This study has examined a theoretical discourse about the nature and authority of scripture together with the vernacular biblical scholarship that extended from and reframed some of its major premises. The crucial reference point for much of this work has been John Wyclif 's academic writing, and, within such contexts, his efforts to imagine the Bible as a “book” inured to the logical and grammatical methods of scholastic intellectuality, here implicated most urgently in Wyclif 's late reassertion of realism. This results in something more ambiguous and theoretically suggestive than a “treatise” on biblical hermeneutics; while De Veritate Sacrae Scripturae is most definitely concerned with proper interpretation, proper interpretation itself hinges on a sweeping revaluation of all that which is “perceptible through voices and manuscripts,” thus marking off the materialist problematic of this study (99). To recall a passage discussed at length in chapter one, “scripture is not merely some sort of sign,” for if it were, “then all holy scripture could be damaged by a leather-worker, authorized by a scribe, torn apart by a dog, and corrected by a buffoon, as if it were liable to such defilement” (99). Far from reductive polemic, this and other such moments reveal how intensely attuned Wyclif is to the materiality of voces et scripta. Thus he exhorts the “subtle theologian” (subtilis theologus) to adopt a logic and grammar consistent with the sanctity of scripture's subject matter, the permanence of its divinely inscribed meaning, and its salvific purpose as a book – all ambitions which for him converge under the auspices of the liber vitae.

Although Wyclif is a constant presence in these pages, his thought a framework for thinking about the movement's work more broadly, the preceding chapters largely depart from genealogical models for intellectual or religious history. Wyclif 's individuation as “source” or “origin” of ideas mediated intact to the laity must be acknowledged in certain crucial respects, of course; during roughly the same stretch of time discussed in this book, or roughly 1380 to 1420, vernacular theology arguably reinforced the political and ecclesiological views that made the movement suspect in the eyes of authorities, such as Wyclif 's anti-sacerdotalism or his understanding of dominion.

Somewhere alongthe serene, long strip of the Red Sea, is an artificialsettlement, El Gouna. A carefully tended settlement ofsplendor thronged with exquisite and homogenous structuresthat reflect, even in their modernity, the ancient Arabianarchitecture of near Bronze Age. In its somewhat ambiguousnature, the new seems to constantly hold on to the old as ifafraid of drowning in the vibrancy of infringing Europeancivilization. On the faces of things, the battle forsupremacy between the old and the new readily captivates thesenses in the smoking of the old pipe, Shahshi at musicalconcerts where American Country music is performedconcurrently with a near perfect mimic, of big time Rapmusic, by 50 Cent. In the symmetry that results, thetenacious dilemma of the old is strung to the new dynamicsof the intra-familiar. This is the El Gouna of the Marina,which harbours the rich of Europe, and the fleet of holidaymakers that perhaps, not so rich, would work themselves tothe bones back home, for a little feel of the realexperiences that define the realities of the rich people ofthis world. Can Doctor Faustus, that ignoble creature ofChristopher Marlowe be blamed for wanting the experiencewith Helen of Troy even if it was short lived?

The El GounaMarina sprawls at parallel sides like a double-tongueddragon. On the one side, almost at the demarcating gravelstones, stands the Mosiaque; a lovely piece of architectureof modern welfare with Arabian sensibilities. The Mosiaque,only seven months old is the chosen abode for the sixvisiting writers from around the different Continents of theWorld; America, Europe, Asia, Australia and good old Africa;however, two writers could not make the program. Theone-month Sponsorship program offered by the OracomDevelopment, a multibillion- pound organization with hugeinvestments scattered around the world was aimed atproviding writers with writing space to help them completeon-going projects.

In Gouna, asthe locals refer to the serene holiday spot, is a collectionof properties owned by the giant Oracom Development. Thiscompany provided the writers with the opportunity to writewithout having to worry about cooking or the making of theirrooms while they were engaged in the tedious activity ofrecreating the world.

In 1896, Alice MacDonell, a poet from Keppoch in Scotland, wrote ‘The weaving of the tartan’. The short poem relates the story of an old woman while she sits and weaves a tartan; as she works, the ‘Old Dame’ explains to the narrator the meaning of each colour and thread: ‘She wove in red for every deed, / Of valour done for Scotia's need: / She wove in green, the laurel's sheen, / In memory of her glorious dead.’ The old woman stresses the importance of each weft and warp she makes: ‘And warp well the long threads, / The bright threads, the strong threads; / Woof well the cross threads, / To make the colours shine.’ The weaving of the tartan becomes the creation of an identity, or narrative, each thread and colour symbolic of the many elements that go together to make up Scotland and Scottishness, each weft and warp representing the ways in which these experiences interact and create new meanings.

MacDonell has selected an apt symbol, for the tartan itself is the embodiment of an ongoing tension between the inflexibility of its grid and pattern, and the never-ending possibilities for colour and variety – the array of human experience, and the rules and boundaries of culture and identities. Weaving a ‘web of tartan fine’, the Old Dame of MacDonell's poem carefully selects and intertwines the various strands of Scottish experience into a design that is at once ordered and organic, a multiplicity of narratives and meanings woven into a rigidly patterned but vibrantly coloured design.

This is a book about the many experiences of the Scots in Australia, from the first colonists in the late eighteenth century until the hopeful arrivals of the interwar years. It is about how and why they migrated to Australia, and their experiences as convicts, colonists, farmers, families, workers, and weavers of culture and identity. It explores their encounters with the Australian continent, whether in its cities or on the land, and their relationship with its First Peoples. This book interro¬gates their connections to one another and with their own collective identities, and examines diversity and tension within the Scottish diaspora in Australia. It is also a book about the challenges of finding a place for oneself in a new land, and the difficulties of creating a sense of belonging in a settler colonial society.

The subtitle to a volume in this series is very often the last part of the text to be decided. For inordinate lengths of time the contents are often unpredictable, dependent on the readiness of contributors to meet deadlines, their ability to fit composition and revision into busy schedules, and their willingness to respond to feedback. What, in the planning stages, might promise to develop into a coherent theme may have to be discarded as the date of publication draws nearer. But then sometimes (as on this occasion) a common thread unexpectedly emerges. For volume XV this could be summed up as ‘The Word’, for each of the articles collected here focuses on specific words or use of language – the contents of books, either read in private or listened to in company, of missives dispatched by rulers with political purposes in mind, of speeches delivered at the opening of parliaments, or of inspiring sermons addressed to open-air congregations. They were employed with polemic or didactic intent, and took concrete form as practical guidebooks for merchants and travellers, chivalric tales to entertain magnates and their servants alike, devotional works to promote understanding of the teachings of the Church, and legal documents to preserve a record of judicial proceedings and royal grants. In the late fifteenth century such books and sermons introduced English readers and listeners to humanist writings from the continent and a direct link to the works of authors from antiquity.

The volume has been roughly divided into three parts. The first focuses on the written word: the ‘Libelle of English Policy’ and the intentions (and possible identification) of its author; contemporary books, among the first to be printed in England, which introduced topics of historical interest and illustrated the geography of the known world; the works belonging to the duchess of York, mother of kings, and what they reveal about her tastes and concerns. The last part focuses on sermons: the purposes of the opening addresses delivered at the start of parliaments, varying as the century progressed, and the provenance of their themes, found in the scriptures or increasingly in classical texts; and the oratory of Bishop John Alcock, whether in parliament or at St. Paul's Cross, the development of his thinking and his influence on those who heard him. The four articles sandwiched in between these two parts might seem to fit the theme less snugly.

While the galley remained the primary weapon of the ghāzī states during the sixteenth century, this was to quickly change during the following century. Admittedly, if the ghāzī sea warriors had continued to operate from the smaller, secluded coastal bays to which they had been restricted during the early period of their endeavours, then the galley would have continued to dominate their naval arsenals, given that this was the best vessel for navigating the shallower entrances and narrow creeks that characterised those early ports of the Maghreb, used for conducting either a razzia (a plundering raid against Christian coastline territory) or capture of merchant ships. The acquisition of larger harbours during the middle years of the sixteenth century allowed for the establishment of secure deep-water harbours that would also permit a transfer to sailing ships, with their high-sided, deep-draughted hulls.

The adoption of sail by the North African ghāzī states would appear, from evidence put forward by Jamieson and others, to have been fairly rapid. Jamieson indicates that Algeria, home to the greatest number of ghāzīs, was by 1634 harbouring a fleet dominated by sail. He compares the situation with the year 1581, when Algiers possessed some thirty-six galleys and galiots. Similarly, Jamieson indicates that by the 1630s Tunis had a fleet of forty sailing ships, with only five galleys retained, while Salé, at the time of its declared independence, possessed forty to fifty sailing ships. Possibly, in his reference to Algiers, Jamieson is using evidence produced by the French historian Pere Dan who, during a visit to Algiers in 1631, counted in the harbour of Algiers only two galiots and eight galley frigates.

But other evidence would dispute the transition to sail being quite as rapid as is suggested. While there can be no doubt that North American ghāzīs were certainly entering the Atlantic and fully able to do this through the adoption of sail over oar, in the Mediterranean the situation was very different.

In 1744, Britain and France finally went to war officially. They had been sparring ever since the War of Jenkins’ Ear began in 1739, and more seriously since the outbreak of the War of the Austrian Succession in Europe in 1740. An accumulation of events such as the brief fire-fight between Captain Curtis Barnett's squadron and several French ships near Gibraltar, and the British blockade of Toulon – technically a blockade of the Spanish warships which had taken refuge there - had finally brought both countries to a decision for open war. Even so, it was only after a failed French attempt to invade Britain (in peacetime) and a full-scale naval battle between their fleets (also in peacetime) that a final declaration of war was made. That the declaration came from France is scarcely relevant; nor, after all the sniping and hostility of the previous five years, is the actual moment of the declaration of war important. But it was the battle of Toulon which was the real start of their war.

The War of Jenkins’ Ear was only one of a series of separate wars, involving in the end most of Europe, which finally coalesced in 1744 into the general European war. In 1740 Prussia invaded Austrian territory and stole Silesia; in 1741 Sweden attacked Russia, and Austria began fighting Bavaria; Bavaria invited France to come to her assistance, and jointly they attacked Austria; later in the year Spanish troops were landed in Italy (see chapter 5), though Commodore Martin's threat to bombard Naples kept the fighting restricted to the north of the peninsula. Until then the two wars, the Anglo- Spanish and the Austro-Prussian, were more or less separate, with most participants fighting each other but not formally at war – a British army fought a French army at Dettingen in in the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium) in 1743, getting away with it by being classified as a German army. But the link was finally made early in 1744 when a French invasion of Britain across the Strait of Dover was planned and almost carried out. In March France declared war on Britain and Hanover, in May on Austria; the two wars had at last become one.

Merlin owes much of his literary success to French prose writers of the early thirteenth century. It was they who first brought him from Latin history into vernacular romance, and who endowed his already enigmatic character with a compelling origin story and a doomed romance. The Arthurian stories in which he featured quickly gained popularity throughout the major literary centres of Western Europe, as a result of both the prolific production and wide circulation of Francophone literature in this period. As advisor to Uther and Arthur, founder of the Round Table, and herald of the grail, Merlin is central to the Arthurian story; however, his reputation as an omniscient prophet has allowed him to transcend the context of vernacular romance and take on a textual life that is independent of the Arthurian universe. Nowhere is this more evident than in Merlin's transition from French to Italian literature, through which he became a symbol of political resistance to imperial domination and ecclesiastical corruption in the north of the peninsula. This book will examine the rewriting of Merlin in French, Franco-Italian, and Italian vernacular texts, foregrounding a direction of transmission that has rarely been considered in previous Merlin scholarship. The story of Merlin's movement from French to Italian is a story of translation, but one that will allow us to question the limits of what translation meant in the Middle Ages. It is a story of prophecy – or rather, a story of why prophecy can never be fully understood. It is a study of a figure who is subject to human limitations, but who, at the same time, transcends those limitations, and whose status on the margins of language, culture, and text personifies the transmission between them.

The Storia di Merlino, written in Florence around 1324 by Paulino Pieri, offers an account of how the story of Merlin and his book of prophecies found its way into French, then into Italian literature. He explains that the book composed by Merlin himself would be translated by a Maestro Riccardo, at the behest of Frederick II, Holy Roman emperor, whose court was based in Sicily.

One of the mostpernicious obstacles to African literary studiesincorporating the entire African continent in its purview isthe persistent division between northern and southern Africain literary scholarship. As Ziad Bentahar has recentlyargued, a de facto consensus exists between African literarystudies and Arabic literary studies that ‘ “Africa” nowostensibly stands for sub-Saharan Africa, whereas NorthAfrica is considered in many academic disciplines to be partof the Middle East instead’ (‘Continental Drift: TheDisjunction of North and Sub-Saharan Africa’: 1). Bentahar'sappraisal is not unique; it echoes those of previousscholars, such as Farida Abu-Haidar (‘Arabic Writing inAfrica’) and Anissa Talahite (‘North African Writing’), invoicing frustration that African literary studies has failedto substantially incorporate North Africa despite beingurged to do so for decades. In the wake of this exclusion ofNorth African literature in our field, this article makes acase for increased inclusion, as well as highlightingbarriers, by examining a particular Egyptian text in theoriginal Arabic and in English translation, Magdyel-Shafee's مترو (Metro), that has beenread as World literature and Arabic literature rather thanAfrican literature.

Although thenorthern/southern African studies division elides thecontribution of many African literatures (principally thosein Arabic and Berber) to African literature writ large,Egyptian literature in particular has been problematicallyoverlooked. For centuries, Cairo has stood out as anintellectual hub, and beginning in the early twentiethcentury it cemented its status in the print era as thepublishing capital of North Africa. With Cairo as one of therichest production and distribution points in Africa,Egyptian literature flourished in the twentieth century withlittle recognition within African literary studies. Thisdivision has narrowed the scope of what the field considersits purview to largely exclude Egyptian literature despiteits impressive quantity and quality, reproducingdisciplinary oversight by labelling only sub-Saharan worksas African literature in global circuits.

Popular Africantexts that circulate outside of individual African localesand the continent as a whole have been aptly termed byRebecca Walkowitz as ‘born translated’, i.e. imagining aglobal audience from its inception and therefore written inEuropean languages with embedded didactic culturalexposition for audiences with minimal local knowledge.

The crime discussed in this chapter was discovered on the morning of 19 June 1902 in the rural town of Don Benito (20,000 inhabitants) in the province of Badajoz (Extremadura). The account of the crime and trial that follows derives from newspaper reports of the time, an immediate filter of information and source of representation. Discussion and further detail are supplied in the studies by Vilabella (1983), Ait Bachir (2009) and Cortés González (2014). The milkgirl found the bodies, with multiple stab-wounds in pools of blood, of Catalina Barragán and her daughter Inés María Calderón in their home on the corner of the calle Padre Cortés and the calle Valdivia. Close to Catalina in the hallway was a broken water jug and a medical instrument case; in Inés's bedroom there were signs of a fierce struggle in defence of her virginity (the autopsy report found her inviolate). Newspaper reporting reveals how the man-in-the-street, and particularly the woman-in-the-street, were vociferous in their demands for justice for the dead women, and public subscription went on to fund an Acción Popular (a private prosecution in the public interest of the citizen, first used for the crime of the calle Fuencarral in 1888–89). The public of Don Benito showed that it was suspicious that there might be political interference in the judicial process because of the identity of the primary suspect and principal defendant, Carlos García Paredes, who for many years had been harassing Inés, a girl of humble status. Paredes was the reprobate son of a powerful family, descendant of conquistadors, grandson of a lady-in-waiting to Isabel II and nephew of the Liberal cacique of Don Benito, Senator Enrique Donoso Cortés.

The national (Madrid) press, which had noted the crime in 1902 among the many Crímenes del día, came to recognize the national significance of the trial that took place in 1903. This crime was not just a sensational case of sex and violence seized on to boost circulation. More significantly, it allowed for discussion of the socio-political issues of class and caciquismo that were the stuff of campaigning journalism at a time of crisis in the Restoration system of governance, exacerbated by the 1898 Disaster.

The Libelle of English Policy is a poem of some vigour and originality. Writing in 1436–7, the author describes and assesses England's commerce and strategic position, and commends policies, especially in relation to the promotion of trade and control of the sea, in terms of national interest. Extant in some eighteen manuscripts, the poem appears to have achieved significant early circulation. Outlining England's maritime destiny, it later became an iconic national text. Its inclusion in Richard Hakluyt's Voyages and Discoveries in 1598 and in Thomas Wright's Political Poems and Songs in 1861 assured its availability over the centuries. The first scholarly edition was published in Leipzig in 1878, and the standard edition by Sir George Warner appeared as long ago as 1926. A modern edition based on more manuscripts and engaging with scholarship over the past century is a desideratum. The value of the Libelle as a source of information on English trade and maritime policy has long been recognised. More recently, it has been valued for the insights it offers on the political culture of Lancastrian England. Given the precision with which the Libelle can be dated, and its prominence among a body of other contemporary writing on political themes, the anonymity of the poem is most disappointing. It is unfortunate, too, that the editor of the standard edition identified the author as Adam Moleyns, doctor of canon law, clerk to the council, and subsequently bishop of Chichester. Though the attribution has been shown to be highly implausible, it has proved very hard to dislodge. Furthermore, the focus on a man of formal learning and high official standing has perhaps deflected attention from evidence in the text itself that the author was a man of a rather different stamp.

The first part of this paper introduces the Libelle and the evidence relating to its authorship and context. It sets the poem in the broader context of news, information, policy debate and propaganda in the late 1430s. It acknowledges that the poet was articulate, intelligent and knowledgeable on a range of matters. His literacy and probable competence in Latin suggest that he was well schooled and may have obtained further training in dictamen. There is little in the poem, however, to suggest a university education.

‘An eine Äolsharfe’ Op. 19 no. 5 (comp. Sept. 1858, publ. March 1862)

‘Agnes’ Op. 59 no. 5 (comp. spring 1873, publ. Dec. 1873)

Accompanied duet for soprano/alto:

‘Die Schwestern’ Op. 61 no. 1 (comp. possibly by 1860, publ. Sept. 1874)

ONE MIGHT REASONABLY have expected more Mörike settings from Brahms. The Schumanns, Joachim and Stockhausen all knew him, and Clara Schumann and Stockhausen maintained their friendships with him right up to his death in 1875. Mörike's mastery of Classical poetic forms would also have appealed to Brahms; he shared this gift with Hölty, his older colleague Friedrich Hölderlin as well as Schiller and Goethe. Also, his musical interests were extensive. The small number of settings, therefore, suggests two things: a lack of affinity, and perhaps also some sense of confusion around Mörike's poetic achievement. Some regarded him as a master folk-poet, others as a superb Classicist; and in fact after 1847 Mörike wrote little lyric poetry apart from occasional works; from 1863 onwards, his poetry was generally directed at individuals from his social circle. One scholar has observed that his contemporaries associated him with a mere handful of works. His writings were not widely popularised through schoolbooks and anthologies. Kalbeck, despite his considerable literary knowledge, only mentioned Mörike in relation to Wolf's fifty-three settings. His quotation from a review of Wolf as the ‘rediscoverer’ of Mörike in the 1880s reveals much about waxing and waning of the poet's fortunes. Brahms typically left no comments.

From the age of twenty onwards, Brahms must have heard Mörike's name regularly, especially in Joachim's company. In 1853, Bettina von Arnim's daughter Gisela (with whom the violinist was in love) gave Joachim a copy of Mörike's poems. Mörike knew both her family and another powerful literary clan, the Grimms (see ‘Candidus’). On 12 August 1855, Joachim gave Brahms a copy of Mörike's popular fairy-tale, Das Stuttgarter Hutzelmannlein, with an inscription to read it on his journey through the poet's native Swabia. That Christmas, Joachim received more Mörike writings from Gisela von Arnim, and he thanked her for the ‘hours of blissful absorption in an armchair until late in the night on Christmas Eve’.

The North African coast became the source of a particular set of sea raiders at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The Ottoman authority over the provinces of Tripoli, Tunis, and Algiers established the region as part of the Ottoman Empire by the 1560s, but this scarcely lasted to the end of the century in anything like an effective form. Instead local rulers emerged from the local military/ naval garrisons, with Ottoman pashas appointed to supervise, not always with much effect. These places had been bases for part of the Ottoman naval forces in the sixteenth century, but as the Ottoman imperial presence faded, naval activity in the region emerged as an official piracy. The raiders were called corsairs.

It took rather more than official neglect to drive the development of corsair activity. For one thing the Ottoman naval power was based on galleys, which were, as the Levant Company ships (and others) had by now demonstrated, vulnerable to well-armed sailing ships – and the biggest ships were the biggest prizes. But a new ingredient arrived at the beginning of the seventeenth century in the form of European pirates and privateers who had been infesting Atlantic and Mediterranean waters during the wars with Spain. These were from most of the lands north of Spain – France, the Netherlands, England, even Scotland and Scandinavia – and they were men who had found the privateering life congenial and satisfying, and were keen to continue in it. They had found that peace was not conducive to their activities, and as peace spread over Western Europe – the Franco-Spanish treaty ended one war in 1599, the Anglo-Spanish treaty brought peace in 1604, and the Dutch–Spanish armistice ended their fighting in 1609 – they had to find a new base, not being welcome any more to operate from their homelands. The one war which did not end was that between Spain and the Ottoman Empire. A combination of the slackening of Ottoman authority in North Africa, unemployed European pirates, and vulnerable merchant ships now led to the development of corsairs and corsair states.

The English had been trading with Morocco for half a century, and had even organised the Barbary Company to regulate the trade for a time.