Horse Armor in Medieval and Renaissance Europe: An Overview

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Macbeth The tragedy of Macbeth is the great Shakespearian play of stage superstition and uncanniness. The play is about trasgression and witches, unleashed powers that have already crossed the treshold into the supposedly safe space of the stage. In Macbet the border crossing comes at the beginning and throughout the play as well as at its close. Macbeth begins with witches. Before the inception of the play proper, before the audience is introduced to the title character or any of the Scottish nobilit or soldiery, the stage is overtaken by creatures from another world. Critics from Shakespeare's time to ours have debated whether they are English, Scottish or Continental witches. The last category is conventionally regarded as the most malevolent, powerful and dangerous. Usually, however, the witches in Macbeth are called not witches but weird sisters. Wyrd is the Old English word for fate and these are in a way classical Witches as well as Scottish or Celtic ones. The Macbeth's witches are not merely mithologycal beings, nor merely historical targets of vilification and superstition: on the stage they have a persuasive psychological reality of their own. Continental witches engaged in practicise like cannibalism, the ritual murder of infants, and perverse sexual relations with demons (all activities that will be displaced onto the real figure of Lady Macbeth). These witches were said to fly, to hold witches' Sabbaths and to be seriously malign and powerful. Local English and Scottish witches, by contrast, had less reach. They were often described as retaliatory, exacting retribution for wrongdoing. Their activities were part of a folk culture of superstition and mysterious agency, regional rather than national, pagan rather than christian. There is another dimension to Jame I's relationship to powerful or empowered women. James was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, who was imprisoned in England for nearly 20 years and then executed, in 1587 for her supposed complicity in a plot to assasinate Queen Elizabeth. James, the son of one of these queens and the designated heir for the other made only a perfunctory protest at Mary's execution. Somewhere behind the dominant figure of King James whose image is everywhere in Macbeth, lie the shadows of the strong female figures, mothers and queens with their inescapable aura and their evident power over his life, his fate and his future. In any case, although Shakespeare and his contemporaries were surely cognizant of Jame's interest in witches, once it was decided to write a play about Macbeth the playwright was able to manipulate its details about witchcraft in the service not only of politics, but also of dramatic action and character. What Shakespeare did with the weird sisters was make them into an emblematic state of mind. We don't know if they are inside or outside Macbeth, but the effects of the play show us that they are both inside and outside the mind of the protagonist. They tell him what he has already been thinking. They allow him to interpret things as he wants to see them. They are real in the sense that they are visible and audible on stage. Unlime the voice and the dagger, the witches are seen, heard, spoken to, and vouched for by another onstage witness, Banquo, who provides very much the same kind of indipendent assurance and plays a crucial role in establishing a link of verisimilitude with the audience. They are ordinary people like ourselves. They are confidants and companions of the tragic hero. The witches, so, are real in a dramatic sense, they are a state of mind. They hint, they speak in riddles and they leave their hearers to decipher answer to the riddles they propose. They exist to be interpreted, and they are the essence of ambiguity, ambiguous not only in their speech, but in their gender. Furthermore they are neither wholly of the air or of the earth, but rather a combination of dark elements. They speak in charms or magic riddles and their language is dominated by what in the play is called equivocation. The word equivocation was much in use in the period, since it was a technical term used to describe the mental reservation, by which Jesuits often suspected of treason because of their Catholic faith, could tell unthruts or partial tricks under interrogation without breaking their word to God. Equivocation is closely akin to ambiguity, as well as to indecisiveness, an unwillingness to commit oneself either way: Drink (says the porter) may be said to be an equivocator with lechery , since it provokes and unprovokes: it provokes the desire but it takes away the performance. The porter belongs to that category of truth telling realists. Equivocation: ambiguity, the dangerous double meanings of language. Macbeth, we will see, is an equivocator in all things: a man who splits in two directions, who commits murder to become King, and suffers every moment once he is king. The withces use the words double, that is itself a sign of equivocation, of the fatal split in Macbeth, appearing again and again throughout the play, eleven times in all, always negative in contexts: Duncan is at Macbeth's castle in double trust, yet Macbeth will murder him. Macduff, according to the witches' apparition, seems to pose no threat, yet Macbeth will make assurance double sure, and kill him. Lady Macbeth, called by the king honoured hostess, who can scarcely wait till nightfall brings the death of her royal guest. When we first hear of Macbeth, before we ever meet him, he seems to be in a single state, a state of heroism, fighting, as is characteristic of Shakespeare's tragic protagonists at the outset of their journeys, en external war. Brave Macbeth he is called, and the message of his heroism is brought to the king's camp by a captain. Then we see two Macbeths, who, likewise doubtful and exhausted, doom each other and pull each other down. The image is itself a powerful diagram of doubleness, and the loss of power that comes with doubleness. Duncan is a crocial figure for this play: all the drama swirls around him. And Shakespear's Duncan differs importantly from his source in the historical chronicles. Where Holinshed's Duncan is a weak king, succeded by a powerful and fair minded Macbeth who reigns for 10 years, Shakespear makes his king nobler and more virtuous, the usurper more precipitate and vile in his designs, the action much quicker, the outcome more definitive, the King's death more disastrous. Duncan is for this play the opposite of the witches and of Lady Macbeth. He is a benevolent figure of order and trust, evoked regularly and insistently in images of light and of fertility associated with the land. Duncan speaks of his plenteous joys. Duncan's son Malcolm will inherit from his father the same language of plantation and harvest, speaking in last scene of what's more to do. This Is not merely devorative language; despite the growth of cities like London and Edinburgh, England and Scotland were at the time still largely open land. The political clock was ticking in the direction of nationalism, the unification of England and Scotland, Christian teology and absolute monarchy. But the ideology of seasonal cycle is embedded at the centre of the play. The tension between cycle and line map the structure of the play at every point from first to last. We have seen this same gesture toward fertility and seasonal cyclical renewal at the close of other Shakespearean plays about kingship. But Duncan is linked

Handbook of Sports Medicine and Science, 2010

ARTH 165: Baroque Art: The Making and Dissemination of an International Style "Baroque" style was the first truly international style in the history of art. More than even the Renaissance style that preceded it, the Baroque spread quickly across Europe and, through trade and other means, spread to the New World, India, China, and other far off lands. In this course, we will examine the root of this style, examine the reasons it was so popular in such vastly different cultures, and study what its dissemination tells us about the seventeenth century. The course will begin with and continually return to Italy, which is where the style originated. As we shall see, religious and political motivations were as important for the development of Baroque style as artistic ones. Artists and their work were sent all over Europe and facilitated the quick diffusion of this new "Italian" style. Soon, patrons in Spain, the Netherlands, Flanders, France, England and the Holy Roman Empire demanded that local artists adopt it, usually with some modifications to better conform to the differences in tastes, traditions, and the function and organization of religious and civic institutions in those areas. Then, since trade routes were so highly developed by this time, Baroque style paintings and sculptures were sent to every known area of the world and artists in those places took on some of the Baroque style as well. Because of the scope of the course and the limitations of time, we will focus on the major masters in architecture, painting, and sculpture, though students should be aware that there were many other significant artists who produced beautiful works of art in many types of media in this period. General goals for the course: Students will be able to recognize the major stylistic movements, understand the varying functions, and know the contextual histories of the art produced between ca. 1580-1700 in Western Europe and identify how Baroque still was transmitted and transformed within and beyond Europe. This information will be gleaned from the in-class lectures, readings, online discussion, and other online and in-class activities, including the research project. Student progress in reaching this learning objective will be discerned via exams, weekly online quizzes, and the research project. Students will work collaboratively so as to learn from each other, improve their communications skills, and engage more fully with the material.

PLOS ONE, 2022

Background Research into paranormal beliefs and cognitive functioning has expanded considerably since the last review almost 30 years ago, prompting the need for a comprehensive review. The current systematic review aims to identify the reported associations between paranormal beliefs and cognitive functioning, and to assess study quality. Method We searched four databases (Scopus, ScienceDirect, SpringerLink, and OpenGrey) from inception until May 2021. Inclusion criteria comprised papers published in English that contained original data assessing paranormal beliefs and cognitive function in healthy adult samples. Study quality and risk of bias was assessed using the Appraisal tool for Cross-Sectional Studies (AXIS) and results were synthesised through narrative review. The review adhered to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines and was preregistered as part of a larger registration on the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/uzm5v). Results From 475 identified studies, 71 (n = 20,993) met our inclusion criteria. Studies were subsequently divided into the following six categories: perceptual and cognitive biases (k = 19, n = 3,397), reasoning (k = 17, n = 9,661), intelligence, critical thinking, and academic ability (k = 12, n = 2,657), thinking style (k = 13, n = 4,100), executive function and memory (k = 6, n = 810), and other cognitive functions (k = 4, n = 368). Study quality was rated as good-tostrong for 75% of studies and appears to be improving across time. Nonetheless, we identified areas of methodological weakness including: the lack of preregistration, discussion of limitations, a-priori justification of sample size, assessment of nonrespondents, and the failure to adjust for multiple testing. Over 60% of studies have recruited undergraduates and 30% exclusively psychology undergraduates, which raises doubt about external validity.

The research is related to identification of variables related to Consumer Service Quality in an insurance company. One of the leading private sector company, ICICI Prudential Life is taken for the study. The following dimensions of service quality are considered for study i,e., tangibility- the tangible elements of service that can see and touch, reliability– performing the promised service dependably and accurately; responsiveness- helping customers and providing prompt service

2023

The concepts of what a toy is and what play as a phenomenon represents, evolve. This paper examines how play is affected by digital toys and toy robotics, conceptualized here as play machines. The position paper offers pluralistic perspectives on play machines in an era heading towards a post-digital state by combining earlier research on the historical trajectory of mobile toys with current developments in interactive toys. The paper reconceptualizes toys as interactive media connecting with thingness, transmedia, and technology as perspectives on the toy medium. Finally, the paper illustrates the connections between an emerging category of toys, Internet-connected character toys, and companion robotics, which in speculative toy fiction emerge as future 'toy friends' or Artificial Friends, offering enriched possibilities for motion and emotion in player engagement.