Search results for ""university of wales press""
University of Wales Press Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru / The University of Wales Press: Y Degawdau Cynnar (1922–1953) / The Founding Years (1922–1953)
OPEN ACCESS: To read the ePDF version of this book free of charge, click the below link: https://www.uwp.co.uk/app/uploads/9781837720187_WEB.pdf This short study presents the history of the founding of the University of Wales Press, and the work that it accomplished during the first half of the twentieth century. It describes a formative period in the publishing and wider cultural history of modern Wales, and provides a snapshot of the work of a variety of the nation’s most influential scholars and authors during this era. Detailing the key role played by famous literary figures and historians such as T. H. Parry-Williams, W. J. Gruffydd and R. T. Jenkins in the work of the Press Board between 1922 and 1953, it discusses some of the main works and series that were published under the Press’s name during these years. The work of the Press is placed in the wider context of the development of modernism internationally, and of Welsh nationalism, between the world wars.
£12.99
University of Wales Press This is Not a Grail Romance: Understanding Historia Peredur Vab Efrawc
This is Not a Grail Romance provides answers to some of the most important questions surrounding the medieval Welsh Arthurian tale Historia Peredur vab Efrawc, one of the few surviving medieval Welsh narrative compositions, and an important member of the ‘Grail’ family of medieval European narratives. The study demonstrates that Historia Peredur is an original Welsh composition, rather than (as previous theories have suggested) being an adaptation of the twelfth-century French grail romance. The new analysis of the structure of Historia Peredur presented here shows it to be as complex as it has always been thought – but also more formal, and the result of intentional and intricate design. The seeming inconsistencies or oddities in Historia Peredur can be understood by reading it in its medieval Welsh cultural context, allowing the modern reader a greater appreciation of both the narrative and the culture that produced it. The University of Wales Press gratefully acknowledges the funding support of the Maartje Draak Fund from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, of the Utrecht University Institute for Cultural Inquiry, and of the Books Council of Wales, in publication of this book.
£24.99
University of Wales Press The Trials of Edward Vaughan
This book tells a remarkable story. Edward Vaughan was the fifth son of a landed gentleman, and could not have expected much beyond a career in law. However, by fair means and foul (mostly foul), he managed to gain possession of one of the largest estates in seventeenth-century Wales. His tenure was not to be a quiet one, however, as the Protestant Vaughan endured a bruising legal contest with a powerful Catholic magnate over these lands. Vaughan's case was then swept up in the politics of the civil wars. A moderate parliamentarian, during the 1640s and 1650s Vaughan fought new battles with local radicals to secure his patrimony. The trials of Edward Vaughan reveal much about the confrontational and sometimes bloody nature of law, politics and faction in early modern England and Wales. It is a rich and surprising story, and one which has yet to be told.
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University of Wales Press The Reconciliation of Modernism
Modern art in Britain during the early twentieth century is a complex and compromised proposition. It has frequently appeared selective in its assimilation (or rejection) of European modernism, with the results proving uneven and sometimes flawed in coherence as well as quality from an international outlook to a reductive vorticist blast, from an insular English' modernism to a purist abstraction, from a British neo-romanticism to an earnest accommodation of French surrealism. This book reads critically the context of modernist visual art in the interwar, conceding ultimately to the absence of one representative manifestation in order to account for circuits of ruptures and seizures from which emerge singular instances negotiating the radically new European modernism. The emergence of Ceri Richards as a modernist of remarkable originality in London between the wars poses one such singularity, setting the artist as focus for the present study in critical analysis of a globally trenchan
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University of Wales Press The Political Thought of Aneurin Bevan
Despite his contemporary legacy as an institutional pioneer, there remain fundamental disagreements concerning Aneurin Bevan's politics. During times of intense internal Labour Party conflict, Bevan is regularly invoked by different factions to serve different purposes. Some revere him as a pragmatic institution builder, while others emphasise his political radicalism and dedication to socialism. In response, this book takes a new approach by treating Bevan as a political thinker and reconstructing his political thought. This offers an alternative perspective on a complex figure and provides new insight into Bevan's intellectual development and the ideas that drove his politics including his analysis of class conflict, his commitment to parliamentary politics, and his outlook on international relations. The book also locates Bevan within the Labour Party's ideological traditions, highlighting moments of tension and compromise with the core tenets of labourism.
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University of Wales Press Cornish Gothic, 1830-1913
This book asks why so many authors drew on Cornwall for inspiration across the long nineteenth century, and considers the seismic cultural changes in Cornwall that spurred this interest – from the collapse of the mining industry to the developing national rail network; from the birth of tourism to the neomedieval rise in interest in King Arthur. Understanding frequently overlooked Cornwall in this period is vital to understanding Gothic literature, the Victorian imagination, intellectual and creative networks, and attitudes towards regionality. The first part of the book considers landscape and legend, defining a mining Gothic tradition, exposing the shipwreck as Gothic mastertrope, and demonstrating how antiquarians drew from Cornish legends and lore. The second part explores encounters with modernity, investigating the impact of railway expansion on access to Cornwall, the development of a Cornish King Arthur as a key figure of Victorian masculinity, and the specific features of the Cornish ghost story.
£67.50
University of Wales Press Medieval Welsh Medical Texts: Volume One: The Recipes
OPEN ACCESS To view Medieval Welsh Medical Texts for free click on the following links: https://www.uwp.co.uk/app/uploads/MWMT_final_low-res-1.pdf https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK558253/ This volume presents the first critical edition and translation of the corpus of medieval Welsh medical recipes traditionally ascribed to the Physicians of Myddfai. These offer practical treatments for a variety of everyday conditions such as toothache, constipation and gout. The recipes have been edited from the four earliest collections of Welsh medical texts in manuscript, which date from the late fourteenth century. A series of notes provides sources and analogues for the recipes, demonstrating their relationship with the European medical tradition. The identification of herbal ingredients in the recipes is based on pre-modern plant-name glossaries rather than modern dictionaries, and has led to new interpretations of many of the recipes. Comprehensive glossaries allow the reader to find any recipe based on the ingredients and equipment used in it or the condition treated. This new interpretation of these texts clearly shows that they are not unique, but rather form part of the medical tradition that was common throughout Europe during the Middle Ages.
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University of Wales Press Discovering Dylan Thomas: A Companion to the Collected Poems and Notebook Poems
Discovering Dylan Thomas is a companion to Dylan Thomas’s published and notebook poems. It includes hitherto-unseen material contained in the recently-discovered fifth notebook, alongside poems, drafts and critical material including summaries of the critical reception of individual poems. The introductory essay considers the task of editing and annotating Thomas, the reception of the Collected Poems and the state of the Dylan Thomas industry, and the nature of Thomas’s reading, ‘influences’, allusions and intertextuality. It is followed by supplementary poems, including juvenilia and the notebook poems ‘The Woman Speaks’, original versions of ‘Grief thief of time’ and ‘I fellowed sleep’, and ‘Jack of Christ’, all of which were omitted from the Collected Poems. These are followed by annotations beginning with a discussion of Thomas’s juvenilia, and the relationship between plagiarism and parody in his work; poem-by-poem entries offer glosses, new material from the fifth notebook, critical histories for each poem, and variants of poems such as ‘Holy Spring’ and ‘On a Wedding Anniversary’ (including a magnificent, previously unpublished first draft of ‘A Refusal to Mourn’). The closing appendices deal with text and publication details for the collections Thomas published in his lifetime, the provenance and contents of the fifth notebook, and errata for the hardback edition of the Collected Poems.
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University of Wales Press Robert Owen and his Legacy
J. F. C. Harrison has written that 'for each age there is a new view of Mr Owen', which is proof of the fertility and continuing relevance of his ideas. Not just in Britain and America but today around the world anti-poverty campaigners, birth-controllers, collectivists, communitarians, co-operators, ecologists, educationalists, environmentalists, feminists, humanitarians, internationalists, paternalistic capitalists, secularists, campaigners for social justice, trade unionists, urban planners, utopians, welfare reformers can all find something to admire and inspire in the treasure trove that is the thought and actions of Robert Owen. Owen was a creative genius of global significance, a radical writer and activist of international reputation and reach who has inspired those seeking to change human society for the better. The contributors to this volume include not only many of the recognized experts on the life, work and legacy of Owen, but also work from younger scholars or scholars coming to the field afresh. The volume presents the most recent and original research on Owen. Owen notoriously (and impressively) dabbled in many spheres, and this is reflected in the its breadth of content. The unifying themes are Owen's profile in his own time, and the relevance of his ideas for the generations that followed. His importance for educational and social philosophy, for political economy and for the political theory of socialism are all discussed, as are his contribution as a philanthropic employer, his political activities and the specificities of his historical context.
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University of Wales Press Evan James Williams: Ffisegydd yr Atom
Dyma gyfrol sy’n rhoi darlun o fywyd a gwaith y ffisegydd o Gymro, yr Athro Evan James Williams, gŵr a gafodd ei ddisgrifio fel un o’r gwyddonwyr mwyaf galluog a welodd Cymru erioed ac fe’i cydnabyddid fel arbrofwr dyfeisgar a damcaniaethwr disglair. Cymerodd ran flaenllaw yn y chwyldro a ddigwyddodd yn negawdau cyntaf yr ugeinfed ganrif gyda datblygiad ffiseg cwantwm. Cydweithiodd gyda’r arloeswyr (nifer ohonynt yn enillwyr gwobr Nobel) a gwnaeth gyfraniad nodedig ym maes gwrthdrawiadau atomig ac yn narganfyddiad gronyn elfennol newydd. Ym 1939, ymunodd yn y dasg o ddiddymu bygythiad dinistriol llongau tanfor a chyflawnodd waith gorchestol. Amlygir ei alluoedd di-gymar yn y gyfrol hon, a chyflwynir yn ogystal ddarlun o gymeriad hoffus a thwymgalon na gollodd ei ymlyniad na’i gariad tuag at fro ei febyd a’i diwylliant.
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University of Wales Press Carmarthen Castle: The Archaeology of Government
Carmarthen Castle was one of the largest castles in medieval Wales. It was also one of the most important, in its role as a centre of government and as a Crown possession in a region dominated by Welsh lands and Marcher lordships. Largely demolished during the seventeenth century, it was subsequently redeveloped, first as a prison and later as the local authority headquarters. Yet the surviving remains, and their situation, are still impressive. The situation changed with a major programme of archaeological and research work, from 1993 to 2006, which is described in this book. The history of the castle, its impact on the region and on Wales as a whole are also examined: we see the officials and other occupants of the castle, their activities and how they interacted with their environment. Excavations at the castle, and the artefacts recovered, are described along with its remaining archaeological potential. This book puts Carmarthen Castle back at the heart of the history of medieval Wales, and in its proper place in castle studies and architectural history, the whole study combining to make a major contribution to the history of one of Wales's great towns.
£34.99
University of Wales Press Cardiff and the Marquesses of Bute
As late as 1980, a quarter of the population of Wales lived within the boundaries of what had once been the lordships of the Bute estate. Powerful landowners for centuries, the Stuarts of Bute were key drivers of the many social, political, and economic changes that transformed south Wales between the eighteenth and twentieth century. This volume explores the Butes and their influence, setting them in context of a long, interwoven history of landed proprietorship, economic development, and the rise of the industrial middle class throughout Britain.
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University of Wales Press Tir
In Tir the Welsh word for land' writer and ecologist Carwyn Graves takes us on a tour of seven key elements of the Welsh landscape, such as the ffridd, or mountain pasture, and the rhos, or wild moorland. By diving deep into the history and ecology of each of these landscapes, we discover that Wales, in all its beautiful variety, is at base just as much a human cultural creation as a natural phenomenon: its raw materials evolved alongside the humans that have lived here since the ice receded. In our modern era of climate concerns and polarised debates on land use, diet and more, it matters that we understand the world we are in and the roads we travelled to get here. By exploring each of these key landscapes and meeting the people who live, work and farm in them, Tir offers hope for a better future; one with stunningly beautiful, richly biodiverse landscapes that are ten times richer in wildlife than they currently are, and still full of humans working the land.
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University of Wales Press The Long Unwinding Road
If you want to see the whole of Wales, from cosmopolitan Cardiff in the south to the historic Victorian resorts of the north, there's one road that will take you all the way: the A470. This route, which traverses the country from end to end, winds its way through post-industrial valleys, agricultural landscapes and stunning mountains and it offers a chance to see Wales for what it is in the twenty-first century, in all its diversity.In the company of Gwendoline, his trusty but ancient scooter, travel writer Marc P. Jones follows the long unwinding road of the A470 on a quest to discover what makes his homeland tick. Taking in the splendour, beauty and history of the communities he travels through, Marc explores what unites and divides the different regions of this varied nation, and how can they learn to understand each other better. And one question, above all others, remains to be answered: will Gwendoline make it to the end of the road in one piece?
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University of Wales Press Seaglass
On a windswept stretch of the Durham coastline, there's treasure to be found: jewels of shining sea glass, swept in by the tide after years at sea. Gathered together in a jar on the windowsill, each seawornpebbleisa moment in time, aglinting archiveof unknowablelives. Seaglassis a collection of such moments; essaysblending creative non-fiction with nature writing and memoir, and portraying with powerful observation and moving honesty the journey of a young woman navigating modern adulthood.The stories draw a map of Kathryn's life,from Manchester to the South Wales coastline and out to the Thousand Islands in Canada's Saint Lawrence River.Traversing wilderness, natural history, travel and water rivers, lakes, coastlines and leisure centres Seaglassexplores shared experiences,anxieties, confidence and contentment.
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University of Wales Press Wales on This Day
Discover 366 fun and surprising stories about Wales – each linked to a specific day of the year. Did you know that the recipe of Tennessee’s famous Jack Daniel’s whiskey is rumoured to have originated in Llanelli, or that the world’s first radio play was set in a Welsh coal mine? Why was a showing of the Jurassic Park film in Carmarthen so special, and how is Rupert Bear connected to Snowdonia? Delve in to discover the stories that most history books leave out.
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University of Wales Press The New Queer Gothic
Queer theory, queer literary criticism and queer cultural criticism often focus on western, white, cis men. This book provides the first in-depth analysis of contemporary queer and Gothic texts that focus on the subjectivity, characterisation and representation of queer girls and women. The New Queer Gothic applies interdisciplinary theory to offer a new mode and method of reading literary and film fiction. From monstrous femininity in tales of girlhood, to paranoid negativity and transformation in young womanhood, through to postcolonial doubles, hybrid assimilation, corporeal possession, and final girls at the end of everything this book takes as its canon works from the past fifteen years concerning queer and questioning girls and women in Gothic settings and narratives, to elucidate upon questions of queer feminist ethics, biopower and global identity politics.
£67.50
University of Wales Press Spectral Spain
Spectral Spain examines the Gothic haunting motif in post-Franco Spanish literature. With a theoretical framework in memory and trauma studies, and a particular emphasis on the inclusion of women's voices, this book is the first to provide an in-depth study of spectrality and haunting in the Gothic literature of contemporary Spain. Through close readings of eleven main texts, the author examines haunting as the perfect motif for Spanish authors to portray the tension between modernity and the imposition of a monocultural, nationalised tradition throughout the twentieth century noting not just the trauma of the civil war and resulting dictatorship of Franco, but also the continuing and widespread disenchantment during and after the Transition. Through its references to the contemporary debate surrounding historical memory, Spectral Spain demonstrates the relevance of the Gothic in Spanish literature, and the continued ghostly returns of the past in the socio-political anxieties of the
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University of Wales Press Gentility in Early Modern Wales: The Salesbury Family, 1450–1720
OPEN ACCESS To read the PDF of Gentility in Early Modern Wales: The Salesbury Family, 1450–1720 for free, follow the link below Gentility in Early Modern Wales: The Salesbury Family, 1450–1720 (uwp.co.uk) This book is freely available on a Creative Commons licence thanks to the kind sponsorship of the libraries participating in the Jisc Open Access Community Framework OpenUP initiative. Early modern Wales was a place of opportunity for the gentry. The Acts of Union with England granted them powers to govern their local communities, the Reformation enabled them to add former monastic lands to their estates, and burgeoning global expansion encouraged them to seek fortunes abroad. Early modern Wales was also a place in transition. The gentry navigated a complex relationship with their English neighbours and found themselves cultivating a new identity as Cambro-Britons. This book is an exciting new study of how one Welsh gentry family, the Salesburys of Rhug and Bachymbyd, negotiated the changing expectations of gentility in early modern Wales. From this in-depth analysis, the book finds that the Welsh gentry were status-conscious and opportunistic, but Welshness remained fundamental to their sense of self. This is further enhanced by considering the early modern Welsh gentry within a wider global context for the first time.
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University of Wales Press The Modern Spanish Sonnet
The fine tradition of the Spanish sonnet, developed during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the subject of Rutherford’s The Spanish Golden Age Sonnet (2016), has been extended and developed during the subsequent centuries. This book presents one hundred of the best sonnets of the eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including sonnets written in the Catalan and Galician languages, together with their translations into modern English sonnets and a critical commentary on each. There is a general introduction to the genre, followed by summaries of the historical and literary backgrounds and a discussion of the problems facing the translator of sonnets. The life and works of each poet are summarised and a select bibliography of further reading concludes the volume. The translations bring these sonnets to new life in the modern English language, and they can be read both as interesting and lively poems in their own right and as leads into the originals.
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University of Wales Press Gender in Modern Welsh History: Perspectives on Masculinity and Femininity in Wales from 1750 to 2000
This innovative collection offers a reappraisal of gender as a category of analysis in modern Welsh history. Beginning with sex work in the eighteenth century and concluding with women’s late twentieth-century anti-nuclear activism, the contributors show how gender has been constructed, represented, performed and experienced by men and women at different times and places throughout Wales’s modern past. Using a variety of approaches, the collection interrogates gender as a concept that encompasses both femininity and masculinity, provides fresh perspectives on familiar themes, and demonstrates the value of gender analysis for our understanding of the political, social, cultural and economic history of modern Wales. Chapters by leading historians and early career academics each set an agenda for exploring the intersection of gender with nationality, race, class, age and sexuality.
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University of Wales Press Geirfâu’r Fflyd, 1632-1633: Casgliad John Jones, Gellilyfdy o eiriau'r cartref, crefftau, amaeth a byd natur
Mae John Jones, Gellilyfdy, sir y Fflint (c.1580–1658) yn enwog fel ysgrifydd medrus a dibynadwy a gopïodd nifer helaeth o destunau canoloesol, mewn llaw galigraffig hardd. Mae ei gopïau o farddoniaeth a rhyddiaith ganoloesol yn arbennig o werthfawr i’r ysgolhaig Cymraeg, gan nad yw ei ffynonellau’n aml wedi goroesi. Ond nid copïwr yn unig oedd John Jones. Pan oedd yng ngharchar y Fflyd yn Llundain yn ystod y 1630au cynnar, cynhyrchodd restrau o dros 7,000 o eiriau wedi eu trefnu’n thematig dan 130 o benawdau, gan eu cofnodi’n daclus mewn tair llawysgrif. Mae’r geirfâu hyn, a gyhoeddir yma am y tro cyntaf, yn cynnwys geiriau am sawl agwedd ar fywyd bob dydd: y tŷ a’i gynnwys; crefftwyr traddodiadol a’u hoffer; dyn, ei gorff a’i afiechydon, a’r gemau a’r chwaraeon a’i difyrrai; a byd natur, gan gynnwys rhestrau maith o enwau coed, llysiau, pysgod ac adar. Rhydd y geirfâu gipolwg gwerthfawr i ni ar fywyd ac iaith gŵr bonheddig o sir y Fflint ar ddechrau’r ail ganrif ar bymtheg, yn ogystal ag ychwanegu’n fawr at eirfa Gymraeg hysbys y cyfnod.
£25.00
University of Wales Press Cranogwen
Yn oes Fictoria, ystyriwyd menywod yn anaddas ac anabl ar gyfer pob arweinyddiaeth gyhoeddus a deallusol. Ond llwyddodd Cranogwen, sef Sarah Jane Rees (1839–1916) o Langrannog, i ennill parch ac enwogrwydd fel bardd, darlithydd, golygydd, pregethwraig, dirwestwraig – ac ysbrydolwraig to newydd o awduresau a merched cyhoeddus. Mae’r gyfrol hon yn dilyn ei thrywydd er mwyn deall pam a sut y cododd Cranogwen, benyw ddibriod o gefndir gwerinol, i’r fath fri a dylanwad ymhlith Cymry ei hoes. Teflir goleuni newydd hefyd ar ei bywyd carwriaethol cyfunrywiol, a’i syniadau arloesol ynghylch rhywedd. Cyhoeddwyd cyfrolau bywgraffiadol ar Cranogwen ym 1932 a 1981, ond oddi ar hynny mae twf y mudiad ffeminyddol wedi ysgogi llawer astudiaeth (ar awduron benywaidd a lesbiaid y bedwaredd ganrif ar bymtheg, er enghraifft, ac ar wragedd mewn cymunedau morwrol) sy’n berthnasol iawn i’w hanes. Yng ngoleuni’r holl ddeunydd ychwanegol hyn, ceir yn y gyfrol hon ddarlun newydd o’i bywyd a’i dylanwad.
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University of Wales Press Llwyfannu’r Genedl Anghyflawn: Iaith a Hunaniaeth yn y Theatr Gymraeg
Sut mae ysgrifennu drama ‘genedlaethol’ mewn cenedl ddwyieithog a diwladwriaeth? A yw ymdrech dramodwyr yr 1990au i ddychmygu cenedl amgen ac annibynnol ar lwyfan wedi pylu ers datganoli? Sut y mae lleiafrifoedd eraill wedi dygymod â heriau’r oes honedig ôl-fodern ac ôl-genedlaethol hon, ac a oes gan eu profiadau wersi i Gymru? Dyma rai o’r cwestiynau y mae nifer o arloeswyr y ddrama Gymraeg gyfoes yn ymhél â nhw yn y gyfrol ddiweddaraf hon yng nghyfres Safbwyntiau. Mae Llwyfannu’r Genedl Anghyflawn yn gasgliad heriol o ysgrifau, wedi ei guradu a’i olygu gan un o’n dramodwyr mwyaf blaengar.
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University of Wales Press Broadcasting for Wales: The Early Years of S4C
This is the first study of the early formative years of one of Wales’s most important cultural organisations – Sianel Pedwar Cymru (S4C). The volume chronicles the decisions and activities of the channel during its trial period between 1981–5. Through a detailed study of minutes, correspondence and interviews with individuals who were key to the channel’s development during its early years, it chronicles the many challenges, successes and failures which faced the S4C Authority and its staff as they aimed to create a Welsh-language television service that would meet the desires and needs of the audience in Wales. S4C is no ordinary channel, and no other period in its history portrays this more effectively than the trial period given to it at the beginning of the 1980s.
£19.99
University of Wales Press The Society for the Reformation of Manners in Hull, 1698-1706: 'Favour'd with the Lord's Wonders'
The Society for the Reformation of Manners in Hull was formed in 1698 by religiously-inspired mariners, merchants and tradesmen who aimed to hinder the spread of sin and wickedness in their town. Their methods included initiating prosecutions against their neighbours’ transgressions, and sponsoring sermons on the subject of spiritual reformation. Unlike other religious societies of this period, the majority of the leading members in the Hull society were Dissenters from the Church of England. For many nonconformists, the period represented a providential ‘now or never’ moment for moral reform. The Society’s activities shed considerable light on the degree to which High Churchmen were willing to tolerate the Toleration. An exceptional survival for a regional society for the reformation of manners, this volume presents their records in full for the first time, with an introductory essay analysing its origins, membership, methods, and ultimate decline.
£24.99
University of Wales Press Trysorau: Casgliadau Arbennig Prifysgol Cymru Y Drindod Dewi Sant
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University of Wales Press Watchdogs or Visionaries?: Perspectives on the History of the Education Inspectorate in Wales
This is a ground-breaking history of school and college inspection in Wales. With contributions from two former chief inspectors, two former HMI and leading historians, it offers an authoritative account of how the inspectorate has changed over time. Since their beginnings in 1839, HMI have steered a course between being instruments of the state and independent influencers of education policy and practice. They have been much-valued catalysts for improvement in schools and colleges, and have had a key role in promoting the teaching of the Welsh language, history and culture. This book is written for anyone concerned with the history of education in Wales, the history of accountability in education, with approaches to school improvement, and the extent to which HMI have influenced or been at odds with education policy making. At a time when the inspectorate itself is under review, this is a timely reminder of its wide-ranging services.
£24.99
University of Wales Press Compatriots or Competitors?: Welsh, Scottish, English and Northern Irish Writing and Brexit in Comparative Contexts
This is the first comparative study of the distinctive literatures and cultures that have developed in Wales, Scotland, England and Northern Ireland since political devolution in the late 1990s, especially surrounding Brexit. The book argues that in conceptualising their cultures as ‘national’, each nation is caught up in a creative tension between emulating forms of cultural production found in the others to assert common aspirations, and downplaying those connections in order to forge a sense of cultural distinctiveness. The author explores the resulting dilemmas, with chapters analysing the growth of the creative industries; the relationship between UK City of Culture and its forerunner, the European Capital of Culture; national book prizes in Britain and Europe; British variations on Nordic Noir TV; and the Brexit novel. With regard to separate cultural precursors and responses in each nation, Brexit itself is debated as a factor that has widened their differences, placing the future of the UK in question.
£24.99
University of Wales Press Towards Modern Nationhood: Wales and Slovenia in Comparison, c. 1750-1918
This book is a pioneering comparison of Wales with another small people, the Slovenes, over the formative period for national development in modern Europe. Language, religion and social conflict figured in both countries, but the determinant issue for national mobilisation was language equality for Slovene speakers, and religious equality for Welsh Nonconformists. Both options reflected their respective state contexts: the Habsburg empire’s acceptance of public multilingualism, and the religious pluralism long crucial in the British isles. British economic power, shown in the dramatic industrialisation of south Wales, strengthened a Welsh profile; relative Habsburg weakness detracted from Slovene language progress. The wartime premiership of a Welsh-speaking Nonconformist, Lloyd George, was no fluke – language-orientated East European scepticism about Welsh nationhood overlooks this context. The Welsh process was indeed more diffuse than the Slovene, involving the dual assimilation of immigrant workers to Welsh nationality, but also, less completely, Welsh language loss. The stories of Wales and Slovenia fascinate in themselves. They suggest, too, that alongside the ‘hard power’ of larger units, the ‘soft power’ of smaller communities’ traditions, linguistic, religious or other, is also a vital historical factor.
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University of Wales Press Australian Gothic: A Cinema of Horrors
The term 'Gothic' has been applied to examples of Australian cinema since the 1970s, often in arbitrary and divergent ways. This book examines a wide range of Australian films to trace their Gothic resemblances, characteristics and meanings. Concentrating on the occurrence of Gothic motifs, characters, landscapes and narratives, it argues for the recognition and relevance of a coherent Gothic heritage in Australian film. Considering a plethora of Gothic representatives in relation to four consistent and illuminating continuities (images of the family, ideas of monstrosity, generic hybridity and the occurrence of the sublime), this study investigates the appearance and asserts the significance of Australian Gothic films within their national, cultural, literary and cinematic traditions.
£63.00
University of Wales Press Y Gymraeg a Gweithle’r Gymru Gyfoes
Mae’r byd gwaith yng Nghymru a’r Gymraeg fel disgyblaeth yn esblygu yn sgil y galw cynyddol am weithwyr proffesiynol â sgiliau dwyieithog. Mae’r gyfrol ryngddisgyblaethol hon yn cyfuno lleisiau o’r byd academaidd a’r byd proffesiynol er mwyn archwilio i arwyddocâd a rôl y Gymraeg mewn gweithleoedd yn y Gymru gyfoes, ymateb y sectorau addysg a recriwtio i anghenion gweithwyr a sefydliadau, a rôl gwneuthurwyr polisi yn natblygiad yr iaith mewn cyd-destun proffesiynol. Sut mae gwella sgiliau dwyieithog gweithwyr? Er gwaethaf ewyllys da nifer o sefydliadau, a yw sgiliau Cymraeg eu gweithwyr yn cael eu cymhwyso? Beth yw buddiannau'r Gymraeg i weithleoedd, a beth yw’r heriau y maen nhw’n eu hwynebu wrth weithredu a chynnig eu gwasanaethau’n ddwyieithog? Beth yw rôl y Llywodraeth a Chomisiynydd y Gymraeg yn y fath ddatblygiadau? Wrth ystyried a thrafod y cwestiynau hyn, gofynnir sut y mae polisïau, cyfreithiau a safonau iaith yn effeithio ar y gweithle cyfoes yng Nghymru.
£17.99
University of Wales Press Theorising the Contemporary Zombie: Contextual Pasts, Presents, and Futures
Zombies have become an increasingly popular object of research in academic studies and, of course, in popular media. Over the past decade, they have been employed to explain mathematical equations, vortex phenomena in astrophysics, the need for improved laws, issues within higher education, and even the structure of human societies. Despite the surge of interest in the zombie as a critical metaphor, no coherent theoretical framework for studying the zombie actually exists. Addressing this current gap in the literature, Theorising the Contemporary Zombie defines zombiism as a means of theorising and examining various issues of society in any given era by immersing those social issues within the destabilising context of apocalyptic crisis; and applying this definition, the volume considers issues including gender, sexuality, family, literature, health, popular culture and extinction.
£40.50
University of Wales Press Precarious Sociality, Ethics and Politics: French Documentary Cinema in the Early Twenty-First Century
Precarious Sociality, Ethics and Politics: French Documentary Cinema in the Early Twenty-First Century brings an original perspective on French cinema's 'return to work' in the early twenty-first century, focusing on the transformation of cinematic activism in view of the rapid dissolution of class narratives and solidarities. It is argued that, reckoning with widespread anxieties about job precarity, social uncertainty, loss and invisibility in French society, filmmakers catalysed new modes of intervention, best described as embodied praxes of sociality. Combining rigorous film analyses with concepts borrowed from philosophy, sociology, geography and political theory, this study positions documentary as a privileged point of articulation between aesthetics, politics and ethics. The wide-ranging film corpus features well-established auteurs (Agnes Varda, Raymond Depardon, Denis Gheerbrant) and less canonical filmmakers to celebrate the vitality of contemporary French documentary cinema and its creative contributions to international discussions about work, precarity and social resilience.
£63.00
University of Wales Press Reform, Rebellion and Party in Mexico, 1836–1861
Between 1836 and 1861, Mexico’s difficulties as a sovereign state became fully exposed. Its example provides a case study for all similarly emerging independent states that have broken away from long-standing imperial systems. The leaders of the Republic in Mexico envisaged the construction of a nation, in a process that often conflicted with ethnic, religious, and local loyalties. The question of popular participation always remained outstanding, and this book examines regional and local movements as the other side of the coin to capital city issues and aspirations. Formerly an outstanding Spanish colony on the North American sub-continent, financial difficulties, economic recession, and political divisions made the new Republic vulnerable to spoliation. This began with the loss of Texas in 1836, the acquisition of the Far North by the United States in 1846–8, and the European debt-collecting Intervention in 1861. This study examines the Mexican responses to these setbacks, culminating in the Liberal Reform Movement from 1855 and the opposition to it.
£63.00
University of Wales Press Patronage and Power in the Medieval Welsh March: One Family's Story
This is the first full-length study of a Welsh family of the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries who were not drawn from the princely class. Though they were of obscure and modest origins, the patronage of great lords of the March - such as the Mortimers of Wigmore or the de Bohun earls of Hereford - helped them to become prominent in Wales and the March, and increasingly in England. They helped to bring down anyone opposed by their patrons - like Llywelyn, prince of Wales in the thirteenth century, or Edward II in the 1320s. In the process, they sometimes faced great danger but they contrived to prosper, and unusually for Welshmen one branch became Marcher lords themselves. Another was prominent in Welsh and English government, becoming diplomats and courtiers of English kings, and over some five generations many achieved knighthood. Their fascinating careers perhaps hint at a more open society than is sometimes envisaged.
£14.99
University of Wales Press Industrial Gothic: Workers, Exploitation and Urbanization in Transatlantic Nineteenth-Century Literature
This study carves out a new area of study, the 'industrial Gothic', placing the literature of the Industrial Revolution in dialogue with the Gothic. It explores a significant subset of transatlantic nineteenth-century literature that employs the tropes, themes and rhetoric of the Gothic to portray the real-life horrors of factory life, framing the Industrial Revolution as a site of Gothic excess and horror. Using archival materials from the nineteenth century, localised incidences of Gothic industrialisation (in specific cities like Lowell and Manchester) are considered alongside transnational connections and comparisons. The book argues that stories about the real horrors of factory life frequently employed the mode of the Gothic, while nineteenth century Gothic writing (stories, novels, poems and stage adaptations) began to use new settings - factories, mills, and industrial cities - as backdrops for the horrors that once populated Gothic castles.
£63.00
University of Wales Press Transnationalism and Genre Hybridity in New British Horror Cinema
As an intervention in conversations on transnationalism, film culture and genre theory, this book theorises transnational genre hybridity - combining tropes from foreign and domestic genres - as a way to think about films through a global and local framework. Taking the British horror resurgence of the 2000s as case study, genre studies are here combined with close formal analysis to argue that embracing transnational genre hybridity enabled the boom; starting in 2002, the resurgence saw British horror film production outpace the golden age of British horror. Yet, resurgence films like 28 Days Later and Shaun of the Dead had to reckon with horror's vilified status in the UK, a continuation of attitudes perpetuated by middlebrow film critics who coded horror as dangerous and Americanised. Moving beyond British cinema studies' focus on the national, this book also presents a fresh take on long-standing issues in British cinema, including genre and film culture.
£45.00
University of Wales Press Doña Bárbara Unleashed: From Venezuelan Plains to International Screen
Since its publication in 1929, the story of Doña Bárbara has haunted the collective Latin-American imagination, and has been adapted variously both for the small and big screen. Doña Bárbara Unleashed explores how Rómulo Gallegos’s original story has been kept alive yet altered by subsequent screen adaptations; the book illustrates how film and telenovela adaptations have reinterpreted Doña Bárbara in order to mirror changes in societal norms, such as the role of women in Latin American societies, and audience expectations. Particular attention is given to how spectators in the twenty-first century have played a crucial role influencing the alterations to which Gallegos’s original plot has been subjected. Now Doña Bárbara Unleashed offers an original way of studying screen adaptations by engaging several adaptations of the same source text in dialogue with each other, rather than simply comparing adaptations to the source text. This is a ground-breaking study that further develops readings through more traditional theories of screen adaptations with approaches emerging from fandom studies and audience responses.
£58.50
University of Wales Press Global TV Horror
The Horror genre has become one of the most popular genres of TV drama with the global success and fandom surrounding The Walking Dead, Supernatural and Stranger Things. Horror has always had a truly international reach, and nowhere is this more apparent than on television as explored in this provocative new collection looking at series from across the globe, and considering how Horror manifests in different cultural and broadcast/streaming contexts. Bringing together established scholars and new voices in the field, Global TV Horror examines historical and contemporary TV Horror from Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Iran, Japan, Spain, New Zealand, USA and the UK. It expands the discussion of TV Horror by offering fresh perspectives, examining new shows, and excavating new cultural histories, to render what has become so familiar – Horror on television – unfamiliar yet again.
£40.50
University of Wales Press New Queer Horror Film and Television
This anthology comprises essays that study the form, aesthetics and representations of LGBTQ+ identities in an emerging sub-genre of film and television that we term 'New Queer Horror.' New Queer Horror designates horror that is crafted by directors/producers who identify as gay, bi, queer or transgendered, or works that feature homoerotic or explicitly homosexual narratives with 'out' LGBTQ+ characters. Unlike other studies, this anthology argues that New Queer Horror projects contemporary anxieties within LGBTQ+ subcultures onto its characters and into its narratives, building upon the previously figurative role of Queer monstrosity in the moving image. New Queer Horror thus highlights the limits of a metaphorical understanding of queerness in the horror film in an age where its presence has become more unambiguous. Ultimately, this anthology aims to show that 'New Queer Horror' has in recent years turned the focus of fear on itself, on its own communities and subcultures.
£40.50
University of Wales Press Barry Island: The Making of a Seaside Playground, c.1790- c.1965
Barry Island was one of the most cherished leisure spaces in twentieth-century south Wales, a playground of generations of working-class day-trippers. This book considers its rise as a seaside resort and reveals a history that is much more complex, lengthy and important than has previously been recognised. As conventionally told, the story of the island as tourist resort begins in the 1890s, when the railway arrived in Barry - in fact, it was functioning as a watering hole by the 1790s - yet decades of tourism produced no sweeping changes. Barry remained a district of 'bathing villages' and hamlets, not a developed urban resort. As such, its history challenges us to rethink the category of 'seaside resort' and forces us re-evaluate Wales's contribution to British coastal tourism in the 'long nineteenth century'. It also underlines the importance of visitor agency. Powerful landowners shaped much of the island's development but, ultimately, it was the working-class visitors who turned it into south Wales's most beloved tripper resort.
£19.99
University of Wales Press Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi
This is the first biography to foreground the importance of Hester Lynch Piozzi's Welsh heritage throughout her long life. As one anonymous reader put it, `Few eighteenth-century Welsh writers long resident in England continued to identify as strongly with their homeland.' Born in an obscure plwyf in Caernarvonshire the salonniere of Streatham was finally laid to rest in the vault of Tremeirchion church in the Vale of Clwyd. Hester had been mortified at the failure of her brewer husband Henry Thrale, and her mentor Dr Samuel Johnson, to appreciate the beauties of Wales. But her second husband, musician Gabriel Piozzi, was so enamoured that he proposed residing there. Newly-found confidence inspired Piozzi to write in her middle age, and her daringly personal biography (1786) and edition of Johnson's letters (1788) were runaway bestsellers. Her travel book (1789) treated the reader for the first time as an intimate friend, recounting her love affair with her husband's homeland in Italy, whose landscape reminded her so much of Wales.
£16.99
University of Wales Press Ophelia: Shakespeare and Gender in Contemporary Spain
It is astonishing how deeply the figure of Ophelia has been woven into the fabric of Spanish literature and the visual arts – from her first appearance in eighteenth-century translations of Hamlet, through depictions by seminal authors such as Espronceda, Bécquer and Lorca, to turn-of-the millennium figurations. This provocative, gendered figure has become what both male and female artists need her to be – is she invisible, a victim, mad, controlled by the masculine gaze, or is she an agent of her own identity? This well-documented study addresses these questions in the context of Iberia, whose poets, novelists and dramatists writing in Spanish, Catalan and Galician, as well as painters and photographers, have brought Shakespeare’s heroine to life in new guises. Ophelia performs as an authoritative female author, as new perspectives reflect and authorise the gender diversity that has gained legitimacy in Spanish society since the political Transition.
£45.00
University of Wales Press Y Dychymyg Ol-Fodern: Agweddau ar ffuglen fer Mihangel Morgan
Cyfrol arbrofol o feirniadaeth greadigol yw hon, sy'n cynnig golwg ffres ar ffuglen fer y llenor nodedig Mihangel Morgan (1955-). Hon yw'r astudiaeth estynedig gyntaf o'i waith, a rhoddir sylw penodol i'r wyth cyfrol o ffuglen fer a gyhoeddodd rhwng 1992 a 2017 - cyfnod lle gwelwyd datblygiadau arwyddocaol ym maes rhyddiaith Gymraeg. Eir i'r afael a phynciau megis ffurf y stori fer, realaeth, moderniaeth ac ol-foderniaeth, a thrwy osod gwaith Mihangel Morgan yn ganolbwynt i'r astudiaeth cynigir golwg ehangach ar ddatblygiad a derbyniad ffuglen fer ol-fodernaidd Gymraeg a'i harwyddocad i'n diwylliant llenyddol. Arbrofir yma am y tro cyntaf yn y Gymraeg a beirniadaeth lenyddol ar ffurf ffuglen academaidd er mwyn archwilio'r ffin dybiedig rhwng 'ffaith' a 'ffuglen'. Dilynir hynt a helynt y cymeriad ffuglennol Dr Mari Non yn ei swydd brifysgol, law yn llaw a thrafodaeth ar ddarnau o ffuglen fer Mihangel Morgan, gan agor y drws ar ddeongliadau newydd o waith yr awdur.
£19.99
University of Wales Press Madness and Irrationality in Spanish and Latin American Literature and Culture
This is the first monograph to consider the significance of madness and irrationality in both Spanish and Spanish American literature. It considers various definitions of madness and explores the often contrasting responses, both positive (figural madness as stimulus for literary creativity) and negative (clinical madness representing spiritual confinement and sterility). The concept of national madness is explored with particular reference to Argentina, where the country's vast expanses have been seen as conducive to madness, while the urban population of Buenos Aires is especially dependent on psychoanalytic therapy. The discussion considers both the work of lesser-known writers such as Nuria Amat, whose personal life is inflected by madness, and that of larger literary figures such as Jose Lezama Lima, whose poetic concepts are suffused with the irrational. The conclusion draws attention to the other side of reason as a source of possible originality in a world dominated by the tenets of logic and conventionalised thinking.
£45.00
University of Wales Press Revelation and the Apocalypse in Late Medieval Literature: the Writings of Julian of Norwich and William Langland
This interdisciplinary book breaks new ground by systematically examining ways in which two of the most important works of late-medieval English literature - Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Love and William Langland's Piers Plowman - were borne from engagement with the biblical Apocalypse and exegetical writings. This study contends that the exegetical approach to the Apocalypse is more extensive in Julian's Revelations and more sophisticated in Langland's Piers Plowman than previously thought, whether through a primary textual influence or a discernible Joachite influence. The author considers the implications of areas of confluence, which both writers reapply and emphasise - such as spiritual warfare and other salient thematic elements of the Apocalypse, gender issues, and Julian's explications of her vision of the soul as city of Christ and all believers (the fulcrum of her eschatologically-focused Aristotelian and Augustinian influenced pneumatology). The liberal soteriology implicit in Julian's `Parable of the Lord and the Servant' is specifically explored in its Johannine and Scotistic Christological emphasis, the absent vision of hell, and the eschatological `grete dede', vis-a-vis a possible critique of the prevalent hermeneutic.
£63.00
University of Wales Press Middle English Devotional Compilations: Composing Imaginative Variations in Late Medieval England
Middle English devotional compilations - consisting of a series of texts or extracts of texts that have intentionally been put together to constitute new and unified devotional texts - have often been approached as complex collections of source texts that need to be linked with their originals. Middle English Devotional Compilations argues that the study of compilations should move beyond the disentanglement of their sources. This publication approaches compiling as a literary activity and an active way of shaping the medieval text, aiming to nuance scholarly discussion about compiling by putting greater emphasis on the literary instead of the technical aspects of compiling activity. In addition to describing the additions, omissions and other types of adaptations that compilers made to their source texts, Middle English Devotional Compilations highlights the nature and function of compiling activity in late medieval England. Furthermore, this monograph will examine three major but understudied Middle English devotional compilations in depth: the Pore Caitif, The Tretyse of Love and A Talkyng of the Love of God.
£63.00