Misunderstandings between races, hostilities between cultures. Anxiety from living in a time of war in one's own land. Being accused of profiteering when food was scarce. Unruly residents in a remote frontier community. Charged with speaking the unspeakable and publishing the unprintable. All of this can be found in the life of one man--William Pynchon, the Puritan entrepreneur and founder of Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1636. Two things in particular stand out in Pynchon's pioneering li...

Thanks to coded notes taken by the teenager John Pynchon, this volume transports the reader, virtually, back to Sundays in the seventeenth century, when the community gathered to listen to the Rev. George Moxon. The setting was Springfield, Massachusetts, founded in 1636 by John's father William Pynchon. As a note-taker, John recorded just what he heard in this rare resource, which allows the reader to listen in on the weekly sermons he documented in the 1640s. This symbol-by-symbol transc...

In 1764 the first printing press was established in the French Caribbean colonies, launching the official documentation of operas and plays performed there, and marking the inauguration of the first theatre in the colonies. A rigorous study of pre–French Revolution performance practices in Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), Powers’s book examines the elaborate system of social casting in these colonies; the environments in which nonwhite artists emerged; and both negat...

This book tells the truth about the controversial subject called ABORTION**; a** source of endless conflicts in most countries.You will be surprised to realize that the Catholic Church does not consider Abortion as a homicide, nor even as a crime, but only as a sin (for its members only).You will learn how a simple medical procedure to terminate an unacceptable pregnancy has become the basis for major conflicts in the political arena.Before ...

Cesaire, Cesairology, and Universal Humanism (in English) Csaire, Csairologie et Humanisme Universel (en franais) By Zekeh S. Gbotokuma, Editor/Translator Book Summary This two-part, twelve chapter, and bilingual work (English-French) is the Gospel of Negritude according to the world renowned poet and politician Aim Csaire of Martinique. The work is also a vivid account of the busy life and works of Csaire according to himself as well as through the eyes and voices of numerous scholars, Ce...

A veritable artist, Maillet becomes a “creator of sounds, of colours, of forms and words.” As she speaks, she paints a vast landscape of mountains and oceans, history and story, using the tools on her palette: blending the colours of myths and those of contemporary issues, creating an epic poem in a profoundly personal voice. This country she portrays is both young and old, speaks two languages, has a rich subconscious, and aspirations. She ends her lecture by re-telling a story originally...

How did the French Revolutionaries explain, justify, and understand the extraordinary violence of their revolution? In debating this question, historians have looked to a variety of eighteenth-century sources, from Rousseau's writings to Old Regime protest tactics. A Natural History of Revolution suggests that it is perhaps on a different shelf of the Enlightenment library that we might find the best clues for understanding the French Revolution: namely, in studies of the ...

2012 Outstanding Academic Title, Choice MagazineThis volume examines the Enlightenment-era textualization of the Black African in European thought. Andrew S. Curran rewrites the history of blackness by replicating the practices of eighteenth-century readers. Surveying French and European travelogues, natural histories, works of anatomy, pro- and anti-slavery tracts, philosophical treatises, and literary texts, Curran shows how naturalists and philosophes drew from...

The French slave trade forced more than one million Africans across the Atlantic to the islands of the Caribbean. It enabled France to establish Saint-Domingue, the single richest colony on earth, and it connected France, Africa, and the Caribbean permanently. Yet the impact of the slave trade on the cultures of France and its colonies has received surprisingly little attention. Until recently, France had not publicly acknowledged its history as a major slave-trading power. The distinguish...

Mary Cyr addresses the needs of researchers, performers, and informed listeners who wish to apply knowledge about historically informed performance to specific pieces. Special emphasis is placed upon the period 1680 to 1760, when the viol, violin, and violoncello grew to prominence as solo instruments in France. Part I deals with the historical background to the debate between the French and Italian styles and the features that defined French style. Part II summarizes the present state of ...

Here is an annotated, scholarly, multilingual edition of the only lengthy text personally written by Haitian revolutionary Toussaint Louverture: the memoirs he wrote shortly before his death in the French prison of Fort de Joux. The translation is based on an original copy in Louverture's hand never before published. Historian Philippe Girard begins with an introductory essay that retraces Louverture's career as a slave, rebel, and governor. Girard provides a detailed narrative of the last...

The search for a republican morality provides an exciting new study of an important event in the French Revolution and a defining moment in the career of its principal actor, Maximilien Robespierre, the Festival of the Supreme Being. This day of national celebration was held to inaugurate the new state religion, the Cult of the Supreme Being, and whilst traditionally it has been dismissed as a compulsory political event, this book redefines its importance as a hugely popular natio...