This inter-disciplinary volume demonstrates, from a range of perspectives, the complex cultural work and struggles over meaning that lie at the heart of what we call memory. In the last decade, a focus on memory in the human sciences has encouraged new approaches to the study of the past. As the humanities and social sciences have put into question their own claims to objectivity, authority and universality, memory has appeared to offer a way of engaging with knowledge of the past as inevitably partial, subjective and local. At the same time, memory and memorial practices have become sites of contestation, and the politics of memory are increasingly prominent.

Flitter examines those narratives within the intellectual parameters that defined them, probing the conceptual strategies by which writers represented history.

How do national stereotypes emerge? To which extent are they determined by historical or ideological circumstances, or else by cultural, literary or discursive conventions? This first inclusive critical compendium on national characterizations and national (cultural or ethnic) stereotypes contains 120 articles by 73 contributors. Its three parts offer [1] a number of in-depth survey articles on ethnic and national images in European literatures and cultures over many centuries; [2] an encyclopedic survey of the stereotypes and characterizations traditionally ascribed to various ethnicities and nationalities; and [3] a conspectus of relevant concepts in various cultural fields and scholarly disciplines. The volume as a whole, as well as each of the articles, has extensive bibliographies for further critical reading. Imagologyis intended both for students and for senior scholars, facilitating not only a first acquaintance with the historical development, typology and poetics of national stereotypes, but also a deepening of our understanding and analytical perspective by interdisciplinary and comparative contextualization and extensive cross-referencing.

Fiction. Short Stories. Translated from the Italian by Barbara De Marco. In SARACEN TALES, Italian-born Giuseppe Bonaviri brings a wild newness to the tale of the life of Jesus. In this succession of stories, Bonaviri explores all manners of the known and unknown, the archetypal, the mythological, the symbolic--the life of Jesus is both his material and his point of departure. Part surrealism, part folklore, readers will be amazed at the originality and creativity with which a long-familiar tale is presented. "Bonaviri is a myth-maker, looking simultaneously to the historical past and to the future, to arrive at the a-historical, at cosmic universality"--Franco Zangrilli. Giuseppe Bonaviri was born in 1924 in Sicily. He began writing when he was ten and continued through high school, college, and in his professional life as a doctor, health official, and cardiologist. His work has been widely translated.

This first English translation makes avail­able to English-speaking readers a power­ful modern Mexican novel, first published in 1961. Fernando Benítez, well-known Mexican author, journalist, and winner of Mexico's 1968 best-book award, exploits a true but little-known incident by build­ing it into a tightly structured, tense, and tragic novel of social protest. The incident on which the novel is based is a bloody rebellion against the village feudal master touched off by joking comment on the "poisoning" of the water as one of Don Ulises's men is pushed into the plaza fountain. Feed­ing on itself, the rumor spreads that the "boss" has poisoned the local spring, and rebellion follows, with its violent and unforeseen consequences. The result is a frightening look at one of Mexico's major social problems and glaring ironies--that over fifty years after a revolution fought by the peasant and for the peasant, most rural groups are still living below the national economic standard.

This book covers the slave trade from 1562-1865 involving ten white nations and hundreds of black tribal rulers; it concentrates on the roles played by the English and the Americans.