"Anglo-Saxon ‘things’ could talk. Nonhuman voices leap out from the Exeter Book Riddles, telling us how they were made or how they behave. The Franks Casket is a box of bone that alludes to its former fate as a whale that swam aground onto the shingle, and the Ruthwell monument is a stone column that speaks as if it were living wood, or a wounded body. In this book, James Paz uncovers the v…
"This book traces the enduring relationship between history, people and place that has shaped the character of a single region in a manner perhaps unique within the New Zealand experience. It explores the evolution of a distinctive regional literature that both shaped and was shaped by the physical and historical environment that inspired it. Looking westwards towards Australia and long shut of…
The region of the Middle East has been called the cradle of mankind. This volume studies historical, cultural, religious, social and political legacies, which play a central role in obstructing intercultural dialogue in the Middle East. The region became home to numerous cultures, religions and ethnicities with long experience of living together in a multicultural environment and has an immense…
Why did human beings first begin to write history? Lisa Irene Hau argues that a driving force among Greek historians was the desire to use the past to teach lessons about the present and for the future. She uncovers the moral messages of the ancient Greek writers of history and the techniques they used to bring them across. Hau also shows how moral didacticism was an integral part of the writin…
From the current vantage point of the transformation of books and libraries, B. Venkat Mani presents a historical account of world literature. By locating translation, publication, and circulation along routes of “bibliomigrancy,” Mani narrates how world literature is coded and recoded as literary works find new homes on faraway bookshelves. Mani argues that the proliferation of world liter…
History and Cultural Memory in Neo-Victorian Fiction combines innovative literary and historiographical analysis to investigate the way neo-Victorian novels conceptualise our relationship to the Victorian past, and to analyse their role in the production and communication of historical knowledge. Positioning neo-Victorian novels as dynamic participants in the contemporary historical imaginary, …
Physiognomy and ekphrasis are two of the most important modes of description in antiquity and represent the necessary precursors of scientific description. The primary way of divining the characteristics and fate of an individual, whether inborn or acquired, was to observe the patient’s external characteristics and behaviour. This volume focuses initially on two types of descriptive literatur…
Writing, Medium, Machine: Modern Technographies is a collection of thirteen essays by leading scholars which explores the mutual determination of forms of writing and forms of technology in modern literature. The essays unfold from a variety of historical and theoretical perspectives the proposition that literature is not less but more mechanical than other forms of writing: a transfigurative i…
This open access book examines key aspects of international cooperation to enhance nuclear safety, security, safeguards, and nonproliferation, thereby assisting in development and maintenance of the verification regime and fostering progress toward a nuclear weapon-free world. Current challenges are discussed and attempts made to identify possible solutions and future improvements, considering …
The examination of literary and cultural transfer processes in the colonial Caribbean allows completely new insights into the early processes of cultural globalisation. Racist discourses, established models of white abolitionists, politics of remembrance and the hitherto neglected role of the Haitian Revolution combine to an amalgam that questions our established concept of a genuine western mo…