In an article that exposes the roots of Brexit-era Germanophobia, Rita Singer details how Welsh press coverage and poetry about U-Boat attacks on Welsh ships evolved into racialised depictions of German U-Boat combatants as ‘Huns’, monsters, ghouls and Satanic fiends

“Hace ya veintiséis años se publicó una colección de ensayos en homenaje a la historiadora Natalie Zemon Davis que incluía un capítulo llamado “People of the Ribera: Popular Politics and Neighborhood Identity in Early Modern Barcelona”. En él, su autor, a quien ahora dedicamos esta obra, delinea brevemente una metodología para analizar el perfil s…[Read more]

This article explores how certain dramatists in early modern England and in Spain, specifically Ben Jonson and Miguel de Cervantes (with much more emphasis on the former), pursued authority over texts by claiming as their own a new realm which had not been available – or, more accurately, as prominently available – to playwrights before: the sta…[Read more]

Comparative studies have revealed uncanny similarities between the theatrical cultures of Shakespearean England and Golden Age Spain, and in particular between the Elizabethan amphitheaters and the Spanish corrales de comedia (courtyard playhouses). Contrary to conventional wisdom, however, Spain’s (and, in particular, Madrid’s) courtyard the…[Read more]

Comparative studies have revealed uncanny similarities between the theatrical cultures of Shakespearean England and Golden Age Spain, and in particular between the Elizabethan amphitheaters and the Spanish corrales de comedia (courtyard playhouses). Contrary to conventional wisdom, however, Spain’s (and, in particular, Madrid’s) courtyard the…[Read more]

Young Michelangelo Buonarroti’s experience was deeply marked by his cult of Antiquity, reverberated in the creation of artworks such as the Sleeping Cupid and the Bacchus and shared with Raffaele Riario and Jacopo Galli, his patrons during his first stay in Rome (1496-1501).
The cardinal-camerlengo Raffaele Riario was an important promoter of t…[Read more]

The peculiar iconography of the winged horse surmounted by several puttos, as appears in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili sixth woodcut, turns out to be unprecedented and enigmatic at a glance and it’s the result of the depth and complexity of the author’s concepts.
Considering the iconographic details of the sculptural group as well as the text sca…[Read more]

Going to the theater was one of the most distinctive-as well as conspicuous-cultural activities to take place regularly in early modern european cities. Precisely because so many people from all walks of life partook of this highly visible pastime, public theaters became spaces wherein social and cultural boundaries between spectators were easily…[Read more]

This article explores the change in dynamics between matter and style in Shakespeare’s way of depicting distress on the early modern stage. During his early years as a dramatist, Shakespeare wrote plays filled with violence and death, but language did not lose its composure at the sight of blood and destruction; it kept on marching to the beat o…[Read more]

This paper was presented as part of an online symposium titled “Research as a Radical Act of Creativity” organized by the School of Arts, Design and Architecture at Aalto University. As a response to “radical creativity” – one of the current cross-cutting, strategic themes of Aalto University – the paper addresses the need to learn from dec…[Read more]

Over the last four decades of the 18th century, the image of Sparta began to include a few characteristic elements that later became an important point of reference for 19th-century writers, philosophers and historians. Issues of Spartan equality of citizens, fully responsible for their country, and also soldierly honour and Sparta’s military c…[Read more]

Az orosz történetírásban hagyományosan szmutá-nak, “zavaros időszaknak” nevezett évtizedek három legmarkánsabb, művészi szempontból a legerőteljesebb feldolgozásának mindegyike különböző szemléletet és műfajt képvisel, ám egy dologban egyek: a kérdéses időszak adekvát elbeszélésére illetőleg megjelenítésére Borisz Godunov cár uralkodói pályáj…[Read more]

English abstract: A paper arguing the relevance of a cognitive narratological perspective and a retrospective stance attentive to hindsight bias in order to clarify the debate on racial differences and population diversity in biology. The issue is discussed with reference to the dichotomy between ‘lumpers’ and ‘splitters’ in paleoanthropology as…[Read more]

España tiene una relación traumática con su guerra civil. Del franquismo ni hablamos: es para el discurso oficial del régimen político actual la personificación abyecta del mal, y esa versión oficial es defendida por el actual gobierno izquierdista como la única verdadera y aspira a ser impuesta como la única autorizada. En 2020, y con Franco y…[Read more]

Global studies enable us to examine deceivingly harmonious images of Shakespeare. This chapter focuses on the modern period and introduces readers to a number of key concepts in Shakespeare and global studies, namely censorship and redaction, genre, gender, race, and politics of reception. Performing Shakespeare not only creates channels between…[Read more]

This article deals with representations of Christian-Islamic confluence in the medieval Portuguese genealogical compilation known as Livro de Linhagens do Conde D. Pedro (Count Pedro’s Book of Lineages), assembled in the mid-fourteenth century by Count Pedro of Barcelos. Several narratives dealing with the non-military interaction of Christians a…[Read more]

Spanish abstract: La película histórica de Andrzej Wajda sobre la matanza de Katyn da una imagen tremenda de los totalitarismos del siglo XX, de los horrores políticos y morales de las dictaduras comunistas en la URSS y en Polonia. Retrata memorablemente las circunstancias que llevan a la gente bien a doblegar su voluntad y su conciencia, o bi…[Read more]

The book is dedicated to the presence of Greek history in the works of Cyprian Norwid. According to the poet, the Greek origins contributed to the creation of mechanisms that make it possible to diagnose the spiritual condition of the contemporary times through analyzing its relation to the Greek myth of the “Golden Age”. Ideologization of the way…[Read more]