Even though foreign crime fiction has been available in translation in Brazil since the 1930s, Brazilian crime fiction did not become a part of the nation's cultural landscape until the 1980s. The most popular international representatives of the genre, notes Amelia Simpson in 1990, have ‘been widely distributed and read in Brazil. Bookstores regularly carry detective titles, usually a substantial selection of British classics and, especially more recently, hard-boiled works’. However, Simpson continues, until at least the end of the 1980s, crime fiction ‘remains a relatively unassimilated product, receiving little attention either as a foreign ingredient of Brazilian culture, as a set of conventions of formal, critical interest, or as a form to be cultivated’ (62). The genre had little prestige within the Brazilian literary field. Brazilian modernism specifically, since the 1920s, was characterised by a critical revision of national cultural traditions and an attitude of distancing from the influence of foreign cultural values. This was not a context conducive to adapt the genre to a local context. An additional factor contributing to the lack of intellectual prestige of the genre in Brazil was ‘a linha regionalista que propunha uma identidade do pais baseada na natureza e no campo’ (the trend of regionalist literature that proposed an identity of the country based on nature and the countryside), while the detective genre, for the most part, reflected the vicissi-tudes of the modern individual in the modern city.

Most cardinals were Italians. They found themselves far from home, far from their networks, and far from their resources, which left them in a vulnerable position. Still, they were considered to be powerful lords, and as such, they wielded significant power. Not only might legates have anticipated the adventus with unease, recipients of cardinal-legates might have felt likewise. Recipients, especially if they were minor players, needed to live up to expectations, executing the adventus successfully, lest they wanted to risk the ire of one of the most powerful ecclesiastical lords in Europe.

Numerous adventus ceremonies have left no written evidence beyond the casual note. Many have undoubtedly been lost to the passage of time, leaving no trace whatsoever. In many instances, the preparations for and the performance of the ceremony likely depended on collective experience and tradition. Medieval authors only showed interest in the specifics of a reception if something particularly significant was at stake or if a reception held a special meaning. In like manner, some authors composed treatises on the appropriate way to welcome a dignitary with an adventus, often in response to some form of monastic reassessment or reform. The titles of these treatises vary in the medieval sources – sometimes there are no titles – but I have labelled them collectively as ‘adventus instructions’ for the sake of convenience.

As dermatologists recognise, skin is one of the most extensive and important organs of the human body. As a mechanism for protection, it serves as a barrier, shielding people from external impacts and variations in pressure, while as an instrument of regulation, it ensures that body temperature remains within acceptable parameters. With its network of nerve cells, skin is the most widely distributed of the sense organs and the only one that is essential for life. As it detects and relays changes in external environments, skin functions as a universal, an anatomically essential component of the body that – in the absence of injury, disease, or acts of self-inflicted transformation – serves as a leveller, uniting beings in a common evolutionary bond. Yet from a socio-cultural perspective, skin is one of the most complex and ambivalent parts of the body. Appraised in some contexts as a stand-in for the individual, a synecdoche, or pars pro toto of human identity, it is viewed in others as a mask, a barrier, a form of protective armour that impedes contact with the individual artificially trapped within. It stands thus, paradoxically, both as a representation of the true and authentic self, and as the facade that conceals it. This process, which is further complicated by the curious and controlling operation of the gaze, which imposes identities through procedures of scopic surveillance, ensures that just as the skin of the individual projects an identity outwards towards the observer, it serves simultaneously as a canvas, a text, a receptacle for the imposition – whether warranted or not – of a range of culturally significant meanings.

The story of British choral music up to around the time of the Black Death (1348) is essentially that of activity in its monasteries and cathedrals, after which, up to the Reformation in the middle of the sixteenth century, other institutions also begin to play a significant part. The liturgies of the early church started to take systematic shape in the fourth to sixth centuries, although it was not until the era of Charlemagne in the eighth and ninth centuries that standard forms emerged from many diverse local practices. With references to psalms and hymns being sung in Christian worship from the earliest days, music in one form or another has always played an important role, and the 150 psalms of the Hebrew Bible were eventually to form a backbone of worship throughout the Western church. Chanting – at its simplest, essentially the use of heightened speech – is a natural feature of many religions, serving principally as a means of elevating words from the realm of the everyday. Sung liturgy also came to have the practical benefits of aiding clarity in large buildings, and of preventing the words being rushed – you cannot easily gabble when chanting! For the whole of the Middle Ages, communal services (as opposed to private Masses) appear to have been more or less sung throughout, except for any sermon – certainly in monasteries and cathedrals. In the twenty-first century we are accustomed to much of the liturgy (and especially the lessons) being spoken, even in the most musical of establishments. The continuous singing still found in the Orthodox churches perhaps offers the closest impression of the atmosphere of Western medieval practice, as does the fact that their liturgy is celebrated in an area closed off from the laity, as was the case both in the quire of a cathedral or monastic church, and (to a lesser extent) the chancel of a parish church.

Two ancient traditions about how to respond to the suffering of the world unexpectedly intersect in fifteenth-century England. The life of Buddha is the ultimate source of Barlam and Iosaphat, a popular saint's life, which in the late fifteenth century was translated into Middle English, somewhere around London or the southern Midlands. It resembles the ascetic Christianity displayed in Sir Thomas Malory's version of the Grail quest, translated nearby at about the same time. Both texts emphasize the sorrows that spring from the unstableness of the world and humans’ wavering will. In particular, Malory suggests Launcelot's adultery is a symptom of the more fundamental problem of his unstableness. When explaining why Launcelot will not achieve the Grail, the hermit Nacien says:

Gervase of Canterbury and Roger of Wendover shared certain similarities. Both were Benedictine monks and chroniclers. Their social backgrounds were probably quite similar. Historically, Christ Church and St Albans maintained certain connections such as Lanfranc's Monastic Constitutions, which Lanfranc composed for both Canterbury and St Albans. Nevertheless, the views of Roger and Gervase on the papacy and its legates stood worlds apart. English criticism of the papacy was not novel, but Roger took it to a new level. The world had changed since Gervase wrote his Chronica: King John had offered up England as a fief to the pope.

In 1213, King John had found himself in deep trouble. Excommunicated by the pope for his stance on the Stephen Langton affair, facing rebellion, and expecting a French invasion, John had capitulated to Pope Innocent III to curry favour and offered England as a fief to the pope. Roger found this manoeuvre outrageous. He accused the king of selling his country and his people into slavery. The pope, in the same vein, was a traitor in Roger's eyes because he had accepted the offer. Innocent became the feudal lord of England, John, receiving England as a fief, his vassal. Roger viewed this arrangement as a momentous shift in Anglo-Papal relations. It greatly affected his outlook on the legatine adventus. While he, like Gervase, viewed the legatine adventus as the ceremonial affirmation of papal-legatine authority, he interpreted the implications in a radically different way.

Warriors and wise women were celebrated – as we learn mainly from their burials – primarily the men in the early seventh century and, around the mid-seventh, the women. The farmers and foot-soldiers left less of a footprint, but there is one cadre of early English society who earn our respect and whom we yearn to meet and learn from: they left their mark in every cemetery and settlement and enriched no small part of the splendour of the greatest of them. These are the artisans, those that made and assembled the regalia, stitched and dyed the apparel and built the burial chambers and halls. The great and the good did not do these things. Our artisans earn admiration at every turn; they not only designed and manufactured the artefacts that defned their society, but in every object they bequeathed something of their own expertise and personality. We will know them through their art. If we need to see their idea of perfection, and something of the way they saw the world – it is the things themselves that relate them. Through their artefacts we will meet makers of precious metalwork, creators of vivid clothing, and, most importantly, the carpenters. Of all the active artisans of the early seventh century, it is the creators of buildings who were most closely associated with those building its ships. We will see that the time of Sutton Hoo was a peak of productive creativity, with all the crafts contributing to an age of advanced invention.

Introduction

In 1868, planning began on the northern estates of the Duke of Sutherland for one of the largest land reclamation schemes in nineteenth-century Britain. Underpinned by Victorian confdence in the wonder innovation of the age – steam power – the 3rd Duke invested heavily for ffteen years in his attempt to create productive arable land and farms to support commercial sheep farming, the dominant enterprise on the estate. Agricultural experts had long pointed out that the total acreage of arable land in Sutherland was the smallest of any Scottish county; out of a total 1,207,188 acres in the county, only 28,711 were under cultivation and this meant that large sheep farmers were obliged to send their focks into Caithness and Ross-shire for winter feeding, as sufcient foodstufs could not be grown locally. Land reclamation in Sutherland, using the most modern agricultural technology and theory, aimed to create neat and productive felds from land lying in a ‘state of nature’, by removing all stones and other obstacles, ploughing it over, fertilising it and cropping it, so that Sutherland sheep farmers would no longer have to line the pockets of farmers and suppliers from outside the county.

Works on the same principles had been undertaken elsewhere in England, lowland Scotland and in other Highland counties. But the Sutherland works were on the largest scale ever attempted in Britain, in terms of acreage, technology and fnancial investment.

Native Landscape and Family Relations

There is nothing particularly romantic or exciting—at least in the conventional sense—about the countryside in which young Bedřich Smetana spent his earliest years. It is a gracious, fertile land, stretching between the border mountains of northeastern Bohemia and the gently tapering plains of the river Labe (Elbe). The landscape is a patchwork of fields and meadows, occasionally interrupted by apple, pear, or cherry orchards, their trees either in full blossom or heavy with ripening fruit.

Here and there, darker shades of green signal pinewoods, which grow wider and denser as they approach the mountain ridges. Scattered across the slopes, valleys, and riverbanks are typical Bohemian villages. Every now and then, small but thriving towns, centuries old, dominate the landscape with their ancient church towers, castles, and modern schools. The Orlické Mountains stretch from the north to the southeast, gracing the horizon. On clear days, the mightier peaks of the Krkonoše range can be glimpsed in the distance. To the west, where the land opens into a broad plain, lie the ruins of Kunětická Hora castle and the majestic Renaissance steeples of Hradec Králové (Königgrätz), a bishopric and county seat. The rivulets and streams feeding into the Labe teem with fish, while the dense forests provide shelter for pheasants and partridges. Along the Metuje river, near the Bohemian frontier and Prussian Silesia, beneath the imposing Wallenstein's castle, lies Náchod, now known as the Czech Manchester. Not far away, past a low pass called “Branka” (Gateway), the charming town of Nové Město nad Metují sits perched on a rocky promontory.