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The ArtsJune 2021Medieval film
by Anke Bernau, Bettina Bildhauer
Medieval film explores theoretical questions about the ideological, artistic, emotional and financial investments inhering in cinematic renditions of the medieval period. What does it mean to create and watch a 'medieval film'? What is a medieval film and why are they successful? This is the first work that attempts to answer these questions, drawing, for instance, on film theory, postcolonial theory, cultural studies and the growing body of work on medievalism. Contributors investigate British, German, Italian, Australian, French, Swedish and American film, exploring topics such translation, temporality, film noir, framing and period film - and find the medieval lurking in inexpected corners. In addition it provides in-depth studies of individual films from different countries including The Birth of a Nation to Nosferatu, and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Medieval Film will be of interest to medievalists working in disciplines including literature, history, to scholars working on film and in cultural studies. It will also be of interest to undergraduates, postgraduates and to an informed enthusiast in film or/and medieval culture.
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Promoted Content
The ArtsJanuary 2019Medieval film
by Anke Bernau, Bettina Bildhauer
Medieval film explores theoretical questions about the ideological, artistic, emotional and financial investments inhering in cinematic renditions of the medieval period. What does it mean to create and watch a 'medieval film'? What is a medieval film and why are they successful? This is the first work that attempts to answer these questions, drawing, for instance, on film theory, postcolonial theory, cultural studies and the growing body of work on medievalism. Contributors investigate British, German, Italian, Australian, French, Swedish and American film, exploring topics such translation, temporality, film noir, framing and period film - and find the medieval lurking in unexpected corners. In addition it provides in-depth studies of individual films from different countries including The Birth of a Nation to Nosferatu, and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Medieval film will be of interest to medievalists working in disciplines including literature, history, art history, to scholars working on film and in cultural studies. It will also be of interest to undergraduates, postgraduates and to an informed enthusiast in film or/and medieval culture.
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The ArtsJune 2017Contemporary Australian cinema
An introduction
by Jonathan Rayner
Provides an introduction to the products and context of the new Australian film industry which arose toward the end of the 1960s. Traces the development of Australian film, in terms of prominent directors and stars, consistent themes, styles and evolving genres. The evolution of the film genres peculiar to Australia, and the adaptation of conventional Hollywood forms (such as the musical and the road movie) are examined in detail through textual readings of landmark films. Films and trends discussed include: the period film and Picnic at Hanging Rock; the Gothic film and the Mad Max trilogy; camp and kitsch comedy and the Adventures of Pricilla, Queen of the Desert. The key issue of the revival (the definition, representation and propagation of a national image) is woven through analysis of the new Australian cinema.
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Literature & Literary StudiesJanuary 2023The gift of narrative in medieval England
by Nicholas Perkins
This invigorating study places medieval romance narrative in dialogue with theories and practices of gift and exchange, opening new approaches to questions of storytelling, agency, gender and materiality in some of the most engaging literature from the Middle Ages. It argues that the dynamics of the gift are powerfully at work in romances: through exchanges of objects and people; repeated patterns of love, loyalty and revenge; promises made or broken; and the complex effects that time works on such objects, exchanges and promises. Ranging from the twelfth century to the fifteenth, and including close discussions of poetry by Chaucer, the Gawain-Poet and romances in the Auchinleck Manuscript, this book will prompt new ideas and debate amongst students and scholars of medieval literature, as well as anyone curious about the pleasures that romance narratives bring.
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Humanities & Social SciencesMay 2023Medieval women and urban justice
Commerce, crime and community in England, 1300–1500
by Teresa Phipps
This book provides a detailed analysis of women's involvement in litigation and other legal actions within their local communities in late-medieval England. It draws upon the rich records of three English towns - Nottingham, Chester and Winchester - and their courts to bring to life the experiences of hundreds of women within the systems of local justice. Through comparison of the records of three towns, and of women's roles in different types of legal action, the book reveals the complex ways in which individual women's legal status could vary according to their marital status, different types of plea and the town that they lived in. At this lowest level of medieval law, women's status was malleable, making each woman's experience of justice unique.
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Literature & Literary StudiesMay 2024Medieval afterlives
Transforming traditions in Shakespeare and early English drama
by Daisy Black, Katharine Goodland
A collection of essays which show how early drama traditions were transformed, recycled, re-used and reformed across time to form new relationships with their audiences. Medieval afterlives brings new insight to the ways in which peoples in the sixteenth century understood, manipulated and responded to the history of their performance spaces, stage technologies, characterisation and popular dramatic tropes. In doing so, this volume advocates for a new understanding of sixteenth-seventeenth century theatre makers as highly aware of the medieval traditions that formed their performance practices, and audiences who recognised and appreciated the recycling of these practices between plays.
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Literature & Literary StudiesJanuary 2013Popular protest in late-medieval Europe
Italy, France and Flanders
by Samuel Kline Cohn
The documents in this stimulating volume span from 1245 to 1424 but focus on the 'contagion of rebellion' from 1355 to 1382 that followed in the wake of the plague. They comprise a diversity of sources and cover a variety of forms of popular protest in different social, political and economic settings. Their authors range across a wide political and intellectual horizon and include revolutionaries, the artistocracy, merchants and representatives from the church. They tell gripping and often gruesome stories of personal and collective violence, anguish, anger, terror, bravery, and foolishness. Of over 200 documents presented here, most have been translated into English for the first time, providing students and scholars with a new opportunity to compare social movements across Europe over two centuries, allowing a re-evaluation of pre-industrial revolts, the Black Death and its consequences for political culture and action. This book will be essential reading for those seeking to better understand popular attitudes and protest in medieval Europe.
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The ArtsJuly 2024Public information films
British government film units, 1928–52
by Alan Harding
In the years after the First World War the British government had to adapt its communication policy to connect with the new mass electorate. This book examines the government's own Film Units and their slow development of the Public Information Film. By reviewing the entire film catalogue produced by the Empire Marketing Board, the General Post Office and Crown Film Units, particular themes are identified which not only reflect the demands of the Units' sponsors but also the anxieties and concerns of the 1930s and 1940s. The impact of the films is explored through the contemporary reaction of the audiences to them. By the time the Crown Film Unit was closed in 1952 a style of Public Information Film had been developed and continued into the 1970s.
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The ArtsJune 2017Terry Gilliam
by Peter Marks
Terry Gilliam presents a sustained examination of one of cinema's most challenging and lauded auteurs, proposing fresh ways of seeing Gilliam that go beyond reductive readings of him as a gifted but manic fantasist. Analysing Gilliam's work over nearly four decades, from the brilliant anarchy of his Monty Python animations through the nightmarish masterpiece Brazil to the provocative Gothic horror of Tideland, it critically examines the variety and richness of Gilliam's sometimes troubled but always provocative output. The book situates Gilliam within the competing cultural contexts of the British, European and American film industries, examining his regular struggles against aesthetic and commercial pressures. He emerges as a passionate, immensely creative director, whose work encompasses a dizzying array of material: anarchic satire, childhood and adult fantasy, dystopia, romantic comedy, surrealism, road movie, fairy tale and the Gothic. The book charts how Gilliam interweaves these genres and forms to create magical interfaces between reality and the illuminating, frightening but liberating worlds of the imagination. Scrutinising the neglected importance of literature and adaptation in Gilliam's career, this study also observes him through the lenses of auteurism, genre, performance, design and national culture, explaining how someone born in Minnesota and raised in California came to be one of British television and film's most compelling figures.
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The ArtsJanuary 2019The films of Luc Besson
Master of spectacle
by Susan Hayward, Philip Powrie
This fascinating collection looks at the career and films of Luc Besson, one of the most acclaimed figures in international cinema. Contributions have been assembled from all over the world, and their different approaches reflect this geographical diversity. Films covered range from Besson's first feature, La Dernier Combat, to the international blockbusters The Fifth Element and Joan of Arc. The essays range from looking at costume design to musical scores, and the final chapter offers a transcript of a previously unpublished interview with the man himself. He is the only French director to have crossed over successfully during the 1990s into the blockbuster spectacular we associate with Hollywood cinema and yet this is only the second book in English on this major international director. The films of Luc Besson will make fascinating reading for anyone interested in the career and films of the 'master of spectacle'.
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Literature & Literary StudiesOctober 2010Sanctity and pornography in medieval culture
On the verge
by Bill Burgwinkle, Cary Howie, Anke Bernau
Sanctity and pornography in medieval culture exposes the complexity of bodily exposure in medieval devotion and contemporary pornographic cultures. Through readings of texts and images, sacred and profane, from preimodern France and Italy as well as Anglo-American modernity, the book makes a case for paying closer attention to the surfaces of our bodies and the desires that those surfaces can articulate and arouse. From the Old French life of Saint Alexis to the work of writer-filmmaker Miranda July, from Wakefield Poole to Pietro Aretino, these are texts and images that diminish the distance between premodern Europe and contemporary California, between the sacred and the profane, as they demonstrate how, in the end as in the beginning, the surface of things is never simple. ;
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Literature & Literary StudiesJanuary 2024Gothic dreams and nightmares
by Carol Davison
Gothic dreams and nightmares is an edited collection on the compelling yet under-theorised subject of Gothic dreams and nightmares ranging across more than two centuries of literature, the visual arts, and twentieth- and twenty-first century visual media. Written by an international group of experts, including leading and lesser-known scholars, it considers its subject in various national, cultural, and socio-historical contexts, engaging with questions of philosophy, morality, rationality, consciousness, and creativity.
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Literature & Literary StudiesJuly 2022Nordic Gothic
by Maria Holmgren Troy, Johan Hõglund, Yvonne Leffler, Sofia Wijkmark
Nordic Gothic traces Gothic fiction in the Nordic region from its beginnings in the nineteenth century, with a main focus on the development of Gothic from the 1990s onwards in literature, film, TV and new media. The volume gives an overview of Nordic Gothic fiction in relation to transnational developments and provides a number of case studies and in-depth analyses of individual narratives. It creates an understanding of this under-researched cultural phenomenon by showing how the narratives make visible cultural anxieties haunting the Nordic countries, their welfare systems, identities and ideologies. Nordic Gothic examines how figures from Nordic folklore function as metaphorical expressions of Gothic themes and Nordic settings are explored from perspectives such as ecocriticism and postcolonialism. The book will be of interest to researchers and post- and- undergraduate students in various fields within the Humanities.
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Literature & Literary StudiesApril 2024Graveyard Gothic
by Eric Parisot, David McAllister, Xavier Aldana Reyes
Graveyard Gothic is the first sustained consideration of the graveyard as a key Gothic locale. This volume examines various iterations of the Gothic graveyard (and other burial sites) from the eighteenth century to the twenty-first, as expressed in numerous forms of culture and media including poetry, fiction, TV, film and video games. The volume also extends its geographic scope beyond British traditions to accommodate multiple cultural perspectives, including those from the US, Mexico, Japan, Australia, India and Eastern Europe. The seventeen chapters from key international Gothic scholars engage a range of theoretical frameworks, including the historical, material, colonial, political and religious. With a critical introduction offering a platform for further scholarship and a coda mapping potential future critical and cultural developments, Graveyard Gothic is a landmark volume defining a new area of Gothic studies.
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Literature & Literary StudiesFebruary 2010Essays in later medieval French literature
The legacy of Jane H. M. Taylor
by Mike Thompson, Rebecca Dixon
Over the course of a career spanning five decades, Jane Taylor has shown a commitment to the rehabilitation of the more neglected aspects of later medieval French literature. This volume brings together original contributions from scholars who have worked alongside Taylor and directly or indirectly benefitted from her example. The chapters demonstrate their authors' link to this legacy, and concomitantly underline the vibrancy and breadth of approach which is the hallmark of current later medieval studies. The essays in the collection centre on a number of key issues in the field: notions of literary self-consciousness and what it means to come after an avatar; issues of intertextuality and the appeal to past models in the creation of a new literary aesthetic (or a new literary criticism); and interdisciplinary questions of translation, reworking, and continuation. Essays in later medieval French literature seeks not only to illustrate the buoyant state of later medieval French literary studies but also, in so doing, to show how in broader terms responding to the legacy of an illustrious predecessor has not pejorative but positive consequences. ;
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Humanities & Social SciencesAugust 2006Political culture in later medieval England
Essays by Simon Walker
by Mike Braddick
This is an important collection of pioneering essays penned by the late Simon Walker, a highly respected historian of late medieval England. One of the finest scholars of his generation, Walker's writing is lucid, inspirational, and has permanently enriched our understanding of the period. The eleven essays featured here examine themes such as kingship, lordship, warfare and sanctity. There are specific studies on subjects such as the changing fortunes of the family of Sir Richard Abberbury; Yorkshire's Justices of the Peace; the service of medieval man-at-arms, Janico Dartasso; Richard II's views on kingship, political saints, and an investigation of rumour, sedition and popular protest in the reign of Henry IV. An introduction by G.L. Harriss looks back across Walker's career, and discusses the historiographical context of his work. Both the new and previously published pieces here will be essential reading for those working on the late medieval period. ;
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Humanities & Social SciencesJanuary 2020Political culture in later medieval England
Essays by Simon Walker
by Michael J. Braddick
This is an important collection of pioneering essays penned by the late Simon Walker, a highly respected historian of late medieval England. One of the finest scholars of his generation, Walker's writing is lucid, inspirational, and has permanently enriched our understanding of the period. The eleven essays featured here examine themes such as kingship, lordship, warfare and sanctity. There are specific studies on subjects such as the changing fortunes of the family of Sir Richard Abberbury; Yorkshire's Justices of the Peace; the service of medieval man-at-arms, Janico Dartasso; Richard II's views on kingship, political saints, and an investigation of rumour, sedition and popular protest in the reign of Henry IV. An introduction by G.L. Harriss looks back across Walker's career, and discusses the historiographical context of his work. Both the new and previously published pieces here will be essential reading for those working on the late medieval period.
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Humanities & Social SciencesJanuary 2013Women of the English Nobility and Gentry, 1066-1500
by Jennifer Ward
While there is increasing interest in the lives of medieval women, the documentary evidence for their activities remains little known. This book provides a collection of sources for an important and influential group of women in medieval England, and examines changes in their role and activities between 1066 and 1500. For most noble and gentry-women, early marriage led to responsibilities for family and household, and, in the absence of their husbands, for the family estates and retainers. Widowhood enabled them to take control of their affairs and to play an independent part in the local community and sometimes further afield. Although many women's lives followed a conventional pattern, great variety existed within family relationships, and individuality can also be seen in religious practices and patronage. Piety could take a number of different forms, whether a woman became a nun, a vowess or a noted philanthropist and benefactor to religious institutions. This volume provides a broad-ranging and accessible coverage of the role of noble women in medieval society. It highlights the significant role played by these women within their families, households, estates and communities.
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Humanities & Social SciencesJanuary 2006Gentry culture in late-medieval England
by Raluca Radulescu, Steve Rigby, Alison Truelove
Essays in this fascinating and important collection examine the lifestyles and attitudes of the gentry in late medieval England. They consider the emergence of the gentry as a group distinct from the nobility, and explore the various available routes to gentility. Through surveys of the gentry's military background, administrative and political roles, social behaviour, and education, the reader is provided with an overview of how the group's culture evolved, and how it was disseminated. Studies of the gentry's literacy, creation and use of literature, cultural networks, religious activities and their experiences of music and the visual arts more directly address the practice and expression of this culture, exploring the extent to which the gentry's activities were different from those of the wider population. Joining the editors in contributing essays to this collection is an impressive array of eminent scholars, all specialists in their respective fields: Christine Carpenter, Peter Fleming, Maurice Keen, Philippa Maddern, Nicholas Orme, Tim Shaw, Thomas Tolley and Deborah Youngs. As a whole, the book offers a broad view of gentry culture that explores, reassesses, and sometimes even challenges the idea that members of the gentry cultivated their own distinctive cultural identity. It will appeal to students looking for a comprehensive introduction to late medieval gentry culture, as well as to researchers interested in gentry studies more generally. ;
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Literature & Literary StudiesApril 2022The narrative grotesque in medieval Scottish poetry
by Caitlin Flynn
