Books published by University of Exeter Press

This volume provides the three corpora on which the associated monograph The Boggart: Folklore, History, Place-Names and Dialect is based. Offering detailed insights into a ground-breaking research method, it will be of particular interest to folklorists, historians and dialect scholars.

Women with fish tails are among the oldest and still most popular of mythological creatures, possessing a powerful allure and compelling ambiguity. They dwell right in the uncanniest valley of the sea: so similar to humans, yet profoundly other. Mermaids: Art, Symbolism and Mythology presents a comprehensive, interdisciplinary and beautifully illustrated study of mermaids and their influence on Western culture. The roots of mermaid mythology and its metamorphosis through the centuries are discussed with examples from visual art, literature, music and architecture-from 600 BCE right up to the present day.Our story starts in Mesopotamia, source of the earliest preserved illustrations of half-human, half-fish creatures. The myths and legends of the Mesopotamians were incorporated and adopted by ancient Greek, Etruscan and Roman cultures. Then, during the early medieval period, ancient mythological creatures such as mermaids were confused, transformed and reinterpreted by Christian tradition to begin a new strand in mermaid lore. Along the way, all manner of stunning-and sometimes bizarre or unsettling-depictions of mermaids emerged. Written in an accessible and entertaining style, this book challenges conventional views of mermaid mythology, discusses mermaids in the light of evolutionary theory and aims to inspire future studies of these most curious of imaginary creatures.

This new book in Critical Discourse Studies uses detailed and systematic analysis of the discursive construction of Austrian identities across a period of 20 years - from 1995 to 2015 - to trace the re-emergence of nationalism in the media, popular culture and politics, and the normalization of far-right nativist ideologies and attitudes. Contradictory and intertwined tendencies towards re-nationalization and trans-nationalization have always framed debates about European identities, but during the so-called refugee crisis of 2015, the debates became polarized. During the COVID-19 pandemic, nation states first reacted by closing borders, while symbols of banal nationalism proliferated. The data, drawn from a variety of empirical studies, suggests changes in memory politics - the way past events are remembered - are due to a range of factors, including the growth of migrant societies; the influence of financial and climate crises; changing gender politics; and a new transnational European politics of the past. The authors assess the challenges to liberal democracies and fundamental human and constitutional rights, and analyze how the pandemic contributes to a new re-nationalization across Europe and beyond. DOI:https://doi.org/10.47788/RLNW3226

This book is one of the first to study the role of women in public and professional life from a regional point of view. It breaks new ground in considerations of gender in the early twentieth century and the history of Devon in the modern period.

Winner of the Society for Theatre Research Book Prize - 2016This is the final volume in a new paperback edition of Steve Nicholson's definitive four-volume survey of British theatre censorship from 1900-1968, based on previously undocumented material, covering the period 1960-1968. This brings to its conclusion the first comprehensive research on the Lord Chamberlain's Correspondence Archives for the 20th century. The 1960s was a significant decade in social and political spheres in Britain, especially in the theatre. As certainties shifted and social divisions widened, a new generation of theatre makers arrived, ready to sweep away yesterday's conventions and challenge the establishment. Analysis exposes the political and cultural implications of a powerful elite exerting pressure in an attempt to preserve the veneer of a polite, unquestioning society.

This is the third volume in a new paperback edition of Steve Nicholson's comprehensive four-volume analysis of British theatre censorship from 1900-1968, based on previously undocumented material in the Lord Chamberlain's Correspondence Archives in the British Library and the Royal Archives at Windsor. Focusing on plays we know, plays we have forgotten, and plays which were silenced for ever, Censorship of British Drama demonstrates the extent to which censorship shaped the theatre voices of this decade. The book charts the early struggles with Royal Court writers such as John Osborne and with Joan Littlewood and Theatre Workshop; the stand-offs with Samuel Beckett and with leading American dramatists; the Lord Chamberlain's determination to keep homosexuality off the stage, which turned him into a laughing stock when he was unable to prevent a private theatre club in London's West End from staging a series of American plays he had banned, including Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge and Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; and the Lord Chamberlain's attempts to persuade the government to give him new powers and to rewrite the law.This new edition includes a contextualising timeline for those readers who are unfamiliar with the period, and a new preface.

This book tackles fragmentation in mental health discourse and in particular the relationship between academic discourse in different disciplinary silos and public discourse in the media. It argues that fragmentation in public discourse does harm, and that an approach is needed that is able to integrate across perspectives holistically.

This is the first of a four volume analysis of British theatre censorship from 1900 - 1968, based on previously undocumented material in the Lord Chamberlain's Correspondence archives. It covers the period before 1932, when theatre was seen as a crucial medium with the power to shape society, determining what people believed and how they behaved.

A core text for upper undergraduates and postgraduates taking language, applied linguistics, translation and cultural studies courses in the UK and abroad. Of interest to teachers of languages, other applied linguists, and practising translators and interpreters. Fully revised and expanded edition.

This book brings together a number of specialist scholarly articles published previously in the series Cornish Studies, and presents them in revised form as a history of Cornwall in the early modern period, focusing especially on issues of language, identity and rebellion in the period 1490-1690.

This book is the first sustained and dispassionate study of the role of Freemasonry in everyday social and economic life: why men joined, what it did for them and their families, and how it affected the development of communities and local economies.

From Mimesis to Interculturalism offers a series of critical readings of key texts in the history of European and American theatrical and performance theory. It answers the need for a detailed critique of theatrical theory from its origins in Greek antiquity to the present day.

The birth of cinema coincided with the heyday of the short story. This book studies the relationship between popular magazine short stories and the very early British films.

This compact book reproduces fifty-two memorials in Latin taken from churches situated largely in the West Country. Each memorial is accompanied by a translation and by notes on the grammar.The book is aimed at all who would like to be able to read Latin epitaphs in churches, and whose knowledge of the language may be sketchy.The introduction explains the conventions involved in lettering, abbreviations, Latinized personal names, and stock phrases. It is followed by a very brief Latin grammar and notes on Roman numerals and dates. At the back of the book there is a word list containing all those words found in the inscriptions with numbered references, plus a selection of words which are commonly found in inscriptions generally, though not in those printed here.By combining these resources in one book, the author equips the reader with the tools to tackle other epitaphs beyond the pages of this book and further afield.Every attempt is made to help the reader understand the context in which each inscription was composed. For instance it is stressed that the composers of such epitaphs were skilled Latin scholars, and that there are very few errors to be seen. Errors attributable to the stonemasons or sign-writers are noted and corrected.

The birth of cinema coincided with the heyday of the short story. This book studies the relationship between popular magazine short stories and the very early British films.

William Jervois was a military engineer who rose to prominence as a result of Lord Palmerston's extensive programme of fortification against a feared French invasion in the middle years of the nineteenth century. Ramparts of Empire is a detailed and engaging study of his life and works. As the first comprehensive study of this influential Victorian, the bookis an important contribution to military and engineering history as well as to the history of Imperial Britain.The text is richly illustrated with photographs and plans of Jervois' forts, while supporting appendices provide a mine of supplementary information. This includes a gazetteer of Jervois' works and documentary evidence of his involvement in plans for a Channel Tunnel and a proposal for attacking the seaboard of the United States.In 1860, Palmerston's parliament sanctioned the construction of the largest system of fortifications that the British Isles had ever seen, or would ever see again, to defend against a feared French invasion. For William Jervois, then a young major in the Royal Engineers, his appointment as ';design leader' of this programme was a major step in a career in fortress construction that would see his work in Britain, the Channel Islands, Ireland, Canada, Bermuda, India, and later, Australia and New Zealand.Timothy Crick makes extensive use of extracts from Jervois' diaries and illustrations of his fortresses to give the reader a rounded picture of this Royal Engineer's wide-ranging career. He also captures a real sense of the fears of invasion that prevailed in this period. Throughout the book both the political background and the technical considerations involved in constructing forts and armaments are carefully explored to flesh out the motivations in what is sometimes referred to as the ';Golden Age' of British fort building.

The New Germany provides a picture of contemporary Germany from a variety of perspectives, establishing relationships between recent political events and society and cultural life.