Search results for ""liverpool university press""

Optatus, Bishop of Milevis in North Africa in the late fourth century, wrote a detailed refutation of Donatist claims to be the one true and righteous church, an ark of purity in a world which was still corrupt despite Constantine’s support for Christianity. This new translation of Optatus’s work is the first since 1917, and makes full use of modern scholarship in its annotation and Introduction.

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From the patristic age until the Gregorian calendar reform of 1582, computus – the science of time reckoning and art of calendar construction – was a subject of intense concern to medieval people. Bede’s The Reckoning of Time (De temporum ratione) was the first comprehensive treatise on this subject, and the model and reference for all subsequent teaching, discussion and criticism of the Christian calendar. The Reckoning of Time is a systematic exposition of the Julian solar calendar and the Paschal table of Dionysius Exiguus, with their related formulae for calculating dates. But it is more than a technical handbook. Bede sets calendar lore within a broad scientific framework and a coherent Christian concept of time, and incorporates themes as diverse as the theory of tides and the threat of chiliasm. This translation of the full text includes an extensive historical introduction and a chapter-by-chapter commentary. The Reckoning of Time also serves as an accessible introduction to the computus itself.

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This volume makes available three works attributed to Constantine – two of which were certainly not written by him – which are important sources for historians of the papacy, Christianity and Constantine himself. The Oration to the Saints is an intellectual defence of Christianity, which puts the case for monotheism, extols the incarnation and voluntary abasement of the Son of God, and finally declares Constantine’s personal adherence to the Saviour. The legend of the discovery of the True Cross by the empress Helena, mother of Constantine, following her conversion to Christianity is presented in translations of two variant accounts. The third text, the Edict of Constantine, presents Constantine’s supposed edict to Pope Silvester transferring lands to the papacy. An introduction considers the authorship, motivation and historical context for each of the works, and extensive annotation elucidates textual difficulties and allusions.

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The History attributed to Sebeos is one of the major works of early Armenian historiography. Although anonymous, it was written in the middle of the seventh century, a time when comparable chronicles in Greek and Syriac are sparse. Sebeos traces the fortunes of Armenia in the sixth and seventh centuries within the broader framework of the Byzantine–Sasanian conflict. Comprising two volumes, part 1 (240 pages) is the translation and notes followed by part 2 (216 pages) which contains the historical commentary, this excellent publication will be of interest to all those involved in the study of Armenia, the Caucasus, the Eastern Roman Empire and the Middle East in late antiquity. It will be of particular value to Islamicists, since Sebeos not only sets the scene for the coming of Islam, but provides the only substantial non-Muslim account of the initial period of expansion.

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This volume provides a fascinating account of the natural forces which shaped the Island's landscape from its formation some 500 million years ago to the present nature of the Manx environment and landscape. The story of the island's colonisation by plants and animals sets the scene for the later volumes which deal with the impact of man's arrival. A key element of the volume is an in depth examination of the contemporary landscape, with an appraisal of how the environment has affected man and how man has affected the environment.

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Bede’s aim in De Templo is stated in Chapter I: ‘That the building of the tabernacle and the temple signifies one and the same Church of Christ’. For anyone with an interest in mysticism or merely desiring spiritual nourishment, the reading of De Templo should prove a sublime experience and its own reward. This classic in Latin by an English saint is here made available in English for the first time since it was written nearly 1300 years ago.

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Since the publication of her debut novel The Country Girls in 1960, Edna O’Brien has experimented with an impressive range of forms and genres. Her most recent trilogy, completed in 1999 with the publication of Wild Decembers, focuses on issues surrounding contemporary Ireland such as terrorism, decolonisation and abortion law. Concentrating mainly on the novels from 1960 to the present day Amanda Greenwood contests critical perceptions of O’Brien as a narrow chronicler of women’s inner lives, arguing that O’Brien’s writings are not only radical but deeply revealing of the position of women under patriarchy in Ireland and beyond; the later texts suggest the need for revisions of the social and symbolic orders. Drawing on ‘French’ feminism, gender issues, Irish studies and ecocriticism, Greenwood explores O’Brien’s representations and deconstruction of ‘femininity’, ‘masculinity’ and ‘Irishness'.

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Djuna Barnes once described herself as one of the most famous unknowns of the century. Revisionary accounts of female modernist writers have re-awakened interest in her work, yet she remains a unique and idiosyncratic figure, unassimilated by models of American expatriate or Sapphic modernism. In this illuminating and lucid study, Deborah Parsons examines the range of Barnes’s oeuvre; her early journalism, short stories and one act dramas, poetry, the family chronicle Ryder, the Ladies Almanack, and her late play The Antiphon, as well as her modernist classic Nightwood. She explores the psychological and stylistic aspect of Barnes’s work through close analysis of the texts within their social, cultural and aesthetic context, and provides an indispensable and enriching guide to Barnes’s artistic identity and poetic vision. Barnes’s determined inversion of generic and social norms, sexology, degeneration, ethnography and decadence, her unusual childhood, her professional friendships with T.S. Eliot and James Joyce, and her controversial lesbianism are all highlighted and discussed in this introduction to a bold and enigmatic writer.

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Almost everything of interest in Anglo-Saxon history is recorded in the poetry of the period: the historical and political, moral and ethical, theological and ecclesiastical, military and constitutional motives and preoccupations of that past culture are there to be read at the level of individual perception and personal experience. In this study Graham Holderness brings these Old English texts and the culture they embody within the reach of the general reader by providing powerful new translations of heroic, elegiac, religious and love verses, translations which span the corpus from Beowulf to The Wife’s Lament and bridge the gap between the unfamiliar language of their original composition and the modern English in which they are subsequently discussed and lucidly explained. As a general introduction to the subject this book opens up the language, literature and life of Anglo-Saxon England to the non-specialist, ending with a line by line, sample translation and detailed annotation as an impetus to further study.

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This book re-assesses the significance to Pre-Raphaelitism of the fundamental relationship of poem to painting, of the visual to the verbal, to examine those aspects of the movement that account for its enduring legacy. Beginning with the profound and somewhat neglected influence of Ruskin’s work upon the poets and painters, Smith focuses in particular upon the Pre-Raphaelite rehabilitation of the sister arts analogy, and an aesthetic of ekphrasis as played out in the short-lived periodical The Germ and in D.G. Rossetti’s sonnets for pictures. At the heart of the project is a new reading of the notorious circumstances of Rossetti’s ‘coffined book’ - those manuscript poems Rossetti disinterred from his wife Elizabeth Siddal’s grave – that brings to the fore the all-pervasive significance to the Pre-Raphaelites of a complex aesthetic of resurrection. With this and other examples, Smith redefines for us those categories of the corporeal and spiritual, the material and immaterial, the verbal and visual that the Pre-Raphaelites aspired to re-conceptualise.

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The stereotype of Casanova as a promiscuous and unscrupulous lover has been so pervasive that generations of historians have failed to take serious account of his philosophical legacy. This has recently changed, however, as the publication of the definitive edition of his memoirs and the majority of his longer treatises has heralded a surge of interest in the writer. This book constitutes an interpretive turn in Casanova studies in which the author is positioned as a highly perceptive and engaged observer of the Enlightenment. Drawing primarily on Casanova’s large body of manuscripts and lesser-known works, the contributors reveal a philosopher whose writings covered topics ranging from sensual pleasure to suicide. Analysing Casanova’s œuvre from the perspective of moral philosophy, contributors show how several of his works – including his historical writings and satirical essays on human folly – contribute to the Enlightenment quest for a secular morality. A major feature of this book is the first English annotated translation of Federico Di Trocchio’s seminal article ‘The philosophy of an adventurer’, which paved the way for a re-evaluation of Casanova as a serious philosopher. In subsequent chapters contributors uncover the Italian context of Casanova’s anticlericalism, analyse the sources of his views on suicide and explore the philosophical dialogues contained in his recently published manuscripts. Casanova: Enlightenment philosopher marks a turning point in literary and philosophical studies of the eighteenth century, and is an indispensable resource for analysing and interpreting the work of this previously overlooked Enlightenment thinker.

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Préfacée par Roger ChartierAu XVIIIe siècle, les libraires jouissent d'un monopole inégalé sur le monde du livre à Paris, laissant peu de place aux auteurs qui souhaitent profiter seuls du fruit de leur travail. Toutefois, le vent tourne en 1777: les auteurs acquièrent enfin le droit d'éditer et de vendre leurs propres ouvrages sans l'intermédiaire d'un libraire. Bien que les risques associés à l'édition autonome − longtemps sous-estimée par l'historiographie − aient été réels, cette pratique fait partie du cheminement de quelques centaines d’auteurs avant la Révolution.Après avoir exploré les différents discours traitant de l’émergence de l’auteur moderne, maître de son ouvrage, Marie-Claude Felton démontre comment des écrivains de tous horizons, du plumitif au philosophe, choisissent de garder une mainmise sur les droits et les retombées de leurs œuvres. Elle révèle aussi que les auteurs-éditeurs, sensibles à la qualité matérielle des livres imprimés à leurs frais, en assurent la diffusion tant par le recours à la publicité que par l'organisation des ventes à domicile. Grâce à une analyse minutieuse et originale, Marie-Claude Felton apporte une contribution importante à l’histoire du livre et jette un regard neuf sur la place insoupçonnée qu’occupent les auteurs sur le marché littéraire d’Ancien Régime.

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Trees and tree products have long been central to human life and culture, taking on intensified significance during the long eighteenth century. As basic raw material they were vital economic resources, objects of international diplomatic and commercial exchange, and key features in local economies. In an age of ongoing deforestation, both individuals and public entities grappled with the complex issues of how and why trees mattered.In this interdisciplinary volume, contributors build on recent research in environmental history, literary and material culture, and postcolonial studies to develop new readings of the ways trees were valued in the eighteenth century. They trace changes in early modern theories of resource management and ecology across European and North American landscapes, and show how different and sometimes contradictory practices were caught up in shifting conceptions of nature, social identity, physical health and moral wellbeing.In its innovative and thought-provoking exploration of man’s relationship with trees, Invaluable trees: cultures of nature, 1660 –1830 argues for new ways of understanding the long eighteenth century and its values, and helps re-frame the environmental challenges of our own time.

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La construction du récit en tant que vérité est l’ambition essentielle du roman du dix-huitième siècle. Mais dans quelle mesure les mots sur la page cachent-ils ou, au contraire, révèlent-ils la genèse de l’histoire qu’ils prétendent représenter? Telle est la question que J.Herman aborde en regardant sous la surface du récit pour explorer les traces de ses origines.Faisant appel à des théories de l’écriture allant de Platon à Derrida et à Genette, J.Herman offre une façon entièrement neuve de lire les romans-mémoires. Il montre comment les textes utilisant cette forme narrative réactivent des questions sur les rapports de l’écriture avec la vérité et avec la mémoire. Se concentrant sur le motif récurrent de l’enfant trouvé, sollicité à la fois en tant que thème et en tant que métaphore pour le texte lui-même, J.Herman explore la manière dont les romans utilisent cette figure pour représenter leur propre quête de légitimité et de reconnaissance.Après une exposition fouillée de ses concepts théoriques, l’auteur apporte une analyse systématique de plusieurs romans d’importance majeure dus à des écrivains allant de Marivaux et de Prévost à Laclos et à Potocki, à travers laquelle il offre une nouvelle méthode de déchiffrement rhétorique du roman au dix-huitième siècle.

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Qui songerait aujourd’hui que la tragédie française, après l’apogée du XVIIe siècle, a été à l’origine d’innovations scéniques telles que la pantomime, le décor et le récit pittoresques? Qu’elle a préfiguré autant la suppression de l’unité de lieu que l’apparition de décors spectaculaires?A partir de cent pièces ayant connu le succès, Renaud Bret-Vitoz analyse ce tournant remarquable dans le théâtre du XVIIIe siècle où la tragédie, à l’instar de la poésie et du roman, accorde une fonction significative à l’espace. Il montre ainsi que le rapport des poètes à l’Histoire, source de l’invention, a modifié le choix du lieu de l’action. Puis il étudie l’écart entre espace imaginaire, où se déroule l’intrigue, et lieu matériel de la scène. Décoration, costumes et gestuelle accompagnent ce dépaysement de la tragédie, créant de saisissants paysages scéniques, comme lors des représentations de Sémiramis de Voltaire, où le spectacle l’emporte sur la beauté des vers.Dans cette étude riche en extraits de pièces, en analyses d’images et en anecdotes dramatiques, Bret-Vitoz offre la relecture d’une page méconnue de l’histoire du théâtre. Son livre intéressera à la fois les spécialistes de la tragédie du XVIIIe siècle et tous ceux qui s’intéressent à l’esthétique du théâtre.

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Newly available in paperback, this edition is an important volume of international significance, drawing together contributions from some of the leading scholars in the field and edited by a team headed by the acclaimed historian David Richardson. The book sets Liverpool in the wider context of transatlantic slavery and addresses issues in the scholarship of transatlantic slavery, including African agency and trade experience. Emphasis is placed on the human characteristics and impacts of transatlantic slavery. It also opens up new areas of debate on Liverpool’s participation in the slave trade and helps to frame the research agenda for the future.

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This volume traces the history of the TGWU from its zenith in the period of the Labour Government to its nadir in 1992. It easily divides itself into two distinct periods. The first from 1974-79 saw a reforming Labour government which, recognising trade union strength, was determined to ‘bring about a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of power and wealth in favour of working people’. It marked the zenith of the TGWU in which the union played an important role, overseeing the repeal of anti-union Industrial Relation Act, and the enactment of a raft of pro-worker legislation. But this was insufficient to sustain the 'Social Contract' between the Labour Government and the Trade Unions– leading to the ‘Winter of Discontent’ and the Tory election victory of 1979. The second period, 1979-92, witnessed the nadir of the TGWU. A right wing Conservative government led by Margaret Thatcher, was determined to reverse all the gains of preceding Labour administrations. Anti-union legislation and the cruel tool of unemployment created the economic and political conditions to decimate trade unions. Defensive struggles could not stop the defeats suffered by car workers, miners, printers and dockers. Trade union membership declined in the Thatcher years, leading to a bleak period of industrial defeat and union retrenchment, characterised by mergers and reorganisation - mitigated only by positive moves to tackle endemic racism and sexism in an attempt to involve previously disregarded women and black workers.

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Following the editors’ introduction to the collection, the essays in Scholarly Milton examine the nature of Milton’s own formidable scholarship and its implications for his prose and poetry–“scholarly Milton” the writer–as well as subsequent scholars’ historical and theoretical framing of Milton studies as an object of scholarly attention–“scholarly Milton” as at first an emergent and later an established academic discipline. The essays are particularly concerned with the topics of the ethical ends of learning, of Milton’s attention to the trivium within the Renaissance humanist educational system, and the development of scholarly commentary on Milton’s writings. Originally selected from the best essays presented at the 2015 Conference on John Milton in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, the essays have been considerably revised and expanded for publication.

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The environmental humanities are one of the most exciting and rapidly expanding areas of interdisciplinary study, and this collection of essays is a pioneering attempt to apply these approaches to the study of nineteenth-century Ireland. By bringing together historians, geographers and literary scholars, new insights are offered into familiar subjects and unfamiliar subjects are brought out into the light. Essays re-considering O’Connellism, Lord Palmerston and Isaac Butt rub shoulders with examinations of agricultural improvement, Dublin’s animal geographies and Ireland’s healing places. Literary writers like Emily Lawless and Seumas O’Sullivan are looked at anew, encouraging us to re-think Darwinian influences in Ireland and the history of the Irish literary revival, and transnational perspectives are brought to bear on Ireland’s national park history and the dynamics of Irish natural history. Much modern Irish history is concerned with access to natural resources, whether this reflects the catastrophic effect of the Great Famine or the conflicts associated with agrarian politics, but historical and literary analyses are rarely framed explicitly in these terms. The collection responds to the ‘material turn’ in the humanities and contemporary concern about the environment by re-imagining Ireland’s nineteenth century in fresh and original ways. List of contributors: Matthew Kelly, Helen O’Connell, David Brown, Colin W. Reid, Huston Gilmore, Ronan Foley, Juliana Adelman, Mary Orr, Patrick Maume and Seán Hewitt.

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Martin Scorsese’s Cape Fear (1991) opens with a shot of water and climaxes on a raging river. Despite, or perhaps because of, the film’s great commercial success, critical analysis of the film typically does not delve beneath the surface of Scorsese’s first major box office hit. As it reaches its 30th anniversary, Cape Fear is now ripe for a full appraisal. The remake of J. Lee Thompson’s 1962 Cape Fear was originally conceived as a straightforward thriller intended for Steven Spielberg. Author Rob Daniel investigates the fascinating ways Scorsese’s style and preoccupations transform his version into a horror epic. The director’s love of fear cinema, his Catholicism and filmmaking techniques shift Cape Fear into terrifying psychological and psychosexual waters. The analysis also examines the influence of Gothic literature and fairy tales, plus how academic approaches to genre aid an understanding of the film.

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Sex, Sea, and Self reassesses the place of the French Antilles and French Caribbean literature within current postcolonial thought and visions of the Black Atlantic. Using a feminist lens, this study examines neglected twentieth-century French texts by Black writers from Martinique and Guadeloupe, making the analysis of some of these texts available to readers of English for the first time. This interdisciplinary study of female and male authors reconsiders their political strategies and the critical role of French creoles in the creation of their own history. This approach recalibrates overly simplistic understandings of the victimization and alienation of French Caribbean people. In the systems of cultural production under consideration, sexuality constitutes an instrument of political and cultural consciousness in the chaotic period between 1924 and 1948. Studying sexual imagery constructed around female bodies demonstrates the significance of agency and the legacy of the past in cultural resistance and political awareness. Sex, Sea, and Self particularly highlights Antillean women intellectuals’ theoretical contributions to Caribbean critical theory. Therefore, this analysis illuminates debates on the multifaceted and conflicted relationships between France and its overseas departments and expands ideas of nationhood in the Black Atlantic and the Americas.

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This interdisciplinary collection focuses on the history of the future and in particular how Irish people in the nineteenth century thought about their future, in many different ways and contexts. It spans the long nineteenth century from c. 1800 to c. 1914 and includes both people living on the island of Ireland and the Irish abroad, women and men, the religious and the secular, the governing and the governed. It explores – both individually and collectively – the various hopes, dreams, fears and visions of the future that permeated through nineteenth-century Ireland and Irish life. The collection also analyses how the Irish future was conceptualized and understood in different cultural contexts, how visions of the future shifted in relation to the present and the past, and how the future was instrumentalized for political, religious or other social agendas. It attempts to go beyond the usual political or religious discourses on what the future might hold for Irish people and consider a broader spectrum of witnesses from a mixture of historical and literary sources.CONTRIBUTORS: Patrick Bethel, Richard J. Butler, Pauline Collombier-Lakeman, Sophie Cooper, Catherine Healy, Peter Hession, Raphaël Ingelbien, Jim Kelly, Fiona Lyons, Aoife O'Leary McNeice, Patrick Maume, Christopher P. Morash, Loughlin J. Sweeney.

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Situated at the intersection of affect studies, ecocriticism, aesthetics, and Romantic studies, this book presents a genealogy of love in Romantic-era poetry, science, and philosophy. While feeling and emotion have been traditional mainstays of Romantic literature, the concept of love is under-studied and under-appreciated, often neglected or dismissed as idealized, illusory, or overly sentimental. However, Seth Reno shows that a particular conception of intellectual love is interwoven with the major literary, scientific, and philosophical discourses of the period. Romantic-era writers conceived of love as integral to broader debates about the nature of life, the biology of the human body, the sociology of human relationships, the philosophy of nature, and the disclosure of being.Amorous Aesthetics traces the development of intellectual love from its first major expression in Baruch Spinoza’s Ethics, through its adoption and adaptation in eighteenth-century moral and natural philosophy, to its emergence as a Romantic tradition in the work of six major poets. From William Wordsworth and John Clare’s love of nature, to Percy Shelley’s radical politics of love, to the more sceptical stances of Felicia Hemans, Alfred Tennyson, and Matthew Arnold, intellectual love is a pillar of Romanticism.This book will interest scholars and students of Romanticism, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature, affect studies, ecocriticism, aesthetics, and those who work at the intersection of literature and science.

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The Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran are adherents of the last surviving Gnostic tradition from the period of Late Antiquity, and the Book of Kings is the capstone to one of their most sacred scriptures. A universal history in four parts, it concisely outlines the entire 480,000 year span of the material world, from its creation to its destruction in the maw of the great Leviathan, with details including a succession of antediluvian cataclysms that have previously wiped out all human life, the reigns of the kings who have reigned over humanity and are still yet to reign, a lament on the end of pagan antiquity under the reign of the Arabs, and the apocalyptic drama attending those who have the misfortune to live at the end of the world era. For the first time ever, this work appears in English in its entirety, complete and unabridged, and directly translated from original Mandaic manuscripts, with the events mentioned within it coordinated with our calendar. It also includes an extensive commentary illustrating its relationship to contemporary historical writing and with the sacred literature of Zoroastrians, Jews, Christians, Muslims, and other neighbouring religious communities living under Sasanian rule.

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Prevenge (2016) is an entertainingly dark 21st-century horror movie detailing the serial killing journey of heavily pregnant Ruth. It’s a cleverly crafted narrative full of stark social commentary, traversing the delicate line between comedy and tragedy by fusing together a kitchen sink approach with a supernatural revenge plot. This book, as part of the Devil’s Advocates series, examines how the film deconstructs the slasher mythology and the sexism therein, and upends stereotypical representations of the ‘weak’ woman and ‘delicate’ mother. With new exclusive input from writer, director and star Alice Lowe, the text also looks at the production’s inception and development, assesses its debts to cult British cinema, and inspects its umbilical connections to Rosemary’s Baby, Alien, Village of the Damned and many other ‘Monstrous Child’ silver screen features.

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This volume of essays explores the multiple forms and functions of reading and writing in nineteenth-century Ireland. This century saw a dramatic transition in literacy levels and in the education and language practices of the Irish population, yet the processes and full significance of these transitions remains critically under explored. This book traces how understandings of literacy and language shaped national and transnational discourses of cultural identity, and the different reading communities produced by questions of language, religion, status, education and audience. Essays are gathered under four main areas of analysis: Literacy and Bilingualism; Periodicals and their readers; Translation, transmission and transnational literacies; Visual literacies. Through these sections, the authors offer a range of understandings of the ways in which Irish readers and writers interpreted and communicated their worlds. List of contributors: Rebecca Anne Barr, Sarah-Anne Buckley, Muireann O’Cinneide, Niall Ó Ciosáin, Máire Nic an Bhaird, Liam Mac Mathúna, James Quinn, Nicola Morris, Elizabeth Tilley, Darragh Gannon, Florry O’Driscoll, Michèle Milan, Nessa Cronin and Stephanie Rains.

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The book outlines how class is single most important factor in understanding the British army in the period of industrialisation. It challenges the 'ruffians officered by gentlemen' theory of most military histories and demonstrates how service in the ranks was not confined to ‘the scum of the earth’ but included a cross section of ‘respectable’ working class men.Common soldiers represent a huge unstudied occupational group. They worked as artisans, servants and dealers, displaying pre-enlistment working class attitudes and evidencing low level class conflict in numerous ways. Soldiers continued as members of the working class after discharge, with military service forming one phase of their careers and overall life experience. After training, most common soldiers had time on their hands and were allowed to work at a wide variety of jobs, analysed here for the first time. Many serving soldiers continued to work as regimental tradesmen, or skilled artificers. Others worked as officers’ servants or were allowed to run small businesses, providing goods and services to their comrades. Some, especially the Non Commissioned Officers who actually ran the army, forged extraordinary careers which surpassed any opportunities in civilian life. All the soldiers studied retained much of their working class way of life. This was evidenced in a contract culture similar to that of the civilian trade unions. Within disciplined boundaries, army life resulted in all sorts of low level class conflict. The book explores these by covering drinking, desertion, feigned illness, self harm, strikes and go-slows. It further describes mutinies, back chat, looting, fraternisation, foreign service, suicide and even the shooting of unpopular officers.

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Critical discussion of cult cinema has often noted its tendency to straddle or ignore boundaries, to pull together different sets of conventions, narrative formulas, or character types for the almost surreal pleasure to be found in their sudden juxtapositions or narrative combination. With its own boundary-blurring nature—as both science and fiction, reality and fantasy—science fiction has played a key role in such cinematic cult formation. This volume examines that largely unexplored relationship, looking at how the sf film’s own double nature neatly matches up with a persistent double vision common to the cult film. It does so by bringing together an international array of scholars to address key questions about the intersections of sf and cult cinema: how different genre elements, directors, and stars contribute to cult formation; what role fan activities, including “con” participation, play in cult development; and how the occulted or “bad” sf cult film works. The volume pursues these questions by addressing a variety of such sf cult works, including Robot Monster (1953), Zardoz (1974), A Boy and His Dog (1975), Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989), Space Truckers (1996), Ghost in the Shell 2 (2004), and Iron Sky (2012). What these essays afford is a revealing vision of both the sf aspects of much cult film activity and the cultish aspects of the whole sf genre.

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Life as Creative Constraint is the first book to focus on the extraordinary life-writing of the French experimental writing group, the Oulipo. The Oulipo's enthusiasm for literary games and formal gymnastics has seen its work caricatured as 'lifeless' - impressively virtuoso but more interested in form than content and ultimately disengaged from the world. This book examines a broad corpus of work by Georges Perec, Marcel Bénabou, Jacques Roubaud and Anne F. Garréta to show that, despite the group's early devotion to the radical impersonality of mathematics, later generations of oulipians have brought the group's fascination with systems, games and constraints to bear on autobiography. Far from being 'lifeless', oulipian constraints and concepts provide the tools that allow writers to engage critically and creatively with lived experience, and mine the potential of the autobiographical genre. The games played by these writers are not simply pastimes or cunning writing techniques, but modes of survival, self-examination, self-invention, and relating to the world and to others. As the title of Georges Perec’s masterpiece suggests, they are a mode d’emploi for life.

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Sidonius Apollinaris was an inhabitant of southern Roman Gaul in the mid fifth century AD, when it was threatened by invasions from beyond the boundaries of the Roman Empire and by competing warlords. His many poetic works include three panegyrics to emperors at the beginnings of their reigns; these are carefully translated and annotated, and provided with comment and synopses. His multiple shorter poems, in a variety of metres, are translated into good and lively English and given separate introductions and notes of various kinds, historical and literary. There is an extensive and informative introduction to the whole work.This book by Roger Green, a lifelong expert in Late Antiquity, gives a firsthand account of the political strife and manoeuvring of the times but also a vivid picture of the lives of Sidonius’s like-minded friends in an almost post-Roman episode of Rome’s existence. Sidonius was read widely in the Middle Ages, with a golden age in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and also in the fifteenth century revival of Late Antique literature. Today his poetry will awaken new study and interest, without the archaism of many older translations and with a fresh and updated approach to many issues.

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Few features have shaped east European Jewish history as much as the extent and continuity of Jewish self-rule. Offering a broad perspective, this volume explores the traditions, scope, limitations, and evolution of Jewish self-government in the Polish lands and beyond. Extensive autonomy and complex structures of civil and religious leadership were central features of the Jewish experience in this region, and this volume probes the emergence of such structures from the late medieval period onwards, looking at the legal position of the individual community and its role as a political actor. Chapters discuss the implementation of Jewish law and the role of the regional and national Jewish councils which were a remarkable feature of supra-communal representation in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.The volume reflects on the interaction between Jewish legal traditions and state policies, and offers an in-depth analysis of the transformation of Jewish self-government under the impact of the partitions of Poland–Lithuania and the administrative principles of the Enlightenment. Co-operation between representatives of the Jewish and non-Jewish communities at the local level is discussed down to the interwar years, when Jewish self-government was considered both a cherished legacy of pre-partition autonomy and a threat to the modern nation state.

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Scholars in disciplines from architecture and the fine arts, to the various branches of history and social studies, will find this study timely given contemporary European controversies over what constitutes national identity and what parts are played by race, philosophy and religion, economics, immigration, and invasion. Many major European national identities barely predate the nineteenth century and were shaped not just by wars, philosophies, industrial change, and governmental policies, but also by artistic manipulation of how people perceived public spaces: landscapes, cityscapes, religious and cultural structures, museums, and monuments commemorating conflict. Among the most masterful manipulators of the day were popular nineteenth-century French and British novelists, who gave famous buildings a special prominence in their writing. Some, like Victor Hugo are still read and respected by scholars. Others, like Alexandre Dumas, though still widely read, are undervalued by contemporary critics. Still others, like William Harrison Ainsworth, a prolific English writer, are all but forgotten. These three writers authored architectural novels which gave major ancient Gothic buildings a new and portable cultural presence well beyond their physical location. During these revolutionary times, when national symbolism was being questioned and challenged, the threatened rupture with the past was admirably addressed through their art.

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Historical Studies in Industrial Relations was established in 1996 by the Centre for Industrial Relations, Keele University, to provide an outlet for, and to stimulate an interest in, historical work in the field of industrial relations and the history of industrial relations thought. Content broadly covers the employment relationship and economic, social and political factors surrounding it – such as labour markets, union and employer policies and organization, the law, and gender and ethnicity. Articles with an explicit political dimension, particularly recognising divisions within the working class and within workers’ organizations, will be encouraged, as will historical work on labour law.

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The late-Victorian and Edwardian East End was an area not only defined by its poverty and destitution, but also by its ethnic and religious diversity. In the neighbourhoods of East London diasporic communities interacted with each other and with the host society in a number of different contexts. In Socialism and the Diasporic ‘Other’ Daniel Renshaw examines the sometimes turbulent relationships formed between Irish Catholic and Jewish populations and the socialist and labour organisations agitating in the area. Employing a comparative perspective, the book analyses the complex relations between working class migrants, conservative communal hierarchies and revolutionary groups. Commencing and concluding with waves of widespread industrial action in the East End, where politics were conflated with ethnic and diasporic identity, this book aims to reinterpret the attitudes of the turn-of-the-century East London Left towards ‘difference’. Concerned with both protecting hard-won gains for the industrial proletariat and championing marginalised minority groups, the ‘correct’ path to be taken by socialist movements was unclear throughout the period. The book simultaneously compares the experiences of the Irish and Jewish working classes between 1889 and 1912, and the relationships formed, at work, at worship, in political organisations or at school, between these diasporic groups.

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What happens to art when feminism grips the curatorial imagination? How do sexual politics become realised as exhibits? Is the struggle against gender discrimination compatible with the aspirations of museums led by market values? Beginning with the feminist critique of the art exhibition in the 1970s and concluding with reflections on intersectional curating and globalisation after 2000, this pioneering collection offers an alternative narrative of feminism’s impact on art. The essays provide rigorous accounts of developments in Scandinavia, Eastern and Southern Europe as well as the UK and US, framed by an introduction which offers a politically engaging navigation of historical and current positions. Delivered through essays, memoirs and interviews, discussion highlights include the Tate Modern hang, relational aesthetics, the global exhibition, feminism and technology in the museum, the rise of curatorial collectivism, and insights into major exhibitions such as Gender Check on Eastern Europe. Bringing together two generations of curators, artists and historians to rethink distinct and unresolved moments in the feminist re-modelling of art contexts, this volume dares to ask: is there a history of feminist art or one of feminist presentations of artworks? Contributors include Deborah Cherry, Jo Anna Isaak, Malin Hedlin Hayden, Lubaina Himid, Amelia Jones, Kati Kivimaa, Alexandra Kokoli, Kuratorisk Aktion, Suzana Milevska, Suzanne Lacy, Lucy Lippard, Sue Malvern, Nancy Proctor, Bojana Pejić, Helena Reckitt, Jessica Sjöholm Skrubbe, Jeannine Tang and Catherine Wood.

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A concise and authoritative field guide to an exceptional natural laboratory, this title in the Classic Geology in Europe series is an essential companion for those visiting Iceland to observe the Earth in action. Rifting of the crust, volcanic eruptions and glacial activity are among a host of processes and features to be observed in this fascinating land. Nowhere else on Earth is the volcanic and tectonic architecture of seafloor rifts better exposed. Large icecaps and extensive river systems grind down the volcanic pile at rapid rates, dispersing and forming thick sequences of sediments. These formations are further modified by the pounding waves of the North Atlantic causing intriguing landforms that exhibit an intricate balance between the construction and erosion of land. Iceland is the only part of the North Atlantic Large Igneous Province that is still active and the only place on Earth where the construction of such provinces can be observed directly. As such, it is a window into the formation of proto-continents early in the Earth’s history. For the past seven million years Iceland has been situated at the boundary of major air and ocean masses and has consequently been exposed to extreme climate changes. The effects of the climate on the rock-forming processes are clearly illustrated by diverse sedimentary and volcanic successions and by the wide range of volcanic landforms formed in sub-aqueous to sub-aerial environments; each succession reflecting the characteristics of internal and external processes.Icelandic culture cannot be fully comprehended without understanding its geology. Thus the book will interest not only student, amateur and professional geologists but also others attracted by the natural environment and seeking a deeper understanding of what makes Iceland the unique place that it is.

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Over the many millennia that the human race has inhabited our planet, a use has been found for almost everything that is to be found on it. However, since the Industrial Revolution, many of the resources that we have come to rely on are being depleted, some at an alarming rate. Misuse of others, such as fossil fuels, is causing such damage to the environment that measures are being taken at an international level to restrict their useIntroducing Natural Resources explains how the natural resources of the Earth originated, by outlining the astronomical and geological evolution of the planet in the early period of its existence. The genesis, mode of occurrence, and abundance of the various non-renewable mineral resources are described, together with the methods of extraction, extent of reserves, and any environmental problems. The use of renewable resources, such as solar energy, air, and water, are then discussed, together with plant and animal life, which are renewable resources only if properly managed. The book concludes with a summary of future issues in resource management.Copiously illustrated, this book is intended for those whose interest in natural resources has been stimulated, perhaps by media coverage of declining resources or environmental pollution, and who want to better understand the issues involved. Technical terms are kept to a minimum and are explained in a glossary.

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The Symposium that Xenophon wrote has lived in the shadow of the more famous one by Plato, so much so that it has not received a full commentary in English for well over a hundred years. Yet it is a work as useful for its Greek as it is precious for its content. Socrates is the hero of each Symposium, but most of our understanding of him is usually owed to Plato; we risk assuming that his portrait of Socrates is right. Xenophon saw the man differently: his picture is independent and it is the only significant surviving alternative view. Moreover, the scene that Xenophon paints in his Symposium has a vigour and wit of its own. The work is a document of prime importance for the classical Greek society which we study most and know best: it is set at the male heart of it. Thirdly, Xenophon’s Greek is lucid and unforced. The editor has been using the text for a number of years to help students bridge the gap between what they learn from their beginners’ courses and the richer Greek of more fashionable texts. Hence an unprecedented amount of help with the language, and a large vocabulary, as well as the notes usual in this series on the content. Greek text with facing-page English translation, introduction and commentary.

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Lysistrata is the third and last of Aristophanes' peace plays. It is a dream of peace, of how the women could help to achieve an honourable settlement, conceived when Athens was going through its blackest, most desperate crisis since the Persian War. Though in modern times this is perhaps the most popular of his works, it has never before had an English translation that aims to be reliable in detail and that is fully annotated. The Greek text is based on a fuller body of evidence than any previous edition. It is astonishing to think that this play was first performed over 2,400 years ago, because of all Aristophanes’ great comedies, Lysistrata seems to speak most clearly to our own age. It could perhaps be described as the world's first, and indeed still the world’s greatest feminist drama. This second edition was published in 1998, and revised with addenda and updated bibliography in 2007. [Text with facing translation, commentary and notes.]

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A ghost summoned with bizarre rituals from the underworld, the elaborate protocol of the Persian court, desperate lamentation, self-mutilation, and a thrilling eye-witness account of the battle of Salamis – these are some of the features of Aeschylus’ Persians which make it one of the most exciting examples of ancient theatre. As the earliest surviving European drama it is of incalculable interest to students of ancient literature: as the only extended account of the Persian wars by an author who fought in them, it is a unique document of the Athenian historical imagination. In this, the first English language edition of the text with a commentary for thirty-five years, the particular focus is on the visual and aural effects Aeschylus created, his extraordinarily rich imagery, and the play’s unique contribution to Athenian democratic ideology. [Greek text with facing-page translation, commentary and notes. This edition was reprinted in 2007. Although it was not substantially revised or updated, a short bibliographic update describing important contributions to scholarship on Persians has been included.]

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From the perspective of the Hispano-Romans, the Visigoths who invaded Spain in the mid-fifth century were heretical barbarians. But Leovigild’s military success and Reccared’s conversion to Catholic Christianity led to more positive assessments of the Gothic role in Iberian history. John of Biclaro (c.590) and Isidore of Seville (c.625) authored histories that projected the Gothic achievements back on to their uncertain beginnings, transforming them from antagonists of the Roman Empire to protagonists of a new, independent Chistianity in Spain.

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Recounting his 1897-98 Klondike Gold Rush experience Jack London stated: “It was in the Klondike I found myself. There nobody talks. Everybody thinks. There you get your perspective. I got mine.” This study explores how London’s Northland odyssey - along with an insatiable intellectual curiosity, a hardscrabble youth in the San Francisco Bay Area, and an acute craving for social justice - launched the literary career of one of America’s most dynamic 20th-century writers. The major Northland works - including The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and “To Build a Fire”- are considered in connection with the motifs of literary Naturalism, as well as in relation to complicated issues involving imperialism, race, and gender. London’s key subjects—the frontier, the struggle for survival, and economic mobility—are examined in conjunction with how he developed the underlying themes of his work to engage and challenge the social, political, and philosophical revolutions of his era that were initiated by Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche, and others.

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Although Jews were at the centre of commercial activity in medievalEurope, a talmudic ban on any wine touched by a Gentile prevented them fromengaging in the lucrative wine trade.

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Stonehenge is one of the most famous ancient monuments in the world and its solar alignment is one of its most important features. Yet although archaeologists have learned a huge amount about this iconic monument and its development, a sense of mystery continues about its purpose. This helps fuel numerous theories and common misconceptions, particularly concerning its relationship to the sky and the heavenly bodies. A desire to cut through this confusion was the inspiration for this book, and it fills a gaping hole in the existing literature. The book provides both an introduction to Stonehenge and its landscape and an introduction to archaeoastronomythe study of how ancient peoples understood phenomena in the sky, and what role the sky played in their cultures. Archaeoastronomy is a specialism critical to explaining the relationship of Stonehenge and nearby monuments to the heavens, but interpreting archaeoastronomical evidence has often proved highly controversial in the past. Sto

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Gene Wolfe is one of the most important American writers to emerge in the latter half of the twentieth century. The fact that he publishes in the field of fantastic literature (which includes horror, science and speculative fiction) has meant that his significance has been largely unacknowledged beyond and, at times, even within the genre. Nevertheless, he remains the author of some of the most stylistically distinct, structurally complex, and intellectually invigorating imaginative fiction of recent years. This collection of interviews and essays places under one cover an amazing selection of difficult-to-find resources for the avid Gene Wolfe reader and scholar. Essays concern the nature of writing, including character, structure and the profession of the writer. Also included are a series of interviews with Wolfe and the holy grail of ‘New Sun’ aficionados: Books in the Book of the New Sun, previously only available in a rare small-press volume. This collection will inspire fans and scholars alike to commit themselves to debating new interpretations of Wolfe’s fiction.

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