What better way to start the New Year than with one of our new releases? This month our publications include the exploration of cinema in Mozambique, the figure of Mélusine, a guide to research on Telemann in any language; which book will you choose?
Enjoy this preview of 6 new publications. Until next time!
The Telemann Compendium
The Telemann Compendium is the first guide to research on the composer in any language. Although the scholarly ‘Telemann Renaissance’ is now a half-century old, there has never been a book intended to serve as a gateway for further study and the field of Telemann studies has been slow to develop in the English-speaking world. And yet the veritable explosion of performances, both live and recorded, of the composer’s music in recent decades has won him an ever-increasing following among musicians and concert-goers worldwide. As with other books in the Composer Compendia series, the book includes a brief biography, dictionary, works-list, and selective bibliography.
Baldric of Bourgueil: “History of the Jerusalemites”
A Translation of the Historia Ierosolimitana
The Historia Ierosolimitana is a prose narrative of the events of the First Crusade written at the abbey of Bourgueil in the Loire Valley around 1105. Its author, the abbot Baldric, used the anonymous Gesta Francorum for much of the factual material presented, but provided literary enhancements and amplifications of the historical narrative and the characters found therein. This volume provides the first modern-language translation of the Historia, with a full introduction setting out its historical, social, political and manuscript contexts, and notes.
Kings, Lords and Courts in Anglo-Norman England
About the year 1000, hundreds and shires were the dominant and probably the only local assemblies for doing legal and other business in England. Later, lords established separate courts which gave them greater autonomy: these can be seen clearly by the early twelfth century, and were the basis from which the later manorial courts, courts leet and honour courts originated. This book shows, for the first time, how they came into being.
Liberated Africans and the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 1807-1896
In 1807, Britain and the United States passed legislation limiting and ultimately prohibiting the transoceanic slave trade. Liberated Africans and the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 1807-1896 explores the consequences for formerly enslaved Africans of this legislation. Throughout the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds, those supposedly “liberated” were often conscripted into extended periods of indentured servitude. A groundbreaking intervention in the study of slavery, abolition, and emancipation, this edited collection will be welcomed by scholars, students, and all who care about the global legacy of slavery.
The Mélusine Romance in Medieval Europe
Translation, Circulation, and Material Contexts
Readers have long been fascinated by the enigmatic figure of Mélusine – a beautiful fairy woman cursed to transform into a half-serpent once a week, whose part-monstrous sons are the ancestor of several European noble houses. This study is the first to consider how this romance developed from a local legend to European bestseller, analysing versions in French, German, Castilian, Dutch, and English.
Cinemas of the Mozambican Revolution
Anti-Colonialism, Independence and Internationalism in Filmmaking, 1968-1991
In one of the first cultural acts after independence in 1975, Frelimo’s new socialist government of Mozambique set up a National Institute of Cinema (the INC). In a country with little previous experience of cinema, the INC was tasked to “deliver to the people an image of the people”. A unique culture of revolutionary cinema emerged, building on films made during the armed struggle. The INC began the task of decolonising the film industry, drawing on networks of solidarity with other socialist struggles. Mozambique became an epicentre for militant filmmakers from around the world, and cinema played a crucial role in constructing the new nation and resisting Apartheid. Cinemas of the Mozambican Revolution provides a compelling account of this radical experiment in harnessing cinema to social change.
Old English Scholarship in the Seventeenth Century