalytisch orientierte Beiträge beschäftigen sich mit Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, Clara Schumann und Johannes Brahms, während andere ihre Analysen der Werke von W.A. Mozart und Arnold Schönberg auf Theodor Adornos Kunstphilosophie gründen. In Richard Wagner, Arnold Schönberg und Paul Celan sind sowohl die Musik als auch die Literatur vertreten. Bei Paul Klee steht die Spannung zwischen Klang und Farbe im Mittelpunkt der Analyse. Fließende Übergänge möchten auch den Pionieren der Musikwissenschaft in den Niederlanden den Tribut zollen: Eduard Reeser, Hélène Nolthenius, Marius Flothuis.

The publication of this volume of essays marks the centenary of the birth of Bertolt Brecht on 10 February 1898. The essays were commissioned from scholars and critics around the world, and cover six main areas: recent biographical controversies; neglected theoretical writings; the semiotics of Brechtian theatre; new readings of classic texts; Brecht's role and reception in the GDR; and contemporary appropriations of Brecht's work. This volume will be essential reading for all those interested in twentieth century theatre, modern German studies, and the contemporary reassessment of post-war culture in the wake of German unification and the collapse of Stalinist communism in Central and Eastern Europe.The essays in this volume also address a variety of general questions, concerning - for example - authorship and textuality; the nature of Brecht's Marxism in relation to his understanding of modernity, science and Enlightenment reason; Marxist aesthetics; radical cultural politics; and feminist performance theory.

A history of printing and publishing at Amsterdam from the beginnings (1506) up to the'Alteration'(1578). At the end of each chapter devoted to a printer, publisher or bookseller a short-title list of his production, with references to existing bibliographies and location of copies. Extensive summary in English.

Die Herausgeber präsentieren eine einmalige Sammlung bis dato unveröffentlichter Briefe von David Zeisberger und seiner Glaubensgenossen und bieten so neue, unerwartete Zugänge zum Nordamerika des 18. und frühen 19. Jahrhunderts, in dem Herrnhuter Missionare, Siedler und indigene Völker aufeinandertrafen, kooperierten, einander bekämpften oder sich gegenseitig instrumentalisierten. Die Quellensammlung zeigt das koloniale Nordamerika bzw. die frühe Republik der USA vor allem aus der Sicht des europäischen Missionars Zeisbergers, der eigene Interessen und Überzeugungen mit denen seiner Umgebung und der Kirchenleitung in Herrnhut in Einklang bringen musste. The editors of this volume present a unique collection of previously largely unedited letters from David Zeisberger and his colleagues, opening a window into the unknown world of European missionaries, colonial settlers, and native Americans in the most crucial time of early American history. It pays tribute to Moravians working the “American vineyards” and navigating diverse political interests in Pennsylvania, the Northwest Territory, and the borderzone of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River, as seen from the perspective of an insider.

Die Herausgeber präsentieren eine einmalige Sammlung bis dato unveröffentlichter Briefe von David Zeisberger und seiner Glaubensgenossen und bieten so neue, unerwartete Zugänge zum Nordamerika des 18. und frühen 19. Jahrhunderts, in dem Herrnhuter Missionare, Siedler und indigene Völker aufeinandertrafen, kooperierten, einander bekämpften oder sich gegenseitig instrumentalisierten. Die Quellensammlung zeigt das koloniale Nordamerika bzw. die frühe Republik der USA vor allem aus der Sicht des europäischen Missionars Zeisbergers, der eigene Interessen und Überzeugungen mit denen seiner Umgebung und der Kirchenleitung in Herrnhut in Einklang bringen musste. The editors of this volume present a unique collection of previously largely unedited letters from David Zeisberger and his colleagues, opening a window into the unknown world of European missionaries, colonial settlers, and native Americans in the most crucial time of early American history. It pays tribute to Moravians working the “American vineyards” and navigating diverse political interests in Pennsylvania, the Northwest Territory, and the borderzone of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River, as seen from the perspective of an insider.

Latin and English texts revised and edited with variants and an introduction by Mario Montuori.

This volume presents four early works by Vives: De initiis sectis et laudibus philisophiae (On the Origins, Schools and Merits of Philosophy); Veritas fucata (Painted Truth); Anima senis (the Soul of an Old Man); and Pompeius fugiens (Pompey in Flight). In each case the Latin text is accompanied by an English translation. The main aim of the editors has been to provide for the first time critical editions of the texts. The texts published here were included by Vives in the volume of collected essays which appeared in 1519 in Louvain under the title Opuscula varia. The text published at that time has also become the textus receptus.Variants are, of course, included in the critical apparatus.The apparatus fontium gives us an insight into Vives as a humanist. To the English translation are appended a small number of explanatory notes. Finally, there are these three indices: an index nominum (with reference in each to an encyclopaedia article which contains the bibliography forming the basis), an index locorum, and an index verborum memorabilium (which indicates deviations from Classical Latin forms).This volume is the first in a planned series of Selected Works which will follow the same concept.

Is violent conflict in Africa urbanizing? How do urban protests and civil war intersect? How do narratives, mechanisms and identities of contention move between urban and rural arenas? These questions constitute the basis of investigation and analysis of this unique cross-disciplinary volume. Applying diverging perspectives and methods from political science, anthropology and urban African studies, the book carefully constructs the relational and entangled nature of contemporary forms of contentious politics in Niger, Democratic Republic of Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Sierra Leone and Ethiopia.

In the Posterior Analytics Aristotle contrasts demonstrations with syllogisms through signs. In the Prior Analytics he defines a sign as a demonstrative premise. One is thus led to ask: is a sign a demonstration? This book reconstructs the history of the notion of “demonstration through signs” from roughly the third through to the thirteenth century. It examines the work of Aristotle's Greek, Arabic, and Latin commentators, both within and outside the tradition of the Posterior Analytics.

This volume puts two biblical miracles - the Sun reversing its course in II Kings 20:8-11/Isaiah 38:8 (Horologium Ahaz) and the Sun standing still in Joshua 10:12 -, in the early modern period centre stage. We pay special attention to the development of related imagery, their role as anti-Copernican arguments (in text and image), their reception, their treatment in the mathematical sciences, and their various cultural layers, with a focus on the history of art and the history of science in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The material discussed spreads from rather prosaic mathematical reflections to highly appealing visual representations of the two miracles.

Was Interkulturelle Philosophie ist, und worin ihr besonderer Beitrag zur Philosophie im ganzen bestehen kann, das kann sich allein in konkreten Ausarbeitungen erweisen. Der vorliegende Band repräsentiert eine breitgefächerte Auswahl sowohl der unterschiedlichen Ansatzpunkte, von denen interkulturelles Philosophieren ausgeht, als auch der diversen Forschungsgebiete innerhalb der Philosophie, die durch interkulturelle Fragestellungen angesprochen sind. Die Vielfalt der historischen und systematischen Zugangsweisen reflektiert die Überzeugung, daß Interkulturelle Philosophie kein in sich geschlossenes Lehrgebäude ist und ein solches auch nicht werden kann, sondern interkulturelles Philosophieren eine bestimmte Einstellung und eine Haltung darbietet, die auf der grundlegenden Annahme beruht, daß die letzte philosophische Einsicht, die Wahrheit im Singular, von niemandem allein erlangt worden ist und auch nicht erlangt werden kann.

How can dispute records shed light on the study of dispute settlement processes and their social and political underpinnings? This volume addresses this question by investigating the interplay between record-making, disputing process, and the social and political contexts of conflicts. The authors make use of exceptionally rich charter materials from the Iberian Peninsula, Italy, and Scandinavia, including different types of texts directly and indirectly related to conflicts, in order to contribute to a comparative survey of early medieval dispute records and to a better understanding of the interplay between judicial and other less formal modes of conflict resolution. Contributors are Isabel Alfonso, José M. Andrade, François Bougard, Warren C. Brown, Wendy Davies, Julio Escalona, Kim Esmark, Adam J. Kosto, Juan José Larrea, André Evangelista Marques, Josep M. Salrach, Igor Santos Salazar, and Francesca Tinti.

The postal system of the Byzantine Empire, the cursus publicus or dromos, was a pony express-style system of routes and relays, capable of moving messages at up to 100 miles (160 km) per day. In this fascinating book, Jason Fossella describes the infrastructure, operations, and administration of the dromos. Drawing on sources as varied as papyri, seals, inscriptions, and ancient histories, the author examines how the dromos was integrated into Byzantine society and influenced the development of Byzantine diplomacy, ceremony, and religion, demonstrating that it played a key role in the development of Byzantine imperial power.

This book examines neglected architectural decoration from the late antique city of the East Mediterranean. It addresses the omission in scholarship of discussion about the embellishment of non-monumental secular buildings (public porticoes, small public baths, shops/workshops, and non-elite houses). The finishing of these structures has been overlooked at the expense of more lofty buildings and remains one of the least known aspects of the late antique city. The author surveys the archaeological evidence for decoration in the region, with the maritime sites of Ostia and Ephesus selected as case studies. Drawing upon archaeological, written, and visual sources, it attempts to reconstruct how such buildings appeared to late antique viewers and investigates why they were decorated as they were.

Beyond hegemonic thoughts, the Post-Western sociology enables a new dialogue between East Asia (China, Japan, Korea) and Europe on common and local knowledge to consider theoretical continuities and discontinuities, to develop transnational methodological spaces, and co-produce creolized concepts. With this new paradigm in social sciences we introduce the multiplication of epistemic autonomies vis-à-vis Western hegemony and new theoretical assemblages between East-Asia and European sociologies. From this ecology of knowledge this groundbreaking contribution is to coproduce a post-Western space in a cross-pollination process where “Western” and “non-Western” knowledge do interact, articulated through cosmovisions, as well as to coproduce transnational fieldwork practices.

This volume brings together scholarship from many disciplines, including history, heritage studies, archaeology, geography, and political science to provide a nuanced view of life in medieval Ireland and after. Primarily contributing to the fields of settlement and landscape studies, each essay considers the influence of Terence B. Barry of Trinity College Dublin within Ireland and internationally. Barry's long career changed the direction of castle studies and brought the archaeology of medieval Ireland to wider knowledge. These essays, authored by an international team of fifteen scholars, develop many of his original research questions to provide timely and insightful reappraisals of material culture and the built and natural environments. Contributors (in order of appearance) are Robin Glasscock, Kieran O'Conor, Thomas Finan, James G. Schryver, Oliver Creighton, Robert Higham, Mary A. Valante, Margaret Murphy, John Soderberg, Conleth Manning, Victoria McAlister, Jennifer L. Immich, Calder Walton, Christiaan Corlett, Stephen H. Harrison, and Raghnall Ó Floinn.

This two-volume work describes the significant activities of Martin Bucer, reformer in Strasbourg, and the profound influence he exerted on his contemporaries. The collection brings together sixty contributions in English, German and French by leading Bucer and sixteenth century scholars. They highlight Bucer's profile and style, his theology, his attitude towards social questions of his time, his work in the church, his relationships with contemporaries in the city of Strasbourg and all over Europe, his position on contemporary issues and how his peers perceived him — in short, the many facets of thought, actions, and influence of an important but largely neglected sixteenth century reformer. They also provide new insight into the victories and defeats of Protestantism, and on Bucer's role in the progress of the Reformation in Europe. Dieses Buch stellt das Wirken und die vielfältigen Beziehungen des Strassburger Reformators Martin Bucer dar. Sechzig Beiträge prominenter Spezialisten Bucers und des 16. Jahrhunderts sind in den zwei Bänden vereint. Behandelt werden Bucers Profil und Stil, seine Theologie, seine Haltung zu gesellschaftlichen Fragen seiner Zeit, sein Wirken in der Kirche, seine Beziehungen zu Zeitgenossen in Strassburg und in ganz Europa, seine Verhältnis zu zeitgenössischen Strömungen, die Rezeption Bucers. Die verschiedenen Beiträge erhellen auf vielfältige Weise das Denken, das Wirken und die Austrahlung eines der grossen aber weithin vergessenen Reformators des 16. Jahrhunderts. Sie werfen auch ein neues Licht auf die Siege und Niederlagen der evangelischen Bewegung und die Rolle Bucers bei der Durchführung der Reformation in Europa. The print edition is available as a set of two volumes (9789004098862).

The Fantastic Other is a carefully assembled collection of essays on the increasingly significant question of alterity in modern fantasy, the ways in which the understanding and construction of the Other shapes both our art and our imagination. The collection takes a unique perspective, seeing alterity not merely as a social issue but as a biological one. Our fifteen essays cover the problems posed by the Other, which, after all, go well beyond the bounds of any single critical perspective. With this in mind, we have selected studies to show how insights from deconstruction, Marxism, feminism, and Freudian, Jungian and evolutionary psychology help us understand an issue so central to the act of reading.

Blue in Old English represents the first thorough investigation of an area of the colour semantics of Old English, and the methodology developed for this study is believed to be appropriate for researching the colour semantics of any language which survives only in recorded texts. By means of a collection of in-depth word-studies, which suggest new interpretations of many well-known passages, an understanding of how blueness was described in Old English is developed. The approach is interdisciplinary, using evidence from subjects such as botany, manuscript illustration, etymology, early technologies, and others. The conclusion contradicts certain previously held views on Old English colour, and presents a hitherto obscured sociolinguistic picture of differing language use among various groups of Old English speakers.

This book begins with a painting. Loyalty to cultural artefacts, listening carefully to what they have to say, is the secret of Inge E. Boer's approach to the French Orientalists tradition. In a post-Said manner, Boer provides close readings of philosophical and literary texts, paintings, prints and other artefacts. Her readings establish a dialogue with critical post-colonial and feminist theory as well as (art-) historical and literary scholarship. She treats all these artefacts like subjects in their own right, enabling them to show and tell. This dialogic attention to detail makes for an innovative vision that shuns the sweeping statements of a priori conviction, as much as avoiding the unwitting endorsements that the rhetoric of scholarship sometimes promotes.

In the second half of the fifteenth century, Roberto Caracciolo's preaching touched the most important cities of Italy, and met with wide and resounding success. His sermons were read and diffused throughout Italy and Europe, propelled by the emergence of the printing press industry. This book provides a new and comprehensive study of his life, preaching and writing, replacing outdated resources and adding new and hitherto unknown data. It offers a reference work on a relevant social, intellectual and religious actor of Renaissance Italy and a reading of those times through the life and works of a celebrated preacher.

This encyclopaedia showcases the explanatory power of Marxist educational theory and practice. The entries have been written by 51 leading authors from across the globe. The 39 entries cover an impressive range of contemporary issues and historical problematics. The editor has designed the book to appeal to readers within the Marxism and education intellectual tradition, and also those who are curious newcomers, as well as critics of Marxism. The Encyclopaedia of Marxism and Education is the first of its kind. It is a landmark text with relevance for years to come for the productive dialogue between Marxism and education for transformational thinking and practice.

Tianyi Zhang offers in this study an innovative philosophical reconstruction of Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī's (d. 1191) Illuminationism. Commonly portrayed as either a theosophist or an Avicennian in disguise, Suhrawardī appears here as an original and hardheaded philosopher who adopts mysticism as a tool for philosophical investigation. Zhang makes use of Plato's cave allegory to explain Suhrawardī's Illuminationist project. Focusing on three areas—the theory of presential knowledge, the ontological discussion of mental considerations, and Light Metaphysics—Zhang convincingly reveals the Nominalist and Existential nature of Illuminationism and thereby proposes a new way of understanding how Suhrawardī's central philosophical ideas cohere.

Transylvania has some of the most valuable monuments of medieval architecture in Europe. The oldest church was built in the 10th century, but most others came into being only after 1200. Later changes have considerably modified the appearance of still-standing buildings. Written sources are lacking for answers to questions about the identity of the builders and patrons. Countering the idea that only standing structures can reflect the history of medieval churches in Transylvania, this book uses archaeological sources in order to answer some of those questions and to bring to light the hidden past of many monuments.

Saying that horses shaped the medieval world – and the way we see it today – is hardly an exaggeration. Why else do we imagine a medieval knight – or a nomadic warrior – on horseback? Why do we use such metaphors as “unbridled” or “bearing a yoke” in our daily language? Studies of medieval horses and horsemanship are increasingly popular, but they often focus on a single aspect of equestrianism or a single culture. In this book, you will find information about both elite and humble working equines, about the ideology and practicalities of medieval horsemanship across different countries, from Iceland to China. Contributors are Gloria Allaire, Luise Borek, Gail Brownrigg, Agnès Carayon, Gavina Cherchi, John C. Ford, Loïs Forster, Jürg Gassmann, Rebecca Henderson, Anna-Lena Lange, Romain Lefebvre, Rena Maguire, Ana Maria S. A. Rodrigues, and Alexia-Foteini Stamouli.

Held in Florence in 1929, the First National Exhibition of History of Science was a pivotal event in the shaping of Italian cultural panorama. With more than 8000 items on display coming from public and private lenders, it showed the general public how rich the Italian scientific heritage was and how it could be regarded as part of a general nation-claiming narrative, thus laying the foundation for today's protection policy and scholarly research. Moreover, it is also a telling case-study that offers precious insights into the complex relationships between cultural enterprises and political power during the fascist era, helping us understand how today's geography of Italian cultural institutions have been shaped and reshaped through time.

The Great Protector of Wits provides a new assessment of baron d'Holbach (1723–1789) and his circle. A challenging figure of the European Enlightenment, Paul-Henri Thiry d'Holbach was not only a radically materialistic philosopher, a champion of anticlericalism, the author of the Système de la nature – known as ‘the Bible of atheists'–, an idéologue, a popularizer of the natural sciences and a prolific contributor to the Encyclopédie, but he also played a crucial role as an organizer of intellectual networks and was a master of disseminating clandestine literature and a consummate strategist in authorial fictions. In this collective volume, for the first time, all these different threads of d'Holbach's ‘philosophy in action'are considered and analyzed in their interconnection. Contributors to this volume: Jacopo Agnesina, Nicholas Cronk, Mélanie Éphrème, Enrico Galvagni, Jonathan Israel, Alan Charles Kors, Mladen Kozul, Brunello Lotti, Emilio Mazza, Gianluca Mori, Iryna Mykhailova, Gianni Paganini, Paolo Quintili, Alain Sandrier, Ruggero Sciuto, Maria Susana Seguin, and Gerhardt Stenger.

Presenting medieval Pisa in a multidisciplinary study, A Companion to Medieval Pisa provides a comprehensive overview of the city at the time of its greatest fame and prosperity. The volume addresses central aspects of the city's history: its geomorphology and orientation towards the Mediterranean Sea; its ancient past; the archaeological basis for the study of the medieval city and its built environment; Pisa's urban and port infrastructure; its social organization and political and economic history; its cultural achievements in the visual and literary arts; and the legacy of the medieval past for the city today. Contributors are: David Abulafia, Monica Bini, Veronica Rossi, Stefano Bruni, Antonio Alberti, Gabriele Gattiglia, Alma Poloni, Giuseppe Petralia, Gabriella Garzella, Ewa Karwacka Codini, Cédric Quertier, Michele Campopiano, Michel Balard, Fabio Redi, Olimpia Vaccari, Mauro Ronzani, Maria Luisa Ceccarelli Lemut, Ottavio Banti, Marco Collareta, Karen Rose Mathews, Cristina Cagianelli, and Franco Cardini.

Premodern architecture and built environments were fluid spaces whose configurations and meanings were constantly adapting and changing. The production of transitory meaning transpired whenever a body or object moved through these dynamic spaces. Whether spanning the short duration of a procession or the centuries of a building's longue durée, a body or object in motion created in-the-moment narratives that unfolded through time and space. The authors in this volume forge new approaches to architectural studies by focusing on the interaction between monuments, artworks, and their viewers at different points in space and time. Contributors are Christopher A. Born, Elizabeth Carson Pastan, Nicole Corrigan, Gillian B. Elliott, Barbara Franzé, Anne Heath, Philip Jacks, Divya Kumar-Dumas, Brigitte Kurmann-Schwarz, Ashley J. Laverock, Susan Leibacher Ward, Elodie Leschot, Meghan Mattsson McGinnis, Michael Sizer, Kelly Thor, and Laura J. Whatley.

Vives'tract on the education of Women, De Institutione Feminae Christianae (1524, revised 1538) became a model for cunduct books in various Protestant traditions and as such has always been of interest to historians of education. However, the treatise also made a very important contribution to the querelle des femmes of its time and has consequently generated much interest among modern historians of women and gender. It consists of 3 books, one for each stage of woman's life –maidenhood, marriage and widowhood. The only English translation of the text on offer till now was the inaccurate and free version of Richard Hyrde (a friend of Thomas More), published early in the 20th century by Foster Watson, but now unavailable. De Institutione Feminae Christianae, 2, contains the critical edition of the Latin text of Books II and III with a double apparatus and a facing-page English translation with notes. It starts with a special introduction to this edition. Volume 1 covering Book 1 was published in 1996. By publishing the 2nd volume the complete text of this important treatise by Vives is now available.

Offering access to an extensive and resource-rich hinterland, eastern Sumatra was an important trading region between the Melaka Straits and the Minangkabau highlands of Sumatra prior to colonial rule. Traditionally under the control of Johor, the various communities in eastern Sumatra were united under the leadership of an adventurer named Raja Kecik in the early eighteenth century and formed an independent community along the Siak River. Over the next century Raja Kecik and his descendents attempted to gain control over the trade that flowed through the Straits, while keeping the numerous communities within their territories united by means of marriage alliances, warfare, raiding, trade, and myth. By the end of the eighteenth century the multiple centres of authority that constituted Siak represented the dominant Malay community in the Straits of Melaka, only to fall into decline due to the rise of British trading communities in Singapore and Penang. This book, based on VOC (Dutch East Indies Company) archives and traditional Malay texts, examines the rise of a Malay state in the early modern era. It focuses on the ecological frontier of eastern Sumatra, with its multi-ethnic communities, and how they were able to transform themselves, in the words of an English visitor, into a summit of prosperity by the end of the eighteenth century. Particular emphasis is placed on the methods used by Siak leaders used unite the disparate communities in the region, and how this was viewed in other Malay communities.