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Representations of the Body in Middle English Biblical Drama combines epistemological enquiry, gender theory and Foucauldian concepts to investigate the body as a useful site for studying power, knowledge and truth. Intertwining the conceptualizations of violence and the performativity of gender identity and roles, Estella Ciobanu argues that studying violence in drama affords insights into the cultural and social aspects of the later Middle Ages. The text investigates these biblical plays through the perspective of the devil and offers a unique lens that exposes medieval disquiets about Christian teachings and the discourse of power. Through detailed primary source analysis and multidisciplinary scholarship, Ciobanu constructs a text that interrogates the significance of performance far beyond the stage.
The volume The Spectacle of the Body in Late Medieval England represents a study on the human body representation in medieval England by approaching the concept of the spectacle as a space of manifestation. The author clarifies the ways of understanding the body as a physical and metaphorical reality, but also the medieval conceptualization of violence. On top of that, the author is making an investigation on the violent character of spectacles' representation in pursuit of picturing this subject more clearly and more relevant. The approach of the volume is dominantly Christian reviewing the representations of the body through outstanding figures of Christianity (crucifixion of Jesus Christ, body of Virgin Mary).
Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England is an annual volume committed to the publication of essays and reviews related to English drama and theater history to 1642. An internationally recognized board of scholars oversees the publication of MaRDiE. Readers who wish to deepen their understanding of early drama will find that the journal publishes wide-ranging discussions not only of plays and early performance history, but of topics pertaining to cultural history, as well as manuscript studies and the history of printing.
Images of the City takes the reader on a fascinating journey through urban landscapes across centuries, literary periods, media, genres and borders. 27 essays gathered from Poland, UK, Romania, Italy, Hungary, and Portugal by researchers representing different academic environments and fields of speciality offer a truly interdisciplinary perspective on the issue of understanding, representing, and interpreting the city. In this respect, the volume complements other anthologies which discuss urban space without limiting itself to one unique theoretical perspective. Its neat division into chronological and thematic sections makes for easy yet informative and inclusive reading, encouraging cross-referencing and challenging interests and tastes of a wide array of readers. Images of the City provides essential reading for cityphiles everywhere.
In Touching the Passion — Seeing Late Medieval Altarpieces through the Eyes of Faith, Donna Sadler explores the manner in which worshipers responded to the carved and polychromed retables adorning the altars of their parish churches. Framed by the symbolic death of Christ re-enacted during the Mass, the historical account of the Passion on the retable situated Christ’s suffering and triumph over death in the present. The dramatic gestures, contemporary garb, and wealth of anecdotal detail on the altarpiece, invited the viewer’s absorption in the narrative. As in the Imitatio Christi, the worshiper imaginatively projected himself into the story like a child before a dollhouse. The five senses, the sculptural medium, the small scale, and the rhetoric of memory foster this immersion.
Solitude is the state of being alone or isolated from others. It is often a voluntary choice for meditation, introspection, reflection, or simply enjoying one’s own company. Solitude can be peaceful and conducive to deep thinking or creativity, contrasting with loneliness, which implies a negative feeling of being alone and disconnected. This book investigates the types of solitude in twelve modern short stories written by authors of different nationalities, races, and genders. It also explores how the setting boosts the state of solitude of each character. There are different manifestations of solitude and the solitary character: a person living among other people, refusing to be part of them, unwilling to be part of them, or being refused and rejected to be part of them. This character is a child, a teenager, a man (or an abnormal, freakish man) or a woman of sorrow, a recipient of much unbearable pain.
This book is a timely addition to debates and explorations on the epistemological relevance of African proverbs, especially with growing calls for the decolonisation of African curricula. The editors and contributors have chosen to reflect on the diverse ways of being and becoming African as a permanent work in progress by drawing inspiration from Chinua Achebe's harnessing of the effectualness of oratory, especially his use of proverbs in his works. The book recognises and celebrates the fact that Achebe's proverbial Igbo imaginations of being and becoming African are compelling because they are instructive about the lives, stories, struggles and aspirations of the rainbow of people that ma...
Speech Act Theory and Shakespeare delves deeper than linguistic ornamentation to illuminate the complex dynamics of thanking as a significant speech act in Shakespearean plays. The word “thanks” appears nearly 400 times in 37 Shakespearean plays, calling for a careful investigation of its veracity as a speech act in the 16th-century setting. This volume combines linguistic analysis to explore the various uses of thanks, focusing on key thanking scenes across a spectrum of plays, including All’s Well That Ends Well, Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, Timon of Athens, The Winter’s Tale, and the Henriad. Shakespeare’s works indicate the act of thanking to be more than a normal ...
The book reveals the historical change in the function of the generic form of the fairy tale: at the beginning of the twentieth century, fairy tales are no longer written or read for their stimulus to the imagination or their nostalgia towards past times, but with a political end in view: to define a nation’s identity meant to justify and support claims to a unitary state (Romania) or an independent state (Ireland). As such, this book investigates the interweave of poetics and politics at the time of the rise of modernist nationalism at the margins of Europe.
Răzbunarea barbarilor… s-a născut dintr-o emoţie deopotrivă individuală şi colectivă. Impulsul poietic iniţial al răzbunării noastre a trădat, ca întotdeauna, o emoţie mai degrabă exterioară temei – reacţia unui om de cultură singur la nerecunoştinţa/ tăcerea/ răceala/ autismul Cetăţii (tomitane) faţă de cea mai solidă voce poetică, literară, culturală a ei, funcţională deopotrivă în registru simbolic/ mitic şi în viaţa diurnă reală, actuală, a Tomisului. Singurătatea iniţială s-a convertit ulterior în emoţie colectivă, iar această emoţie construieşte semnul şi sensul acestei cărţi, dincolo de borna paradigmatică ce însoţeşte demersu...