You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Since its discovery by German romantics and nationalists, Rothenburg has been an established icon of the German nation and its medieval past. By tracing Rothenburg's historical development as a place of national importance, this book examines the cultural politics of historical preservation and tourism in general. In exploring the shifting practice and importance of tourism in Rothenburg and how this relates to broader debates about German culture and identity, Preservation, Tourism and Nationalism offers an important and original perspective on the changing dynamics of romanticized historical landscapes and how events are used to further national, cultural and political agendas. It also analyses the changing practices of historical preservation, and in particular, how historic preservation in Rothenburg reflects a desire to make it more historic and more German. With important insights into what it means to be German, how Germans relate to the past and how the answers to these questions have changed over time, this richly illustrated and detailed volume offers an important narrative of the rise, evolution and contestation of memory in German culture.
Continuing on to the electronic revolution, Martin's account takes in the changes wrought on writing by computers and electronic systems of storage and communication, and offers surprising insights into the influence these new technologies have had on children born into the computer age. The power of writing to influence and dominate is, indeed, a central theme in this history, as Martin explores the processes by which the written word has gradually imposed its logic on society over four thousand years. The summation of decades of study by one of the world's great scholars on the subject, this fascinating account of writing explains much about the world we inhabit, where we uneasily confer, accept, and resist the power of the written word.
In recent years, American art scholars have increasingly focused on the importance of cross-cultural exchanges during the nineteenth century. As essayist François Brunet puts it, mid-nineteenth century landscapes were “transnational . . . permeated by complex transactions where ‘American’ originality produced itself not only in imitation of or reaction against ‘European’ influences, . . . but as critical mirroring and incorporating of ‘European’ images.” Articles in this collection make clear that the “conversation of cultures” went both ways, with American artworks and culture also affecting European artistic and literary practice. Essays explore the transnational origi...
What does it mean to write a history of the night? Evening's Empire is a fascinating study of the myriad ways in which early modern people understood, experienced, and transformed the night. Using diaries, letters, and legal records together with representations of the night in early modern religion, literature and art, Craig Koslofsky opens up an entirely new perspective on early modern Europe. He shows how princes, courtiers, burghers and common people 'nocturnalized' political expression, the public sphere and the use of daily time. Fear of the night was now mingled with improved opportunities for labour and leisure: the modern night was beginning to assume its characteristic shape. Evening's Empire takes the evocative history of the night into early modern politics, culture and society, revealing its importance to key themes from witchcraft, piety, and gender to colonization, race, and the Enlightenment.
Edgar Franz deserves credit for having been the first to use Siebold’s private papers and manuscripts to provide a detailed analysis of his influence on Russia’s policy on opening up Japan. Franz proves that Siebold’s intimate knowledge of Japan and his sensitive attitude to the Japanese mentality were crucial to Russian negotiations. Subsequently Russia was the first foreign nation to succeed in concluding a treaty with Japan that included establishing trade relations between the two nations. It has been possible to verify Siebold’s significance for the modernization of Japan, the political dimension of Japan’s activities and Siebold’s great influence on the opening of Japan for trade and navigation
In 1621, in one of the earliest campaigns of the Thirty Years' War, the South German principality of the Upper Palatinate was invaded and annexed by Maximilian of Bavaria, director of the Catholic League. In the subsequent years the eyes of Europe looked to the fate of this erstwhile hub of the 'Calvinist international', as Maximilian steadily moved to convert its population to Catholicism. This study is the first account in English to focus on this important instance of forced conversion and the first account in any language to place the political impact of the Thirty Years' War into the broader context of the Upper-Palatinate's religious culture examined over the longue durée, from the la...
Animals were everywhere in the early modern period and they impacted, at least in some way, the lives of every kind of early modern person, from the humblest peasant to the greatest prince. Artists made careers based on depicting them. English gentry impoverished themselves spending money on them. Humanists exercised their scholarship writing about them. Pastors saved souls delivering sermons on them. Nobles forged alliances competing with them. Foreigners and indigenes negotiated with one another through trading them. The nexus between animal-human relationships and early modern identity is illuminated in this volume by the latest research of international scholars working on the history of...
Pieter Coecke van Aelst (1502 – 1550) was renowned throughout Renaissance Europe as a draftsman, painter, and publisher of architectural treatises. The magnificent tapestries he designed were acquired by the wealthiest clients of the day, up to and including rulers such as Emperor Charles V, King Francis I of France, King Henry VIII of England, and Grand Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici of Tuscany. At the same time, Coecke was remarkable not only for the complexity and unparalleled quality of his tapestries, but also for his fluency in various media: this lavishly illustrated volume examines the full range of his work, from tapestry and stained-glass window designs to panel paintings, prints, dr...
Concentrating on Europe, this volume's sixteen essays discuss different forms of medievalism in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Serbia. Medievalism, the whole spectrum of post-medieval response to the middle ages, is now accepted as a vital key to the understanding of Western culture and society from 1500 to the present, pervading every aspect of our time, from the popular and artistic to the scholarly. Studies in Medievalism, now published annually, is the one series to provide a regular forum for discussion of medievalism. This volume is devoted to medievalism in Europe, excludingEngland (the subject of Volume IV,1992). Contributors from Europe and America consider medievalism in Germany, Italy, France, Spain and Serbia over a wide range of topics from eighteenth-century French politics and nineteenth-century German nationalism to contemporary Italian film.
A Companion to the Reformation in Central Europe analyses the diverse Christian cultures of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Czech lands, Austria, and lands of the Hungarian kingdom between the 15th and 18th centuries. It establishes the geography of Reformation movements across this region, and then considers different movements of reform and the role played by Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox clergy. This volume examines different contexts and social settings for reform movements, and investigates how cities, princely courts, universities, schools, books, and images helped spread ideas about reform. This volume brings together expertise on diverse lands and churches to provide the...