Exploring a chapter in the cultural history of the West not yet probed, The Strait Gate demonstrates how doors, gates, and related technologies such as the key and the lock have shaped the way we perceive and navigate the domestic and urban spaces that surround us in our everyday lives. Jütte reveals how doors have served as sites of power, exclusion, and inclusion, as well as metaphors for salvation in the course of Western history. More than any other parts of the house, doors are objects onto which we project our ideas of, and anxieties about, security, privacy, and shelter. Drawing on a wide range of archival, literary, and visual sources, as well as on research literature across various disciplines and languages, this book pays particular attention to the history of the practices that have developed over the centuries in order to handle and control doors in everyday life.

Narratives, translated and edited, with a preface, introduction and notes, of the second voyage through the strait, commanded by the Comendador Loaysa and Sebastián del Cano, 1524-6, the third voyage, under the command of Simón de Alcazaba, 1534-5, and the reconnaissance by Bartolomé and Gonzalo de Nodal, 1618-19; with a fragment relating to the expedition sent by the bishop of Plasencia under Alonso de Camargo, 1539-41. Contents: Introduction to the expedition of the comendador Loaysa and Juan Sebastian del Cano.-List of survivors of the Magellan expedition brought back by Juan Sebastian del Cano, in the Victoria.-Expedition of the comendador Loaysa to Maluco.-Narrative of the Loaysa expedition by Captain Andres de Urdaneta.-Description of the strait of Magellan by the pilot Martin de Uriarte.-Narrative of the voyage of the pinnace Santiago.-Narrative of the voyage of Alvarez de Sayavedra by Vicencio of Naples.-Introduction to the expedition of Simon de Alcazaba.-Principal officers of Alcazaba's expedition.-Narrative of the expedition of Simon de Alcazaba by Alonso (Veedor) This is a new print-on-demand hardback edition of the volume first published in 1911.