Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Kristen B. Neuschel
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Prescriptive Literature ◽  
And Function

This introductory chapter provides an overview of swords. If the sword was the most symbolically potent of all of a warrior's weapons, as most scholars of material culture and aristocratic life believe, and perhaps the most potent of all his belongings, one should pause to look at the change in the design and use of swords more closely. How could an object so important, with such symbolic valence — not to mention usefulness in combat — change in appearance and function so quickly? Historians of warfare have argued that the rise of gunpowder weapons was dramatic, in fact traumatic for elite warriors, but have not asked as much about the mutations of swords. A number of scholars have also studied the prescriptive literature about swordsmanship and dueling, which began to proliferate in the sixteenth century after the spread of print technology. Few, however, have examined material culture. The book presents evidence about swords in the possession of aristocrats and more humble fighters, as well as royalty, found in records generated by their households or from contemporary observers. It investigates the practical and symbolic uses of swords as weapons, as gifts, as markers of authority, and as talismans of identity.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Hamilton
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Early Modern History ◽  
History Of Collecting ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Renaissance

This chapter explores the material culture of everyday life in late-Renaissance Paris by setting L’Estoile’s diaries and after-death inventory against a sample of the inventories of thirty-nine of his colleagues. L’Estoile and his family lived embedded in the society of royal office-holders and negotiated their place in its hierarchy with mixed success. His home was cramped and his wardrobe rather shabby. The paintings he displayed in the reception rooms reveal his iconoclastic attitude to the visual, contrasting with the overwhelming number of Catholic devotional pictures displayed by his colleagues. Yet the collection he stored in his study and cabinet made him stand out in his milieu as a distinguished curieux. It deserves a place in the early modern history of collecting, as his example reveals that the civil wars might be a stimulus as much as a disruption to collecting in sixteenth-century France.

scholarly journals Defining Urban Science

2021 ◽  
pp. 15-28
Author(s):  
Michael Batty
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Structure ◽  
Spatial Interaction ◽  
Urban Informatics ◽  
Form And Function ◽  
Urban Science ◽  
Operational Models ◽  
And Function ◽  
The City ◽  
Different Levels

AbstractThis introductory chapter provides a brief overview of the theories and models that constitute what has come to be called urban science. Explaining and measuring the spatial structure of the city in terms of its form and function is one of the main goals of this science. It provides links between the way various theories about how the city is formed, in terms of its economy and social structure, and how these theories might be transformed into models that constitute the operational tools of urban informatics. First the idea of the city as a system is introduced, and then various models pertaining to the forces that determine what is located where in the city are presented. How these activities are linked to one another through flows and networks are then introduced. These models relate to formal models of spatial interaction, the distribution of the sizes of different cities, and the qualitative changes that take place as cities grow and evolve to different levels. Scaling is one of the major themes uniting these different elements grounding this science within the emerging field of complexity. We then illustrate how we might translate these ideas into operational models which are at the cutting edge of the new tools that are being developed in urban informatics, and which are elaborated in various chapters dealing with modeling and mobility throughout this book.

The Changing Face and Function of Museums

1998 ◽  
Vol 89 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Trotter
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Economic Forces ◽  
The Face ◽  
National Museums ◽  
And Function ◽  
A Site ◽  
Internal Pressures ◽  
New Museology

Museums are currently undergoing a number of changes as a repercussion of their histories and professional developments, and of new social and cultural contexts, not to mention as a result of pressure from competition and economic forces. This article explores the current ‘reinvention’ of museums — in particular, national museums — by examining some of the factors of change — some of the major internal pressures that have been the result of museological initiatives and also various exogenous influences. New museology and postcolonialism represent not only separate forces, but also a synthesis of pressures that are not only changing the face, but also the role, of museums, whilst also transforming relationships between museums and their users. A concern of this study is to look at those museums which have a ‘nationalising’ function, and to determine whether changing policies and practices are inhibiting or advance a renegotiation of the relationships between museums and their constituencies. In the last two decades, we have seen some trends confirmed. There has been a move from material culture studies to concern with the ideas contained in objects, whilst the older notion of the museum as a treasure house has given way to a stronger educative role and, more recently, an information centre and also a site of leisure, entertainment and identity-formation. These ‘reinventive’ processes, it is suggested, are closely allied to a postcolonial imperative.

At Home in Renaissance Bruges

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie De Groot
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Domestic Spaces ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Rich Material ◽  
At Home

How did citizens in Bruges create a home? What did an ordinary domestic interior look like in the sixteenth century? And more importantly: how does one study the domestic culture of bygone times by analysing documents such as probate inventories? These questions seem straightforward, yet few endeavours are more challenging than reconstructing a sixteenth-century domestic reality from written sources. This book takes full advantage of the inventory and convincingly frames household objects in their original context of use. Meticulously connecting objects, people and domestic spaces, the book introduces the reader to the rich material world of Bruges citizens in the Renaissance, their sensory engagement, their religious practice, the role of women, and other social factors. By weaving insights from material culture studies with urban history, At Home in Renaissance Bruges offers an appealing and holistic mixture of in-depth socio-economic, cultural and material analysis. In its approach the book goes beyond heavy-handed theories and stereotypes about the exquisite taste of aristocratic elites, focusing instead on the domestic materiality of Bruges’ middling groups. Evocatively illustrated with contemporary paintings from Bruges and beyond, this monograph shows a nuanced picture of domestic materiality in a remarkable European city.

Introduction: The Bollywood Eclipse

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neelam Sidhar Wright
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Film Production ◽  
Indian Cinema ◽  
Aesthetic Style ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
And Function ◽  
Film Language

This book examines changes in Bollywood's film production during the twenty-first century, and particularly after its economic liberalisation, giving rise to a ‘New Bollywood’. It shows how the Indian cinema has acquired evidently postmodern qualities and explains what postmodernism means in the context of Bollywood cinema. It also considers what postmodernism tells us about the change and function of Bollywood film language after the twenty-first century. The book describes Bollywood's ‘postmodern turn’ as a form of transformation that reworks or revisits previous aesthetic trends in order to produce a radically different aesthetic. ‘New Bollywood’ refers to contemporary films characterised by a strong postmodern aesthetic style which was not as present in the 1990s. This introductory chapter discusses the meaning of ‘contemporary Bollywood’, postmodernism as a means of reading and interpreting films, and the structure of the book.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver H. Creighton ◽  
Duncan W. Wright ◽  
Michael Fradley ◽  
Steven Trick
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Evidence Base ◽  
Final Part ◽  
Documentary History ◽  
Siege Warfare ◽  
Material Evidence ◽  
The Church

This introductory chapter outlines the historiography of the reign of King Stephen (1135–54), highlighting how study has been dominated by documentary history while archaeological and other material evidence has played a marginal role. It identifies landmark studies of the period, summarises the principal chroniclers that cover Stephen’s reign and discusses charters as another cornerstone of the evidence base. A major debate has centred on whether or not the period should continue to be styled as ‘the Anarchy’, with scholars taking maximalist and minimalist views of the violence and disturbances of the period. The final part of the chapter explains the approach and structure of the volume: after a chronological outline of the civil war (Chapter 2), the book covers conflict landscapes and siege warfare (Chapter 3), castles (Chapter 4), artefacts and material culture (Chapter 5), weaponry and armour (Chapter 6), the church (Chapter 7), settlements and landscape (Chapter 8), and a detailed case study of the fenland campaigns (Chapter 9), while Chapter 10 presents a self-contained concluding essay that reflects on what the material evidence can and cannot us about the conflict and its consequences.

Music in the French Domestic Interior (1500–1600)

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
SOPHIE PICKFORD
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Leisure Activities ◽  
Music Making

This chapter considers music-making and the material culture of music in the French domestic interior (1500–1600) with the primary aims of outlining the field; discussing the context for entertaining, particularly in châteaux; as well as investigating the kind of music-related objects found in houses. Châteaux and other élite domestic settings often housed vibrant households, with music as a key part of inhabitants' leisure activities. From services in the chapel to banquets in the great hall, music was a common feature of privileged life. The chapter falls into two halves. First, it discusses the use of inventories in investigating music in châteaux, looking at the range of documents available dating from the sixteenth century, their limitations and, finally, the evidence they offer. Secondly, it takes the grande salle as a case study and examines the use of music as entertainment in this space.

Labour Law from an Ontological Perspective

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Zoe Adams
Keyword(s):  
Social Ontology ◽  
Labour Law ◽  
The Law ◽  
And Function

This introductory chapter explains the motivation behind the book. It argues that it is unhelpful to talk about what labour law should be doing, and how, without a deeper understanding both of what law is, its ontology, and the nature of the society to which it is specific. The chapter introduces key themes and ideas, and outlines, briefly, the chapters to follow. It introduces the reader to social ontology, and the particular approach to social ontology inspiring the book. It contrasts two competing conceptions of the law–market and law–society relationship, and explains how these conceptions influence assumptions about the nature, and function, of labour law, and of the concept of the wage.

Hamlet Within Hamlet

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Rhodri Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Conceptual Frameworks ◽  
Human Individual ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
Historical Discourses

This introductory chapter argues that William Shakespeare's Hamlet can be read as a profound meditation on the nature of human individuality without relying on conceptual frameworks drawn from the eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. Just as historical discourses beyond those of Hamlet itself provide a fuller and more nuanced understanding of the political and dynastic forces shaping life in Shakespeare's Denmark, so what might be called Hamlet's “character” appears in unfamiliar and revealing relief when read against the textual contours of the psychological, rhetorical, and moral-political theorizing that lay at the heart of sixteenth-century humanism. This approach not only better locates Hamlet within Hamlet, but that it offers to rehabilitate a coherent and intensely challenging work of tragedy—albeit one in which Shakespeare steadfastly disregards the rules of Aristotelian and humanist poetics. What sets Hamlet apart from the remainder of the dramatis personae is the degree to which Shakespeare explores through him the insight that the insufficiency of received ethical and political wisdom does not just have public consequences. Transposed onto the person of Hamlet, it calls into question the fundamentals of who and what a human individual might be said to be.

1. Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Jack Beatson ◽  
Andrew Burrows ◽  
John Cartwright
Keyword(s):  
Contract Law ◽  
Property Law ◽  
Unjust Enrichment ◽  
Different Types ◽  
English Law ◽  
The Law ◽  
Contractual Obligations ◽  
And Function

This introductory chapter first considers the nature and function of contract. It then discusses the contractual obligations in English law; the content of the contract law as set out in this book, which is concerned with the ‘general principles’ of contract rather than the detailed rules applicable to different types of contracts; the location of contract as part of the law of obligations and its relation to other parts of the law of obligations, tort and restitution of an unjust enrichment, and property law.

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