This essay offers an overview both of Alejo Carpentier’s writings and González Echevarría’s own work as a literary critic, especially as it pertains to his monograph, Alejo Carpentier: The Pilgrim at Home (1977). He traces the arc of Carpentier’s works, beginning with ¡Ecué-Yamba-Ó! and ending with El arpa y la sombra pointing to recurrent, highly original themes such as Afro-Cuban culture, classical music and jazz, colonial history, and exile, all the while noting Carpentier’s dialogue with a younger generation of Latin American writers. González Echevarría comments on the influence exerted by the concept of “the marvelous real” on Boom writers and magical realism. The essay ends by reflecting on Carpentier’s lies about his biography and points to similarities in his last novel, El arpa y la sombra (1978), between the character Christopher Columbus’s penchant to lie and his foreignness, and Carpentier himself.

This chapter examines how the 2011 uprising disrupted the authoritative intellectual model, leading to an ideal of radical embeddedness – a position of unconditional solidarity with the people. Intellectuals, once expected to enlighten and guide, increasingly deferred to public sentiment, sometimes at the expense of critical intervention. Two intellectual orientations co-existed: a Bourdieusian model, which maintained analytical distance, and a Boltanskian model, which embraced radical egalitarianism. However, exile fostered self-perceptions of epistemic inferiority, particularly in trauma work aimed at global solidarity. While radical embeddedness strengthened solidarity narratives, it also weakened political influence, leading intellectuals to avoid institutional politics and produce politically hesitant interventions. The chapter argues that this shift neutralised secular democratic currents, leaving the movement vulnerable to competing ideological forces. Ultimately, while embedded intellectuals sought praxis, their deference to public sentiment limited their impact.

Chapter 8 examines a neo-Latin university drama, Christus Triumphans, which was written by the English Protestant John Foxe while he was living in exile during the reign of Mary I, and which depicts Mater Ecclesia (Mother Church) as the mother and schoolmistress of the entire human race. The chapter argues that Foxe uses his dramatic work to forge a diverse community of Continental and English Protestants into the impassioned body of the Church as Christ’s bride, who desires the return of Christ and an end to all tyrannical violence.

This chapter examines significant gay American travel writers from the nineteenth century to the present who mine the political, aesthetic, and ethical dimensions of travel writing to interrogate the experience of non-heteronormative life. From Herman Melville’s Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life (1846) to Robert McAlmon’s time in Paris in the 1920s and Edmund White’s landmark account of travel in the US (published in 1980), the chapter traces how experiences of exoticism, exile, and home have conditioned the representation of gay masculinity.

Itineraries of poetry across language boundaries do not necessarily entail actual travel on the poet’s part. However, writers ancient and modern did go on excursions to the lands associated with the poetic traditions with which they interacted – as did readers too. Chapter 5 resumes discussion of two poets who appeared in Chapter 4, Joachim Du Bellay in sixteenth-century France (via the French Antiquitez de Rome, the Latin Elegiae, and other works) and John Milton in seventeenth-century England (via the bilingual double book of 1645, its Latin half framed by dedicatory testimonia from learned Italians and by the career-punctuating Epitaph for Damon). For both, language choice would have been an issue even without their ventures abroad; but both use their time in Italy to explore, sharpen, thematize, and problematize transcultural issues of language and identity. Is the passage to Italy a celebration of linguistic cosmopolitanism or a test of linguistic loyalty, a journey home or a journey into exile and alienation? What kinds of language question do poetic travellers to Italy negotiate, and what Rome, or whose Rome, do they find?

This chapter discusses the terms in which collective exile experienced by Constantinopolitan refugees was rendered in architecture, by analyzing how Nicaea was renovated into a new exilic capital, replacing Constantinople (New Rome). Extensive fortifications were built around Nicaea, Nymphaion, Heraclea Pontica, Prousa, Smyrna, Tripolis, and Philadelphia. In analyzing their architectural form and the dedicatory inscriptions embedded in their walls and towers, I describe how Nicaea and its surrounding landscape evoked a collective exilic experience for the refugees it protected. As attested by the built environment, these experiences at times align with but also contrast with literary tropes on exile written about by the period’s chronicler, Niketas Choniates. The era of exile is commemorated in the unusual appearance of Jewish exilic leaders and prophets in several dome mosaics of newly renovated works in Constantinople.

The Introduction discusses the role of Constantinople as capital and center of the Byzantine Empire, the so-called Palaiologan Renaissance, and the historiographic consequences of both, particularly upon the study of the Laskarid dynasty during the years 1204−1261.

This chapter uses qualitative analysis to elucidate the quantitative results obtained in Chapter 10. First, it explains why most staseis began with relatively minor forms of violence, such as shows of force, assassinations, and expulsions. Next, it addresses the follow-on question of why so many staseis ended before escalating to involve more intense forms of violence, such as battles and mass executions. Finally, it discusses the implications of the results obtained in Chapter 10 from a qualitative perspective.

Chapter 6 focuses on Ottoman political reactions to the two opposition movements. Since the main means of spreading word about them was carried out by missionary activities, this chapter examines how Ottoman rulers reacted to Wahhabis and Mahdists in Ottoman lands. I examine in detail various cases through Ottoman archival materials, classifying them according to region as a means of showcasing the political measures implemented to stop the spread of the two movements in the centres (Istanbul and the Hejaz), in the core regions (Anatolia and Rumelia) and in the periphery (Arab regions, such as Damascus and Baghdad). This chapter shows that the severity of punishments decreased from the centre to the periphery, even though the main concern was maintaining public order in all the territories of the empire. The cases in the chapter also reveal how the telegraph and steamship helped in the central management of all the territories through the responses of the Ottoman rulers in Istanbul to incidents in the periphery.

Chapter 16 provides an analysis of an important passage in Simplicius’ Commentary on Epictetus’ Manual. What functions can the (true) philosopher have in political and social life? Simplicius answers this question as concerning either a state or city which is good or one which is evil. In general, the philosopher should look to the moral wellbeing of others, seeking to ‘humanize’ them (i.e., to promote the virtues, the political virtues, of a good human being). With this in view, in a good state the philosopher will assume leadership functions, as described in Plato’s concept of political science. In a morally corrupt state there will be no place for the philosopher in politics. To preserve his integrity, the philosopher may have to go into exile, as Epictetus did, and Simplicius himself. Or if exile is not possible, the philosopher will try to act in a more limited (probably domestic) sphere, but without compromise.

This essay explores the Spanish Inquisition’s attention to individuals who identified with Protestant Christianity. In the 1520s, inquisitors first attempted to prohibit the smuggling of books. By the 1530s, they were also willing track Spanish Protestant sympathizers abroad, via family members of the suspects as well as networks of spies, and have them repatriated for punishment. The discovery of Spanish Protestant cells in Seville and Valladolid in the late 1550s -- whose members often intellectual and socioeconomic elites -- stunned the inquisitorial establishment, which did not succeed in catching all the suspects. Exceptional punishments even for the penitent were allowed by Pope Paul IV; dozens of individuals were burned at the stake in autos de fe between 1559 and 1562. The discovery of Protestants in the heart of Spain also facilitated the arrest of the archbishop of Toledo, Bartolomé de Carranza, whose seventeen-year trial became notorious. Eventually, Spanish monarchs had to make concessions to foreign Protestants for political and economic reasons, and Spanish inquisitors only encountered scattered, small groups of native believers.

Chapter 3 explores in detail the households between which Tivinat was carrying the correspondence: of Henry Norris, the English ambassador, in the suburbs of Paris and of Odet de Coligny, the cardinal of Châtillon, in the outskirts of London. Discusses Norris’s experience as ambassador and the challenges of this role, not least the interception of couriers, as well as the difficulty of negotiating between the French and English courts at a time of turbulent diplomatic relations. Establishes the importance of his household as a hub of Protestant activity. Châtillon’s life and career are examined as context for his experience of exile in England and his role as diplomat at Elizabeth’s court from 1568 to 1571. Establishes the importance of his contribution as Huguenot representative, facilitating a Protestant network of ministers and agents across Europe, as well as the links of this network with the two households and the correspondence carried by Tivinat. The role of other prominent figures in exile with Châtillon are also explored.

This chapter discusses poets of the South West Asian and North African diasporas who have experienced exile and loss, some as refugees. It describes a translingual pluriverse of diasporic poets from a region that has come to have many names and terminologies assigned to it. The chapter reflects on the political and cultural conditions in which diasporic writers produce poetry in Australia, in both spoken and written forms. Themes of witness, protest and identity, often interwoven, are analysed. The chapter considers the presence of poets from Arabic-, Kurdish-, Dari- and Farsi-speaking backgrounds, some of whom write in English while others have translingual practices and experiment with hybrid modes. It assesses the impact of settler monolingualism in Australia and argues for the importance of multilingual poetry in articulating cultural diversity and challenging delimiting discursive systems. The significance of literary journals is also detailed, and the value of poetry in the face of violence, displacement and prejudice is asserted.

The Peloponnesian War affected how mass and elite interacted at Athens and how the public sphere worked there. The Athenians themselves thought in terms of two ruptures, one at the death of Perikles, one at the end of the war. But the degree of rupture in both cases has been exaggerated, and it is better to think in terms of how power was exercised. Here we see various ways in which the people’s control of the elite was strengthened during the war, and indeed the use of exile and atimia (disenfranchisement) as penalties fatally weakened Athens by causing factional strife. The Peloponnesian War concentrated the people inside Athens and the Long Walls and increased the number of spaces in which Athenians were mixed up with metics and enslaved people, enhancing the deep politicisation of Athenian culture, which affected the wealthy as well as the poor and promoted the hetaireiai and, eventually, concentration of political factions into particular spaces. War enhanced the Athenians’ emotional investment, and this came out in particular over the Sicilian Expedition. It was because war affected the Athenians in a variety of different ways, each with their own timescale, that the traumatic effects emerged only after fifteen years.