Introduction

The study of history has traditionally emphasized the impact of human actions on the environment, often overlooking the reciprocal relationship. However, environmental history provides valuable insights into how humans have shaped their surroundings over time, influencing various aspects such as politics, society, economy, and culture. African historiography has also been influenced by this perspective, with many narratives centered on human agency. Nevertheless, Africa's diverse environment, including a forest region teeming with flora and fauna, rivers, lakes, and other water features, significantly influenced the emergence and development of ethnic groups in the region. It is important to consider not only how these groups utilized their environment for survival but also how the environment, in turn, shaped African societies. Additionally, there is a need to redress the imbalance in the focus on land over water, leading to a more comprehensive study of environmental history literature.

The need to depart from the notion that environmental history examines the conservation of wildlife, soil, water, and forests and practical use of the environment has led to the exploration of the mutual relationship between people and their environment, making this study ecological. According to Arnold and Guha, the interrelationship between humans and the environment is central to environmental history, and in recent times, this theme has evolved to pay particular attention to conservation. Issues on conservation come to the fore in this study during the colonial period when water bodies were exploited for their natural resources.

Here begin the rules, which Robert Grosseteste the good bishop of Lincoln made for the Countess of Lincoln, on how to guard and govern lands and household. He who will keep to the rules will live well and comfortably off his demesne and keep himself and his people.

This inscription marks the beginning of a set of rules that was compiled by Robert Grosseteste, the thirteenth-century bishop of Lincoln. The rules included advice for the management of estates and rules for the domestic arrangements of the household, and it was one of the best known contemporary treatises on estate and household management. This treatise was specifically addressed to Margaret de Lacy, the widowed countess of Lincoln, who presided over a large magnate household and vast complex of landholdings. The practical nature of the advice offered in this treatise demonstrates the bishop's concern for the countess’ level of competence in administrative matters now that she had been widowed and had assumed sole control of the family's properties. It also suggests that the bishop accepted the idea that a noble widow could assume direct ownership and governance of her own lands. The bishop was not alone in his beliefs, judging from descriptions by his contemporary Gerald of Wales, who said that Matilda de Saint Valery, wife of William de Braose, a Welsh Marcher lord, was ‘well equipped to rule her household’ and ‘highly skilled in preserving her property’. These viewpoints are indicative of a general acceptance of the idea that all women, not only those who had been widowed, could participate actively and effectively in household and estate administration.

During the Cold War, popular culture played an important political role when the US House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) leveraged against each other the two biggest African American stars Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson. HUAC’s investigation into Hollywood “subversives” and Communist media influence is usually remembered for those who refused to cooperate and were jailed (“the Hollywood Ten”) or “blacklisted” and boycotted from working in Hollywood. When Paul Robeson, who viewed his celebrity as a platform for championing social justice, spoke candidly that the United States presumed to be a model democracy for the world while it denied basic civil rights to African Americans, HUAC was outraged. The committee called baseball hero Jackie Robinson as a countermeasure to Robeson’s inflammatory speeches. Robinson, the first Black MajorLeague baseball player, reassured HUAC on a national stage of African American patriotism while trying to convey the importance of Robeson’s civil rights fight.

From 1724 to 1727, Daniel Defoe travelled across England and one of the counties he visited was Kent.1 Defoe was impressed by the naval foundations at Deptford and Woolwich and provided details on the hospitals erected to care for seafarers. He said Greenwich was the ‘pleasantest’ town in England. In Woolwich, he said, the ‘biggest cables’ were made for ships of war and the town had a ‘prodigious quantity of cannon of all sorts’, stating there could be as many as 8,000 pieces of ordnance. After discussing the naval centres, Defoe described the towns of Erith, Greenhithe and Northfleet. Here deposits from the nearby hills provided large quantities of chalk, which was used to make lime before it was shipped to the Low Countries. He describes how Kentish folk would use lighters and hoys to remove the chalk deposits and transfer these to local forts and the counties of Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk for the farmers to ‘lay upon their land which they do in prodigious quantities and are glad to give 2s 6d to 4s per load’. He marvelled at how many people were ferried from Gravesend to London, stating that ‘all the people of East Kent, when they go to London, go no farther by land than this town’. He added that Gravesend was an important staging post for ships leaving London, not least because it was here where the searcher of customs would make one final check of the goods aboard each ship. Rochester, Faversham, Broadstairs, Margate and Ramsgate he notes were important places for oyster dredging and fishing, saying their activities at sea were ‘exceedingly industrious’. Chatham docks he described as bristling with all manner of stores for building and equipping the largest ships. Dover, he says, was an important town that traded with the Low Countries and welcomed ships from New York and Virginia.

English was not the only language used for worship in the Church of England and the Church of Ireland. During the early modern period, translations of the BCP into three further languages were officially authorized. A Latin translation was issued by order of Elizabeth I in 1560, for use in the English universities and leading public schools, and the Irish Act of Uniformity of that year allowed Latin to be used by ministers who could not speak English. An ‘Act for the translating of the bible and dyvine service into the Welshe tongue’ was passed in 1563, to provide for the perhaps 90 per cent of Welsh speakers among the population of Wales, and for further congregations in the border diocese of Hereford. As will be shown below, there was continuing support for public worship in Welsh. This contrasted with a general neglect of two other large vernacular language groups, in Ireland and Scotland. In the Church of Ireland and the Episcopal Church in Scotland, use of Gaelic was treated as evidence of backwardness and catholicism, and its replacement by worship in English as essential for the advancement of protestantism.

A French translation of the BCP was ordered by Charles II in October 1662, for use by churches in the Channel Islands and by exiled congregations of Huguenots that conformed to the Church of England. In 1700, seven ‘French’ churches in London and nine others in southern England worshipped under a licence issued by the bishop of London; presumably a similar licence was issued for the ‘several hundred’ Huguenots who in 1685 worshipped in a chapel in St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin.

This chapter examines how ancient Romans conceptualized the countryside through fragmentary or emblematic representations across various media, arguing that seemingly insignificant elements like painted birds, plants, and farm animals functioned as powerful symbols connecting urban Roman identity to agricultural roots. These “countryside” motifs appear in villa decoration and literature not merely as decorative elements but as complex topological markers that bridged social divides, reinforced political narratives about Roman identity, and gestured toward both the idealized pastoral and the economic realities of agricultural production.

In support of their political arguments against the doctrines of non-resistance and passive obedience, the pseudo-reform comedians highlighted patriarchs’ intentional or unintentional errors. This way of representation posed two significant problems from the standpoint of conduct literature. First, it did not render inferiors’ disobedient acts justifiable. Because two wrongs do not make a right, superiors’ wrongdoing would not change the fact that inferiors’ subsequent breach of the code of conduct was morally wrong. The pseudo-reform comedians’ exploitation of the loopholes in the principle of general obedience in conduct literature revealed their awareness of the need to distract their audience from this simple fact. Second, it was generally accepted that superiors had the power to punish inferiors, but not vice versa. In contrast to the Nonconformist conduct writers, who defined their non-conformity as passive obedience and did not argue for disobedience, the pseudo-reform comedians equated disobedience and resistance with punishment and interpreted punishment as the means of ‘reforming’ superiors.

In what way, then, could a wife reform her libertine husband while observing the code of conduct? This question is vital for understanding the ingenious design and the controversial nature of The Careless Husband. The design is ingenious because Cibber, instead of asking the question directly, threw it to the audience by giving a simple answer: the immoral husband was reformed by the female protagonist Lady Easy's patience – she did nothing but fulfil her duty as an obedient wife.

Abstract: Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz's short story “Zerbin, or Recent Philosophy” (1776; “Zerbin oder die neuere Philosophie”) stands alongside Heinrich Leopold Wagner's The Childmurderess (1776; Die Kindermörderin) and Goethe's Urfaust as one of the most important literary depictions of infanticide of the German Storm and Stress (Sturm und Drang). “Zerbin,” which is often overlooked in English-language Lenz scholarship, features thematic similarities to his better-known dramas The Tutor (1774; Der Hofmeister) and The Soldiers (1776; Die Soldaten): gender inequality, economic disparities, Enlightenment philosophy, class differences, suicide, and the moral conflicts attending an individual's independence and obligation toward others. This translation makes “Zerbin” available to English audiences for the first time. It is accompanied by an introduction providing a biographical overview of Lenz, context for the story's composition and publication, and a summary of its key themes. It also situates “Zerbin” in historical and recent Lenz scholarship and makes a case for its enduring relevance. Explanatory notes ensure this translation's suitability for both literary scholars and general audiences.

Keywords: Zerbin, J. M. R. Lenz, Storm and Stress, Sturm und Drang, Enlightenment, infanticide in literature, suicide in literature

Storm and Stress

Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz (1751–1792) may be known to English readers, if he is known at all, as the disturbed protagonist of Georg Büchner's (1813–1837) novella Lenz (1839), which fictionalizes a period in Lenz's life when he suffered from mental illness and was cared for by pastor Johann Friedrich Oberlin (1740–1826). However, for a brief moment in time he was one of Germany's most daring and experimental authors.

Brussels, KBR (Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België), ms. 1828–30 is a composite codex comprised of two parts of differing date and origin: fols 1–35 and fols 36–109. The first part, whose main content is the Historia apostolica of Arator, dates to the tenth century and was written on the Continent. The latter part (fols 36–109) is thought to have been copied in England during the first half of the eleventh century and then moved to the Continent, where it received additions, to be eventually bound to the first part of the manuscript. Before the two parts of the codex were bound together, one – or more – twelfth-century Continental hands copied poetic compositions, sometimes fragmentary, on fols 1r and 35r–v, which mark the beginning and the end of the first part of the manuscript. The main contents of these two folios are eight Latin poems, which are connected in content and tone. Five of these poems celebrate the song of the nightingale, while the other three have different subjects but share a riddling quality.

The Manuscript

In the sixteenth century, Brussels, KBR, ms. 1828–30 belonged to the library of Anchin. Nothing is known about its former life. The first part of the codex contains the Historia apostolica of Arator, which begins on fol. 1v with the Epistola ad Florianum, accompanied by commentary glosses, which become less numerous after the initial folios. This part of the manuscript has been dated to the tenth century and, according to McKinlay, was copied in the abbey of Anchin.

In West Africa, the era of colonialism imposed new economic imperatives on Africans, compelling them to venture away from their homelands and engage in the cultivation of novel crops and income-generating activities. For many Yoruba migrant workers, this journey mirrored the pre-colonial trading routes of their forebears, leading them to settle in areas where their ancestors had established diaspora communities.

Under colonial rule, the long-standing tradition of Yoruba migration to regions like Ghana and Kano underwent a transformation. The advent of mechanized transportation, including bicycles, motor roads, and railways, facilitated their migration to locations such as Tamale in northern Ghana and Kano in northern Nigeria. These migrations were triggered by a variety of factors, including the colonial tax burden and the demand for cash crops. Some Yoruba migrants moved to Ghana and northern Nigeria for political or spiritual reasons, while others engaged in politically motivated migrations in protest against colonial taxation and forced labor.

In response to the structural changes in the colonial economy, Yoruba migrant workers provided vital economic and social services, securing a distinct niche within the economies of their host communities. They were key contributors to the development of modern technical skills, effectively serving as craftmasters of the colonial economy. The migrant profiles and experiences underscore the remarkable adaptability of Yoruba migration culture. This adaptability manifested as a duality of social integration within host communities, often taking the form of transnational connections, and diaspora identities that remained closely intertwined with the homeland for developmental purposes, particularly in the context of homeland politics.

Studies in Arthurian and Chronicle Traditions in Memory of Fiona Tolhurst: Quondam et Futurus is the last in a series of memorial projects in honour of Professor Fiona Tolhurst, who died unexpectedly in December 2021. Tolhurst pursued her undergraduate English literature degree at Rice University, graduating Magna cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1990. From Rice, she proceeded to a Mellon Fellowship and Princeton University for her graduate training, earning her MA in 1994 and PhD in 1995. Thereafter, Tolhurst worked briefly at Texas A&M before taking up a tenure-track position at Alfred University, becoming one of the youngest female faculty members to achieve Full Professor. At the time of her death in December 2021, Tolhurst was Full Professor and Chair of the Department of Language and Literature at Florida Gulf Coast University.

At about the same time that Tolhurst died, the Executive and Advisory Committee of the North American Branch of the International Arthurian Society was finalizing its 2022 programme for its Arthurian mini-conference at the larger Medieval and Renaissance Symposium at St. Louis University. Although the June 2022 Arthurian mini-conference was not originally designed this way, it quickly became dedicated to Fiona Tolhurst: it was the first of the three Tolhurst Tributes. The second tribute was a 2023 special issue of Arthuriana that published several of the Tolhurst Tribute papers from that June's St. Louis Medieval and Renaissance Symposium.

This chapter discuss how Iberia’s rural landscapes evolved under Roman period, shaping settlements, agriculture, and social structures through diverse territorial, economic, and cultural dynamics.

Franziska had slept longer than usual after her restless night, so that when she awoke at a late hour, the sun was already streaming brightly into her room. Everything seemed transformed, and her melancholy was gone along with the rain.

The two patients were also both improved and under the influence of the changed weather were clearly near recovery. The count was sitting up in his cot, and the door and window were open to let the light in everywhere. Franziska took advantage of this propitious turn of events, and spoke about the boat and the fiery eye that had pursued her into her dreams. And surely the boat must have brought her some news.

“It did, Franzl—a letter from Judith. She's coming, and Egon too. They’re both just waiting for better weather.” As the count said this, Franziska seemed to be thinking, and her color changed.

“You’re not pleased?”

“Oh, no, I am. How could I not be? You know what high regard I have for the countess—how much I love her. There were weeks and days that she might have made difficult for me—but she made them unforgettably happy. I’m truly and sincerely pleased, and if I was startled for a moment, it was only at the thought of being suddenly and unexpectedly torn away from this peace and quiet that I’ve grown so fond of.”