Sir.

For some very good Reasons, which yet there is no need of mentioning, I have addressed certain Letters to you; and joyn’d you with my Excellent friend Dr. John Woodward in a small Collection of Curiosa Americana, to the making whereof I devoted near a fortnight a Little before the sailing of the fleet from hence, as far as my many other Employments would give me Leave.

I could have been glad I could have provided a Richer Entertainment for you; But your Candour will accept of these mean things because they were the best, that I could in so little time as I could allow myself to be master of. I despair not that if I live, I may annually entertain you with something or other from these parts of the World that a Secretary of the Royal Society may judge it proper to take some notice of. And tho’ I cannot presume so much upon my own merits as to dream of being thought worthy to be admitted a member of that more than illustrious Body but rather to belong to the order of the fratres Ignorantiae, yet I will here venture to subscribe the Promise which your Candidates make at their admission; That I will Endeavor to promote the good of the Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge.

As Peter the Venerable contrasted the northern barbarians of old with the latest and greatest threat to the Christian Church, the Arabs, he may not have recognised the prescience of his own words. The world of the early twelfth century was in the midst of seismic changes both materially and intellectually, and in no place was this more evident than in the map of Latin Christendom. The north, east and even the far west had opened up to the Latin world, not only through the sort of colonial expansion described by Bartlett, but also through a radical restructuring of world geography. And although the expansion of the Latin world was a process already well under way by the turn of the twelfth century, it is especially from the last quarter of the eleventh century that Latin authors begin to respond to these developments. From at least the 1070s with Adam of Bremen's Descriptio insularum aquilonis, authors of the Latin world were moved to describe these regions beyond the boundaries of the Carolingian Empire. Likewise for the east, from the 1102–3 pilgrimage of Saewulf, authors began to recognise a greater variety of Christians who lived there, a development that would only intensify in the second half of the century. From the early twelfth century these developments increasingly found their way into standard European geography and historiography: Honorius Augustodunensis included Norway in Germania inferior, and along with Hugh of Saint Victor carved out a new area in Europe north of the Danube.

The conflation of the secular and spiritual aspects of the presentation of Charlemagne in the chansons de geste is evident from the earliest surviving poem in which he appears and recurs in a recognizably similar form in the poetic accounts of his death and burial. Karl-Heinz Bender makes the prototype of the Oxford manuscript of the Chanson de Roland, which he dates to the late eleventh century, the first text in which Charlemagne is specifically ‘God's elect’. In the Oxford manuscript of the Chanson de Roland he appears in majesty at the start of the council scene in which Blancandrin and the Saracen emissaries from Marsile approach him. He is seen seated on a golden throne, under a pine tree and next to an eglantine bush. Although the poet is not precise about its type, the pine tree may be of the Mediterranean kind: an umbrella pine offering shelter and acting as a form of awning over a dais. However, its broader anthropological significance is in the straightness of its trunk acting as a ‘polar’ link between earth and heaven. The eglantine or wild rose has a more immediate Christian significance, because of its symbolic association with the Virgin Mary. Such is the emperor's personal presence, conflated from his secular imperial and spiritual persona, that no one coming to his court has to ask who or where the king is. This is in sharp contrast to the other iconic king, Arthur, who seems to demonstrate a lack of self-evident kingliness.

Each chapter of this book has read the motifs of individual character types within their sub-generic spaces, observing that their reiterations generate productive tension for our reading of gender and genre structures of romance. My focus has been on distinct sub-genres rather than the bleed between them, the broad, generic intertextual resonances that link one magical woman to another. But more often than not, romance folds these patterns into each other, rendering modern scholarship's divisions between one character and another anachronisms; the modern impulse to disambiguate texts and contexts may therefore occlude meaning found in this intertextually rich space. This book proposes a reparative approach to this trend by asking: what happens if we look at broad, genre-wide expectations of magical femininity in romance by reading across textual and narrative borders? How might the disparate points of tension, anticipation, and revelation coalesce when read intertextually? One route through this broad web of narrative influences and connections is to follow the footsteps of a single character throughout her different incarnations – and for this, there is none more appropriate, nor generically revealing, than Morgan le Fay.

Of all romance's characters that ought, by virtue of their familiarity, to be read through anticipation and expectation, perhaps the most obvious is Morgan le Fay. Viewed by modern scholarship and popular medievalism alike as romance's quintessential magical woman, Morgan embodies aspects of all the previously discussed models of magical femininity in her various iterations – healer, exotic queen, fairy mistress, monster-mother – and her character synthesises many of the generic motifs and points of expectation discussed throughout the previous chapters. Morgan therefore serves as a cipher for romance's meditations on magical women's power and an embodiment of the tensions and desires these characters reflect.

The oratorio Tikkun Ḥatzot (Midnight Vigil) by Mordecai Seter (1914– 1997), setting a libretto compiled by the poet and novelist Mordecai Tabib (1910–1979), was hailed as an unprecedented masterpiece of Israeli art music at its premiere in 1963, and its critical stature has only risen in subsequent years. It is an ambitiously large-scale work, calling for one soloist, three mixed choirs—often in dialogue with each other—and a large orchestra, sparingly and strategically used to enhance dramatic climaxes. The work presents an inner psychological drama within the soul of one individual (the Worshipper) during a solitary prayer vigil at an empty synagogue. As he performs the Kabbalistic rite known as the midnight vigil, the Worshipper experiences a series of visions—starting with the tribulations of exile and culminating in the promised salvation of the Jewish people and their celebrations at the rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem. The work ends as the Worshipper's visions fade, and he returns to reality as the congregation enters the synagogue to begin the morning prayers.

The work presents a powerful narrative, rising from the depths of grief and despair to the heights of triumphant joy. These sensations are not just those of one individual; the Worshipper is clearly an archetype, a Jewish Everyman, whose visions represent the emotions that had stirred Jews through centuries of Diaspora and that continue to inspire Jews today, in Israel and in the Diaspora alike. Ronit Seter therefore suggested that the work “expresses (or even serves) the [Zionist] melting pot ideology, identifying the foundation of the State of Israel with the transition from slavery to salvation.”

The people who speak this language [i.e., Welsh], who read this literature, who own this history, who inherit these traditions, who venerate these names, who created and sustain these marvellous religious organisations, the people forming three fourths of the people of Wales – have they not a right to say to this small propertied class [i.e., the gentry] … We are the Welsh people and not you? This country is ours and not yours.

The Rev. Henry Richard's stirring 1868 speech to the electors of Merthyr and Aberdare encapsulated a powerful vision of Welsh nationhood embodied in the image of a Welsh-speaking, nonconformist and politically radical ‘gwerin’ populace. Responding to the influence that had been exerted by this rhetoric two generations later, the south Wales squire Herbert M. Vaughan lamented that, branded as ‘“aliens in birth, in religion, in politics and in language,” the Welsh gentry are ruled out as having any part in Wales as a nation’.

Padhraig Higgins notes of late eighteenth-century Ireland that public ‘celebrations and commemorations, with the rich array of symbols, imagery and gesture employed by participants, were important occasions for the expression of patriotic understandings of “the nation”’. This chapter analyses coming of age celebrations in Wales as comparable occasions through which Welsh and British identities and patriotism were expressed and negotiated.

A woman of letters

The fiction writer, playwright, and essayist Júlia Lopes de Almeida (1862– 1934) was one of the most important female Brazilian writers of her time; however, most historians of literature have forgotten her name for decades since her death. An active figure in the cultural scene both of the capital (Rio de Janeiro) and the state of São Paulo (the richest in the country), the writer worked with several periodicals, some of them aimed explicitly at women, others with a wider reach and more varied themes. Her published texts shared pages with renowned writers such as Machado de Assis (1839–1908), Artur Azevedo (1855–1908), and Carmen Dolores (1852–1910), all of whom were also fiction writers, playwrights, and chroniclers.

One of Almeida's most enduring collaborations was with O País (Rio de Janeiro, 1884–1934), a republican daily founded at a ‘time of intense political unrest’, which encompassed the anti-slavery and republican movements.2 Between 1884 and 1912, she had almost 500 fictional and non-fictional texts published in this newspaper: chronicles, letters, short stories, children's literature, and an epistolary novel. Her contributions were irregular at first, interspersed with long breaks, but later became a regular, weekly feature in the paper. Her texts were almost always printed on the front page; most were signed with her own name, and just over 100 were written under a pseudonym. The texts were often also reproduced by other periodicals, an indication of how well they were received.

In this chapter, we will analyse some of the confrontations and conflicts experienced by the writer in her efforts to remain an active intellectual in a markedly male environment.

Put on the spot tasked with developing an architectural concept for a Chinese fashion business on the grounds of an old warehouse in Berlin, Greta, the protagonist of Tatjana Turanskyj's film Eine flexible Frau (A Flexible Woman, 2010) launches into an absurd and convoluted speech riddled with empty phrases that echo the lingo of what Richard Florida has termed “the creative class.” In urgent need of employment, she stumbles and almost trips as she gives her jumbled pitch. Instead of trying to stay on task, Greta appears to choose to use her speech to convey her thinly disguised desperation, aggravation, and frustration. Her expression is one of veiled anger performed and perceived as craziness—madness.

After struggling to close the zipper on her dress, Ines Conradi, a business consultant and the main character in Maren Ade's 2016 film Toni Erdmann, spontaneously decides to host a birthday brunch with her colleagues at work as a “naked party,” claiming it is a team-building exercise. She opens the door naked for her surprised guests with her typical stern, almost angry-looking face. Nobody openly questions or confronts her, yet everyone seems deeply uncomfortable. Ines hosts the party naked, frustrated, and angry but also slightly amused and defiant.

Introduction

As legal rights concerning gender equity and reproductive rights have come under renewed attack in parts of the Global North, this essay provides reflections on women's longstanding fight for bodily autonomy and mental competency by highlighting a story that remains as relevant today as it was one hundred years ago. In 1922, four years after German women obtained the right to vote, Expressionist writer Bess Brenck- Kalischer (1878–1933) published her narrative “Die Knabin: Aus einem Brief” (The Boygirl: From a Letter). The story appeared as part of Die Mühle: Eine Kosmee (The Mill: A Cosmos), an avantgarde collection of twenty-six self-contained yet loosely connected episodes of Expressionist poetry and prose. The title of the narrative captures, to some extent, the very essence of Weimar Germany, a time generally known for its progressive stance on social and cultural norms, its loosening of traditional gender roles, and its experimentations with sexuality: As a feminization of the word “Knabe” (lad, youngling), the term “Knabin” typically refers to the “new” urban, educated and/or professional women in Weimar Germany who started blurring traditional gender lines by wearing more masculine clothes or cutting their hair short.

In 1949 Beaumont Newhall published The History of Photography to accompany the similarly named exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. One way to read that exhibition and its corresponding book is to consider them a retrospective of the 100 years since Louis Daguerre made his photographic process for the daguerreotype known to the world in 1839 (15–18). Over the course of that century, the technology had modernized and gone from being practiced by scientists and other professionals to becoming a medium much more commonly used by non-specialists to register the events of their lives. Photography had become an accessible medium for recording history and creating art. Many artists had begun to experiment with the medium, and yet photography was still not seen at that time as an independent field of art by many. Newhall's exhibition would change this (Phillips 33). Having a dedicated exhibition in a canonical museum in New York confirmed photography's status as an independent field of art to many. The book that accompanied the exhibition became a portable unit of information that could then be purchased by teachers and their students all throughout the United States and the rest of the world. The history of the technology and photography's different uses and movements help to consolidate much information regarding the role of photography in our modern world and to chart its evolution. The over 300 photographs that the book contains is an important archive that anyone who is interested in photography can study to learn about many of the experts in the field and its artistic movements. However, from the perspective of the study of Latin American photography, this book has a clear shortcoming. Its coverage of Latin American photography is practically non-existent.

In summarizing John Ireland's life and work towards the end of an article for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Fiona Richards, the most comprehensive scholar of Ireland studies to date, reiterates many of the contradictions that continue to characterize his critical reception:

One encounters this subtly exculpatory sentiment repeatedly in Ireland studies in which the words discreetly beseech the reader to excuse our inability to encapsulate the subject under discussion; the topic, with its idiosyncratic ‘complex system of personal musical symbols and images’, is simply too nebulous to capture. Richards's recourse to Ireland's dualities in demonstrating this trend is typical and accords with the perception of Ireland as embodying the features of a so-called archetypal Romantic artist, however much of an ‘epistemological bucket-with-a-hole’ that denomination may be. The literature is full of references to Ireland's ambiguity. His stylistic fluctuations mark him anachronistically as ‘an uncurable [sic] and unashamed romantic’ yet nevertheless a ‘modern’ one. The insecurity and indulgence which some critics have associated with romantic artists is likewise perceived as balanced in Ireland by a ‘firm musical invention’ that is ‘clear-cut and disciplined’. From the opposite extreme, Trevor Hold considered Ireland to be in fact an ‘anti-romantic’, only to write later in the same article that, in his attachment to a heritage of romantic poetry and his predilection for autobiographical reference, Ireland is perhaps ‘the compleat romantic song-composer’.