This introduction provides background and context for the four principal narrative sources for the history of the Spanish kingdom of León-Castile during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. They are Historia Silense, Chronicon Regum Legionensium by Bishop Pelayo of Oviedo, Historia Roderici and Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris. Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris is a biography of the hero Rodrigo Díaz, better remembered as El Cid.

This chapter offers the first academic account of one of Indian cinemas’ largest cult phenomena: the horror films of the Ramsay brothers. The Ramsay brothers were most prolific and popular between the late 1970s and the late 1980s, when India experienced the rise of Hindu fundamentalism. During this decade, as before, the Indian state sought to maintain strict control of the economy – a strategy which has historically enabled the film industry to function as a parallel (and not always legitimate) channel for the circulation of money. In this context, small, short-term speculative capital thrived, and the Ramsay brothers were one instance of it. The second part of the chapter examines the ways in which the Ramsay brothers’ horror films capitalised on ingredients that, while borrowed largely from the Hindu and Christian religions, staged new, secular and forward-looking dimensions of Indian subjectivity.

This chapter considers the epigram in the period in relation to a range of proximate and competing genres, including satire, the jest, the libel, the sonnet, and the character, and the distinction between the epitaph (a sub-genre of the epigram) and the elegy. It also examines the range of terminology that was at times applied to the epigram, and the meters and forms most often associated with the genre.

This section introduction presents an overview of contempory explainations for and responses to the plague. All contemporary commentators were agreed that the plague was an act of God, sent to punish mankind for its sinfulness and to frighten it into repentance and future good behaviour. Medical treatises, like public health regulations, at least gave the illusion that the plague could be controlled; but the overwhelming reaction of most people to the plague must have been one of helplessness. Perhaps that helps to explain contemporary claims that the plague had been caused by human agency. The plague seemed to many contemporaries to be the first act of an apocalyptic drama which would see the rule of Antichrist on earth, and finally the coming of Christ to judge the world. The Jews had a central role in that drama, as the enemies of Christ who must be converted, or murdered, before Christ would come in glory.

Like most filmmakers of his generation, the author grew up with the legends of Joris Ivens. Joris and Abe Osheroff have shown the author how life can be lived, and what might be the right path for a documentary enthusiast. George Orwell was making sponsored documentaries, and the author worked with him as camera assistant on a movie called The Furlined Foxhole. George was fastidious, meticulous, and great on script; and Terry Macartney-Filgate was iconoclastic, acid-tongued, devastatingly brilliant, and very funny. Both taught the author rudiments of filmmaking. But like George, Thomas Antony too has inspired the author. Antony's influence on the author is different from that of George. George taught the author that film was there to be used by the community, to record history, and to right wrongs. Like George he is a keen political critic, but in his attacks he uses a rapier instead of a broadsword.

The events and stories produced by the 1857 Rebellion, and the connections forged between particular British and Indian troops during the conflict, helped to shape its future form. The Rebellion was, in fact, a pivotal moment for the redefinition of attitudes - both public and official - about the military, empire, race and masculinity. The Rebellion was much more than a military crisis, however, for the public interest it generated in Britain was unprecedented. The structural, cultural and discursive transformations inspired by the Rebellion provided the conditions under which a new set of linkages between British and Indian heroes would gain widespread fame in both popular and military circles. The power of these connections derived, in no small part, from the particular ways in which Highlanders, Sikhs and Gurkhas embodied racial and masculine superiority in contrast to rebel sepoys. This chapter explores the conditions that made such connections possible.

The book ends with a brief reflection on a "religious epigram" by Sir John Harington that manifests the typical Martialian tone and approach that dominated the genre in the period1590 to 1640.