Everyman in Motion: From Bosch to Bruegel

This chapter discusses the rise of a painting in everyday life in Northern Europe. It focuses on the representations of ‘everyman’ in the art of the early pioneers of genre painting: Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Hieronymus Bosch. It considers the figure of ‘trapping’ in these artists, as a model both of everyman's relation to the world and of the picture's relation to the viewer.

Becoming Human: the Archaeological Challenge

This chapter discusses the attempts of pinpointing the origins of humans, i.e. Homo sapiens sapiens. Due to the recent advances in archaeology, specifically in archaeogenetics, it has been determined that the Homo sapiens sapiens originated in Africa 200,000 years ago, and that the speciation phase of human development occurred before that time. The chapter shows that cognitive archaeology would need to analyse more carefully the nature of mind, as well as seek further insight into the processes that underlie the achievements that characterise those different trajectories of development and change.

Mutualities and Obligations: Changing Social Relationships in Early Modern England

This chapter discusses a theme for a variety of relationships of mutuality and obligation in early modern England. Relationships of mutual obligation are discussed, and are described as being ‘the most fundamental of all the bonds in medieval society’. Sometime between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries however, these bonds went through a fundamental change, via a process of erosion and dissolution. The chapter examines these processes of change, concluding with an attempt to characterise the overall process of change.

Byron, Conversation and Discord

This chapter focuses on the force of Byron as a ‘talker’ between poetry and conversation in English verse. It discusses the conversational mode of his poetry, which is noted to be often taken for granted. The chapter also explores Byron's mobile attention to the role of the reader and with the degree of dissonance or friction that the reader helps engender. It shows that the boundaries of both speech and poetry are both enforced and eroded by Byron.

Beyond Nature and Culture

This chapter discusses the concepts of nature and culture. It reveals that Radcliffe-Brown had a poor opinion of the concept of culture; he neglected to consider that the concept of nature was no more concrete or directly observable than ‘culture’. The chapter shows that other civilisations were able to adopt a variety of ways to distribute qualities to beings in the world, thus resulting in forms of discontinuity and continuity between humans and non-humans. It stresses that people should treat the modern ontological grid — moral singularity versus physical universality — as one of several other formulae employed to describe the structures of the world.

Useful Knowledge

This chapter discusses useful knowledge, yet it also acknowledges the fact that there may be something gained from uselessness. Three kinds of uselessness are encountered during this chapter: extraneous detail, irrelevant parallels, and modelling for its own sake. The chapter covers topics such as plagiarism and making knowledge relevant to one's life. One conclusion drawn from this chapter is that knowledge has to be more than information in order for it to be accumulated or managed.

Staging Matters: Shakespeare, the Director, and the Theatre Historian

This chapter discusses the bases for the gap between Globe practitioners and the Shakespearean academic community and develops some implications. It attempts to recover a lost or blurred vocabulary of the theatre. The discussion also includes two assumptions: that Shakespeare and his colleagues actually knew what they were doing, and that their methods and working assumptions were not being taken for granted more than four centuries later. It notes that there is a proposition for the play adaptations of Shakespeare's work to be approached as scripts designed to be staged, rather than as solely literary texts to be read.

The Inscribed Bronzes from Yangjiacun: New Evidence on Social Structure and Historical Consciousness in Late Western Zhou China (c.800 bc)

This chapter discusses the twenty-seven inscribed ritual bronze vessels, which were uncovered in Yangjiacun, Mei Xian. The place where these vessels were discovered may have been near the seat of the powerful Shan lineage — several names of Shan family members are inscribed on the vessels. The chapter reveals that the inscriptions on the bronze vessels provide new insights into the structure and internal organisation of lineages in the Late Western Zhou-period China. These inscriptions also convey a feeling of shared identity among the members of the Shan lineage, particularly the male members. It is also shown that they illuminate the contexts in which a sense of history was beginning to form during the final half-millennium of pre-Imperial China.

Dante’s Epistle to Cangrande and its Two Authors

This chapter discusses a new interpretation of an epistle to Cangrande della Scala, a lord of Verona. For over a century, the question of whether Dante wrote the epistle or not has been the object of a passionate scholarly debate. The new interpretation of the epistle presented in the chapter focuses on the role played by Giovanni Boccaccio in promoting the literary cult of Dante.

The Judges: Active or Passive

This chapter discusses the traditionalist view of the judicial role. Three propositions are used as the basis for this view, beginning with the separation of powers. The second and third propositions relate to non-statutory areas of the law, and that the authority and standing of the judges depend on their strict adherence to rules. The chapter also touches on the constitutional implications of this choice.