Situated on the margins of Eurasia, Europe and Japan each underwent its own cultural crystallization, with Europe’s being primarily indigenous while Japan’s was stimulated by a history of cultural transference from China. Starting in the tenth century, European society began to take shape thanks to new agriculture, the rise of towns, and the expanding domain of the Catholic church. The theatre forms that emerged in the following centuries owed little to the theatre of the ancient Mediterranean, but were original creations that included traveling players, liturgical theatre (e.g., the Quem queritis trope), Passion plays, Corpus Christi plays, and vernacular literary theatre. Japan’s theatre, meanwhile, was stimulated by the Chinese-originated gigaku and bugaku (which were taken up by the imperial court) and the indigenous sangaku and dengaku. Out of this mix of theatre forms, Kan’ami and his son Zeami created nō, which was later to be accompanied by the comic kyōgen.

Described Würzburg in the early modern era, emphasizing its special character as a capital city and seat of a Prince-Bishop. Introduced the census of 1701, and proceeds with an account of the city’s household structure, its age structue, its occupational and social structure. The life cycle of the household and its members is described with emphasis on family formation, servant status, and the place of the elderly. The place of migrants in the city is emphasized.

Victorian Doggy People left a powerful legacy and the story of dogs in the twentieth century was largely one of continuities with changes that they initiated. Their enduring influence can be seen through my five headings: High society, low society; Celebrities and millionaires; Sportsman and showmen; Doctors and scientists; and Campaigners and politicians. There were continuities into the twenty-first century, evident in the COVID-19 pandemic: as more people worked from home, they acquired pet dogs for companionship and chose specific breeds to suit their lifestyle and tastes.

Throughout history, reference to the historical constitution of Hungary was used to achieve different and sometimes conflicting goals. Since 2012, it has become a constitutional concept after decades of abandonment. It appears in the Fundamental Law of Hungary (2012) and the jurisprudence of the Hungarian Constitutional Court (HCC) – linking it to the concept of constitutional identity. This chapter claims that the narrative of the Hungarian historical constitution as a constitutional concept is conducive to illiberalism. This is because political and constitutional actors have used it to oppose liberal values. Two arguments justify this claim. First, the contemporary claims on continuity and rights expansion cannot be verified when we contrast the contemporary narratives on the two most important constitutive components of the historical constitution, that is, continuity and rights expansion with legal measures introduced in the second part of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries. Second, the relevant jurisprudence of the HCC suggests that the finality of introducing the historical constitution into the constitutional text and their subsequent linking to the concept of constitutional identity was to secure the traditional Westphalian understanding of ethnic-national sovereignty, mainly against the rule of law, that is, EU obligations and globalization.

Chapter 5 outlines the way in which Plath’s poetry engages with the language and performance of ritual magic. It introduces the concept of ritual magic that employs ritualistic, incantatory language, such as chants, spells, and ritualistic acts. The chapter focuses on two poems, ‘Daddy’ and ‘Burning the Letters’, that engage with the idea of poetic spellcasting and argues that the poems seek inspiration from the ritual of exorcism or banishing spirits. The close reading relies on the drafts of the poems, highlighting Plath’s attribution of magical powers to poetic language that she often erased from the final versions of her poems. The chapter asks how Plath’s poems interrogate what constitutes ritual magic, engaging with the blurred boundaries between mundane and magical rituals and utilising the powers of poetic language.

This chapter explores why, despite being central players in transnational drug markets, Mexico and Peru’s post-authoritarian trajectories of peace and violence differ. It first examines how the Mexican military developed a powerful counterinsurgent state to fight leftist insurgents and dissidents under one-party rule. Once it succeeded in suppressing rebels through a Dirty War, authoritarian specialists in violence helped transform local traffickers into transnational drug cartels. After democratization, the first administration failed to adopt a transitional justice (TJ) process and subsequent governments deployed the surviving counterinsurgent state to fight a War on Drugs, leading to the proliferation of conflicts that turned Mexico into one of the world’s most violent democracies. Focusing then on Peru, the chapter traces the rise of the counterinsurgent state under military dictatorship, its expansion during the civil war, and its transformation under Alberto Fujimori’s dictatorship. After defeating the rebels, the head of Fujimori’s secret service seized control of transnational drug-trafficking. Following the collapse of dictatorship, the adoption of a robust truth commission and the prosecution of Fujimori’s security apparatus led to the dismantling of the counterinsurgent state, prevented the outbreak of large-scale drug wars, and set Peru on a twenty-year path of relative peace. However, failure to adopt TJ “boosters” opened a new era of violence.

Since the eighteenth century, Vienna has been primarily thematized in music as the Habsburg capital, as a city of pleasure and as a utopian ideal. Moving beyond this idealization, this chapter looks at music that takes Vienna and its residents as its subject matter, including by Mozart, Haydn, Johann Strauss Jr, Franz Lehár and Falco.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines the many-sided relationship between social democracy and 'the people' in Britain. It discusses the extensive body of thought from David Marquand on citizenship, and especially Marquand's civic republican vision for a far more energised and engaged public in Britain. The book explores the historical and political implications of the social and psychological concept of 'neighbourliness', especially as it played out in that pivotal moment of apparent social democratic ascendancy, the 1940s, and the 'People's War'. It argues that empowerment, equity and engagement are three lodestars for the re-making of social democratic citizenship and illustrates how new voices and venues are emerging in pursuit of more auspiciously deployed governing institutions and public policies. The issue of the people, the citizenry, the voters has long been a perplexing one for social democrats.

The Coda shows how the post-Enlightenment desire for a science of verse has been fundamental to contemporary machine learning technologies. It also reflects on the historical development, ideological commitments and epistemological foundations of the normal scientific study of poetry, both at its inception and in its enduring legacies, inquiring into what is at stake when techno-scientific reason attempts to exert its full domination over the poetic imagination, into how the nineteenth-century dream of a science of verse has shaped contemporary scientific exploration. It does so via the often-overlooked mid-century poet and scientific critic Josephine Miles.

Chapter 12 deals with the challenges involved in creating these two elements of a book. Here, we present tools (e.g., software) as well as guidelines and examples for the readers to create their own index and ToC in a way that fits the content of their book, their tech skills, and their time availability.

The Republic of Ireland was one of the countries worst hit by the global financial crisis and the ensuing Eurozone crisis. It was the first EU country to go into recession and the first to require a bailout, it was effectively under the control of the troika and endured austerity measures for several years. Even though the country officially emerged from bailout conditions at the end of 2013, and recorded the highest rate of growth among EU member states in subsequent years, the social costs still weigh heavily on the population and have created a greatly changed political context.This chapter argues that the left has expanded significantly, but has done so in a fragmented way that will be difficult to sustain. And Europe has become an important line of division between the centre left and the radical left. The chapter begins with an overview of the crisis in Ireland. The focus is then on the programmatic and political responses of the Irish left. The crisis created an opportunity for the left, but there was no consistent left-wing response, and one of the major sources of disagreement among left parties is European integration. Finally, the chapter evaluates the Irish left in terms of votes, office and policies.