In the photograph that adorns the cover of this volume, two young girls are shown peering at a giant window display advertising Richard Eichberg's 1938 film Der Tiger von Eschnapur (The Tiger of Eschnapur). The scene is from July 1949, when Eichberg's film was being rescreened in the newly established Federal Republic of Germany, and the location is the Atrium Theater in Essen. The advertising shown in this image is imbued with cultural symbols of the “exotic” East: a Hindu goddess, Indian royalty in traditional regalia, and a wild tiger threatening to devour the white German hero. This exquisite photograph immediately touches on questions of Orientalism and spectatorship central to transnational cinema in general and Asian German film history in particular: what was so tantalizing about Asia, in this case, South Asia, that drew curiosity from (young) Western viewers? How can archival sources on production history and audience reception elucidate the enduring popularity of Orientalist tropes in German cinema from the Weimar era through the Third Reich and the Cold War to the present? How can contemporary filmmakers and scholars reinterpret the often problematic but also fruitful entanglements between Asia and the German-speaking world?

To answer such questions, film scholars have attempted to remap world cinema through the critical lens of postcolonialism and migration studies.

The art historian Serafin Moralejo once described a group of twelfthcentury Spanish ivories as “erratic, strange and isolated”. These adjectives are equally apt for other works – from buildings to manuscripts – produced in northern Iberia in the middle decades of that century. These artefacts frequently lack both evident local formation and a clear legacy. In some circumstances a high rate of loss could account for this effect, but intent also is at play here. Above all, this art is eclectic, not in a merely derivative sense but as an expression of experimental collecting. The importation of diverse styles and techniques, sometimes within one work of art, sits alongside the re-display of material from archives and the re-deployment of earlier pieces. This body of work delights in varietas, in jarring juxtapositions, and in playful rhetorical approaches. It can also be remarkable for the quality of its invention and execution. It rarely yields to familiar categorisations and yet offers tantalising resonances. The difficulty in classifying these works is perhaps one reason why these decades of the twelfth century are rarely the focus of art historical studies.

The range of the corpus requires this study to stretch geographically across the north of the Peninsula, from Portugal to Catalunya, and over the Pyrenees into modern-day France and Italy. Chronologically, it will cover the period c.1110 to c.1170. These decades are bracketed by instability: at the beginning, civil war between Leon-Castile and Aragon; at the end, uncertainties engendered by minority reigns in both Castile and Aragon- Catalunya. In the middle of this were two relatively settled reigns: those of Alfonso VII (r.1126–57), son of Count Raymond of Burgundy and Queen Urraca, in Leon-Castile, and Ramon Berenguer IV (r.1131–62) in Catalunya and, from 1137, in Aragon.

INTRODUCTION

Jean Brown's case began when she moved into the parish of Penninghame, north of Newton Stewart, as a servant, and the kirk session heard that the newcomer claimed to have extraordinary visions of spirits. The session’s investigation began in January 1706. The resulting narrative of Brown's past doings and sayings gave few dates, but the earliest events mentioned had occurred in Kirkinner, to the south of Wigtown, and she herself may have grown up there. Her spirits had told her in Kirkinner that all who took the Test would go to hell. This referred to the anti-presbyterian Test Act of 1681, which remained in force until the revolution of 1689 – an unusual example of national political and religious controversy being recorded in popular discourse. Brown herself may have learned of this controversy only after the revolution. She seems to have been a young woman, having first encountered her spirits either ten or sixteen years earlier, when she had apparently been in her early teens. As an adult she had moved north to Colmonell in southern Ayrshire, where she had a quarrel that was alleged to have led to the death of Robert MacCaw. Other places in Wigtownshire referred to include Kirkcowan.

The case is remarkable for Brown's visions of spirits, and for her insistence on her interpretation of the spirits even when the minister and others told her repeatedly that she was wrong. She said that her spirits were her ‘maker’; she later added that they were God, and then that they called themselves the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Yet she also insisted throughout that these spirits had sex with her, and gave many further idiosyncratic and unorthodox details.

This final volume of National prayers contains three main sections and a series of appendices, together with biblical and general indices for all four volumes. The first two sections describe and provide edited versions of the main texts for the anniversary commemorations. First are the early modern anniversaries that began in England and Wales, Ireland and Scotland during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, most of which continued to be observed until the mid-nineteenth century and in one case was still being reordered in the twenty-first century. The second section is concerned with the annual commemoration dating from the early twentieth century, remembrance day – more strictly, armistice day, armistice Sunday, and remembrance Sunday – as it has been observed in the Church of England and the Church of Scotland, and at the national and imperial (later commonwealth) ceremony held at the Cenotaph in London.

The third section is a continuation of the texts and commentaries for particular occasions of special worship described in the first three volumes, which ended in 2016. This section adds the calls for prayer during the Covid pandemic of 2020–1, and the special forms and worship resources provided for general use to mark the close succession of royal events from 2021 to 2023. In the Church of England, the clergy were – in contrast to the practice of previous centuries – encouraged to compile and print their own forms of prayer.

To a lady fair and good and wise, noble of heart and lineage, this man who dares not write his honest name – to avoid opening the way for slanderous tongues to wag and lie – instead of greetings sends his heart and all his thoughts, along with this work: these verses written specially for her. But though he's composed and completed it first and foremost for her, he dares not send it to her directly, not wishing to provoke envious, malicious minds: rather, he wishes to challenge them with it. And to tell the truth, he's not entirely sure she’d want to receive it! So he's sending it to various friends of both sexes, and to all more generally who love faithfully and truly. He's sending it to her, then, by way of others: he's hoping that somewhere it's seen by the one for whom it was all composed – beginning, middle and end. For when she sees it or hears it read, she’ll be able plainly to realise it was made for love of her, containing as it does certain things that reveal it's meant for her specifically – but no one else will know, unless she tells them: they won't be able to spot them otherwise. And I ask her, kind and generous- hearted as she is, to approve with pleasure that I’ve composed it for her sake. [38] So now let me turn to the work itself, which begins like this:

Sirs, ever since I was a child I’ve heard that dreams can sometimes prove true. That's why I’m reciting this: I wish to record a dream, and one I dreamt not long ago.

Introduction

In this final chapter of the book, I return to the conundrums I started with in the Introduction and discuss the insights that have emerged from the three cases across southern Africa. The main question I started with is: why is there no open revolution by local people regarding their dispossession around forests? Why have rights that were taken away from local people by states during colonial times not been restored in the post-colony? So many decades after the attainment of independence, for Zimbabwe, and the charting of a democratic dispensation for South Africa, technical arms of the state are still confused, unsure, and are caught in between regarding the best ways to resolve communities’ demands for rights to their land and resources around protected areas. In other words, they find themselves in situations of ‘chronic liminality’ (Cliggett, 2014). Despite many decades of waiting and engaging in various forms of struggle and articulating their claims against state exercise of power over nature, local people are yet to realise their ambitions of having their rights restored. As much as states are stuck and unsure what to do next, local people on their part are equally in various conditions of chronic liminality regarding what action to take regarding their plight around protected forests.

Luigi (Carlo Zanobi Salvadore Maria) Cherubini, born in Florence in 1760, had died on 25 March 1842.

The life of this great composer can be offered as a model for young artists in almost every particular. Cherubini's studies were long and patient, his compositions numerous, his enemies powerful. To the inflexibility of his character and the tenacity of his convictions must be added a real dignity that kept him always respectable, and which, sad to say, one does not often find in even the most eminent of artists. He was born in Florence towards the end of 1760, was taught from the age of nine by Bartolomeo and Alessandro Felici, and later by Bizzari and Castrucci, all composers nowadays forgotten. He didn't complete his musical education until around his twentieth year under Sarti. The Grand Duke of Tuscany [later Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II] then took him under his special protection, and Sarti, as payment for his lessons, was happy to get his pupil to write a large number of works which he inserted among his own, unscrupulously keeping all the honour of them for himself. Ultimately however, the teacher had to decide on launching his pupil's career, and Cherubini, finally free to see his music applauded under his own name, wrote several scores for Italian theatres, the success of which soon led to him being invited to London. It was there that he wrote La finta principessa and Giulio Sabino.

This chapter questions the explanatory validity of the term “Enlightenment” to understand intellectual and religious change in early modern England and the Dutch Republic. Not only do both countries claim to be the cradle of the Enlightenment, but their intellectual, political and religious developments were so deeply entangled during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that terms such as ‘Anglo-Dutch context’, ‘Anglo-Dutch moment’, ‘Anglo-Dutch sphere’, and ‘Anglo-Dutch connections’ are now of common usage in modern scholarship concerning the relations between these neighbouring nations.

According to Roy Porter, ‘England's special role’ in the development of the Enlightenment ‘was that in many areas – freethinking, empiricism, utilitarianism – she came first’, while Frederick Beiser affirmed that ‘although England … never had a self-conscious intellectual movement called ‘the Enlightenment’, it has a strong claim to be ‘cradle’ of such an intellectual movement. England was therefore the country most responsible for the emergence of the Enlightenment, and specifically of a strand of Enlightenment that characterised itself as ‘Christian’ on the basis of the idea – developed by the so-called ‘Cambridge Platonists’, Locke, and moderate Anglicans such as William Warburton (1698–1779) – that the Christian religion was an eminently reasonable religion and that reason and revelation could be reconciled by identifying the moral essentials of the Christian faith. Furthermore, at variance with the long persistent commonplace that the Enlightenment was essentially a revolt against established religion and ‘priestcraft’, researchers have recently shown that English apologists adopted arguments which incorporated assumptions they shared with their critics.

Sigismond Thalberg made triumphant tours round Europe between 1837 and 1848. For some musicians he was ‘the greatest pianist’, but for others Liszt was ‘the only pianist’. For the first concert on 12 April, his contributions were three of his own Fantasias on themes from Mozart's Don Giovanni, Donizetti's Anna Bolena, and Rossini's Mosè in Egitto. For the second , on 21 April, he played Fantasias on Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor and Rossini's Semiramide, and a ‘Grand Duo’ for two pianos on themes from Bellini's Norma.

After a three-year absence, Thalberg has returned both powerful and calm, as in the days of his earliest triumphs and, if possible, even happier. He in fact belongs to the small number of artists for whom everything succeeds, even success. It's not held against him that he has great talent, that he is favoured by glory and fortune; and were he to possess, together with Beethoven's genius, the name of Napoleon, and the wealth of the Banque de France, he would not be loved any the less. Does he take the trouble to become famous and rich? Not in the slightest. Before leaving for Paris, he writes to a friend (he has them) to announce his forthcoming arrival and a concert. The friend duly hires the Théâtre-Italien, orders a printer to put up notices: ‘Tuesday … April, first concert by M. Sigismond Thalberg’ and organises a wretched little orchestra, rickety, knock-kneed, peevish, made for playing overtures no one will listen to and accompanying singers who will hardly be heard. The day before the concert, the virtuoso arrives, puts together his programme in a few hours, looks in at the theatre for a few minutes to reassure himself that the beautiful ladies who dream of him will be there on his return, and next day, hey presto!, the house is full of them.

On Advent Sunday in December 1636 the eccentric aristocrat Lady Eleanor Davies, with female companions, arrived early for the communion service at Lichfield cathedral in south-east Staffordshire. Diocesan officials welcomed her to their recently redecorated church, with its ‘hangings of arras behind the altar, the communion table handsomely railed in, and the table itself set out in the best manner, and the bishop's seat fairly built’. The reverence of the occasion and the setting was shattered when Lady Eleanor approached the sanctuary with

News of this exploit went round the country, as the latest outrage by a disorderly visionary. The newswriter Edward Rossingham followed his New Year letter to Sir Thomas Puckering with an update a month later

Most of what historians understand about medieval pilgrim souvenirs and similar devotional ephemeralia has been gleaned from a study of the surviving objects themselves. Many thousands of devotional badges, ampullae, and other trinkets in tin, lead, or pewter have been discovered in various archaeological contexts, for which contemporary documentary evidence is almost entirely lacking. Art historians and archaeologists have thus attempted to reconstruct the history of these items, what material culture studies would call the ‘object biography’, largely working backwards from the form and context in which they have been preserved. One notable debate about the object biography of pilgrim badges, for example, is why so many ended up in rivers: whether they were disposed of as trash or meaningfully placed as votive objects. The latter is an idea which Jennifer Lee has persuasively countered, although the idea of ritual deposition still has a strong attraction for many scholars. The wish to find, or at least to suggest, a certainty and strength of argument is often prominent in the analysis of these otherwise context-light objects.

Toward an Understanding of Recent Events

A century after Émile Jaques-Dalcroze's students first started spreading his ideas and methods in the United States, two historic developments marked a critical break with the past. In 2012, the Dalcroze Society of America (DSA) formed a committee to develop a consensus about Dalcroze teacher training. This Professional Development Committee (PDC) was led by the Americans who hold the Diplôme, expert Dalcroze practitioners who had earned the highest credentials from the Institut Jaques-Dalcroze (IJD) and, with it, the right to certify teachers. Soon after, in 2014, two former Presidents of the DSA, David Frego and Kathy Thomsen, declared their independence from the IJD by announcing their creation of an alternative model for teacher training. The American Eurhythmics Society (AES) would enable teachers lacking the Diplôme to confer credentials in eurhythmics. These events stirred strong reactions, both in the States and abroad.

In 2017, the AES formally launched its new teacher-training program and the PDC produced the first iteration of its teacher-training manual for the DSA, codifying its ongoing efforts to bring greater cohesion to Dalcroze education as practiced in the USA. This curriculum proved controversial; yet changes in the PDC's membership have not deterred the DSA from its commitment to building a professional community of practice.

How may we understand these developments? What were the key factors that led them to take shape as they did? To interpret them, we need to step back and see them in their historical context.

The Middle Ages are omnipresent in contemporary culture. People encounter it daily in the form of popular cultural products that refer to the real historical period, such as the film The Last Duel by Ridley Scott. Other points of contact are neomedieval fantasy products such as House of the Dragon, which draw on popular notions of the Middle Ages to enrich their fantastic secondary worlds. Feature films, series, documentaries, novels, YouTube videos take up existing knowledge about the Middle Ages, expand, contrast, popularise it, and make it part of everyday life. Video games are a relatively young medium and have become a global phenomenon, played every day. Among a wide range of games using the Middle Ages as their historical backdrop is the hugely successful and popular neomedieval fantasy video game The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt released in 2015, referred to in this chapter as The Witcher 3. This includes numerous references to ideas about the Middle Ages.

Even though some scholarship on the staging of the Middle Ages in video games and on The Witcher 3 exists, research into players’ response to these productions is sparse. This chapter therefore focuses precisely on the aspect of reception. More specifically it examines statements from interviews conducted with players of The Witcher 3. It draws attention to how and why the game's neomedieval fantasy world is perceived by players as a depiction of the Middle Ages. In a first step, the interview method and the sample are presented in more detail. This is followed by a short overview of the game The Witcher 3.

Introduction

The African rivers have a significance that goes beyond physical representation as a body of nature. They also embody the lifeblood of diverse African societies and cultures, which serve as a repository of cultural heritage and pivotal points of human interaction. From the sprawling Nile to the winding channels of the Congo Basin, these waterways have shaped not only the physical landscape but also the cultural identities of the communities spread across and along their banks. This chapter explores the complex relationship between African rivers and culture, looking deeply into their far-reaching influence on and by the societies that depend on them. The cyclic flooding of rivers like the Nile and Niger has nurtured fertile lands, enabling the rise of civilizations such as ancient Egypt and the Mali Empire.

Moreover, they have acted as vital arteries for trade and commerce. An overview of the economic history of Africa shows a pattern of settlements along river bodies. Rivers facilitated intra-trade among African societies as riverine products were exchanged for other commodities.1 This, in turn, has enabled the exchange of ideas and goods. Beyond their practical functions, African rivers hold deep cultural significance and are revered as sacred entities in indigenous belief systems. Rituals and ceremonies paying homage to these waterways reflect a deep reverence for nature and the interconnectedness of all living beings. From ceremonial offerings to communal gatherings, these cultural expressions underscore the intrinsic bond between human societies and their natural environment.