A final chapter sets out an argument about the role of labour in the process of European integration. Rather than facilitating Europeanization, as certain theories predict, relations between separate labour movements tend to be based on national interests and, within EMU, exploitative relations form between strong and weak. It is argued that such developments validate intergovernmentalist theories of European integration and, consistent with an emerging agenda which underlines the capacity of the EU to disintegrate, point to the ability of labour sectionalism to undermine the European project. An agenda for future research is also outlined, which encourages investigation into asymmetric relations between labour movements, the capacity of actors to prioritize competing goals and the manner in which non-state actors drive the (dis)integration process. Finally, it is stressed that the endurance of the EU is unequivocally in the interests of labour; the book ends with evaluation of ways in which the EU might be reformed so as to strengthen institutional grounds for labour cooperation.

The Dedicatory Epistle to The Shepheardes Calendar tells us that the ‘newe poet’ wrote with the ‘sound of ancient poets ringing in his ears’. The Calendar’s scholarly apparatus figures Chaucer as a pastoral poetic progenitor, aligned with Virgil. In the eclogues proper, however, precise reference to Chaucer’s words and phrases are scarce. The most precise recall are the lines in the February eclogue about little herdgrooms piping in broom bushes from The House of Fame. Yet, for a reader whose ears are tuned to Chaucerian pitch, these lines cause problems. Those little herdgrooms, piping in their green corn, become enveloped in a musical troupe from Chaucer’s poem that approaches cacophony; pipes become eclipsed by unnameable noise, and the names of Tityrus and Colin Clout are comically disfigured.Resonance (literary tinnitus) is difficult to regulate. How far does it extend? How do you moderate its volume and tone? If those lines on pipers and herdgrooms ringing in the new poet’s head are not taken directly from Chaucer at all, Chaucer is read as a Chaucerian. If they are taken from Chaucer then Spenser may have recognised Chaucer, not as an illustrious forebear, but as a comedy sparring partner.

This chapter revolves around fundamental debates about the role of politicians in the twenty-first century and the kind of politicians required for effective accountability of government. It situates the chapter in broader debates about the role of MPs before then examining the ‘scrutiny role’ of parliamentarians. The chapter finds that MPs have contrasting and competing visions for scrutiny and enact those roles through a variety of performance styles: specialists and experts, lone wolves, constituency champions, learners, party helpers or absentees. The chapter juxtaposes these interpretations with the pressures that MPs face more generally, such as time pressure, building expertise and multiple loyalties. All of these have a bearing on how MPs subsequently approach their scrutiny work. This chapter gives us new ways to think about the role of MP in the House of Commons, and sparks debates about the effectiveness of accountability in Parliament.

This chapter is an opportunity to explore some of the potential reasons behind the knee-jerk responses to demands for reconstruction that may be rooted in misplaced assumptions around the fixedness and unchanging nature of our built environment. I argue that reconstructions that leave no space for demonstrating that change has happened may be akin to zombies. By refusing to acknowledge change, however painful, such projects may, albeit unwittingly, be entrenching trauma responses and feeding into repressed memories. The author proposes instead that we take a two-pronged approach. First, we need to pay more attention to the research into PTSD and traumatic memory to help us find solutions that are grounded in proven practices of reiy from trauma. Second, the author offers the metaphor of ghosts to give us the conceptual space in which to pause, reflect and process before moving headlong into solutions that may do more harm than good.

This chapter studies book provenance, auction and library catalogues, and reading networks to explore the circulation of Tagliacozzi’s rhinoplasty technique in medical society across early modern Britain. Copies of relevant medical texts can be traced to numerous individual surgeons, physicians, and other educated men, as well as several university and medical libraries that would have exposed the procedure to an interested readership. An English translation of De curtorum chirurgia was appended to the Chirurgorum comes of surgeon Alexander Read in 1686. The chapter explores Read’s attitudes towards plastic surgery techniques and the treatment of stigmatised (especially poxed) patients more broadly, and argues that he has been overlooked in the field. The publication history of this translation is explored in detail, and physician Francis Bernard proposed as the anonymous translator and editor. Further important owners of De curtorum chirurgia and Chirurgorum comes are discussed, including Francis’ brother, Sergeant Surgeon Charles Bernard. The chapter finally examines the writings of James Yonge, a Plymouth naval surgeon who publicised the use of a skin flap in amputations, for his strategic differentiation of his procedure from Taliacotian skin flaps.

In A View of the Present State of Ireland, Spenser cites Chaucer twice in order to authorise his claims about the meaning of words in relation to Irish culture. These citations are motivated not just by antiquarian curiosity, but by colonial ambition to radically transform Irish society. In this way, Spenser’s use of Chaucer in A View is similar to his much more extended engagement with Chaucer in his poetry. In each medium, the English past provides material for the creation of novel forms in the present. Just as Spenser reaches back to Chaucer to help forge and authorise his innovative poetics, so does he look back to Chaucer to prove that the English past can guide the reform of Irish material and legal culture in the present.

This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book shows the extent to which the communist and capitalist illusions are significantly different from other types of collective social illusions. It deals with the trauma associated with the process of change or transition, using the concept of shock. Following the trajectory of the first self-proclaimed civil society group in Romania, the Group for Social Dialogue (GSD), the book explains the role that the group played in popularizing democratic reforms and challenging neo-communist tendencies in the newly elected government. It focuses on the increasing role that the visual plays in the formation of new social and political illusions. The book examines the extent to which different forms of representation, such as photography, can open up much-needed spaces for self-reflection and create new forms of interaction between the subject and the photographer.

Responding to Franco Moretti’s theory of ‘distant reading’, this chapter argues for an approach to reading that can combine a respect for non-specialist readers with a post-structuralist scepticism about humanism. It takes Cornelia Parker’s artful work on Magna Carta as a paradigm of how theories of reading and interpretation need to find ways of acknowledging the importance of humour and playfulness in the reading experience.