The seventh and final chapter presents a new interpretation of Richard Simon’s Histoire critique du Vieux Testament (1678). Having set out the course of his early career (and especially his study of Hebrew manuscripts in the library of the Oratory), it outlines how Simon presented a novel account of the practice and purpose of Catholic biblical scholarship. Its conclusion reflects on why this was found challenging by his contemporaries, and discusses how the reception of his work differed so extensively from that of Louis Cappel’s Critica sacra.

Chapter 1 focuses on the practice and purpose of biblical scholarship in the Catholic world in the later sixteenth and early seventeenth century. It traces the fortunes of three prospective polyglot editions of the Bible in Spain, the Southern Netherlands, and France to examine how the publication of authoritative Roman editions of the Septuagint (1587) and Vulgate (1592) posed new challenges for Catholic scholars and editors of the Bible.

The controversies that plagued the Critica sacra described in Chapter 3 took place while it was in manuscript. Chapter 4 shows what happened when it finally found its way into print, prompting considerable debate in both Catholic and Protestant Europe. In the former, it focuses on how the work was received in Rome, tracking the lengthy investigation it was subject to at the Congregation of the Index and then the Holy Office. In the latter, it charts the wide-ranging public disputes the work elicited, paying particular attention to reconstructing the scholarly views and methods that underpinned Johann Buxtorf II and Archbishop James Ussher’s engagement with Cappel’s work.

Where Chapter 2 assessed the origin and content of Morin and Cappel’s works, Chapter 3 shifts to consider aspects of their reception, tracing both the debates prompted by Morin’s publications and the difficulties Cappel faced in publishing the Critica sacra. These, it shows, were interlinked, as many of the problems Cappel encountered stemmed from the way in which his Protestant contemporaries learned about Morin’s claims and followed the disputes he provoked. It draws particular attention to how scholars in Switzerland came to oppose Cappel’s work, showing how this was shaped by a conjunction of differing views about the practice of biblical scholarship and how Protestant scholars ought to conduct themselves in the Republic of Letters.

Chapter 6 shows how the later 1650s and 1660s defy ready categorisation, with the practices and tools of biblical scholarship being drawn on in a range of different ways in a range of different contexts. Its three parts proceed concurrently, rather than chronologically, and successively analyse: the way in which debate concerning the Old Testament became increasingly polemical, framed in terms of a choice between the Masoretic Hebrew text or the Septuagint; how biblical scholarship differed according to different local settings (in this case Italy (and especially Rome) and the Dutch Republic); and how Benedict de Spinoza, comparatively disconnected from the confessionalised world of Old Testament scholarship, targeted a precise set of the views concerning the Bible held by others in his local Reformed and Jewish communities.

The specter of maiestas looms large over narratives of the reign of Tiberius, especially that of Tacitus. We begin with an overview of maiestas laws predating the reign of Augustus. We then analyze known cases of maiestas from the reign of Augustus, particularly those towards the end involving attacks on Augustus and his family. Next, we explore the early trials for maiestas in the reign of Tiberius, observing that in the vast majority of those cases the charges were dismissed. The trial of Libo and the maneuverings of Agrippa Postumus’ freedman Clemens indicate, however, larger issues in the domus Augusta. The deaths of Germanicus and Drusus produced a power vacuum, filled by Tiberius’ Praetorian Prefect, Sejanus. As the relationship between Tiberius and his daughter-in-law Agrippina became increasingly strained, members of the Senate were unsure as to how to express their loyalty. The problem was exacerbated by Tiberius’ permanent removal from Rome. Ultimately, the situation devolved into a "reign of terror." Nevertheless, Tiberius was careful to preserve Augustus’ position for a member of the domus Augusta, Augustus’ great-grandson Caligula.

After addressing Hamas’s intelligence collection in previous chapters, this chapter focusses on Hamas’s efforts to counter Israeli intelligence efforts against it. To overcome Israel’s attempts to infiltrate its ranks, Hamas went to great lengths to screen those wishing to join it, while diligently acting to detect collaborators with Israel, both within its ranks and in the broader society in which they operate, while applying internal compartmentalization to the organization. To counter Israel’s SIGINT activity, Hamas tried to avoid the use of wireless communications, and also made use of encryption, both in telephone communication and in correspondence; over time, Hamas developed an internal communication system that is separate from the public system. To defeat Israel’s GEOINT efforts, Hamas tried to conceal its activities to the greatest extent possible. This included a range of strategies, including camouflage, the assimilation of military installations in civilian surroundings, and the use of subterranean spaces. Regarding open-source media publications, Hamas developed the awareness of the need to impose censorship to hide certain characteristic signs of its activity.

This chapter focuses on Haiti’s twentieth-century periodicals, and more specifically on the literary magazine. By bringing to light the complex stories of literary revue culture during key historical moments I show how these specific forms of publications, which played a major role in Caribbean countries, have influenced Haiti’s sociopolitical and intellectual life. At its core, this chapter addresses the tension between the aesthetics and politics of several literary revues by highlighting, first, literary and/or socially engaged magazines predominantly concerned with the development of Haiti’s literature and culture, and, second, those with a clear political agenda, some of which were infused with an explicit objective: the forging of a Haitian national voice.

Sanja Perovic’s chapter treats one of the most significant events in French history and an unprecedented period in theatre history. While the Revolution is often overlooked as a ‘dead period’ in French theatre, Perovic describes the scale and ambition of this extraordinary period. Never before had so many newcomers been able to forge successful careers as writers, actors and directors. Artistic innovation peaked, as revolutionary performance was more akin to what today is termed performance art, than to the kind of repertory theatre that preceded or followed it. Covering some of the major events, influential figures and key texts of this extremely fertile period, Perovic shows how theatre addressed the questions key to revolutionary culture: who is the audience? Where is it located? Who speaks on its behalf, and in what (theatrical, artistic) language? She concludes by contrasting two utopian works – Louis Beffroy de Reigny’s Nicodème dans la lune, ou la révolution pacifique (Nicodème Goes to the Moon, or the Peaceful Revolution, 1790) and Sylvain Maréchal’s Le Jugement dernier des rois (The Last Judgement of Kings, 1793) – with Beaumarchais’ La Mère coupable (The Guilty Mother, 1792), an altogether more sombre assessment of the effects of revolution.

Twentieth-century critics have opposed the supposed objectivity of the essay to the letter and diary as private, self-expressive, and autobiographical genres. But this was a modern development. From Michel de Montaigne to the early nineteenth century, the essay, the letter, and the diary were more alike and far more closely aligned than they later became, particularly with regard to representations of the self and notions of publicity. For instance, they were all considered forms of address, and means of presenting one’s intellectual physiognomy to others that were likely to be read aloud, shared, and discussed. This chapter therefore explores now-forgotten family resemblances among these genres both in form and function and concludes by showing where they were fused or embedded in one another.

For some, bitch is a four-letter word. Cast into the same category as expletives like fuck and shit, bitch has been branded profane, obscene, and indecent. As a tabooed word, it has often been censored or avoided altogether by the mainstream media, to protect tender eyes and ears. In its written form, bitch been expurgated from books and newspapers. In the past, bitch was considered to be defamatory, a dangerous smear on a woman’s character, and leveling the slur at an innocent party could land the offender in court. In its spoken form, bitch has been bleeped in songs and muted in movies, while some radio stations and television networks have been fined for using it. Thanks to the many pioneers pushing the word’s use, bitch has undergone a dramatic “unbleeping” over time. As taboos changed, the word started to be used more openly. Nowadays, bitch is everywhere. This chapter looks at the many bans on bitch and controversies surrounding the word, both past and present.

Chapter 1 chronicles how the distractibility of a king, the agency of objects, the desires that cloud judgment, and the memories that haunt the present shape events perhaps even more than ideology. Prior to the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, the Duke of Newcastle proposed returning to a Caroline-style theatrical marketplace, but he was outmaneuvered by courtier-playwrights long accustomed to deploying networks of access. Contingency also determined outcomes. The particular circumstances of Charles II’s upbringing certainly benefited William Davenant and Thomas Killigrew, the two successful patentees. Unlike his royal predecessors, the new monarch regarded the commercial theatre as a gift to be bestowed upon persistent clients who would enjoy monopolistic control going forward. No one foresaw, of course, the economic repercussions of that gift, namely, how the transformation of the theatre from a purely commercial to a hybrid enterprise would require substantial support beyond the box office. Additionally, the duopoly so sought by Killigrew and Davenant exerted its own unexpected agencies. As the following chapters explore, its resulting economic and cultural logic galvanized a host of decisions about repertories and performance practices that would prove both innovative and ruinous.

This chapter is a comprehensive history of sexually-explicit literature drawn from books banned and prosecuted in Asia and Europe, sixteenth to twentieth centuries. The prurient treatment of sexual violence and the lewd mockery of authority form part of this discourse, yet law and censorship denied its literary value, reduced all erotica to the most basic “obscenity” or mere “pornography” (literally, “whore-writing”), and sometimes put the author to death. (Paradoxically the cultures richest in sex-writing also suppressed it most fiercely.) Here is a more complex history, hybridizing multiple genres: manuals of sexual positions, courtesans” autobiography, satire against hypocrisy and repression, philosophies of mind, body, and desire – normally homoerotic, though in China and the West true knowledge of sexuality is represented as female, passed down by mistresses of the secret arts providing instructions for the wedding night (and beyond). The phallus was even gendered female. Libertinism continued to explore same-sex desire (especially in Italy and Japan), while its heteronormative branch dissociated sexuality from procreation, insisting that biological sex should be transformed into an art of aesthetic “transmutation”, urging women to pursue erotic pleasure as a supreme end in itself – centuries before contraception made this realistic. Feminocentric and masculinist perspectives intertwine.

This chapter offers a broad account of two key governmental themes in post-war British theatre: policy and censorship. The chapter’s discussion of these themes is informed by Michel Foucault’s concept of governmentality, which embraces both the activities of the state and the broader discursive regimes that constitute groups and individuals, including self-governing. The chapter examines a range of values that have featured in post-war cultural discourse in terms of continuities, ruptures, and changes between the post-war period and earlier moments in capitalist modernity, and within the period itself. The chapter surveys the expansionist arts policies implemented in the decades following the war, before turning to the effects of neoliberal governmental politics from the 1970s onward, which saw the value of the arts become subject to increasing scrutiny and justification. Next, the chapter addresses censorship and the contours of its post-war cultural politics. It notes overlapping shifts in focus from sexuality and gender to racial and religious identities – shifts which speak to the governmental ‘management of populations’. Finally, it analyses David Hare’s I’m Not Running (National Theatre: Lyttelton, 2018) – a work that responded to contemporaneous governmental crisis.

The discovery of a consignment of books of Protestant propaganda in Seville in the autumn of 1557 convinced the Spanish inquisitors of the existence of clandestine circles that promoted doctrines that contradicted Catholic orthodoxy as redefined between 1547 and 1552 during the first sessions of the Council of Trent. The discovery of a second community of religious dissidents in Valladolid a few weeks later, followed by the arrest on suspicion of Lutheranism of Bartolomé de Carranza y Miranda, archbishop of Toledo, on 22 August 1559 created the impression in the royal court of Philip II that Spain had escaped an odious heretical conspiracy hatched by foreigners and supported by members of its own nobility and senior clergy. Some of the outstanding figures among the Seville and Valladolid dissidents cannot, contrary to what historiography has long maintained, be characterised simply as Erasmists; many of them subscribed to the doctrinal core of Protestantism. There were several networks of Lutherans in Spain, as well as among the communities of exiled Spaniards throughout Europe. The Reformation made a greater impression in Iberia than has long been assumed.

This chapter examines how lexicographers symbolically policed the borders of English not only by distancing same-sex practices from English society but by disbarring words for those practices from the English language. Though terms for women who had sex with women existed in other Early Modern English text types (and in the bilingual dictionaries that influenced early monolingual lexicographers), they were barely acknowledged in hard-word and general dictionaries. Sexuality between men, though initially well-represented, was also excised by many general lexicographers in the wake of Samuel Johnson, reflecting a growing concern that dictionaries should record only ‘proper’ English. Acts that were inadmissible in polite lexicography would partially re-emerge in dictionaries of criminal cant, which encoded an earthy alternative vocabulary for the men associated with London’s molly houses during the eighteenth century. However, even cant dictionaries would edge carefully around the existence of intimacy between women. And as dictionaries of the underworld gave way to those of fashionable slang in the nineteenth century, unnatural sex of any sort was once again thrust beyond the pale.

Chapter 25 reconstructs Ilf and Petrov’s brief turn as Hollywood screenwriters. At the suggestion of the director Lewis Milestone (born Leib Milstein in the Russian empire), the pair spent nine days before Christmas 1935 holed up in their hotel writing a treatment of The Twelve Chairs – a story they did not tell in their travelogue. Still, the published work suggested bridges across the vast cultural divide. Extravagantly criticizing Hollywood films as mindless, Ilf and Petrov noted that they found many movie people who shared their perspective. Their unpublished accounts and evidence from the American side bring the central paradox of Ilf and Petrov’s Hollywood venture into sharper focus: Their brief and publicly unacknowledged work in Hollywood solidified both their disdain and their respect for the American dream factory.