The Saracen Lamp

The Saracen Lamp
Author: Ruth Mabel Arthur
Publisher:
Total Pages: 210
Release: 1970
Genre: Children's stories, English
ISBN: 9780575004122

Three mistresses of an English manor, each living in a different era, relate the influence on their lives of the Saracen lamp given to the first mistress as a wedding present in 1300.

The Saracen Lamp

The Saracen Lamp
Author: Ruth M. Arthur
Publisher:
Total Pages: 210
Release: 1970
Genre: England
ISBN:

Three mistresses of an English manor, each living in a different era, relate the influence on their lives of the Saracen lamp given to the first mistress as a wedding present in 1300.

Feeling Things

Feeling Things
Author: Stephanie Downes
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 406
Release: 2018-01-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 019252366X

This interdisciplinary essay collection investigates the various interactions of people, feelings, and things throughout premodern Europe. It focuses on the period before mass production, when limited literacy often prioritised material methods of communication. The subject of materiality has been of increasing significance in recent historical inquiry, alongside growing emphasis on the relationships between objects, emotions, and affect in archaeological and sociological research. The historical intersections between materiality and emotions, however, have remained under-theorised, particularly with respect to artefacts that have continuing resonance over extended periods of time or across cultural and geographical space. Feeling Things addresses the need to develop an appropriate cross-disciplinary theoretical framework for the analysis of objects and emotions in European history, with special attention to the need to track the shifting emotional valencies of objects from the past to the present, and from one place and cultural context to another. The collection draws together an international group of historians, art historians, curators, and literary scholars working on a variety of cultural, literary, visual, and material sources. Objects considered include books, letters, prosthetics, religious relics, shoes, stone, and textiles. Many of these have been preserved in international galleries, museums, and archives, while others have remained in their original locations, even as their contexts have changed over time. The chapters consider the ways in which emotions such as despair, fear, grief, hope, love, and wonder become inscribed in and ascribed to these items, producing 'emotional objects' of significance and agency. Such objects can be harnessed to create, affirm, or express individual relationships, as, for example, in religious devotion and practice, or in the construction of cultural, communal, and national identities.

The Courtship

The Courtship
Author: Catherine Coulter
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2000-01-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1101052813

The stunning Regency-era romance from #1 New York Times bestselling author Catherine Coulter. Characters from two of Coulter’s most beloved novels in the Sherbrooke Bride series find each other in The Courtship. Helen Mayberry of Mad Jack has one passion: to track down a mystical treasure. That is, until she meets the thoroughly wicked Spenser Heatherington in a clash of the titans.

Loot

Loot
Author: Tania James
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2024-06-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0593469658

LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN FICTION • A spellbinding historical novel set in the eighteenth century: a hero’s quest, a love story, the story of a young artist coming of age, and an exuberant heist adventure that traces the bloody legacy of colonialism across two continents and fifty years. A Best Book of the Year: The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, NPR, Kirkus Reviews “Addictively absorbing.” —The New York Times Book Review This wildly inventive, irresistible feat of storytelling from a writer at the height of her powers is "an expertly-plotted, deeply affecting novel about war, displacement, emigration, and an elusive mechanical tiger" (Maggie O’Farrell, best-selling author of Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait). Abbas is just seventeen years old when his gifts as a woodcarver come to the attention of Tipu Sultan, and he is drawn into service at the palace in order to build a giant tiger automaton for Tipu’s sons, a gift to commemorate their return from British captivity. His fate—and the fate of the wooden tiger he helps create—will mirror the vicissitudes of nations and dynasties ravaged by war across India and Europe. Working alongside the legendary French clockmaker Lucien du Leze, Abbas hones his craft, learns French, and meets Jehanne, the daughter of a French expatriate. When Du Leze is finally permitted to return home to Rouen, he invites Abbas to come along as his apprentice. But by the time Abbas travels to Europe, Tipu’s palace has been looted by British forces, and the tiger automaton has disappeared. To prove himself, Abbas must retrieve the tiger from an estate in the English countryside, where it is displayed in a collection of plundered art.

The History of the Holy War

The History of the Holy War
Author: Ambroise
Publisher: Boydell Press
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2003
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781843830016

Edition and English translation of eye-witness account of Third Crusade, with emphasis on Richard the Lionheart. The Estoire de la Guerre Sainte, an early example of vernacular chronicle, by the Norman poet Ambroise, presents an eye-witness account of the Third Crusade (1188-92) in a highly-polished rhetorical style. Central is the character of Richard the Lion Heart, Ambroise's hero, but the narrative is also enlivened by short anecdotes, sometimes heroic and sometimes more down-to-earth, about other participants. It depicts clearly the privations and sufferings of the ordinary crusaders, whether at the siege of Acre or on the march, and provides both a detailed record of events and a personal perspective on the Islamic warriors and their leaders, in particular Saladin and Saphadin. Ambroise also shows remarkable knowledge of contemporary weapons of war, such as siege engines and types of ship. This, the first new edition of the Estoire since 1897, offers text and prose translation into English. Detailed notes identify most of the participants and clarify literary, biblical and historical allusions, while the introduction looks at historical, literary and philological aspects of the poem and assesses its significance as literary artefact and historical record, setting it in context and bringing forward new evidence about the identity of the poet. Dr MARIANNE AILES is Lecturer at Wadham College, University of Oxford, and Honorary Research Fellow at Reading University; MALCOLM BARBER is Professor of History at Reading University.