John Cort explores the narratives by which the Jains have explained the presence of icons of Jinas (their enlightened and liberated teachers) that are worshiped and venerated in the hundreds of thousands of Jain temples throughout India. Most of these narratives portray icons favorably, and so justify their existence; but there are also narratives originating among iconoclastic Jain communities that see the existence of temple icons as a sign of decay and corruption. The veneration of Jina icons is one of the most widespread of all Jain ritual practices. Nearly every Jain community in India has one or more elaborate temples, and as the Jains become a global community there are now dozens of temples in North America, Europe, Africa, and East Asia. The cult of temples and icons goes back at least two thousand years, and indeed the largest of the four main subdivisions of the Jains are called Murtipujakas, or "Icon Worshipers." A careful reading of narratives ranging over the past 15 centuries, says Cort, reveals a level of anxiety and defensiveness concerning icons, although overt criticism of the icons only became explicit in the last 500 years. He provides detailed studies of the most important pro- and anti-icon narratives. Some are in the form of histories of the origins and spread of icons. Others take the form of cosmological descriptions, depicting a vast universe filled with eternal Jain icons. Finally, Cort looks at more psychological explanations of the presence of icons, in which icons are defended as necessary spiritual corollaries to the very fact of human embodiedness.

Pentcheva demonstrates that a fundamental shift in the Byzantine cult from relics to icons, took place during the late tenth century. Centered upon fundamental questions of art, religion, and politics, Icons and Power makes a vital contribution to the entire field of medieval studies.

From the same Irish monastery that gave us the best-selling The Glenstal Book of Prayer, with over 150, -000 copies sold worldwide! The Glenstal Book of Icons presents meditations and prayers on a selection of icons from the Glenstal Abbey Icon Chapel. The process is that of lectio divina, where the icon itself is the text to be read and considered, leading to a meditation on the text - or icon - which in turn leads to prayer. Each icon is reproduced in full color. A substantial introduction places the icon in its context in Eastern Christianity, looks at the theology of icons and then at the Eastern approach to praying with icons. Special emphasis is given to The Jesus Prayer which is then used in various forms throughout the meditations which follow. Gregory Collins, OSB, is a monk of Glenstal Abbey, Ireland.

Justinian's triumphal column was the tallest free-standing column of the pre-modern world and was crowned with arguably the largest metal equestrian sculpture created anywhere in the world before 1699. The Byzantine empire's bronze horseman towered over the heart of Constantinople, assumed new identities, spawned conflicting narratives, and acquired widespread international acclaim. Because all traces of Justinian's column were erased from the urban fabric of Istanbul in the sixteenth century, scholars have undervalued its astonishing agency and remarkable longevity. Its impact in visual and verbal culture was arguably among the most extensive of any Mediterranean monument. This book analyzes Byzantine, Islamic, Slavic, Crusader, and Renaissance historical accounts, medieval pilgrimages, geographic, apocalyptic and apocryphal narratives, vernacular poetry, Byzantine, Bulgarian, Italian, French, Latin, and Ottoman illustrated manuscripts, Florentine wedding chests, Venetian paintings, and Russian icons to provide an engrossing and pioneering biography of a contested medieval monument during the millennium of its life.

This three volume set is a comprehensive account of the development of European aesthetics from the time of the ancient Greeks to the 1700s. This second volume focuses on eastern and western aesthetics in the Middle Ages.

The recent sesquicentennial of August Strindberg's (1849-1912) birth was an appropriate occasion for investigating the role of this towering figure in Nordic literature. By Eugene O'Neill once labeled the most modern of moderns, Strindberg the playwright has commanded a prophetic influence on 20th century drama and theater, and his voluminous production in several other genres continues to constitute a watershed and some of the highpoints in Swedish letters. Yet, Strindberg remains as controversial today as he was in his lifetime. The nature and degree of his modernity are still under discussion, and so is the impact of his remarkable genre-proliferation and border-transgressing Swedishness. Once considered too unruly for the pillars of society and too pious for the radicals, his artistic and existential points of gravity remain in critical dispute. Generally subjected to traditional modes of inquiry, Strindberg's complexity calls for new critical approaches. Strindberg and the Other brings together scholars, younger and older, from Scandinavia and abroad, who either venture such new approaches or engage their practitioners in fruitful dialogue. Especially promising among the volume's methodological and theoretical propositions is the notion of the 'other' and 'otherness.' Indeed, the image of August Strindberg himself is quite an-other at this millennium than it was just half a century ago.

The Ashgate Research Companion to Migration Law, Theory and Policy complements the already successful Ashgate series Law & Migration, established in 2006 which now has a number of well-regarded monographs to its credit. The purpose of this Companion is to augment that Series, by taking stock of the current state of literature on migration law, theory and policy, and to sketch out the contours of its future long-term development, in what is now a vastly expanded research agenda. The Companion provides readers with a definitive and dependable state-of-art review of current research in each of the chosen areas that is all-embracing and all-inclusive of its subject-matter. The chapters focus on the regional and the sub-regional, as well as the national and the global. In so doing, they aim to give a snap-shot that is contextual, coherent, and comprehensive. The contributors are both world-renowned scholars and newer voices and include scholars, practitioners, former judges and researchers and policy-makers who are currently working for international organisations.