Liverpool University Press – förlag

The nornir or norns were a group of female supernatural beings closely related to ideas about fate in Old Norse tradition. Karen Bek-Pedersen provides a thorough understanding of the role played by norns and other beings like them in the relevant sources. Although they are well known, even to people who have only a superficial knowledge of Old Norse mythology, this is the first detailed discussion of the norns to be published amongst the literature dealing with Old Norse beliefs. Surprisingly little has been written specifically about the norns. Although often mentioned in scholarship treating Old Norse culture, the norns are all too often dealt with in overly superficial ways. The research presented in this book goes much deeper in order to properly understand the nature and role of the norns in the Old Norse world view. The conclusions reached by the author overturn a number of stereotypical conceptions that have long dominated our understanding of these beings. The book has a natural focus on Old Norse culture and is especially relevant to those interested in or studying Old Norse culture and tradition. However, comparative material from Celtic, Anglo-Saxon and Classical traditions is also employed and the book is therefore of interest also to those with a broader interest in European mythologies.

In 1969, California is not just the new Eldorado: it is the crucible where civilisation is accelerating, self-destructs, and is reborn. It's the probe of Spaceship Earth. The hippy phenomenon, communes, the ecological movement, great collective ceremonies like park-ins and rock concerts, the flourishing of sects ranging from mystics to Marxists, the experience of 'weed' and 'acid', are temporary images and elements of a search for a new truth, a new religion, a new society. Long before it became fashionable for European intellectuals to write about their voyages to the United States, Edgar Morin, one of France's leading intellectual figures and at that time known as a path-breaking and innovative sociologist and researcher of popular culture, recounts the story of his experiences in the cauldron of change that was California, including his encounters with some of the leading minds of that time. The book combines Morin's accounts of his experiences with his own search for answers to fundamental questions about the human condition. For a few months, the author had a profound feeling of being drawn into the heart of the 'great questions', played out personally and societally. The result is an engaging and prophetic work that has as much if not more to offer today than it did when it was first published in French.

Now enhanced with colour photographs and illustrations, this thoroughly revised fourth edition of Sedimentary Structures enhances its status as a major textbook in geology. Since its first publication in 1982, Sedimentary Structures has established and maintained itself as a pre-eminent resource that sets out a clear methodology and philosophy for understanding present-day sediments and sedimentary rocks as the product of dynamic processes.The fourth edition of this classic textbook introduces erosional, depositional and post-depositional sedimentary processes in an easily accessible way. It shows how sedimentary structures can be interpreted, across a wide range of scales, in terms of those processes.Sedimentary structures produced by erosion, deposition and post-depositional change are all clearly explained and related to the processes that formed them. Hydrodynamic and aerodynamic controls on the development of subaqueous and aeolian bedforms are discussed, as are the styles of deformation to which sediments can be subjected after deposition. Structures that characterize deposition caused by chemical and biologically influenced processes are explained and illustrated, along with the complex effects of chemical changes, and of animal and plant activity in modifying sediments after they have been deposited. The book ends with an introduction to the methods and principles of environmental interpretation, for which earlier chapters provide an invaluable basis.Sedimentary Structures is designed principally for use in undergraduate settings and will be invaluable to students reading geology, earth sciences, physical geography and environmental sciences throughout their degree studies. It will also appeal to enthusiastic students at colleges and schools, as well as to amateur geologists who want to gain an understanding of sedimentary processes and products. Furthermore, the book is also valuable as a reference for both academic researchers and industry professionals alike. The fourth edition covers all major recent developments in the subject. It is characterized by an abundance of informative illustrations and photographic examples, and introduces colour figures for the first time.This edition, the first prepared without the direct input of the late David Thompson, builds on a major re-write that paid particular attention to recent advances in the understanding of aeolian processes and bedforms, and in the interpretation of trace fossils. The introduction to environmental interpretation has been further developed to reflect recent advances in stratigraphic thinking, thereby enabling sedimentologists to more readily relate the occurrence of assemblages of sedimentary structures to likely environments of deposition. Sedimentary Structures emphasizes a practical, hands-on approach. It remains indispensable to those with a serious interest in the study of sedimentary structures, not only as fascinating features in themselves but also as key indicators in the reconstruction of past environments.

Before the First World War there existed an intellectual turmoil in Britain as great as any in Germany, France or Russia, as the debates over Nietzsche and eugenics in the context of early modernism reveal. With the rise of fascism after 1918, these debates became more ideologically driven, with science and vitalist philosophy being hailed in some quarters as saviours from bourgeois decadence, vituperated in others as heralding the onset of barbarism. Breeding Superman looks at several of the leading Nietzscheans and eugenicists, and challenges the long-cherished belief that British intellectuals were fundamentally uninterested in race. The result is a study of radical ideas which are conventionally written out of histories of the politics and culture of the period.

The Zohar is the fundamental work of Jewish mysticism. Isaiah Tishby’s classic and definitive Wisdom of the Zohar makes the world of the Zohar available to the English-speaking reader in all its complexity and poetry.The extended extracts are arranged by topic, each section being prefaced by introductory explanations and accompanied by copious notes. There is also a General Introduction on the complex symbolism of the Zohar and on its historical and literary background.The scholarly value of David Goldstein’s acclaimed translation is enhanced by an index expanded to include references to passages cited in the introduction and notes, and by the addition of a subject index and an index of biblical references.Isaiah Tishby was awarded the Bialik Prize 1972, the Israel Prize 1979, and the Rothschild Prize 1982, mainly for his work on The Wisdom of the Zohar. David Goldstein was awarded the Webber Prize 1987 for this translation.

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.

This edition of Daphnis and Chloe , the best known of the Greek romances, provides the first modern commentary in English on this intriguing work. This is the story of two young people growing up as goatherd and shepherdess, and their discovery of love, sex and their true selves. Beneath the charm of its deceptively simple surface, this novel explores perennial questions about the naturalness of conventional gender relations, about the roles of instinct and culture in love, about the pain and responsibilities involved in becoming an adult, and ultimately about the relationship between Art and Nature, Fiction and Truth. Morgan presents a sequential reading of the novel, using the tools of modern literary theory to explain how narrative articulates meaning, and exploring Longus' creative dialogue with the literary tradition. The Greek text and English translation are on facing pages.

Women are conspicuously absent from the Jewish mystical tradition. Even if historically some Jewish women may have experienced mystical revelations and led richly productive spiritual lives, the tradition does not preserve any record of their experiences or insights. Only the chance survival of scant evidence suggests that, at various times and places, individual Jewish women did pursue the path of mystical piety or prophetic spirituality, but it appears that they were generally censured, and efforts were made to suppress their activities. This contrasts sharply with the fully acknowledged prominence of women in the mystical traditions of both Christianity and Islam. It is against this background that the mystical messianic movement centred on the personality of Sabbatai Zevi (1626 - 76) stands out as a unique and remarkable exception. Sabbatai Zevi addressed to women a highly original liberationist message, proclaiming that he had come to make them 'as happy as men' by releasing them from the pangs of childbirth and the subjugation to their husbands that were ordained for women as a consequence of the primordial sin. This unprecedented redemptive vision became an integral part of Sabbatian eschatology, which the messianists believed to be unfolding and experienced in the present. Their New Law, superseding the Old with the dawning of the messianic era, overturned the traditional halakhic norms that distinguished and regulated relations between the sexes. This was expressed not only in the outlandish ritual transgression of sexual prohibitions, in which Sabbatian women were notoriously implicated, but also in the apparent adoption of the idea - alien to rabbinic Judaism - that virginity, celibacy, or sexual abstinence were conducive to women's spiritual empowerment. Ada Rapoport-Albert traces the diverse manifestations of this vision in every phase of Sabbatianism and its offshoots. These include the early promotion of women to centre-stage as messianic prophetesses; their independent affiliation with the movement in their own right; their initiation in the esoteric teachings of the kabbalah; and their full incorporation, on a par with men, into the ritual and devotional life of the messianic community. Their investment with authority was such as to elevate the messiah's wife (a figure mostly absent from traditional messianic speculations) to the rank of full messianic consort, sharing in her husband's redemptive mission as well as his divine dimension. By the late eighteenth century, a syncretistic cult had developed that recognized in Eva - the unmarried daughter of Jacob Frank, one of Sabbatai Zevi's apostate messianic successors - an incarnate female aspect of the kabbalistic godhead, worshipped by her father's devotees as 'Holy Virgin' and female messiah. This was the culmination of the Sabbatian endeavour to transcend the traditional gender paradigm that had excluded women from the public arena of Jewish spiritual life.This work is translated by Deborah Greniman.

In 1959, at the age of 22, Joanna Russ published her first science fiction story, “Nor Custom Stale,” in The Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy. In the forty-five years since, Russ has continued to write some of the most popular, creative, and important novels and stories in science fiction. She was a central figure, along with contemporaries Ursula K. Le Guin and James Tiptree, in revolutionizing science fiction in the 1960s and 1970s, and her 1970 novel The Female Man is widely regarded as one of the most successful and influential depictions of a feminist utopia in the entire genre. The Country You Have Never Seen gathers Joanna Russ’s most important essays and reviews, revealing the vital part she played over the years in the never-ending conversation among writers and fans about the roles, boundaries, and potential of science fiction. Spanning her entire career, the collection shines a light on Russ’s role in the development of new wave science fiction and feminist science fiction, while at the same time providing fascinating insight into her own development as a writer.

Born to fanatical religious zealots, deeply wounded by an unloving mother and a weak father whom he hated, Norman Bethune struggled throughout his life to overcome deep emotional scars. Sexually inhibited, given to outbursts of near psychopathic rage, this wounded doctor healed himself through healing others. In the mid-1930s, Bethune emerged as a renowned surgeon fighting the twin plagues of disease and fascism. When Franco launched his offensive, Bethune travelled quickly to Madrid, organised a mobile transfusion service and, often under fire, brought blood to the wounded at the front. David Lethbridge presents the complex of Bethune's unique activities and personality as they intersected with history: His engagement with medical, political, and military civil war players, and the Communist party; his cadaver blood transfusion work with the Nobel Prize-winning geneticist, Hermann Muller; the profound effect that the Malaga atrocity had on him, and the role it played in his attempt to build "children's cities" outside war zones; his meeting with Graham Spry a high-ranking functionary in the Canadian social democratic party, the CCF; the unravelling of Bethune's romantic relationship with the Swedish journalist Kasja Rothman; the implications of his friendship with Henning Sorensen, a possibly secret member of the Communist Party of Canada, and the circumstances of the conspiracy that led to Bethune's ejection from Spain. The book concludes with Bethune's political tour throughout North America raising funds and public awareness on behalf of the Spanish Republic.

In 1992 David Owen was appointed the EU Co-Chairman of the International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia, working alongside the UN’s Co-Chairman, Cyrus Vance. The papers collected here provide fascinating primary source material and an insider’s account of the intense international political activity at that time, which culminated in the Vance-Owen Peace Plan (VOPP).At a time when the international community is looking again at whether and how the Dayton Accords and the 1995 division into two entities should be adjusted in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Owen highlights elements of the VOPP which are of continuing relevance and which can guide political debate and decisions in 2012 and thereafter. Sadly, Bosnia-Herzegovina is still deeply divided, a direct consequence of not imposing the VOPP. The book reminds the international community and the people of Bosnia-Herzegovina that a unified structure for their country is still achievable.

The figure of a woman reclining, in repose, displayed, abandoned, fallen, asleep, or dreaming, returns in the work of women filmmakers and photographers in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Filmmakers Agnès Varda and Catherine Breillat, and American photographer working in Paris, Nan Goldin, return to the paintings of Titian, Velázquez, Goya, Courbet, and others, re-imagining, and re-purposing, their images of female beauty, display, (auto)eroticism, and intimacy. This book, a sensuous evocation of these feminist works, claims a female-identified pleasure in looking. The artists explored align images of repose and sensuality with other images of horizontality and proneness, of strong emotional content, images of erotic involvement, of vulnerability, of bodily contortion, of listlessness, grief, and depression. The reclining nude is for all three artists a starting point for a reflection on the relation of film, projections, and still photography, to painting, and a sustained re-imagining of the meanings conjured through serial returns to a particular pose. This book claims that the image of the reclining nude is compelling, for female-identified artists – and for all allied in feeling and picturing femininity – in the sensitive, ethically adventurous, politically complex feminist issues it engages. The reclining nude is an image of passivity, of submission, of hedonism. It allows thought about passivity as pleasure, about depression and grief figured posturally, about indolence as a form of resistance and anarchy. Through this image, female-identified artists have claimed freedom to offer new focus on these extremes of emotion. They are re-imagining horizontality.

An Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and through Knowledge Unlatched.Disabled Bodies in Early Modern Spanish Literature: Prostitutes, Aging Women and Saints examines the concepts and role of women in selected Spanish discourses and literary texts from the late fifteenth to seventeenth centuries from the perspective of feminist disability theories. This study explores a wide range of Spanish medical, regulatory and moral discourses, illustrating how such texts inherit, reproduce and propagate an amalgam of Western traditional concepts of female embodiment. It goes on to examine concrete representations of deviant female characters, focusing on the figures of syphilitic prostitutes and physically decayed aged women in literary texts such as Celestina, Lozana andaluza and selected works by Cervantes and Quevedo. Finally, an analysis of the personal testimony of Teresa de Avila, a nun suffering neurological disorders, complements the discussion of early modern women’s disability. By expanding the meanings of contemporary theories of materiality and the social construction of disability, the book concludes that paradoxically, femininity, bodily afflictions, and mental instability characterized the new literary heroes at the very time Spain was at the apex of its imperial power. Ultimately, as this study shows, the broken female bodies of pre-industrial Spanish literature reveal the cracks in the foundational principles of power and established truths.

Cicero’s great polemic against Antony, a literary masterpiece, is here made available with full translation and notes. The introduction to this edition deals with the historical setting, Roman rhetoric and Cicero’s style while the notes are mainly literary, not historical. Attention is paid to Cicero’s use of the devices and techniques of rhetoric, and the variety of tones by which he sustains his attack on Antony without ever losing the reader’s interest. The notes also draw attention to the rhythms of the Latin and the clausulae. Latin text with facing-page English translation, introduction and commentary.

Isaiah Berlin, in his "Tribute to a Friend", wrote about the historian Jacob L. Talmon (1916-1980): "No matter what his theoretical interests were, or the topics on which he was lecturing or writing, his deepest concern was with the Jewish people, its history, its religious, moral and social values, its place among the nations, its future in Israel and the diaspora." These words capture the essence of Talmon's political essays presented in Mission and Testimony. Talmon was chosen by an international committee of scholars as one of the twenty major historians of the twentieth century, declaring that "his historiography was a convincing apologia for human freedom." He owes his fame primarily to his magnum opus, the trilogy that began with The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (1952), continued with Political Messianism (1960) and concluded with The Myth of the Nation and the Vision of Revolution (1981). This edited collection of Talmon's essays comprises the following: Part I, "The Nature of Jewish history", deals with the Jewish presence in history, the universal significance of Jewish history, and the impact of Jewish intellectuals. Part II, "From Anti-Semitism to the Holocaust", concerns the anti-Semitic climate of opinion that led to the Holocaust. Part III depicts the regional and global situation of the State of Israel. In Part IV, "Intellectual and Political Debates", Talmon confronts intellectuals and statesmen such as Arnold Toynbee and Menachem Begin. Part V, "Profiles in History", depicts the intellectual portraits of the historian Lewis Namier and the physicist and champion of human rights Andrei Sakharov.

This study examines the whole of Frame’s output starting with the fiction (novels, short-stories and poems) before focusing on the two autobiographical novels, Owls do Cry and Faces in the Water, to end with the autobiographical trilogy, a sort of restorative prism inviting us to (re) read all her preceding works. It is the autobiography and its film version, An Angel at my Table, that won her international fame. Frame’s life is extraordinary, not only because she was spared a lobotomy by winning a prize for her collection of short stories, but also because writing from the ‘rim of the farthest circle’, she provides food for thought for anyone interested in postcolonial and gender studies.

Based on a combination of a wide range of second-hand sources with previously unknown archival material from Spain, Britain, France and the United States, this book explores the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39 as a propaganda battle aimed mainly at foreign public opinion. It shows how both Nationalists and Republicans used the experiences of previous conflicts such as World War I, as well as that of their totalitarian allies, in order to set up a number of propaganda and censorship services with the goal of persuading foreign -- and specifically British -- audiences of the legitimacy of their causes, and of the need to give them political, military, and relief assistance. The propaganda messages designed by both sides -- ranging from the atrocities committed by the enemy to illegal foreign intervention on its behalf -- are analysed in detail, together with the techniques that were employed to transmit these messages: eye-witness accounts, official commissions, unofficial missions of investigation, documentaries, art exhibitions, etc. As to the impact of both campaigns on the British population, the author argues that their crude nature helped to mobilise both the extreme right and the extreme left, but alienated the great majority, who preferred to rally to the Non-Intervention policy adopted by the Baldwin and Chamberlain governments. The chronicle of this relatively neglected topic demonstrates not only the utter modernity of the Spanish conflict, but also the origin of some of the arguments still employed by current historians of the war.

The Stepford Wives (1975) occupies an unusual position in cinematic history. As is often the case with cult texts, the film was both a box office flop and widely misunderstood on release. Intended as a feminist diatribe, it was derided by Betty Friedan, whose 1963 book The Feminine Mystique it literalised. Even Ira Levin, author of the novel from which the film was adapted, concedes he was less than enthused with the filmed version. Despite this, the term ‘Stepford wife’ has become idiolect for a particular kind of one-dimensional, upper-middle class woman who is figuratively, and to some extent literally, an automation. Indeed, one does not need to have seen or even heard of the film or Levin’s book to be familiar with the concept. This timely study finally gives The Stepford Wives the serious scholarly attention it deserves. In doing so, the significance of the film as a socio-cultural and socio-political document in its own right is underscored. While the intention of this book is to pay homage to Bryan Forbes’ film, it goes far beyond this, locating it in the traditions of the gothic, the histories of feminism and fictional imaginings about artificial women, and the futures of social robots and AI, both real and imagined.

Charting new territory in filmmaking technologies and Steven Spielberg’s oeuvre, Minority Report (2002) portrays a dystopian near-future that comments on our increasingly science-fictional world and pays homage to the history of SF cinema. In this comprehensive monograph, D. Harlan Wilson recounts the film's inception, production, reception, and afterlife since its release in 2002 while depicting it as a symptom of contemporary media pathology, post-9/11 paranoia, consumer-capitalist aggression, religious mania, and above all, the screen culture that has come to define the human condition. At the same time, Wilson explores the many self-reflexive flourishes that render the movie a commentary on Spielberg’s style and the precession of the SF genre.

Ex Machina (2014) impressed critics and audiences alike with its bold ideas and all-too-realistic depiction of the unexpected consequences of constructing a sentient being. In his feature directorial debut, Alex Garland uses efficient storytelling, a compelling narrative, and heady concepts to create a modern science fiction masterpiece that explores gender, scientific advancement, and the very concept of humanity, all in a compelling, suspenseful film. Artificial intelligence has long been a sci-fi staple, but here, Garland posits what would happen if, for once, humans, rather than AI, were the real villains. In exploring Ex Machina’s ideas about consciousness, embodiment, and masculinity, all through the lens of a misogynist mad scientist, Joshua Grimm argues the result is a fascinating, truly unique film that immediately established Garland as a breakout voice in the landscape of science fiction film.

The evangelisation of the peoples of western Europe to Christianity was arguably the single most important historical development of the early Middle Ages, shaping not only the beliefs and religious practices but also the social, political, cultural and intellectual landscape of the last 1,500 years. Although much has been written on the conversion period, little has been done to understand the development of the Christian impulse to spread the Gospel ‘to the ends of the earth’. When and why did Christians develop the idea of the evangelisation of all peoples? When and why did they begin to express this idea by deliberately setting out to evangelise pagan peoples? How did the conception or expression of the idea of evangelisation change over time? How did authors interpret key scriptural texts to justify or explain their views on evangelisation? This book offers the first book-length, diachronic study of these questions. Through contextualised close readings of authors writing mostly in Latin between the fourth and the eighth centuries (including Augustine, Patrick, Gregory and Bede), it argues for a gradual but fundamental transformation in Christian thinking about evangelisation. This in turn provides new insights into the origins of Christian mission.

This edition of Books I & II of St Augustine's The City of God (De Civitate Dei) is the only edition in English to provide a text and translation as well as a detailed commentary of this most influential document in the history of western Christianity. In these books, written in the aftermath of the sack of Rome in AD 410 by the Goths, Augustine replies to the pagans, who attributed the fall of Rome to the Christian religion and its prohibition of the worship of the pagan gods. Latin text with facing-page English translation, introduction and commentary.

In the fading atmosphere of the New Hollywood era, William Friedkin – the wunderkind director with an Academy Award for his cop drama, The French Connection (1971) who then scored an even bigger success with The Exorcist (1973) – began work on what would prove to be the most controversial film of his career: Cruising (1980). In the process he established a template for a sub-genre, the serial killer thriller, that would thrive long after his film had left theatres, having caused widespread offence among the very audience he'd hoped to appeal to, via a campaign mobilised by the counter-culture press. As such, Cruising can be read as a bitter farewell to the seventies and its cinema and industry. This Devil's Advocate dives deep into the phenomenon that is Cruising, examining its creative context and its protagonists, as well as examining its ongoing popularity as it turns 40 in 2020.

Right-wing populism has been on the rise in Europe and elsewhere. Germanys foremost populist party is called Alternative for Germany (AfD). Founded in 2013 and entering Germanys federal parliament in 2017, the AfD increasingly moved towards right-wing extremism. Today, the party is Germanys most successful nationalistic party. Following the populist playbook, the AfD started off with a simple neoliberal and anti-Europe message, but soon moved towards the extreme right. By 2017 the AfDs ultra-nationalistic wing had successfully outmanoeuvred the partys moderate and neoliberal leader Frauke Petry. Written from the standpoint of openness, pluralism, liberalism and democracy, this book examines the AfDs rise to fame, its successes, and the partys ideological links dating back to German Nazism of the 1930s. The author illuminates the partys ideological and institutional links to present-day Neo-Nazis; its close associations to the right-wing street movement Pegida; the recruitment of right-wing extremists and former Neo-Nazis into its parliamentarian ranks; its xenophobic, anti-Muslim, racist and anti-Semitic ideologies; and its relationship to the neo-fascist Identity Movement. A historical overview positions the AfD within Germanys political landscape. The work engages with the make-up of AfD voters and electoral successes; the partys relationship to anti-Semitism; and its dreams of re-establishing a mythical Aryan Volksgemeinschaft. Close attention is paid to the AfDs demagogic and nationalistic leader, Bjoern Hoecke, as well as the partys admiration for the radical right of neighbouring Austria. A final chapter examines the fascist character of the AfD as measured against Umberto Ecos fourteen elements of Ur-Fascism. Three questions are posed: Will the AfD lead to the end of German democracy? Is Germany moving towards another Third Reich? Is there another Hitler in the making?

For more than a century, Irish poetry has enjoyed a privileged relationship with the visual arts. This book shows how intensely this creative rapport has been cultivated. Its importance for our age becomes apparent from an in-depth discussion of the work of nine poets whose combined output extends from the 1960s to the first quarter of the new millennium: Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley, Derek Mahon, Eavan Boland, Paul Durcan, Ciaran Carson, Medbh McGuckian, Paul Muldoon and Sinéad Morrissey. The focus falls on the ways in which the images addressed in their poems are thematically framed by particular pictorial genres or modes: the portrait, the still life, the conversation piece, history painting and abstraction. These creative frameworks provide the thematic rationale for the book’s five chapters, cumulatively demonstrating how a consistent engagement with the visual arts has bolstered the appeal of contemporary Irish poetry in global cultures.

Books V and VI of Tacitus’ Annals, when complete, carried the narrative of Tiberius’ reign from AD 29 to 37. Unfortunately most of Book V has been lost, and, with it, Tacitus’ account of the sensational events that led to the execution on 18 October in AD 31 of Aelius Sejanus. Nevertheless, Annals VI contains a fascinating variety of incidents both at Rome and on Capri, to which Tiberius had retired permanently in AD 27. But, in addition to all the material that portrays Tiberius in a highly unfavourable light, there is much in Annals VI that shows a very different side to his character. Whereas Suetonius talks of an elderly emperor who discarded all interest in public affairs from the time he retired to Capri, Tacitus portrays a more complex character – one in which cruelty and vice stand alongside a deep concern for Rome’s prosperity at home and abroad. Annals VI provides an absorbing account of the varied aspects of the behaviours and personality of Rome’s most enigmatic emperor during the final years of his life. Latin text with facing-page English translation, introduction and commentary.

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.

This is the first book-length study of Forster’s posthumously-published novel. Nine essays focus exclusively on Maurice and its dynamic afterlives in literature, film and new media during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Begun in 1913 and revised over almost fifty years, Maurice became a defining text in Forster’s work and a canonical example of queer fiction. Yet the critical tendency to read Maurice primarily as a ‘revelation’ of Forster’s homosexuality has obscured important biographical, political and aesthetic contexts for this novel. This collection places Maurice among early twentieth-century debates about politics, philosophy, religion, gender, Aestheticism and allegory. Essays explore how the novel interacts with literary predecessors and contemporaries including John Bunyan, Oscar Wilde, Havelock Ellis and Edward Carpenter, and how it was shaped by personal relationships such as Forster’s friendship with Florence Barger. They close-read the textual variants of Forster’s manuscripts and examine the novel’s genesis and revisions. They consider the volatility of its reception, analysing how it galvanizes subsequent generations of writers and artists including Christopher Isherwood, Alan Hollinghurst, Damon Galgut, James Ivory and twenty-first-century online fanfiction writers. What emerges from the volume is the complexity of the novel, as a text and as a cultural phenomenon.