This section introduction presents an overview of the historiography and provides background to the following translations that chart the social and psychological impact of the plague, and its effects on the late-medieval economy. In the course of the twentieth century historians generally became much less willing to ascribe sweeping cultural or psychological changes to the plague. The re-assessment of the plague's impact went on a revision of the accepted levels of plague mortality. J. Huizinga's famous evocation of the late middle ages stands in the same tradition as J. J. Jusserand's description of the religious scepticism which followed the plague. Cardinal Gasquet had been convinced that the first outbreak of plague had carried off half the English population. For contemporary chroniclers, the behaviour of the lower classes after the plague was a clear sign of the world plunging further into sin. The belief that the loss of one third of the population could be absorbed without immediate economic distress rested on the assumption that the population of pre-plague England had become too large for the available resources.

This chapter reviews the tension between the union of the couple and the representation of marriage in screwball comedy. Marriage is commonly understood in the screwball world to involve misery, oppression and confinement; it is nice because it is legal and, therefore, respectable. At the same time, marriage no longer necessarily involves a lifetime commitment. There is an evident tension between the diegetic representation of marriage and the screwball narratives drive to unite the couple. Marriage is never a beautiful thing in screwball comedy; it is always a problem. No one simply falls in love, gets married and lives happily ever after. This very variation on the themes of marital duplicity and infidelity appears in screwball comedy. Indeed, there are hardly any happily married characters; it is a world peopled with widowed fathers, maiden aunts, bachelor butlers and maids.

Through translated and annotated sources, this chapter explores the idea of human agency as the cause of the plague.

The documents in this chapter describe the relationships between the Normans and their neighbours in France, Maine, Anjou, Brittany, Aquitaine, Burgundy and Flanders.

This chapter explores Thomas Becket's period of exile in France.

Karl Polanyi engaged intensively in émigré politics in three subsequent periods: the early 1920s in Vienna, the mid-1940s in London, and the late 1950s and early 1960s in Canada. Representative samples of his correspondence from these three periods are included in this final part of this book. Polanyi was a prolific correspondent, and the letters included in this volume represent only a tiny fraction of his output. Those selected are clustered in periods during which he was engaged in political and intellectual projects with his Hungarian compatriots.

This part discusses technical terms for types of heretic or suspect such as believer, receiver, supporter, defender, counsellor, suspect and vehemently suspect. It includes a few papal bulls dealing with inquisition and some formulae for sentences for different sorts of crime in heresy and different penalties. The part also presents legal consultations on particular questions, most frequently those of the Avignon lawyers of 1235 and Guy Foulques. It also includes a selection of the consultative councils, as also of the Council of Toulouse of 1229, Raymond VII's statutes of 1233 and the Council of Beziers of 1246.

This chapter discusses the consequences of the British withdrawal and challenges the assumption that the overall process was led by the local call for self-determination. In one episode, Britain and the US rejected a plea for sovereign status from Ra’s al-Khaimah, one of the smaller ‘Protected States’. On the one hand, the independence of Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE meant that the new states possessed legal personalities equal to those of the former imperial metropole and superpowers. On the other hand, it also enabled both Britain and the US to maintain an international order favourable to the west by means of consensus and collaboration, whilst minimising direct involvement and the use of coercive measures. In the end, the whole process did not alter the collaborative relationship that had developed during the period of Britain’s informal empire, instead only entailing the rearrangement thereof.

This chapter explores the concerns and interests of the sex comedy film. There are several films that repeatedly acknowledge the sexual commodification of women. Most critics have recognised female virginity as the cycle's thematic core, but very few have engaged with the economic and cultural dimensions. It is also important to emphasise the extraordinary status of the heroine in the sex comedy. While few sex comedies are explicit in drawing attention to the heroine's virginity, most do single her out as different from other women. While the sentiments of the woman construct her as the object to be consumed, the sex comedy does not exclusively gender this relationship as male consumer, female object. Furthermore, the contradiction between male and female desires in the sex comedy exaggerates sexual difference to such an extent that it may seem that the couple are wholly incompatible. However, these desires are shaped by cultural ideology.

This chapter explores the variegated repercussions of the plague on the economy and, no less complex, on social and religious conduct.