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1377672 results in Books

Page 432 of 68884

ALT 43: Afrifuturism
  • Edited by Ernest Cole
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • This issue of ALT provides content narratives, critical frames and theoretical constructs to read and critique writings in the emerging genre of Afrifuturism.

    In contrast to Afrofuturism, which explores the intersection of primarily Diaspora Black culture with Western technology and hence perpetuates, to some extent, a colonial mindset, Afrifuturism looks to imagine an African and global Black future beyond industrial, technological and capitalist terms, one rooted in African cosmologies and history. Contributions in this issue seek to interrogate, contest, and reformulate some aspects of its convention by suggesting alternate frames, shifts in focus, changing perspectives of history and points of view, new narrative methods, new epistemological structures, thematic concepts and pedagogical praxis that offer new ways of defining the African and for imagining alternative futures for African peoples. Together, they shed further light on the complexities of Afrifuturism and offers alternative models for thinking about the past and the future of African people, with important implications for diaspora and postcolonial literature.

Janáček's Sinfonietta
  • Nigel Simeone, Jiří Zahrádka
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • A definitive study of Janáček's Sinfonietta, tracing its creation, reception, and rise to international prominence.

    This book provides a musical 'biography' of Leoš Janáček's (1854-1928) most famous orchestral piece - his Sinfonietta - by analysing its sources, composition, reception history, recordings and musical component parts. The most up-to-date research on the genesis and performance history of the work, it considers in detail Janáček's orchestral writing, the inspiration and genesis of the Sinfonietta, a documentation of all the surviving sources for the work, the work's performance history during Janáček's lifetime and following his death until the end of the Second World War, including press reviews and relevant correspondence.

    The book also examines the growth in the worldwide popularity of the Sinfonietta. This evolved from cautious and hostile critical responses to the premiere recording in 1946 to its gradual acceptance as one of the key works of the 1920s, largely thanks to the advocacy of conductors whose work is considered in detail, alongside other significant recordings. Questions of performance, rehearsal, interpretation and the musical text are considered in a wide-ranging interview with the conductor Jakub Hrůša, and a concluding chapter provides a detailed commentary on the music itself. The book includes a valuable appendix describing the annotated scores used by conductors such as Otto Klemperer, František Neumann and Henry Wood, as well as a comprehensive discography.

Classical Myth in Medieval Ireland
  • Brigid Ehrmantraut
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • Explores medieval Irish interest in Classical mythology and historiography and how it could be situated within the framework of Christian salvation history.

    From allusions to the Olympians in seventh-century glosses to twelfth- and thirteenth-century vernacular adaptations of the epics of Vergil, Lucan, and Statius, Irish authors creatively re-imagined Greco-Roman mythology throughout the Middle Ages. They developed many strategies for situating the Classical deities within medieval Christian historiography, but rarely did they downplay or eliminate them. Some of these strategies, as this study reveals, reflected wider medieval European trends in Classical reception and mythography, whilst others were strikingly original and paralleled the ways in which Irish authors imagined the supernatural beings of their own pre-Christian past.

    This book examines why Irish authors were interested in the history and mythology of the ancient Mediterranean, and how Classical polytheism influenced their ideas about their own pagan past. It explores the ways in which depictions of Irish Otherworldly characters both shaped and were shaped by the gods and supernatural figures of the Classical adaptations. Based on close readings of texts such as the Irish version of Lucan, In Cath Catharda, this book argues that Classical scholarship in medieval Ireland was closely tied to medieval ideas about salvation history. Ultimately, it concludes that medieval Irish authors and audiences applied the same interpretive tools used for biblical exegesis to characters and events from Greco-Roman mythology, history, and literature, and to the supernatural inhabitants of pre-Christian Ireland alike.

Scottish Witchcraft Narratives and Tracts
  • Edited by Julian Goodare
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • This book is a scholarly edition of primary sources for witch-hunting and demonic possession in Scotland. It contains narratives of remarkable witchcraft prosecutions, and tracts expounding witchcraft theory.

    The narratives provide the intense emotional drama, eye-catching colour and nightmarish horror that made witchcraft such a compelling idea. The accused witches' own voices are sometimes heard, under the harrowing circumstances of interrogation under torture. Meanwhile, educated ministers and lawyers develop their theoretical ideas about witches and the Devil. Not every theorist agrees with the prosecutions, and doubts arise that would eventually lead witch-hunting to lose its credibility. The book's most detailed narrative concerns the Bargarran witches of 1697, in which seven witches were executed for the demonic possession of the 11-year-old Christian Shaw. The book shows how this was connected with the sensational witchcraft panic in 1692 at Salem, Massachusetts.

Institutions, Individuals and Modern British History
  • Essays in Honour of Sir David Cannadine
  • Edited by Jonathan Parry
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • This collection of essays celebrates the influence of David Cannadine and examines the place of Britain's political and cultural institutions, and the impact of individuals in their formation and evolution.

    The focus of this Festschrift is the steady making and remaking of British political and cultural institutions since 1800, and the importance of individual agency in that process. Such focus reflects the preoccupations of one of Britain's most prominent professional and public historians: Sir David Cannadine. Cannadine has written on the changing public face of the monarchy and on the impact of aristocratic sensibilities on modern British political culture. He has examined some of Britain's most well-established institutions, and interpreted the British empire as a project to sustain and promote social hierarchy. In Cannadine's writings on aristocracy, empire, institutional life and national historical memory, individuals appear as history-makers, but always situated in their social and cultural contexts.

    Essays in this volume draw inspiration from all these themes. Among the institutions discussed are Parliament, the Primrose League, the civil service, the London Library, the Institute of Historical Research and the National Portrait Gallery. The role of individuals in context features in essays on Benjamin Disraeli, Henry Drummond Wolff, Winston Churchill, the museum director Roy Strong and the National Park publicists Walter Greenwood and Laurie Lee. Tensions between intellectual work and institutional public service are uncovered in essays on Noel Annan, Geoffrey Crowther and Owen Chadwick. Authority (political, social, cultural) - its construction and re-construction - is the central concern guiding the essays. An introductory section discusses the many-sided work of Cannadine himself, both as a historian and as a servant of institutions.

Boundaries, Space and Register in Beethoven’s Piano Music
  • Malcolm Miller
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • Develops a new theory of space and register which will be essential reading for the music analyst, while offering radical new interpretations of canonical repertoire for the pianist, Beethoven scholar and informed listener.

    This is the first book to demonstrate the significance of registral structure and spatial narrative in Beethoven's oeuvre across his stylistic evolution. Introducing a far-reaching new analytical method and theoretical framework to a substantial corpus of piano music including sonatas, variations and bagatelles, the book extends conventional notions of register, Beethoven's handling of the highs and lows of pitch, to the broader concepts of pitch boundaries and the shaping of sonic space. Tracing theories of register from Schenker to the present-day, Miller moves beyond these approaches in his discussions of what he terms "spatial analysis". Proceeding from simple to more complex forms in a broadly chronological sequence, the author describes 'spatial narratives' of each work by means of cutting-edge computational diagrams and close-to-the text commentary.

    This book shows how linear patterns at extreme boundaries correlate with structural highpoints and divisions within musical forms, for instance sonata structures, forming striking large-scale connections within, and between, individual movements. Analysed are interactions of high and low boundaries through gestures such as registral bridges, registral shifts, and the distribution of climatic peaks and wide-spans. Equally central to Miller's study is the survey of keyboard instruments of Beethoven's day, keyboard choreography, and spatial expansion and contraction, reflecting pianistic virtuosity and expression. The mediation of structural and expressive aspects culminates in the physicality and spirituality of the late works interpreted with metaphorical symbolism.

Animal Symbolism in Hispanic Literature
  • From the Sixteenth Century to the Present Day
  • Edited by Lauren Beck, Ailén Cruz, Samantha Ruckenstein
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • Whether unicorns, phoenix, and chimera, or axolotl, jaguars, and giant snakes, animals have often had the human experience grafted onto them, in a conscious or unconscious reflection of a society's beliefs, ambitions, and inequalities.

    This volume seeks to explore different representations of real and imaginary animals across Hispanic literary production from the early modern era to the present day in order to gain a better understanding of how they serve as projections of human identities, knowledge, values, and vices. How do beasts enable the colonizing gaze and its reaches? How might beasts offer a means of decolonizing the Hispanophone world? And how do beasts articulate social unrest and a desire to resist inequality, poverty, and other ills of the modern world that collectively reinforce the status quo?

    Working to better understand how Spanish and Latin American authors, illustrators, and graphic artists have understood animals and beasts, and how they interacted with them, contributors from the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Spain shed light on the use of animals as symbols and emblems, as well as how they have been employed to construct others as monstrous and less human.

Vikings in Early Medieval Ireland
  • Church-Raiding, Politics and Kingship
  • Colmán Etchingham
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • Illuminates the dynamics of church raiding by Vikings in Ireland, relating this phenomenon to their wider objectives and political ambitions.

    This book offers the first comprehensive investigation of Viking raids on Irish churches from the late eighth to the early eleventh century, drawing on a wide range of sources, including Irish legal and literary material, archaeological and historical evidence and English and Frankish chronicles. Through a rigorous quantitative analysis of annalistic evidence, it sheds light on all aspects of this phenomenon: its chronological development, geographical distribution, immediate purpose and the broader context of Viking engagement with Gaelic Irish royal polities. Challenging the view that such raiding was merely a precursor to settlement and trade, it demonstrates that these attacks remained intrinsic to Viking activities throughout this period; it argues in particular that human captives-rather than metalwork or bullion-constituted the primary objective of church raids, with many held for ransom or sold into slavery. By tracing the evolution of random raids to strategically motivated attacks, it establishes church raiding as a deliberate instrument of political strategy, until the Battle of Clontarf (1014) marked a turning point in Viking-Irish relations.

Criminal Justice and Peace-making in Early Modern Italy
  • Governing Hatred, c.1500-c.1700
  • Paolo Broggio
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • An exceptional study of private peace pacts in early modern Italy that challenges earlier notions of the place of these private agreements in the development of the courts and state.

    Private settlements were among the most prominent yet least conspicuous aspects of justice in early modern Europe. Traditionally seen as incompatible with our notions of judicial modernity, these settlements reflected a deeply ingrained culture of negotiation and transaction-one that often viewed resolution by litigation with extreme scepticism. However, rather than existing in opposition to sovereign justice, this practice of private settlement coexisted with the implacable authority of rulers who alternated between exemplary punishments and royal pardons to maintain social harmony.

    In this English translation of his seminal study, Governare l'odio. Pace e giustizia criminale nell'Italia moderna (secoli XVI-XVII), Paolo Broggio shows how private settlements were far from being a purely benevolent mechanism of reconciliation, often carrying unsettling similarities to institutional coercion and even acts of revenge. Judicial authorities are revealed as not only tolerating these private agreements but shown to have actively facilitated and manipulated them as a means of exerting their control within a community. Religious justifications further lent these agreements a veneer of moral obligation, masking the underlying pressures at play. Through detailed examples such as proceedings in the Papal States, Broggio explores how courts encouraged settlements not only to manage caseloads but to also reinforce existing social hierarchies and power structures.

    This expansive study re-examines the role of peace settlements in early modern justice, revealing them as a fundamental yet coercive tool of governance rather than a simple, private, alternative to judicial authority.

Weird Music: Reading John Ireland and Arthur Machen
  • Eric McElroy
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • Using John Ireland's fascination with Arthur Machen as case study, this book challenges our perception of the correspondence between music and literature in twentieth-century Britain.

    The composer John Ireland (1879-1962) declared repeatedly that no one could understand his music until they had first read the work of his favourite writer, Arthur Machen (1863-1947). This book is the first study to take Ireland at his word. Revolving around Machen's classification as a founding figure of 'weird fiction', it uses weird aesthetics as an interpretative lens with which to understand Ireland's notoriously cryptic life and music. Its four chapters deal respectively with Machen's and Ireland's parallel experience of fin-de-siècle London; with their engagement with the English pastoral tradition; with their explorations of weird art's relationship with eroticism; and with unsettling implications of alternative historiography.

    The resulting portrait reveals Ireland to be one of Britain's pre-eminent 'weird artists', placing Ireland in the aesthetic context with which he wished to be associated. It therefore fills a significant gap in British musicology, while at the same time contributing to a growing appreciation of Machen as a major figure in British culture, one whose influence exceeds far beyond the literary sphere to which he is traditionally confined. Using Ireland's fascination with Machen as its case study, this book makes a timely and necessary connection between the literary weird and its musical doppelgänger, enriching and challenging our perception of the correspondence between music and literature in twentieth-century Britain.

Charlemagne in the Francophone World and Occitania
  • Edited by Philip E Bennett, Marianne Ailes
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • Explores the transmission and reception of the medieval legends of Charlemagne in the literatures of the French-speaking areas of France, Burgundy and England, and Occitania.

    The spread of Charlemagne's myth after his death was even more extensive than the empire he ruled during his life. This volume turns to the birthplace of many of these myths, and to the languages of the North (langue d'oïl) and South (langue d'oc) of that land. The first chapter traces the presence and development of his legend the diverse political and cultural areas south of the Loire generally known as Occitania. The two following chapters analyse the often contradictory representations of Charlemagne in northern French-speaking regions in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries, through a careful selection of chansons de geste and chronicles. Using ethnographic theories, they consider his roles as warrior, secular ruler and conduit to the divine. The fourth and fifth chapters examine the exploitation of those images among readers of French in England and in French-speaking provinces ruled by the Dukes of Burgundy. Finally, the epilogue traces the continued vibrancy of Charlemagne stories in popular and high culture through to the twentieth century.

Textiles and Textile Imagery in Early Medieval English Literature
  • Traditions and Contexts
  • Maren Clegg Hyer
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • Identifies and analyses a wide range of textile metaphors and imagery from peace-weaving in Beowulf to word-crafting in Elene.

    Textile metaphors, or metaphors involving the process and product of cloth-making, occur widely in literary traditions around the world. The same phenomenon holds true among the peoples of early medieval England. As close observers of a long and culturally significant textile tradition, pre-Conquest English writers drew upon their close familiarity with spinning and weaving to create a wide range of metaphorical textile images in both Old English and Anglo-Latin literature.

    This book examines early medieval English textile imagery in close detail, situating it within its cultural and material contexts and addressing the ways in which lived experience informed these metaphors, whether inherited, invented, or both. It explores imagery linked to themes of creation, peace, death, magic, and fate in a comprehensive variety of texts, including Beowulf and Elene, Anglo-Latin letters and riddles, the Exeter Book riddles, prognostics, penitentials, hagiographic and homiletic texts, medical collections, and glosses. Overall, it demonstrates how an understanding of this important body of textile metaphors alters and shapes the ways in which we read the literature of this period.

Skaldic Poetry as Christian Propaganda
  • Honouring Bishop Guðmundr Arason in Fourteenth-Century Iceland
  • Margaret Clunies Ross
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • A detailed literary study of fourteenth-century poetry composed in honour of a controversial thirteenth-century bishop.

    Vernacular poetry was a powerful influence in fourteenth-century Icelandic elite literary culture, even to the extent of providing the means of elevating a local bishop, Guðmundr Arason, to sainthood. Three Icelandic poets, Abbots Arngrímr Brandsson and Árni Jónsson, and Lawman Einarr Gilsson, composed impressive encomia of Guðmundr, with the intention of recording the holy bishop's sanctity in the language of contemporary religious devotion and to persuade Church authorities in both Scandinavia and the wider Christian world to canonize him. While the local campaign ultimately failed to sway the Catholic Church, it did succeed in producing a significant corpus of vernacular religious poetry, unmatched in combining the traditional diction and metres of Old Norse skaldic verse with the vernacular poetics of affective piety and Christian hermeneutics.

    This important group of poems is examined here for the first time as literary works. The manuscript context of the Guðmundr poetry is investigated in the first chapter. The next three chapters offer a detailed analysis of the poems themselves while the final chapters situate the Guðmundr poetry within the milieu of the vernacular learning that flourished particularly in mid-fourteenth-century Icelandic bishoprics and monasteries. They also explore the relationship between contemporary prose sagas of Guðmundr Arason and the poetry composed in his honour, which, it is argued, offers figural interpretations of the substance of the prose texts.

Slave Owner and Paternalist
  • Sir William Young (1749-1815) in England and the Caribbean
  • P.J. Marshall
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • An account of the life and ideas of Sir William Young, a leading opponent of the abolition of slavery, who used the rhetoric of paternalism to argue that slavery could be ameliorated to become a benign system.

    This book charts the life and ideas of Sir William Young, owner of enslaved people on Antigua, St Vincent and Tobago and a leading opponent of the abolition of slavery. It outlines how he used the rhetoric of paternalism to argue that slavery could be ameliorated to become a benign system, akin to the paternalism which he worked towards in rural England, and contrasts his aims width his failure to implement them. It considers his place in the British elite - country gentleman, active back-bench MP and a man of learning - and examines his activity in attempting to improve conditions for the rural English poor. It explores his eventual financial failure, which included the loss of both his West Indian and his English estates, and his last years as Governor of Tobago. William Young was a considerable figure in both the world of the Caribbean, source of his wealth, and the world of London and the English countryside, where he spent that wealth. Young's doctrines of paternalism, unreal and self-serving as they may have been, were widely accepted by the British upper classes.

Beowulf and Grettis saga
  • From England to Iceland, 1016–1219
  • Richard North
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • Investigates the relationship between two texts separated by hundreds of years and nearly two thousand miles.

    In the saga, Grettir fights a giant who wields a hepti-sax; in the poem, Beowulf uses a hæft-mēce on Grendel's mother. These two unique words for "hafted blade" appear to be related. Can the same be said for the works that surround them? This book says yes, arguing not that the weapons have a common origin, nor that their likeness is a coincidence, but that Grettis saga has borrowed from Beowulf.

    The case for a textual loan begins in the context of England's connection with Denmark in the reign of Cnut the Great (1016-35). This book argues that Cnut took an interest in Scyld and the Scyldings of Beowulf and that his skalds transformed these names into "Skjǫldr" and the "Skjǫldungar". The Beowulf manuscript is placed in Lichfield in 1017, with the suggestion that it was commissioned by Eadric Streona as a gift for Earl Thorkell of Skåne. It is proposed that in 1159 a copy of Beowulf was brought from Lincoln to Iceland to serve the interests of a family that claimed descent from Skjǫldr, that in the 1180s the poem influenced Skjǫldunga saga, and that in the 1190s Beowulf went north to Þingeyrar abbey, where Oddr the Monk, author of Grettis saga, used it to enhance Grettir's fights with Glámr and the trolls of Bárðardalr. This is a daring book that sheds new light on the circulation of Beowulf, on questions of dating and patronage, and on the authorship of Grettis saga.

Holst and the Winds
  • A Legacy
  • Jon Ceander Mitchell
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • A detailed exploration of the works for winds by Gustav Holst, the renowned composer of The Planets, aided by musical analysis and rich historical documentation.

    Gustav Holst (1874 - 1934) was an English composer and music educator whose work spanned four decades. Though he remains most widely known for his orchestral suite The Planets, his works for band or wind ensemble are also performed frequently, yet have rarely been studied in such systematic detail. They vary widely in genre (from chamber music to military and brass-band works) and in form (from sonata cycle to suite to symphonic poem).

    As author Jon Mitchell shows, Holst's works for winds give plentiful evidence of the many influences on him, both musical (including Wagnerian romanticism, English folk song, and Baroque polyphony) and nonmusical (e.g., Sanskrit literature, William Morris, and Walt Whitman). The book gives careful attention to these influences and to the evolution of the works through analysis of sketches and full manuscript scores.

    Holst and the Winds makes use of a wide array of primary sources, including Holst's personal papers, written correspondence, programs, and periodical reviews. Music educators, performers, conductors, and anybody who loves Holst's music will enjoy the insights provided herein.

Music in Fifteenth-Century Bohemia
  • Between Reform and Identity Building
  • Edited by Hana Vlhová-Wörner, Jan Ciglbauer
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • A long-needed reassessment of the musical culture of fifteenth-century Bohemia, liberating it from nineteenth- and twentieth-century nationalist agendas and reassessing its position in European music history.

    What was musical culture like in a country in fifteenth-century Central Europe where theologians tried to restore the values of the early church--including through musical practices--only to be branded "heretical"?

    Bohemian theologians tried to return to Christianity's "roots" by promoting frequent bread-and-wine communion for all (including children) and by encouraging lay participation in worship through translations into the vernacular. Unlike in many other European lands, monophonic chant and sacred songs were primarily used (though some advanced contemporary polyphonic settings circulated as well). These religious and musical developments formed part of the seedbed that would develop more fully during the European Reformation through the work of Martin Luther and others.

    Music in Fifteenth-Century Bohemia: Between Reform and Identity Building contains essays on liturgy, song, and the influence of the Hussite movement. The book resists both nationalistically tinged narratives and the marginalization that has long resulted from an emphasis on the disparities between Czech and Western European musical traditions. One chapter demonstrates how a fifteenth-century song was employed in the revival of Czech culture in the nineteenth century.

    Taken as a whole, the essays in this important collection illustrate the distinctive and often effective ways in which fifteenth-century Czech culture dealt with the dichotomy between religious reform and cultural identity.

Destroyers, Naval Culture and British Identity
  • Jayne Friend
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • An overview of what destroyers were and how their capacity for heroic deeds captured the popular imagination.

    Destroyers, first developed over the course of the late 1880s and 1890s, were fast, manoeuverable warships intended to escort larger vessels and defend them against a wide range of threats. In Britain their speed, nimbleness and capacity for heroic deeds captured the popular imagination, and they became symbolic vessels, encapsulating the fortitude and ingenuity which contemporaries felt characterised the British navy. Based on extensive original research, this book provides both an overview of destroyers' operational roles and how these developed over time and also a detailed examination of destroyers' place within British culture, society and identity. Considering a wide range of sources including news reporting, pageantry, literature, film, art and more, the book reveals how the destroyer as symbol was used as propaganda, fitted in to popular, civic and artistic cultures and affected naval policy, British people's morale and outlook, and international views of Britain's naval power. One striking example of the depth of British people's attachment to destroyers was the scheme during the Second World War for individual towns to each adopt their own destroyer, a scheme which achieved astonishing success, with many small towns raising huge sums sufficient to fund entirely the building of their own destroyer.

Medieval Commentary and Exegesis
  • Interdisciplinary Perspectives
  • Edited by Cosima Clara Gillhammer, Audrey Southgate
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • Interdisciplinary study of the medieval commentary tradition, covering a range of sources from the Wycliffite Bible and French Marian Lyric to John Lydgate and Anselm of Canterbury.

    Textual and material survivals from across medieval Europe testify to a pervasive commentary culture on Scripture. The biblical text becomes a central object of explication and comment, generating a variety of interpretive texts and genres. But precisely because it is so ubiquitous, medieval commentary can also prove elusive, requiring perspectives from different disciplines. How can we define commentary, and how does it develop and function in different linguistic and geographical areas? What role do commentaries play in the formation and reformulation of personal and national identities across the period? How can contemporary scholars best approach this fundamental genre of the medieval world?

    Exploring these among many other questions, this volume revises and refines our current understanding of the intellectual, cultural, and literary dynamics of the medieval commentary tradition. Contributors consider matters such asauthority, patronage, readership, textual genesis, and material contexts of commentary, as well as the absences and lacunae in our knowledge, and how we might take these into account from today's perspective. Expansive in their chronological, methodological, and disciplinary scope, the chapters here illuminate the origins and forms of commentary from Late Antiquity to the late medieval period in Western Europe, extending across Hebrew, Latin and vernacular texts, and examine a wide range of literary and cultural artefacts, from single-authored works to manuscript compilations.

Science and the Romantic Vision in Early Nineteenth-Century Opera
  • Mark A. Pottinger
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 June 2026
  • An interdisciplinary study of how early nineteenth-century science and opera articulated a transnational romantic vision of harmony between self and nature, and how this ideal gave way to mid-century realism and social conflict.

    The end of the Napoleonic era ushered in a transnational outlook for Europe, where the traditional boundaries that separated people, ideas and things were blurred in favour of a unified and cosmopolitan vision for society. The result of this shift created a 'romantic vision', a new way to perceive the imagined potential of the self in correspondence with the infinite reality of the natural world. Early nineteenth-century scientists such as Alexander von Humboldt (earth sciences), Franz Anton Mesmer (mesmerism), Johann Wilhelm Ritter (galvanism) and Frédéric Dubois d'Amiens (hysteria) are explored in this context to see how the romantic vision was reflected in their work and received by society. Seeing opera as a confluence of all the arts and encompassing a similar romantic vision, this book examines three paradigmatic operas that contend with the forces of nature: Weber's Der Freischütz (1821), Meyerbeer's Robert le diable (1831) and Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor (1835). In these three highly successful works from separate operatic traditions, the unseen, inner world of nature reveals a wholeness of the self with the divine, showcasing a healthy optimism for society.

    The book concludes by discussing Gounod's Faust (1859), a work that highlights the struggle of an early-16th-century scientist and places it against the context of the social revolutions of 1848 and the seminal publication of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species in 1859. In this post-1850 era, the potential of the unseen reality of nature is cast aside and replaced with the certainty of the everyday-the violence of man against man, the struggle for power and the destruction of nature itself.

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