This chapter delves into the witchcraft phenomenon within the Yoruba cosmological framework. The objective is to examine the influence of the sociocultural-religious background on the witchcraft beliefs of Pentecostal pastors, encompassing beliefs, rituals, religious symbols, and spiritual experiences. It commences by providing a succinct historical overview of the Yoruba people and their cultural heritage. A dedicated segment within this chapter scrutinises Àjẹ́ witchcraft in Yorubaland, elucidating its cosmological and anthropological contexts while briefly exploring the disabilities often associated with the phenomenon.

Itan ati Alọ, The Yoruba Cosmogonic Myths

Mythology envelops every aspect of various world religions, including Christianity, Islam, and the Yoruba religion. Within the Yoruba belief system, there exists a fusion of Itan (historical myths), Alọ (folklore, traditions, artifacts), and diverse aesthetics that define the people, culture, language, and religious depth. The Yoruba view their historical accounts as factual events and their folklore as symbolic puzzles. The significance of these folklores varies across different Yoruba communities. According to Marcella Buonanno, myths serve as a fundamental element in a society's religious practices, shaping the essence of religion itself. The Yoruba, therefore, through their embrace of religious narratives and folktales, as articulated by Ògúnadé, ascribe meaning to the unknown through the familiar.

In order for myths to be established, a specific desire must accompany them. These myths serve as enduring and influential invisible tools used to rationalize human actions. Without the longing for individuals to cling to their beliefs, there would be no necessity to craft narratives around the existence of the divine beings they worship, the tales of bravery and inspiration, accounts of conquered realms and divisions, and narratives of valiant warriors and the fallen angels as portrayed in the Bible.

The exhibition Narrating Violence: A Comic Exhibition was on display in the Viennese Sigmund Freud Museum from October 22, 2023, until April 8, 2024. The museum opted to organize this exhibition for several reasons. Firstly, the museum's annual 2023 theme was “violence,” with a focus on sexualized violence. Second, the museum team, Monika Pessler (director), Peter Nömaier (business director), and Daniela Finzi (research director), sought to explore new media within the special exhibition space of the newly renovated museum as an alternative to the book-based permanent exhibition. Thirdly, the team found the comics medium particularly intriguing for engaging with the theme of violence— above all, of course, from a psychoanalytic perspective.

The team commissioned me with the curation of the exhibition— together with Daniela Finzi, who is an expert in psychoanalysis. From the outset, it was important to assemble a diverse selection (e.g., various perspectives, intersectional questions, different carrier media; see below) and adopt an approach that could effectively explore both the topic of violence and the medium of comics while simultaneously reflecting on how to exhibit violence in its various forms and manifestations (e.g., acts of physical violence, but also forms of structural and epistemic violence; see below). Aligned with the museum's interests, the exhibition was organized into four sections: sexualized and gender-based violence, coming of age, Shoah, and, finally, war, fleeing, and migration. It displayed works from over thirty international artists producing Underground Comix and so-called alternative comics. The exhibition also had a small “creative corner” where visitors could reflect on their experience of the exhibition through drawing and writing. A catalog documents the exhibition and offers in-depth information. The following reflections outline the exhibition concept and provide brief analyses of selected exhibits.

We should be angry

Maya Angelou's words capture the central premise of this book: women's anger is not only justified but essential as a force for change. To use it, Angelou proposes, we should get creative in art and active in our communities. Yet, anger remains one of the most stigmatized and misunderstood emotions in women's lives. While the medical field has long examined anger as a response to trauma (e.g., as a result of war or violence), other areas of women's lived experience that provoke anger have received far less attention. These include relationships at home and in the workplace, inequities in the health system, and systemic injustices in politics.

Austrian author Marlene Streeruwitz has written one of the first Covid-19 novels, So ist die Welt geworden (This is what has become of the world, 2021), in which the protagonist Betty, a writer, depicts her anger about life in quarantine: “Sie war wutend. ‘Betty ist bose,’ sagte sie zu ihrem Spiegelbild. Sie war das Leben allein gewohnt gewesen. Sie hatte sich fur dieses Leben entschieden. Und jetzt muste sie so leben. Und alle anderen auch” (She was angry. “Betty is mad,” she said to her reflection in the mirror. She had been used to living alone.

Correspondence from W. J. Duthoit to A. A. Harding, October 3, 1937

At the time of this handwritten correspondence, William James Duthoit (1885–1965) was professor of instrumentation at the Royal Military School of Music at Kneller Hall. Albert Austin Harding (1880–1958) was director of bands at the University of Illinois. This letter emphasizes the fact that the greatest similarity between the British military band and the American concert band, instrumentation, is also the greatest difference.

16 Cludleigh Road

Twickenham

Middlesex

3rd October 1937

Dear Mr. Harding,

I have been in correspondence with Mr. Ralph Hawkes recently with reference to some opinions expressed by you about my Military Band arrangements. The letter which was received from the manager of Boosey & Hawkes New York branch about his conversations with you, an extract of which was forwarded to me, commented rather unfairly about my work. Mr. Ralph Hawkes assured me that the remarks were not intended to be read too badly and he asked me to write personally to you.

On your last visit to England we had a very pleasant two hours talk on the American Contest Bands, and your requirements I made a particular note of. I might say here that in all my arrangements I have considered you and the large American bands first. One part of our conversation dealt with the E flat Alto and Bass Clarinet. You particularly impressed upon me to score the 1st Bassoon for the E flat Alto Clarinet and the 2nd Bassoon part for the Bass Clarinet as your Bassoon players were weak. This has been done according to your wishes.

It is difficult to know precisely when Gower began work on various versions of what eventually became the Vox Clamantis, but assuredly the accession of Richard II in July of 1377 focused and intensified his labors. The poem's initial purpose, to review the state of the realm, particularly in respect to the clergy, was reconceived to provide counsel for the young king Richard. The poet's first major work, the Mirour de l’Omme, directed to the Anglo-Norman-speaking world of Richard's predecessor, his grandfather Edward III, had covered much of the same material, albeit in a manner unsuited to Gower's new aim and audience. The poet may have thought that Richard, born in Bordeaux and affecting Parisian French throughout his life, would likely not have been impressed by the language of the Mirour. Latin would have recommended itself for many reasons, not least among them its prestige as the language of learning and serious literature. Possibly, too, Latin appealed as best suited to the instructional posture Gower adopts, in the manner of the influential pseudo-Aristotelean Secretum Secretorum, in which Aristotle, in Latin, schools the young Alexander in the essentials of statecraft. The appropriateness of Latin for such a poem would not have been lost on Sir Simon Burley, under whose tutelage the ten-year-old king was, when Gower was composing the Vox.

The above, from a letter sent by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II to the rulers of Europe in 1241, provides an interesting indication of his perception of various of the regions of medieval Europe. Many are, not surprisingly, mentioned here, though Frederick's descriptions of the insular dominions bordering the English kingdom of Henry III (reigned 1216–72) are particularly notable. For Frederick, Scotland is here associated with its marshes; Wales, or perhaps more so the Welsh, are noted for their agility, and Ireland for its ferocity. Of course, the emperor had visited none of these lands. Hence his descriptions were the product of hearsay filtering back to his imperial court. Yet, they do not fall far off their mark. Indeed, the kings of England had been, and would continue to be, impeded in Scotland by the country's topography, while Henry and many of his ancestors had frequently found themselves chasing Welsh shadows among the peaks of Snowdonia.

The great ninth-century Frankish emperor Charlemagne, whose legend spread across medieval Europe and beyond, almost certainly himself spoke a Germanic language. He is claimed by French culture as Charlemagne, king of the French and emperor, and by German culture as the emperor Karl der Grosse. From the late eleventh century onwards, narratives in different forms of French vernacular were the dominant vehicle for the spread of his legend. Other volumes in this series have discussed translations of these narratives into the different languages of Western Europe, notably into Spanish, German, Dutch, Italian, and the Scandinavian and Celtic languages. The series has also included a volume on the legends of Charlemagne preserved in Latin, some of which present original text, but all of which exploit vernacular myths and legends to some extent. Here we turn to the area that is now France and the Walloon regions of modern Belgium, the birthplace of many of these myths, and to the languages of the North and South of that land, respectively known as the langue d’oïl and the langue d’oc or Occitan.

The importance of Charlemagne to European cultural memory is of the highest order. Historically the founder of the successor to the western Roman Empire, which in various forms survived as the Holy Roman Empire until its dissolution by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1806, he was transformed into a mythic figure in a variety of literary forms and in representational art from soon after his death in 814 CE to the present day.

En 1990, a partir de la apertura al público del registro para extranjeros del Archivo General de la Nación, se empezó la recopilación de fichas de los judíos askenazíes que habían vivido en México. La información con la que esta comunidad judía contaba anteriormente se había dañado o perdido durante el sismo de 1985 (CDIJUM 2024), por lo que la compilación de este material arrojó nueva luz sobre el pasado de las(os) judeomexicanas(os). Como resultado, se publica Generaciones Judías en México (Gojman 1993), una colección de siete libros para conmemorar el septuagésimo aniversario de la fundación de la comunidad askenazí en México. Asimismo, en 1993 se funda el Centro de Documentación e Investigación de la Comunidad Ashkenazí de México (CDICA), que una década después se convertirá en el Centro de Documentación e Investigación Judío de México (CDIJUM 2024). Los viajes formativos de Seligson inician en la década de los ochenta y su visión enriquece el debate de las diferentes comunidades de extranjeros que se han asentado en México. En particular, en Todo aquí es polvo, la escritora reflexiona a partir de historias de vida que van más allá de los marcos nacionales, como hija de inmigrantes de judíos askenazíes —“originarios del oriente de Europa” (ibid)—.

Posteriormente, el 2 de octubre de 2012, el gobierno español hace público su decreto para que familias sefardíes soliciten su ciudadanía española, justo una década después de que se cumplieran quinientos años del Edicto de Expulsión de Judíos de España (Boletín oficial del Estado 2015).

The Hispanic monarchy was one of the first modern monarchies to institute a systematic, political use of dance. Evidently, court dance had been codified in the second half of the Quattrocento at the powerful courts of northern Italy (Ferrara, Milan) where, alongside other artists, Domenico da Piacenza and Guglielmo Ebreo produced choreographies which contributed to amplifying their patrons’ power at spectacular and lavish festivities. Yet the Este and Sforza courts did not reign over such a large expanse of territories as those in possession of the Hispanic monarchy, which required specific spatial practices to be governed. To address this need, the Hispanic monarchy deployed an itinerant court well into the sixteenth century and, after that period, it maintained the regular practice of visiting its territories. Moreover, festivities and dance were a central part of court life which allowed for the theatricalisation of the monarch's presence. This presence was simultaneously direct and mediated. Direct, because the monarch directly participated in many of the festivities’ acts (entrance, joust, tournament, sarao). Mediated, because the performance of power through the body of the monarch was inscribed in an extensive symbolic system which produced numerous images of the monarch.

Just as with its Italian predecessors, the political efficacy of dance at these festivities depended on its representational potentialities. However, throughout the Siglos de Oro this system was not yet very stable. The king didn't always dance (it seems that Charles V only danced when strictly necessary), and each monarch had their own particular relation to dance which evolved over time (Philip II danced a lot as a young man, and much less in older age). Equally, the framework for courtly dance shifted and, with it, its function and meaning. These changes, at times more oscillations and juxtapositions than clean breaks, make it difficult to separate the concept of representation associated with dance. However, as the period evolved, representation affirmed itself as a central concept in dance practices and in the discourses that described, legitimated or condemned it.

Edmund Spenser feared Ireland's poets. In his notorious prose tract on how to Anglicise the Irish, A view of the present state of Ireland (1596), he writes that it was their

Eradicating Gaelic culture with a dose of muscular Anglicisation was made difficult, however, by the inability to tell on the surface who was ‘mere’, or truly, Irish and who of English origin. For a mind like Spenser's that traded in binaries, identifying such essential difference was crucial to the colonial state's self-appointed, twinned tasks of civilising and guarding against cultural degeneration. To press home the seriousness of the threat of backsliding, he offered example of how the process could claim even the greatest of lineages:

A number of studies of late medieval Icelandic religious poetry have observed a connection between the two Guðmundardrápur of Arngrímr Brandsson and Árni Jónsson and the better-known devotional poem Lilja [Lily] (Anon LilVII), named for the Virgin Mary, but whose subject is the broad sweep of human salvation history. Although Lilja's latest editor, Martin Chase, has declined to attribute the poem to a named author, several possessors of the name and title ‘Brother Eysteinn’ have been suggested, all members of the clergy. Both in terms of language and subject matter, Lilja can be dated to the mid-fourteenth century and, as Chase has written, the poet can be situated ‘at the centre of European literature and theology … show[ing] familiarity not only with standard liturgical, theological, and rhetorical texts that were known and used throughout the Middle Ages, but also with [texts] … which demonstrate his awareness of the most recent developments in European devotion.’

One of the most notable areas in which the Lilja poet asserted his modernity and the influence of the new poetics associated with such foreign grammarians as Geoffrey of Vinsauf (fl. c. 1208–13) was in the field of skaldic diction and metrics. Peter Foote, in particular, has traced the influence of foreign rhetorical figures on the Lilja poet. Among other observations, he has demonstrated how stanzas 15–18 of Lilja, which represent Adam's and Eve's temptation and fall in the Garden of Eden, recreate in Icelandic poetry a passage of Geoffrey's Poetria nova on the same subject.

In Europe, the centuries around the beginning of the second millennium are sometimes termed the period of the Great Reclamation. During these years vast tracts of woodlands and wetlands were reclaimed. This chapter will show how, and under which circumstances, the Great Reclamation, when hundreds of thousands of hectares of wetlands were transformed into farmland, took place in the North Sea Lowlands. These circumstances were of great importance because they determined the economic and social relations that emerged in the reclaimed areas, and they in their turn influenced the organisation of water management and agricultural development in the long run.

A discussion of the physical environment and settlement patterns on the eve of the Great Reclamation will be followed by a section on the Great Reclamation itself, showing how it came about in different landscapes and under varied institutional arrangements. This second section will be followed by two sections focusing on the long-term consequences of the medieval wetland reclamations. The first is on the unintended consequences of the reclamations, such as the lowering of the surface level, which are haunting farmers and engineers to the present day. The second is on the political and economic freedom of the inhabitants of the wetlands. People in reclaimed wetlands tended to enjoy more freedom than inhabitants of older settled areas, but how much freedom did they actually enjoy and what consequences could this have had for agricultural development? But we will begin by addressing the demographic, economic, social and political developments in the North Sea area during the high Middle Ages.

This chapter surveys the publication history of Lessing's work in the United States over the better part of the long nineteenth century, from 1773 to 1898. At the same time, it provides first glimpses into the ways Americans reacted to these writings as well as to Lessing himself, topics that are examined in detail in subsequent chapters.

Lessing's profile in the United States was significantly heightened during the so-called “German craze” that swept Boston and environs beginning in the early 1820s. During the preceding decade, Harvard men George Ticknor, Edward Everett, Joseph G. Cogswell, and George Bancroft initiated what soon became a wave of American students who studied at the University of Göttingen and other German institutions and then returned home to share their enthusiasm for German literature and thought from the college lectern and/or in print. These individuals exerted a well-documented and carefully scrutinized influence on New England Transcendentalism and created a climate in which knowledge of German belles lettres and learning of the Classical-Romantic era became an essential part of an American education.

However, Lessing emerged as a presence in the New World even before his premature death in 1781, indeed, even before the American colonies declared their independence from Great Britain. On September 18, 1773, his fable “Die Furien” (The Furies), that ironic jibe at female and male virtue, appeared in the Providence Gazette of Providence, Rhode Island. Before the end of the eighteenth century, “Die Furien” and two other fables had been published eight times in four other states ranging from Massachusetts to Maryland.

In 1996, Susan Reynolds published an essay summarising the essential features of the ‘English town’ – and this in a volume explicitly dedicated to comparative perspectives on the High Middle Ages in England and Germany. In her critical summary of the current state of English historiography on the subject, she pointed to the problems arising from the application of nineteenth-century German concepts of urban history to English towns. While emphasising the differences in towns and cities between England and Germany, she argued that their similarities have been obscured by terminological confusion and national historiographical bias. Reynolds suggested that these similarities become more apparent with the emergence of municipal record-keeping in the thirteenth century. Even so, remarkably few attempts have been made to compare the evidence for urban record-keeping on either side of the Channel. For instance, neither the ‘Utrecht Studies of Medieval Literacy’ series nor the papers collected in Richard Britnell's Pragmatic Literacy, East and West, 1200–1330 (1997) sought to compare evidence for urban literacy across a European panorama. In 2020, the universities of Mainz and Aberdeen launched a research project comparing financial records from Aberdeen and Augsburg. On the other hand, in his 2006 monograph, Tobias Herrmann deliberately excluded English towns and cities from his overview of urban literacy in central and western Europe. In justification he cites the differences between English and European legal systems and their impact on forms of record-keeping, noting specifically the dominance of royal writs in England. While his observations may be correct, the relationship between urban records on both sides of the Channel warrants closer investigation.