Conscience, as Binding Words convincingly argues, can only ever be understood, interpreted, and made effective through tropes and figures of language.

In the Middle Ages, textual amulets--short texts written on parchment or paper and worn on the body--were thought to protect the bearer against enemies, to heal afflictions caused by demonic invasions, and to bring the wearer good fortune. In Binding Words, Don C. Skemer provides the first book-length study of this once-common means of harnessing the magical power of words. Textual amulets were a unique source of empowerment, promising the believer safe passage through a precarious world by means of an ever-changing mix of scriptural quotations, divine names, common prayers, and liturgical formulas. Although theologians and canon lawyers frequently derided textual amulets as ignorant superstition, many literate clergy played a central role in producing and disseminating them. The texts were, in turn, embraced by a broad cross-section of Western Europe. Saints and parish priests, physicians and village healers, landowners and peasants alike believed in their efficacy. Skemer offers careful analysis of several dozen surviving textual amulets along with other contemporary medieval source materials. In the process, Binding Words enriches our understanding of popular religion and magic in everyday medieval life.

This remarkable, innovative book explores the significance in Shakespeare's plays of oaths, vows, contracts, pledges, and the other utterances and acts by which characters commit themselves to the truth of things past, present, and to come. In early modern England, such binding language was everywhere. Oaths of office, marriage vows, legal bonds, and casual, everyday profanity gave shape and texture to life. The proper use of such language, and the extent of its power to bind, was argued over by lawyers, religious writers, and satirists, and these debates inform literature and drama. Shakespeare's Binding Language gives a freshly researched account of these contexts, but it is focused on Shakespeare's plays. What motives should we look for when characters asseverate or promise? How far is binding language self-persuasive or deceptive? When is it allowable to break a vow? How do oaths and promises structure an audience's expectations? Across the sweep of Shakespeare's career, from the early histories to the late romances, this book opens new perspectives on key dramatic moments and illuminates language and action. Each chapter gives an account of a play or group of plays, yet the study builds to a sustained investigation of some of the most important systems, institutions, and controversies in early modern England, and of the wiring of Shakespearean dramaturgy. Scholarly but accessible, and offering startling insights, this is a major contribution to Shakespeare studies by one of the leading figures in the field.

In the ancient Greco-Roman world, it was common practice to curse or bind an enemy or rival by writing an incantation on a tablet and dedicating it to a god or spirit. These curses or binding spells, commonly called defixiones were intended to bring other people under the power and control of those who commissioned them. More than a thousand such texts, written between the 5th Century B.C.E. and the 5th Century C.E., have been discovered from North Africa to England, and from Syria to Spain. Extending into every aspect of ancient life--athletic and theatrical competitions, judicial proceedings, love affairs, business rivalries, and the recovery of stolen property--they shed light on a new dimension of classical study previously inaccessible. Here, for the first time, these texts have been translated into English with a substantial translator's introduction revealing the cultural, social, and historical context for the texts. This book will interest historians, classicists, scholars of religion, and those concerned with ancient magic.

Words That Bind presents a careful and nuanced treatment of constitutional interpretation and judicial review. By bringing constitutional theory and contemporary political philosophy to bear on each other, John Arthur illuminates these topics as no other recent author has.

Mining the rich Venetian archives, especially the unusually detailed records of Venice's own branch of the Roman Inquisition, Guido Ruggiero provides a strikingly new and provocative interpretation of the end of the Renaissance in Italy. In this boldly structured work, he develops five narrative accounts of individual encounters with the Inquisition that illustrate the double-edged metaphor of how passions were both bound by late Renaissance society and were seen in turn as binding people. In this way new perspectives are opened on magic, witchcraft, love, marriage, gender, and discipline at the level of the community and beyond. Witches, courtesans, prostitutes, women healers, nobles, Cardinals, and renegade priests and monks speak from these pages describing their lives, beliefs, hopes, fears, and lies. With an imaginative flair for storytelling and impeccable scholarship, Ruggiero exposes the rich complexity of the culture and poetics of the everyday at the end of the Renaissance and illuminates a previously unexplored chapter in Italian history.

Machine translation has become increasingly popular, especially with the introduction of neural machine translation in major online translation systems. However, despite the rapid advances in machine translation, the role of a human translator remains crucial. As illustrated by the chapters in this book, man-machine interaction is essential in machine translation, localisation, terminology management, and crowdsourcing translation. In fact, the importance of a human translator before, during, and after machine processing, cannot be overemphasised as human intervention is the best way to ensure the translation quality of machine translation. This volume explores the role of a human translator in machine translation from various perspectives, affording a comprehensive look at this topical research area. This book is essential reading for anyone involved in translation studies, machine translation or interested in translation technology.

n medieval and early modern Europe, the use of charms was a living practice in all strata of society. The essays in this latest CEU Press publication explore the rich textual tradition of archives, monasteries, and literary sources. The author also discusses texts amassed in folklore archives and ones that are still accessible through field work in many rural areas of Europe.