As is to be expected, many Latin American crime novels have been adapted for the screen, though the process has rarely been a case of faithful page-to-screen transposition. Among other considerations, an account of how these adaptations occur needs to attend to: (1) the often febrile political, cultural, industrial, and economic backgrounds against which film adaptations are made; (2) the pervasive influence of Hollywood film noir and neo-noir conventions on crime fiction adaptation; (3) the ways in which noir modes can be argued to have developed endogenously in Latin America, sometimes in response to some of those same political and social conditions; and (4) the filtering and creativity inherent to the act of adaptation itself. All of these concerns are further worth framing with the aid of the rise of adaptation studies over the past two decades, during which time seminal works by Linda Hutcheon, Thomas Leitch and Robert Stam, among others, have served to significantly develop the field. Whereas cinematic adaptations might once have been evaluated primarily in terms of how much they adhered to or diverged from their literary source, recent work has challenged some of the assumptions built into this approach; Stam, for instance, posits adaptations as critical ‘translations’ or ‘readings’ engaged in a creative, two-way dialogic exchange with their sources. Stam's conceptualisation is arguably doubly relevant in the context of genre fiction which, in Latin America as elsewhere, has never really benefitted from the elevated status that traditional cultural hierarchies conferred upon literature over film.

INTRODUCTION

Michael Hoy

A.W. Moore, in his two volume History of the Isle of Man and his diocesan history Sodor and Man, written at the end of the nineteenth century, is the first historian to give a comprehensive history of the Island church and its contribution to the ordering and administration of insular and parochial society, together with accounts of customary religious practice, biographical sketches of some bishops and other ecclesiastical figures, and descriptions of key buildings and other aspects of church life. Before Moore's work, the historiography of accounts of religion and the church in the Isle of Man is for the most part limited to studies of the established church as a political and administrative instrument in the context of the Stanley, Atholl and Crown lordships, and biographies of a handful of Island bishops which are limited in scope and design. Three biographies of Bishop Wilson – Clement Cruttwell's late eighteenth-century account, tagged on to his eight-volume collection of Wilson's works, and two more detailed nineteenth-century accounts by Hugh Stowell and John Keble – and Weedon Butler's Memoirs of Mark Hildesley are for the most part merely descriptive and hagiographical, and none offers any critical reflection on or contextual evaluation of their subjects.

There is little modern biographical writing, although a more recent authoritative account of the Island's bishops and clergy, with factual and anecdotal notes on personalities and parish life, may be found in John Gelling's History of the Manx Church, 1698–1911, published in 1998. This begins relatively late in the period of this volume with the arrival of Bishop Wilson, however, and the work is not referenced.

Introduction

The account

George Wishart of Drymme was a sub-collector of the queen's rents and incomes working for the comptroller Sir John Wishart of Pittarrow. His surviving account covers a part of the years 1563 and 1564. There is a charge or income section followed by discharge or expenditure. The structure and content is summarised on p. 6. George Wishart passed most of the money to ofcers of the queen's household. These particular transactions are for the most part not recorded in Pittarrow's accounts of the Thirds of Benefces, or in other accounts made by the Scottish exchequer, although some similar payments or totals of recurring payments can be found. Payments found here for the Royal Guard, Captain Robert Anstruther, and the fortress island of Inchkeith, also appear in the accounts of the Thirds of Benefces. This account has not previously been published, but has occasionally been quoted by historians. Gordon Donaldson highlighted payments to household ofcers, including David Rizzio, who appears as ‘David Rischo, Italiane’, and to John Knox, as part of his stipend and as sums of money given to his servants, Margaret Fowlis and John Reid. Another payment for Knox was given to Robert Watson, a merchant in Edinburgh. The manuscript was consulted in the nineteenth century for similar purposes; Charles Rogers cited the account for Rizzio's salary from a copy in the papers of George Chalmers, while Chalmers seems to have used fgures from Wishart's account to illustrate courtiers’ salaries.

10 May 1840 Sunday

I mean again to try to keep a journal. I have often thought of doing it, without carrying my resolution into execution and have just now been reminded of it by reading Sir C. Romilly's [sic]. One admires the man so much that one is glad to imitate him even in indifferent things. A good time to write it will generally be the quarter of an hour at night after Eliza is gone up to bed before I follow her. Nothing very particular to record this first day. Had a very nice talk with her in the morning. Went with her to chapel; Dr. Hutton gave a sermon upon the very important duty of the heads of families not neglecting to inculcate good principle into the minds of those dependent on them, showing how they too frequently were prevented from recommending some particular virtue by the consciousness of not exercising it themselves. Hope I may improve by the lesson. In the afternoon walked out to Sam's at Highbury, & back to tea. Rained on the way home, when I walked a mile holding my umbrella over a little girl that its father was carrying on his arm. Read a lecture of Dr. Channing's in the evening. A happy day.

11 May. …As there has been break of ten years in my journal I ought to a certain extent put down an outline of the things that would have been recorded in it: I was then living at my sister's in Ormond Street, & wrote this book I remember at my office in Pinner's Hall.

Fulcoius of Beauvais, ‘Jephthah’

For many historians, the fifteenth century has been seen as witnessing significantly new departures in the history of the Isle of Man. Previously, they would argue, the situation in the Irish Sea was rather chaotic, with confused succession to control over the Island and considerable influence on the part of the Scots at least possible if not de facto. Now as the fifteenth century progressed, it has been suggested, the situation became more stable, and in a ‘better epoch’ the Island became more clearly subject to English influence. At the very least, there has been seen to be a more stable succession to the lordship, through the persons of the Stanleys, and a change in the nature of the rivalry between England and Scotland, with more stability in Scotland leading to a more fixed stand-off between the two kingdoms. Yet this is deceptive: here it will be argued that there are good grounds to question the stability of succession, or at least its applicability in the Isle of Man; and it will also be argued that the Scots were more confident and still assertive in their approach to the Isle of Man, while the English themselves continued to see the Island as Scottish. Internally, the fifteenth century witnessed not subjection to English ways but the consolidation of traditional Manx political and legal structures.

It is important initially to consider the evidence we have for growing stability and Anglicisation. There is a case to be made that during the fifteenth century the focus of English royal foreign policy shifted very clearly to France, with Henry V's novel interest in Normandy and then, as circumstances allowed, in the French throne.

Pilsen

Pilsen, Bohemia's second largest city, has gained a global reputation for its exceptional beer and the impressive Škoda munition works. Nowadays, a charming park envelops the historic houses that boast the coveted “license to brew.” However, when Smetana first arrived in Pilsen, the city was only beginning to dismantle its old town ramparts. The mayor was determined to beautify the city, systematically tearing down the walls and gates that once protected this Catholic community from the Hussites in the fifteenth century and Wallenstein's soldiers during the Thirty Years’ War. In the 1840s, the town still retained much of its prosperity and prestige. The central square featured a Gothic cathedral and a Renaissance town hall. A testament to history, the house where Mikuláš Bakalář's printing press operated in 1504 still stood. This press, one of the oldest in Bohemia, delivered the first news to the Czechs about the discovery of America. On the town's outskirts, Czech villages preserved their traditional customs and vibrant costumes, much like those depicted in The Bartered Bride. Along the Berounka and Radbuza rivers, old castles dotted the landscape, likely serving as destinations for many youthful, romantic escapades. When Smetana arrived, Pilsen's population was around 12,000, consisting mainly of affluent individuals, mostly of Czech origin, though German was the preferred language of the upper class.

The college faculty was predominantly composed of Czech Premonstratensians, and the student body comprised Pilsen's privileged youth. During these three years, young Smetana immersed himself in the humanities, preparing for practical life under much more favorable circumstances than in Prague. This was largely because one of his teachers happened to be his cousin.

How do you read a medieval book? Answers to this broad methodological question generally fall into two related disciplinary categories, the bookhistorical and the literary-critical. One way to read medieval books is to study them as material objects. In this, the book-historical (or “codicological”) perspective, to read a medieval book is to inquire into the physical components of that book, to understand those components in terms of historicized and geographically localized mechanical processes, and to derive from the features and arrangement of those components information about the people who made the book and books like it. Without significantly addressing textual contents, book historians can uncover an astounding array of information surrounding the economic, social, and political processes that governed medieval manuscript production. We can identify the chemical processes that allowed for the manufacture of parchment or ink, survey the use and variety of medieval bindings, estimate the supply of sheepskin and quills for major cities and remote provinces, and model the circulation of skilled labor, in England and on the continent, by way of paleographic analysis and attention to shifting practices in decoration and illumination. From features of a manuscript such as the size of its pages, the breadth of its margins, how it was prepared for the act of writing, how the writing itself was imposed and corrected, and the overall tactile impression of the object, we can make surprisingly accurate inferences about the kinds of texts it is likely to contain and the audiences it was likely meant to reach.

Beethoven's cello sonatas number only half as many as his sonatas for violin, but they were composed at widely spaced intervals, and taken together they give us a clearer picture of his stylistic development. There is, indeed, a sense in which the cello sonatas more neatly define the composer's ‘early’, ‘middle’ and ‘late’ periods than do even his string quartets: the two op.5 sonatas were composed only a year or so after the op.1 piano trios; the A major Sonata op.69, of 1807–8, belongs to the period of the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies; while the two sonatas op.102, composed in 1815, clearly signal the emergence of Beethoven's late style.

With these five works Beethoven broke new ground. No composer since Bach had attempted to write for a stringed instrument of similar range with obbligato keyboard. In the second half of the eighteenth century the prevailing method of writing cello sonatas or variations was to provide the principal part with no more than a simple accompaniment for a second stringed instrument – either another cello, or a bass. In this way the virtuoso player who held a position at court could give his aristocratic employer the satisfaction of joining in the music-making without placing an undue strain on his or her technical proficiency. This type of texture, locating the melody instrument in a high register virtually throughout, is one that was cultivated extensively by such leading players of the day as Boccherini and the Duport brothers; but such use of the cello as essentially a form of viola pomposa was hardly likely to be of interest to Beethoven, whose great achievement was to find instead a viable means of exploiting the distinctive lower end of the instrument's range.

In 1732, the Archdeacon of Middlesex and ‘chaplain in ordinary to his Majesty’ Daniel Waterland (1683–1740) published Christianity Vindicated Against Infidelity, in which he complained how ordinary people debated ‘in shops and stalls’ about the ‘cavils of Spinosa and Hobbs’, the present canon of Scripture was ‘disputed’ and priests were ‘without distinction traduced as imposers on the credulity of mankind’. Waterland explicitly ascribed attacks on Scripture and the clergy to the increasing diffusion in England of ideas developed abroad:

I know not if these licentious principles were the proper produce of our own soil, or may not be rather said to have been transplanted hither from abroad, where it is certain they had taken root and spread, for a hundred years or more, before they met with any favourable reception […] in this grave and serious, and for the most part well-disposed Kingdom.

Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English authors were conscious of the widespread diffusion and potentially destabilising impact of European texts and ideas on English culture and religion. Especially after the lapse in 1695 of the Licensing Act ‘for preventing the frequent abuses in printing seditious treasonable and unlicensed books and pamphlets’, the writings of modern French and Dutch philosophers and biblical scholars were advertised in almost every booklist and newspaper.

Introduction

The Dumfries Midsteeple minute book records information about events and processes carried out by the committee appointed to oversee the construction of a new ‘Council house and steeple’ for the town. Initially intended as a complete replacement to the town's late ffteenth-century tolbooth, once complete, it only took on some of those functions. The name ‘Midsteeple’ by which the building is now known emerged in the mid-eighteenth century on completion of the town's ‘New Church’ on the site of the present-day Greyfriars Church at the northwest end of the High Street. This placed the ‘Midsteeple’ between the steeple of the new church and the steeple of the old church of St Michael's at the opposite end of the town.

In addition to the minute book, there is a complementary survival in Dumfries Archives, now held at the Ewart Library, of numerous individual documents consisting of letters, contracts, accounts, notes and bills that supplement the information in the volume. Indeed, many of these items detail specifcs of some of the actions and monetary amounts referred to in the minute book.