The imprisonment of King Richard I, ruler of the Angevin empire, first by Duke Leopold V of Austria then by Emperor Henry VI between 1192 and 1194, ranks among the most famous Anglo-imperial encounters of the Middle Ages. In terms of political amicability, it probably marked an all-time low in relations between the rulers of these two realms, and in terms of its consequences, it can hardly be overrated. John Gillingham has indeed characterised it as a turning point in medieval German history. He argues that it was Richard's desire for revenge that made him intervene in the imperial election of 1198 and successfully promote his nephew Otto against Henry VI's brother Philip. This in turn prevented a seamless transition of power within the Staufen family. There were also significant consequences on the economic and personal levels, which makes this case particularly suited for consideration in this volume. The economic effects are well known and need to be only briefly recapitulated. The huge ransom – 150,000 marks were agreed on and more than 100,000 marks of silver were actually paid − played an important role in financing Henry VI's campaign to conquer the kingdom of Sicily.

The Victory. Declared 1 April 1939, the end of military combat involved a process of national rewriting of society. Prodigious quantities of ink were used to legislate, solidify, and lay the foundations for a new social structure composed of the victors and the defeated and the schism between these two groups. A battery of laws was put in place, one after another, starting before the end of the war: the Law of Political Responsibilities (9 February 1939), the Law for the Repression of Masonry and Communism (1940), the Law of State Security (1941), and the Causa General (1942). The functional nature of these laws was two-fold. Firstly, they constituted an ambitious rewriting of history that eliminated the coup d’état from the course of events and maintained that continual attacks against the fatherland had led the Army and the movement that backed it to react to eliminate this evil, putting themselves forward as saving actors by revealing what had occurred in ‘Red’ territory and in Spain as a whole since 1934. The insurgents’ pure motives were identified with goodness, thus turning the attempted coup into a Crusade and sidestepping the violence committed in insurgent territory. Conversely, the violence committed in Republican territory was emphasised by describing it in precise detail and claiming that ‘Judeo-Masonic Bolshevik evil’ was behind it. Secondly, once the backing of arms, which was decisive in the first and last instance, had been conveniently justified, these laws served to legitimise the dominating position of the victors and the dominated position of the defeated.

The Polish Princess Elżbieta ‘Izabela’ Dorota Czartoryska (née Flemming; 1745–1835) was a prominent art patron, garden designer, and reformer. Her collection of Polish art and culture at her estate of Puławy formed the basis of the Czartoryski Museum, Krakow, to preserve the culture and heritage of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Izabela's husband Prince Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski (1734–1823) was a member of the so-called Familia, the political dynasty of the Houses of Czartoryski and Poniatowski. Historians and contemporaries have not necessarily appreciated Czartoryska's reform activities, and read her patriotism as Romantic, at best, and as self-serving and performative at worst. Zdzisław Żygulski recognised, if in adulatory words, that Czartoryska transformed herself during the period of the partitions from a ‘cosmopolitan socialite’ into

a fiery patriot, into a freedom fighter, into a ‘Spartan mother’ sending her sons to battle, and most of all, the founder of the pantheon of Polish historical mementoes, the centre of her ambitious political, cultural, and educational plans.

As we have seen with the case studies von Friedland, von Itzenplitz, and von Kurland, the role as cosmopolitan socialite does not necessarily prevent nor contradict women's engagement in politics and patriotism. Czartoryska played all roles, as the ‘Sibyl of Puławy’, a ‘fiery patriot’, and, as the ‘Spartan mother’, the mother to all peasants.

Her nostalgic patriotism was expressed in different ways. The collection of Polish artifacts on the grounds of her Eastern Polish estate Puławy became an emblem of historical nationalism.

The Royall Health to the Rising Sun (Figure 8.1) was published soon after the execution of Charles I on 30 January 1649. Transparently allegorical, the song's visual, lyrical and musical elements lamented the country's condition after years of civil war. It not only mourned the death of the king, but also breached the new Commonwealth government's treason laws by seeking to bring comfort and assurance to the old king's supporters by ‘healthing’ (or toasting) ‘the Rising Sun’, the exiled heir, Charles Stuart:

No certain information survives regarding the song's producers, sellers, singers or buyers. The only copy sits among a collection of more than a hundred ballads that mostly date from the era of the civil wars and the interregnum. Of unknown provenance, the collection was purchased by Manchester Central Library in the 1930s. The ballad's imprint offers little help. The publisher's initials, ‘H. E.’, cannot be traced and are probably pseudonymous, intended to mimic compliance with government regulations requiring publishing details to be included. None the less, as this chapter will argue, the ballad's unusual woodcut illustrations can offer important clues as to the circumstances of its creation.

No literary work addresses the accession of James I to the English throne in 1603 with more attention to its immediate political circumstances or greater interest in its historical and dynastic significance than “A Panegyric Congratulatory to the King's Most Excellent Majesty,” a poem comprising seventythree stanzas of ottava rima by Samuel Daniel. The poet, who had spent much time at the court of Elizabeth I and in the households of some of the country's leading families and who was still at work on his massive historical epic, The Civil Wars of the Two Houses of Lancaster and York (1595–1609), must have felt uniquely qualified to write on the topic. England's submission to the king of Scotland was a dark prospect to some, but it might seem brighter if it could be placed within a long mythopoetic history of civil war and reconciliation. That is what the Janus-like poet does in the “Panegyric Congratulatory.” There the past and present complete each other and offer memories that will be useful for the future. The values that the Stuarts will call upon throughout their mid-century crisis are the same ones that, for Daniel, make the Stuart presence possible in England from the beginning.

England, now become “all great Britain, and no more,” writes Daniel, has been brought under the unifying sway of an “imperial Prince” (2).

Based on the 1819 historical novel The Bride of Lammermoor by Sir Walter Scott, the main conflict in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor is centered around a long-standing feud between two families in the Lammermuir Hills of late sixteenth-century Scotland. Before the start of Act I, Enrico Ashton has killed the head of the Ravenswood family and now occupies his castle and lands. Forced to live in a run-down shack on the edge of the castle grounds, the last surviving Ravenswood (Edgardo) has fallen in love with Lucia Ashton after rescuing her from a wild bull. Their love is kept a secret until it is discovered by Enrico that Lucia and Edgardo meet every morning to walk the grounds together. After receiving such news from his trusted advisor (Normanno), Enrico is doubly upset, for not only is Lucia in love with a mortal enemy but she is also destroying his plans to marry her off to a wealthy benefactor (Lord Arturo Bucklaw), who will rescue the Ashton family from financial and political ruin. Everything in the opera therefore rests upon the actions of Lucia; what she does or does not do has consequences for all. In the end, Lucia breaks off her secret engagement to Edgardo, marries Arturo, kills him on their wedding night, eerily greets her brother and the wedding party in a blood-soaked night dress, sings gleefully of her love for Edgardo and then dies the next day owing to the damaging effects of an acute mental derangement. When Edgardo, who has been waiting at the tomb of his forefathers to fight Enrico, hears of Lucia's death, he commits suicide, leaving Raimondo (a Presbyterian minister) and a chorus of mourners to pray for his soul.

An examination of the musical material of the Sinfonietta reveals the extent to which Janáček had achieved an extraordinary level of com¬positional sophistication by the time he came to write the work. Hans Hol¬lander declared that with the Sinfonietta, ‘Janáček reached the zenith of his orchestral works… . Although he remains faithful to his characteristic idiom, his style is of a thematic density and formal conciseness as in no other work. His inspiration has freed itself from its habitual literary and extra-musical stimulus, and has created a series of five orchestral minia¬tures that are of absolute mastery in invention, sound and structure.’ The overall five-movement form of the Sinfonietta has been likened at various times to a ‘suite’ (by Helfert and others), a ‘divertimento’ (by Hollander), and even a ‘symphony’ (by Janáček himself in a letter to his wife). These attempts to redefine or explain the title demonstrate how difficult it is to pin any conventional genre description on this highly original structure. In the published score, seen through the press by the composer, the movement titles have no programmatic designations, underlining Hollander's point about the composer moving away from any specific non-musical stimulus:

• I. Allegretto

• II. Andante

• III. Moderato

• IV. Allegretto

• V. Andante con moto [Allegro]

The Písek, Sokol and Brno inspirations, all discussed at length in Chapter 1, were of great significance for Janáček himself, but no mention of them is to be found in his manuscript or in the editions published in his lifetime.

Near the end of the twelfth-century Pamplona Illustrated Bible, there is a picture sometimes called the ‘Crowd of the Damned’ (Fig. 1). It is an illustration of countless souls waiting, patiently, it seems, for judgement. Taking up almost the full page in its manuscript, it is as ‘visually spare and unpretentiously rendered’ as the other scenes from the Old and New Testaments and various saints’ lives that are depicted there.1 The image is repetitive; many of the figures’ features (such as their rather bulbous hairstyles) are reproduced identically, over and over, and one has the sense that the illustrator would be fine with the charge of quantity over quality. In this, the image is reminiscent of many other medieval depictions of large groups, like the crowds of saints that can be found in Books of Hours, or the masses of carved sculptures that adorn cathedral chancels and lintels.2 But spend enough time looking at the people in the ‘Crowd of the Damned’, and one begins to see that the sea of sameness is punctuated sporadically, here and there, with a distinctive difference: a figure looks to the side; hair falls over a few foreheads; there are various styles of beards and personal grooming. There is no narrative need to distinguish between these figures (the point is not who they are, simply that they are many, and they are damned), but a sporadic individuality emerges nonetheless through the subtleties of distinction scattered through the crowd.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah continues the exploration of the complications of return to the migrant's homeland. The novel instantiates the possibilities that return migration affords both the returned migrants and the society to which they returned. The chapter predicates this possibility on the construct of the new hybridity that argues for a fusion of the migrant's experience abroad with the potential for transformation at home. I argue that when the worldliness of the returned migrant is combined with the transformative potential of the homeland, return is meaningful, even if complicated.

Americanah is crucial for my argument of return because it explores all three phases of the migration process—flight, arrival, and return. I focus on the otherness of the migrant to analyze the challenges to African migration as justification for return. This chapter has two main parts. In the first, I examine precarity as a necessary reason for return by analyzing the experiences of Ifemelu and Obinze in America and Nigeria, respectively. In the second, I assess their successes upon return through exploring the construct of the new hybridity, while also pointing out the challenges. Return makes possible the construction of a hybridized identity that is crucial to transforming individuals and society. I also include sections of the novel for examination where integration encounters obstacles and barriers.

Book II gives a legalistic veneer to the entire poem when Gower labels it, in the prose headnote, a libellus, a word which means both “little book” and a petition entered to initiate a lawsuit in an ecclesiastical court. Gower calls upon the outcry of the vox populi (the people's voice) to sustain his complaint, which is based on the violation of religious and moral values that in his view has led to the present deplorable state of circumstances. Prior to Gower, vox populi has an obscure but apparently lengthy non-biblical history linking it as a commonplace equivalent to vox dei. Although the earliest documented appearance known of the two together is in a letter from Alcuin to Charlemagne dated ca. 800, its origins are doubtless earlier. Closer to Gower's time, Canon 8 (Qualiter et quando) of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), for instance, explains its authority as a component of inquisitorial procedure in response to widely circulated accounts of clerical abuse:

Ex quibus auctoritatibus manifeste probatur, quod non solum cum subditus, verum etiam cum praelatus excedit, si per clamorem et famam ad aures superioris pervenerit, non quidem a malevolis et maledicis, sed a providis et honestis, nec semel tantum, sed saepe, quod clamor innuit et diffamatio manifestat, debet coram ecclesiae senioribus veritatem diligentius perscrutari.

Bianca Cappello (Venice 1548–October 20, 1587) brought Venetian sixteenth-century fashion to Florence through her elevation to Grand Duchess following her marriage to Francesco I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Florence, in April 1578, following the demise of Johanna of Austria, Francesco's first wife. Bianca, with Isabella de’ Medici and Eleonora of Toledo, wife of Cosimo I de’ Medici, first Grand Duke of Florence, were known as the “Three Graces” of Florence. Eleonora's style, imported from the Spanish and Neapolitan courts, introduced a type of grandeur in dress well-documented in the portraits of her by Bronzino. In contrast, Bianca Cappello based her fashions on the Venetian opulence of textiles and the Cypriot court style of Caterina Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus (1468–89), whose garments were copied and borrowed for Venetian state weddings. This essay focuses on how Bianca's adoption of Venetian and Cypriot designs influenced the manner of Florentine women's dress as evident in state portraits, such as by Alessandro Allori (fig. 1) and Scipione Pulzone (fig. 2).

Bianca's first husband, a Florentine bank clerk, was made the Keeper of the Wardrobe to the Grand Duke through Bianca's connection to Francesco I. Her installation in a casino near the Medici estate Villa Pratolino, ensured her inclusion in the Medici ducal court life, although clandestine. Once the relationship between Bianca and Francesco de’ Medici was established, Francesco had a palazzo built by Bernardo Buontalenti, 1570–4 at 26 via Maggio in Florence, near the Ponte Vecchio.

Much of this book has so far been concerned with traditional theatre and film works presenting chronological depictions of Grainger's life, but his biography has also been the subject of several experimental projects. Jon Rose's 1996 Perks consisted of an interactive badminton game where each player represented the left and right – or ‘Jekyll & Hyde’ – hemispheres of Grainger's brain. Ros Bandt's 1998 site-specific A Garden for Percy's Delight transformed the Grainger Museum's courtyard into an interactive ‘sonic garden’, making use of samples of collection instruments and ‘text and ambient sound relevant to his biography’. This chapter explores a further experimental work: the poetic biography, Suite for Percy Grainger by Jessica L. Wilkinson. Inspired directly by the rhythms and forms of Grainger's writings and compositions, Wilkinson uses techniques from documentary poetry to engage with Grainger's biography through his music and archive. This work was first presented in 2010 in performance, with Wilkinson's spoken poems set to music – inspired by Grainger's ideas of Free Music – by composer Simon Charles. The full biography was then published in 2014 by Vagabond Press.

Developed in the first decades of the twenty-first century, Suite for Percy Grainger provides an example of a larger-scale shift in the use of Grainger's biography, where creators move away from narratives tied explicitly to national identity, and beyond the use of Grainger's sexual activities for shock value. As will be shown in this chapter, and the chapters that follow, while these works still engage with such themes, a more critical lens is applied, seeking to problematise aspects of Grainger's legacy, including, for example, the violence of his sadomasochism or views on race.

Setting a Pattern: an introduction

In 1325, the English monarchy faced a crisis, at the heart of which was the problem of the foreignness of the queen. After years of political corruption, mismanagement of aggrieved barons, military losses, and overt preferential treatment for his favourites(/lovers), Edward II's reign was finally challenged by the rebellion staged by his wife, Isabella of France (b. 1296, d. 1358). The daughter of Philip IV of France and sister to the following three reigning French monarchs, Isabella's position between the French and English crowns highlighted the powerful mediating, or destabilising, potential of foreign queens in English politics during her time as consort and regent from 1308 to 1330.1 Her links to the French throne were seen as carrying both dynastic and political value, and she was chosen multiple times to intercede with the French king on behalf of her husband.

However, these links to France were eventually also seen as potentially dividing her allegiances: in 1325, during a period of increasing conflict with France over the governance of Gascony, Edward responded to the political tensions by seizing the lands and holdings of French persons residing in England – including his own wife. Reacting to the perceived threat of Isabella's Frenchness and the risk that her natal relationships might outweigh her marital loyalties, Edward gave Isabella's lands – and their children – into the care of his favourite, Hugh Despenser the Younger.2

Te room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was Spawning snow and pink roses against it Soundlessly collateral and incompatible: World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think, Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion A tangerine and spit the pips and feel Te drunkenness of things being various.

And the fre fames with a bubbling sound for world Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes – On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's hands – Tere is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

Louis McNeice, ‘Snow’

While there is no wrong time or place to be reading Louis MacNeice, my quotation here of ‘Snow’ has its immediate purposes. It is a poem that has a lot more to do with looking at Middle English manuscripts than one might think, and especially one like the Auchinleck, which contains such a variety of things. MacNeice's ‘Snow’ invites us to rethink, and to wonder at, so simple a concept as a ‘room’ – both as a place to be, and as a unit of containment – and does so in a way that might help us approach Sir Tristrem's presence in the Auchinleck manuscript, and hopefully to appreciate the poem, and the codex which contains it, in their own particularity and in the unique confguration of practices that makes them historically inseparable.

Te room in MacNeice's poem, before the poet renders it inseparable from the objects and impressions it contains (or fails to contain), is an ordinary space, and an ordinary idea.