Theorizations of slavery in the Indian Ocean world often draw upon analyses of enslavement in the anglophone Black Atlantic world, productively highlighting continuities between systems of unfree labor migration across oceans. This chapter, however, focuses mainly on how enslavement in the Indian Ocean diverged from Atlantic models, and the implications this has had for the literatures of slavery. If the anglophone Black Atlantic can be considered a sphere of autobiographical speech and legal silence, the Indian Ocean world of enslavement is one of autobiographical silence, but legal speech. The rich heteroglossia of Indian Ocean legal records stands in contrast to portrayals of the Atlantic Ocean slave trade as a process of silencing and erasure. The existence of these legal records affects the representation of the enslaved in later, fictional narratives of slavery, which share an interest in voice, testimony, and the law. After a brief summary of the historical contexts of slavery in the Indian Ocean world, this chapter examines depictions of enslaved voices in legal archives and fictional works. The final section turns to literatures of indenture, a more recent form of coerced labor migration, to suggest why we should not consider indenture as simply a continuation of slavery.

This chapter explains the nature of the social-scientific interpretation of biblical texts, tracing its recent development from the early 1970s and focusing on contributions that have come from sociology, anthropology, and social psychology.

Introduced in Paris in the middle of the seventeenth century, Italian opera took a long time to conquer French audiences. The genre of the spoken tragedy, represented by the works of Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine, had brought French theatre since the 1640s to a point of perfection: the notion of a play being sung throughout was thus met with much scepticism. French desire for cultural hegemony also resisted opera, which was perceived as an Italian import. The fate of this genre was also complicated at the political level: Cardinal Mazarin’s attempt to impose opera in France did not sit well in the hostile climate generated by the Fronde (1648–1653), during which time several members of Parliament and high-ranking nobles vehemently opposed strengthening the absolute monarchy. While Italian influence was considerable in the artistic domain, it was progressively restricted to theatrical architecture, machinery, and décors, all aspects that would nevertheless become paramount for the development of ‘pièces à machines’, that is, spectacular theatrical plays mostly performed on private stages – princely residences, the king’s palaces – and in Parisian public theatres.

Opera was produced only rarely in the otherwise vibrant theatrical culture of seventeenth-century Spain and her American dominions, though Italian operas and occasional Spanish ones became a mainstay of public life in the Spanish-held territories in Italy, especially Naples and Milan. At the royal court in Madrid and the principal administrative centres of the overseas colonies (Lima and Mexico), opera was inextricably bound to dynastic politics and constrained by conventions about the gender of onstage singers. Several other kinds of plays with music were produced at theatres both public and private, however, and commercial theatres known as corrales were among the busiest sites of musical performance and cultural transmission. Some 10,000 plays were performed in Madrid in the course of the seventeenth century, although only about 2,000 such texts have been preserved. The principal theatrical genre was the comedia nueva, a three-act play in poly-metric verse in which the tragic and the comic were mingled to recreate the natural balance of human existence with varying degrees of verisimilitude.

Any attempt to write a history of the libretto is fraught with paradox. Almost without exception, a text is the starting point for any opera. Indeed, before Mozart, and often after, the libretto was normally complete before the composer put pen to paper, for all that it might then be revised according to the musical and other demands made upon it. As we shall see, its poetry usually had quite precise musical implications. Moreover, in early opera the poet was normally the prime mover in the operatic enterprise, not just by devising the subject and fleshing it out with appropriate words, but also given his often standard role as director of the production. The libretto was itself the public face of opera in terms of the artefacts that survive to record a given performance: libretti were usually printed for general consumption inside or outside the theatre, whereas musical scores were, on the whole, regarded as more ephemeral performance materials, to be adopted, adapted, and disposed of at will. Poets also acted as the chief ideologues of opera, promoting and defending the genre against its detractors and inserting it into broader literary and cultural debates. In a very real sense, the history of the libretto is the history of opera tout court.1

The ‘old regimes’ in Europe marked happy occasions such as births, birthdays, and weddings as conspicuously as they could, often in a series of sumptuous events. For the general public, there might be street processions, races, jousts, and religious rites made special by richly decorated liturgical spaces and extraordinary music. The nobility, however, expected private festivities suited to their place in society. They held banquets and balls for each other and often prepared staged entertainments. Across Europe, the nature of such private amusements varied from palace to palace and court to court; but it is as one of the varieties of occasional celebrations at court that opera began, borrowing and transforming different features from them. It shared with them song, dance, instrumental music, and poetic texts delivered by costumed figures. A set of songs and dances could be held together loosely by a theme. Recited poems and solo songs could pepper a pantomimic ballet; musical intermedi could lighten a spoken play. Any representation could focus on astonishing stage machines – flying dragons and chariots for gods and goddesses, sudden transformations of scenery, or the spouting of fountains. Poetic recitations or musical tableaux could justify or merely adorn these technical wonders. Although opera took on features of court spectacle, it never displaced the other forms. Not only were its special requirements onerous – a stable of singers with the time and ability to memorise and deliver extended roles – but it also demanded acceptance as poetic drama.

The chapter outlines the origins and development of philosophical hermeneutics and argues for its relevance for biblical interpretation today.

Methods of biblical historical criticism are interpretive strategies analyzing texts and significance and the infinite contexts and contacts of history. Examining the histories of individual biblical writings, noncanonical writings, and biblical canons encompass a variety of endeavors deployed in limitless configurations.

The birth of opera around 1600 is intimately tied to singers. Jacopo Peri and Giulio Caccini are known not only as composers of the first complete published operas but also as superb vocalists. In October 1600, as part of the Florentine celebrations for the wedding of Maria de’ Medici to Henry IV of France, Peri starred as Orfeo in his own setting of Ottavio Rinuccini’s Euridice.1 On stage with him were Caccini’s daughters, Francesca (1587–after 1641) and Settimia (1591–c. 1660), who, instead of performing Peri’s music, sang the settings their father had insisted upon inserting. In future years, Francesca would go on to be celebrated for both her vocal prowess and her compositional acumen: she was the first woman to compose an opera, La liberazione di Ruggiero dall’Isola di Alcina (1625).2 The spread of opera thus cannot be separated from the talented performers who brought the works to light on the stages of courts and public theatres over the course of the century.