Böcker utgivna av Manchester University Press

Medieval romances were widely condemned by early modern thinkers: the genre of questing knights and marvellous adventure was decried as bloody, bawdy and superstitious. Despite such proclamations, though, the Middle English romance genre remained popular across the early modern period.Difficult pasts examines the reception of Middle English romances after the Protestant Reformation in England, arguing that the genre's popularity rested not in its violent or superstitious qualities, but in its multivocality. Incorporating insights from book history, reception history and cultural memory studies, Ensley argues that the medieval romance book became a flexible site of memory with which early modern readers could both connect with and distance themselves from the recent 'difficult past', a past that invited controversy and encouraged divided perspectives. Central characters in this study range from canonical authors like Geoffrey Chaucer and Edmund Spenser to less studied figures, such as printer William Copland, Elizabethan scribe Edward Banister and seventeenth-century poet and romance enthusiast, John Lane. In uniting a wide range of romance readers' perspectives, the book complicates clear ruptures between manuscript and print, Catholic and Protestant, or medieval and Renaissance. Difficult pasts reveals how the romance book offers a new way to understand the simultaneous change and continuity that defines post-Reformation England.

This book is paradigm-shifting in the study of film audiences. It develops new theory on audiences as a process and new methodology for studying audiences based on extensive new empirical data on audiences.

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a renewed interest in the relationship between public health authorities and the public. Particular attention has been paid to 'problem publics' who do not follow health advice. This is not a new issue. As the chapters in this collection demonstrate, the designation of certain groups or populations as problem publics has long been a part of health policy and practice. By exploring the creation and management of these problem publics in a range of time periods and geographical locations, the collection sheds light on what is both specific and particular. For health authorities, publics themselves were often thought to pose problems, because of their behaviour, identity or location. But publics could and did resist this framing. There were, and continue to be, many problems with seeing publics as problems.

Manchester Beethoven studies presents ten original chapters by scholars with close ties to the University of Manchester. The volume contains new research on a range of biographical, analytical and cultural topics, and reflects the breadth of ongoing Beethoven scholarship in Manchester.

This collection considers the increasingly central role that memory plays in determining contemporary politics and the future of Northern Irish society. Using an inter-disciplinary approach, it considers how competing narratives of the past are constructed, re-constructed, commemorated and then harnessed to mobilise politics in present day society. -- .

Starting with the premise that clothing is political, this volume explores the relationships between political theory, dress, and self-presentation during the period in which Britain's colonial empire assumed its modern form.The book assembles an international group of scholars to document the role of clothing in shaping identities and communicating social and political messages. It sheds light on the material basis of the political cultures of Britain and its colonies while offering timely connections to present-day issues and concerns. The chapters range from an analysis of the uniforms worn by the West India Regiments stationed in the Caribbean to the smock frock donned by rural agricultural labourers, and from the self-presentation of members of Parliament, political thinkers, and imperial administrators to the dress of characters in novels, paintings, and political cartoons.Since politics in this period was mostly a man's affair, Political and sartorial styles focuses primarily on men and masculinity - an underrepresented area in scholarship on fashion and style. The book will appeal to students and scholars of nineteenth-century history, particularly those working on gender, politics, material culture, and imperialism.

Beckett's afterlives is the first book-length study dedicated to posthumous reworkings of Samuel Beckett's oeuvre. Contextualised against the backdrop of the author's developing views on adaptation and media specificity, it challenges the long-held belief that he opposed any form of genre crossing.Featuring contemporary engagements with Beckett's work from the UK, Europe, the USA and Latin America, the volume does not approach adaptation as a form of (in)fidelity or (ir)reverence. Instead, it argues that exposing the 'Beckett canon' to new environments and artistic practices enables fresh perspectives and enhances the texts' significance for contemporary artists and audiences alike. The chapters explore a wide variety of forms - from prose and theatre to radio, television, film and webseries - focusing on the period from the early 1990s to the late 2010s. The concept of adaptation is broadly interpreted, including changes within the same performative context, spatial relocations or transpositions across genres and media, and even creative rewritings of Beckett's biography. The collection offers a range of innovative ways to approach the author's work in a constantly changing world and analyses its remarkable susceptibility to creative responses.Beckett's afterlives suggests that adaptation, remediation and appropriation are forms of cultural negotiation that are essential for the survival and continuing urgency and vibrancy of Beckett's work in the twenty-first century.

The heat of Beowulf reexamines the aesthetics of the longest surviving Old English poem through the poetics of twentieth-century poets Jack Spicer, arguing that the aesthetics of Beowulf entangle vulnerable human corporeality in the non-human world, rendering perceptible what otherwise remains insensible.

Shakespeare, memory, and modern Irish literature explores the intertextual connections between early modern English and modern Irish literature. Characterising the relationship as 'dismemorial', the book explores how ghosts, bodies, and the land are sites of literary connection through which contemporary Ireland draws on Shakespeare's England. -- .

This book sets out to challenge current interpretations of Carolingian culture, and especially its perceived correctio (correction), reform or renaissance. When we consider authors who operated outside the direct sphere of influence of the court, a much more dynamic image of Carolingian culture comes into view.

This book explores key Saudi and UAE bilateral relations against a backdrop of political transitions occurring at domestic, regional and international levels. It argues that established modes of analysis such as riyal politik and the Islamisation of Saudi foreign policy are redundant in this shifting economic climate, while political consolidation amounting to Sultanism only tells part of the story. Instead, the book emphasises the role of youth, background, and western affinity in leadership, while establishing liberalisation, hyper-nationalism, secularisation, 'Push East' pressure, and broader economic statecraft as the new touchstones of Saudi and UAE foreign policy.

Critical theory is one of the most important and exciting areas within the study of international relations. Its purpose is not only to describe how the world operates but also to help us imagine how things might be different and how we might achieve a more equitable and sustainable way of life. This book provides a cutting-edge introduction to the field.Presenting key concepts and thinkers, the book suggests how critique can help us confront the challenges of the twenty-first century. It evaluates the foundations on which critical theory has been built and illustrates how ideas that developed outside of international relations theory have been adopted and adapted within the discipline. The book focuses on essential questions for the critical project: what can we know, how does power operate and how should we live? It draws on recent developments in philosophy and on posthumanism as an area of study that can provide a critique of western thought.As the human species confronts mounting international tensions and the ongoing climate crisis, this book argues for a new direction for critical theory in international relations, one that engages with thinking outside of the western tradition.

A critical and colourful commentary on the history of the fractious relationship between law and medicine over several centuries reveals compelling stories how law regulated healers and healing . Any view that the law consistently deferred to medical practitioners is shown to be wrong. From the womb to the grave, enduring themes are identified.

By investigating representations of the war years in a selection of French crime novels from the mid-1940s to the present day, this book argues for the importance of crime fiction, and popular culture more generally, as active agents of memory in the ongoing debates over the legacies of the war years in contemporary France. -- .

This book provides a rich survey of the early-modern 'secret state', intelligence gathering espionage, and the work of spies in the British late sixteenth to mid-seventeenth-centuries.

This special issue of the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library is devoted to William Blake. It explores the British and European reception of Blake's work from the late nineteenth century to the present day, with a particular focus on the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s. -- .

This book shows the workings of power in the micro dynamics of welfare encounters. By staying close to real world welfare encounters, the book contributes to the broad scholarly field of welfare studies that either takes a Foucauldian perspective on governance, Weberian approach to the bureaucracy or contributes to the sociology of professions. -- .

The 1990s witnessed an explosion in women's writing in France, with a particularly exciting new generation of writer's coming to the fore, such as Christine Angot, Marie Darrieussecq and Regine Detambel. Other authors such as Paule Constant, Sylvie Germain, Marie Redonnet and Leila Sebbar, who had begun publishing in the 1980s, claimed their mainstream status in the 1990s with new texts. The book provides an up-to-date introduction to an analysis of new women's writing in contemporary France, including both new writers of the 1990s and their more established counter-parts. The editors' incisive introduction situates these authors and their texts at the centre of the current trends and issues concerning French literary production today, whilst fifteen original essays focus on individual writers. The volume includes specialist bibliographies on each writer, incorporating English translations, major interviews, and key critical studies. Quotations are given in both French and English throughout. An invaluable study resource, this book is written in a clear and accessible style and will be of interest to the general reader as well as to students of all levels, to teachers of a wide range of courses on French culture, and to specialist researchers of French and Francophone literature.

This volume brings together two important contemporary accounts of the life of Martin Luther in a confrontation that had been postponed for more than four hundred and fifty years.

China's citizenship challenge tells a story of how labour NGOs contest migrant workers' citizenship marginalisation in China. The book argues that in order to effectively address problems faced by migrant workers, these NGOs must undertake 'citizenship challenge': the transformation of migrant workers' social and political participation in public life, the broadening of their access to labour and other rights, and the reinvention of their relationship to the city. By framing the NGOs' activism in terms of citizenship rather than class struggle, this book offers a valuable contribution to the field of labour movement studies in China. The monograph also proves exceptionally timely in the context of the state's repression of these organisations in recent years, which, as the book explores, were largely driven by their citizenship-altering activism.

This ground-breaking book challenges the widespread view that sex and homosexuality were unmentionable in the USSR. The Khrushchev and Brezhnev eras (1956-82) have remained obscure and unexplored from this perspective. Drawing on previously undiscovered sources, Alexander fills in this critical gap. The book reveals that from 1956 to 1991, doctors, educators, jurists and police officers discussed homosexuality. At the heart of discussions were questions which directly affected the lives of homosexual people in the USSR. Was homosexuality a crime, disease or a normal variant of human sexuality? Should lesbianism be criminalised? Could sex education prevent homosexuality? What role did the GULAG and prisons play in homosexuality across the USSR? These discussions often had practical implications - doctors designed and offered medical treatments for homosexuality in hospitals, and procedures and medications were also used in prisons.

This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. The first major work on noblewomen in the twelfth century and Normandy, and of the ways in which they exercised power. Offers an important reconceptualisation of women's role in aristocratic society and suggests new ways of looking at lordship and the ruling elite in the high middle ages. Considers a wide range of literary sources such as chronicles, charters, seals and governmental records to draw out a detailed picture of noblewomen in the twelfth-century Anglo-Norman realm. Asserts the importance of the life-cycle in determining the power of aristocratic women. Demonstrates that the influence of gender on lordship was profound, complex and varied.

Clive Barker: Dark imaginer explores the diverse literary, film and visionary creations of the polymathic and influential British artist Clive Barker. In this necessary and timely collection, innovative essays by leading scholars in the fields of literature, film and popular culture explore Barker's contribution to gothic, fantasy and horror studies, interrogating his creative legacy. The volume consists of an extensive introduction and twelve groundbreaking essays that critically reevaluate Barker's oeuvre. These include in-depth analyses of his celebrated and lesser known novels, short stories, theme park designs, screen and comic book adaptations, film direction and production, sketches and book illustrations, as well as responses to his material from critics and fan communities. Clive Barker: Dark imaginer reveals the breadth and depth of Barker's distinctive dark vision, which continues to fascinate and flourish.

This volume looks at how mid-seventeenth-century debates on the government and order of the Church related to the political crisis of the time. It explores debates concerning the relationship between church, state and people, the nature of the various post-Reformation settlements in the British Atlantic and how they impacted on each other, as well as central and local responses to ecclesiastical upheaval. This is one of the first scholarly collections to focus on the topic of church polity and its relation to politics during a critical period of transatlantic history. It will be of interest to scholars and students of the British revolutions as well as those working on the history of the Church and early dissenting tradition.

British labour history has been one of the dominating areas of historical research in the last sixty years and this book, written in honour of Professor Chris Wrigley, offers a collection of essays written by leading British labour historians of that subject including Ken Brown, Malcolm Chase and Matthew Worley. It focuses upon trade unionism, the co-operative movement, the rise and fall of the Labour Party, and working-class lives, comparing British labour movements with those in Germany and examining the social and political labour activities of the Lansburys. There is, indeed, some important work connected with the cultural developments of the British labour movement, most obviously in the essay written by Matthew Worley on communism and Punk Rock.

From Behind the Scenes at the Museum to Big Sky, this book explores the major themes and formal concerns in Kate Atkinson's fiction (history, memory, feminism, metafiction, genre revision). It situates Atkinson's ¿uvre in terms of an aesthetics of hydridity that runs through her eleven novels, one play and one collection of stories to date.

'A truly fascinating account - of a voyage, but also of an idea that is counter-intuitive in a world based on speed, but revelatory for a planet that is going to have to start taking real care of itself. There's a bit of romance here, and a lot of reality.'>'Trade winds is an absorbing account of a voyage that starts off as an effort to prove the continuing viability of sail, but becomes far more challenging than expected when the COVID-19 pandemic shuts off all access to the shore. It is also a thoughtful analysis of practical ways to shrink the carbon footprint of one of the world's most polluting industries - shipping.'> 'This book is both important and beautiful: important, in that it describes one of the best ways we can move into a post-fossil fuels civilisation; and beautiful, because it shows on every page how this bursting out of the cocoon of heavy oil that we have been living in will return us to a life in the real world, with the wind felt in the hands and on one's face, and every day an adventure.'>'This is a book that should change the world. Beautifully written and brimming with bold yet careful analysis, Christiaan De Beukelaer has given the world a tremendous gift.'>In 2020, Christiaan De Beukelaer spent 150 days covering 14,000 nautical miles aboard the schooner Avontuur, a hundred-year-old sailing vessel that transports cargo across the Atlantic Ocean. Embarking in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, he wanted to understand the realities of a little-known alternative to the shipping industry on which our global economy relies, and which contributes more carbon emissions than aviation. What started as a three-week stint of fieldwork aboard the ship turned into a five-month journey, as the COVID-19 pandemic forced all borders shut while crossing the ocean, preventing the crew from stepping ashore for months on end. Trade winds engagingly recounts De Beukelaer's life-changing personal odyssey and the complex journey the shipping industry is on to cut its carbon emissions. The Avontuur's mission remains crucial as ever: the shipping industry urgently needs to stop using fossil fuels, starting today. If we can't swiftly decarbonise shipping, we can't solve the climate crisis.

A polymath and participant in the 'first wave' of British Romanticism, Manning was one of the first Englishmen to study Chinese language and culture. His extraordinary story, told for the first time, transforms our understanding of Romanticism and the cultural exchange between Britain and Asia.