This book focuses upon the tomb with a transi image, which the author defines as 'a tomb with a representation of the deceased as a corpse, shown either nude or wrapped in a shroud', tombs that were peculiar to Northern Europe from the late fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries. Cohen challenges the modern view that the transi image was a mere memento mori for the living. Drawing upon 200 examples of tombs with, as well as without transi images, and upon poetry, church hymns, prayers, sermons, ceremonial texts, and wills, she demonstrates that in the course of the 15th & 16th centuries the meaning of the transi evolved, reflecting changes in religious, social and intellectual life during this period.

Franz Kafka, the author has very nicely narrated the story of Gregou Samsa who wakes up one day to discover that he has metamorphosed into a bug. The book concerns itself with the themes of alienation and existentialism. The author has written many important stories, including ‘The Judgement’, and much of his novels ‘Amerika’, ‘The Castle’, ‘The Hunger Artist’. Many of his stories were published during his lifetime but many were not. Over the course of the 1920s and 30s Kafka’s works were published and translated instantly becoming landmarks of twentieth-century literature. Ironically, the story ends on an optimistic note, as the family puts itself back together. The style of the book epitomizes Kafka’s writing. Kafka very interestingly, used to present an impossible situation, such as a man’s transformation into an insect, and develop the story from there with perfect realism and intense attention to detail. The Metamorphosis is an autobiographical piece of writing, and we find that parts of the story reflect Kafka’s own life.

Signs and Symbols in Chaucer's Poetry presents the work of nine distinguished Chaucer scholars inspired by the work of D. W. Robertson Jr., whose seminal 1969 study Preface to Chaucer has exerted wide influence in medieval studies and sparked new interest in the literary iconography of Middle English.

This monograph includes a wide range of Gareth McConnell's work from 1995 to the present. Beginning with the series Anti-Social Behaviour, looking at people who have endured punishment beatings in Northern Ireland, it includes Boxers, a series of portraits from a boxing club in Bournemouth as well as Portraits from Ibiza.

Death is not only the final moment of life, it also casts a huge shadow on human society at large. People throughout time have had to cope with death as an existential experience, and this also, of course, in the premodern world. The contributors to the present volume examine the material and spiritual conditions of the culture of death, studying specific buildings and spaces, literary works and art objects, theatrical performances, and medical tracts from the early Middle Ages to the late eighteenth century. Death has always evoked fear, terror, and awe, it has puzzled and troubled people, forcing theologians and philosophers to respond and provide answers for questions that seem to evade real explanations. The more we learn about the culture of death, the more we can comprehend the culture of life. As this volume demonstrates, the approaches to death varied widely, also in the Middle Ages and the early modern age. This volume hence adds a significant number of new facets to the critical examination of this ever-present phenomenon of death, exploring poetic responses to the Black Death, types of execution of a female murderess, death as the springboard for major political changes, and death reflected in morality plays and art.