In this introduction, we first describe the contents of the Summa Logicae in some detail, situating the work in the larger context of medieval logical texts of the thirteen and fourteenth centuries and explaining why it occupies pride of place in Ockham’s philosophical project. Second, we argue that the Summa Logicae was most likely composed in Avignon between 1324 and 1328 contrary to the accepted view that Ockham wrote it in London over the summer of 1323. Third, we trace the legacy of the Summa Logicae from its first reception in Oxford and Paris in the 1330s, into the Parisian controversies of the 1330s and 1340s, and its dissemination further into Europe over the course of the next century or so. We end this history by noting the 1974 publication of the modern critical edition of the Summa Logicae, which was an enormously significant landmark in Ockham studies.

This essay details selected experiences from Fornés’s early life that were formative to her philosophy of life and art in order to highlight how her theatremaking relates to and extends from Havana’s vanguard movements of the 1920s–1940s. Considering Fornés’s migration alongside the trajectories of transnational movement of artists like director Francisco Morín and composer Mario Bauzá, Mayer-García evinces how this experience disposed her to approaching the world through “errant thinking” wherein one comes to know oneself through an immersion in foreign lands and cultures. By highlighting connections with some of Cuba’s most notable artists, the author argues that shared mobility, portable affects of place, and errant thinking all implicate Fornés as a displaced artist from Havana’s avant-garde circles.

Elaine Romero – an accomplished playwright, teacher, and yogi who studied all three practices with María Irene Fornés – uses the tools of dramatic writing to develop a historically informed theatrical exploration of Fornés’s time in Paris in 1954 with her then romantic partner, Harriet Sohmers (an artist, model, and writer who later published memoirs of this period using the surname Zwerling). Here, Romero’s short play – set in the summer of 1954 that the two women spent together in Paris – ruminates on how Fornés’s artistic beginnings stirred during this intimate time with Sohmers. The playscript is prefaced by a brief critical reflection by Romero that details how her own experiences with Fornés inflect her playwriting process and the playwriting exercise Romero offers as conclusion to her play.

Considering the life and influence of María Irene Fornés’s mother on her development, education, and theatrical career. This chapter follows the life of Cuban teacher, mother, and widow, Carmen Collado Fornés, who moved with her two daughters, María Irene and Margarita, to New York City in 1945, and lived with María Irene until her death in 1996. Key aspects of this chapter include Carmen Fornés’s vocation as a teacher, her influence on her daughter, and how María Irene’s role as caretaker informed her work as a theater artist and teacher.

George Benjamin recalls his friendship with Pierre Boulez which lasted over thirty-five years. He pays homage to Boulez’s quite extraordinary musical abilities and remembers the exceptional lucidity and brilliance of his mind.

The history of the relationship between Sean O’Casey and the French stage is closely linked to the history of décentralisation, the state-implemented policy of creating a network of subsidised theatres outside Paris initiated after World War II during the Fourth Republic. His plays were staged regularly in French public theatres until the early 1980s, when the generation of theatre practitioners who had implemented décentralisation began to retire. This chapter starts by giving some contextual elements about décentralisation; it then moves on to give a brief account of some particularly significant O’Casey productions, in chronological order.

This chapter focuses on Poland and France to discuss examples of the emergence of Jewish armed resistance. It stresses different forms of resistance over time and the shift it took when Jewish activists became aware of mass murder. In the east, the creation of ghettos and the mass shootings and deportations of Jews to extermination camps led the Jewish underground and many individual Jews to engage in armed resistance. In the west, armed resistance emerged in response to mass roundups. Jewish resistance in both eastern and western contexts relied, in part, on longstanding personal networks within Jewish organizations and communities, which transcended linguistic, political, and intra-communal divides.

This chapter explores broader cultural European trends following the First World War, including the consequences of currency dynamics and market speculation. These postwar changes culminated in a heightened financialisation of the culture of the art market, reflecting broader shifts in capitalist economies towards financial forms of revenue and profit. The saturation of financial language that accompanies financialisation processes was also a characteristic of this period: the aftermath of the war saw debates revolving around themes of profit, money-making, and an inflation of art production. This chapter parallels previous chapters by examining how cultural and artistic changes were linked to socio-economic developments. The war had acted as a catalyst and accelerator, inflaming cultural tensions within the art markets. It continued to shape market discourses, embedding wartime mentalities into post-war cultural landscapes.

This chapter explores the major auction landscapes before 1914 and also describes the defining elements of the fin-de-siècle European market: integration, free trade, and cosmopolitanism. Examining societies’ approaches to artwork acquisition unveils contradictions and frictions within a milieu united by an international collecting class. France contended with an international, yet conservative, nationalist art world, while Germany’s bourgeoisie tried to control the world of luxury and consumption. In contrast, Britain grappled with questions about free trade and the preservation of art that challenged its laissez-faire tradition. It is precisely these tensions, which directly reflect the challenges posed by the commercialisation of art, that provide a framework for analysing the impact of the war. By emphasising the shared features of an integrated trade sphere, this chapter paints a balanced portrayal of a European market, where art mirrored the complex integration of both socioeconomic and cultural frameworks.

Chapter 7 tracks the transformation of the position of Paris induced by the neoliberal turn. The marketplace of intermediaries between resource-rich African states and French businesses has long been derided as an outgrowth of the Françafrique, the interpersonal shadow networks linking France to its African pré carré. The neoliberal turn fostered the prominence of corporate lawyers as key intermediaries between the state and the market. It was also deployed within the system of the Françafrique. Due to the historical distancing of the Paris bar from business, French corporate law pioneers contributed to the expansion of a French corporate bar under the double thrust of the European Common Market and the model of the Wall Street corporate law firm. It is also as intermediaries of US multinational corporate law firms that they entered the former French pré carré in Africa qua a legal market.

On his journey to the Franciscan General Council in 1259, Bonaventure, having recently been elected minister general of the Order, stopped off to make a spiritual retreat on Mt. Alverna, the place where St. Francis had seen a vision of a six-winged Seraph with an image of the crucified Christ at its center from which he received the stigmata. It was here that Bonaventure was inspired to write a six-stage ascent of the mind into God, associating each stage of the ascent with one of the six wings of the Searph. By creatively adapting contemporary preaching techniques of the so-called “modern sermon” or sermo modernus style, Bonaventure was able to craft a work of which Bernard McGinn would say: “Perhaps no other treatise of comparable size in the history of Western mysticism packs so much into one seamless whole.” I also broach an issue that has divided commentators on Bonaventure’s leadership of the Franciscan Order since the moment he took office as minister general. In helping to foster the Franciscans presence at the University of Paris and other leading universities, did Bonaventure lead the Order in a direction contrary to the spirit of St. Francis?

Debussy’s creative world was deeply enmeshed in the cultural field of the French capital. Steeped in a post-Enlightenment worldview centred on exploration, accumulation of knowledge, and scientific discovery, no aspect of human experience and its habitats was deemed out of bounds in this path to creative accretion. Like many of his contemporaries, Debussy became fascinated by a wealth of new ideas about the world and the human condition that exploded onto the scene during his lifetime. Mysticism and occultism expanded the horizon within which to understand the mind and its creative potential; archaeological discoveries from Greece and Rome brought alive a past that belied the bland classicism so revered only decades earlier; and a rich smorgasbord of historical research – one that encompassed music and its practice – provided new materials from the foreign worlds of medieval, if not mythical, pasts. Over the course of Debussy’s life, these currents were woven together into the conceptual framework that sustained his creative world and that he claimed continually to renew rather than reproduce.

This chapter explores the fascination with things Japanese (the term japonisme was first coined in 1872), which manifested itself in many ways, not least through the collecting of objets d’art – an obsession of Debussy’s. It will examine other ‘orientalisms’ and the role of the Exposition Universelle of 1889 in promoting them. This chapter intersects with Debussy’s interests in a number of ways. His attendance at the Exposition Universelle was seminal to his future development, not least in alerting him to musical cultures remote from his own. However, whilst we can hear the influence of these experiences in his music, Debussy was also a fanatical collector and browser of shops specialising in exotic products. He would often spend housekeeping money on objects for his collection, much to the despair of his partners. This chapter reflects changing consumption in France.

From what can be inferred from the composer’s correspondence and writings, Debussy was indifferent to political debate. It is noteworthy that the names of politicians are virtually absent from his letters, and that none of the major affairs or terrorist episodes that shook French public opinion are the subject of his public or private writings. This chapter describes France’s volatile politics and the impact of the Prussian invasion, the Commune (1871), the Dreyfus affair, the First World War, and other events that shaped the country. Relations with Germany and the catastrophe of the First World War are discussed. Although Debussy was directly affected by some political events, for example his father’s involvement in the Commune, he comes across as fairly apathetic in his few political pronouncements.

This chapter reflects on the class system and economic background of Debussy’s youth and the implications they had for his education. Given that he received little formal education until he entered the Paris Conservatoire, there is ample opportunity here to assess how typical this background was, or if it was shaped by the parents’ unusual circumstances. Arising out of this, there is a discussion of contemporary conceptions of the family, both at the time of Debussy’s childhood and in the twentieth century, when he became head of a small family and had to cope with the consequences (he apparently coped badly much of the time and resented the demands of family life). Despite his ardent desire to make up for everything he did not have as a child, Debussy struggled to reconcile the demands of his family with his professional aspirations at a time when men were increasingly expected to participate in and enjoy family life. Whether his struggles emanated from his artistic aspirations or his self-centred character, Debussy’s personal and professional choices were undoubtedly shaped by the circumstances of his upbringing and the increasing importance accorded to the family in French society during his lifetime.

Paul Dukas believed that the strongest influence that Debussy came under was that of writers, not composers. Writers were also prominent in his friendship circles, and this chapter outlines the importance of these circles to Debussy’s musical development. So many French composers have been influenced by artists of all types at least as much as by their musical peers, and Debussy was no exception to this. Perhaps surprisingly for someone so personally reserved, his face-to-face encounters with writers were at least as important to him as the time he spent reading their books. But as a collaborator, he was far better at discussing projects than actually completing them: Debussy’s list of projected theatrical works is considerably longer than his list of achievements in this sphere. His personal connections with writers started with the odd coincidence that Debussy’s first piano teacher was Paul Verlaine’s mother-in-law, Antoinette Mauté de Fleurville; her daughter, Mathilde, and the poet lived under her roof when the nine-year-old Debussy studied with her.

Although losing more and more ground to German firms in the 1880s, the large French music publishing houses, such as Hartmann, Heugel, Choudens, and Durand, played a predominant role in French musical life by distributing all kinds of music, from the most popular to the most learned, as well as numerous adaptations and transcriptions, for example when an opera or a work was a huge success. Apart from those publishing houses that dominated the French market, the Parisian market was teeming with small publishers. Before being supported by Georges Hartmann in 1894, the young Debussy tried to have his works published by all sorts of publishers, from the most prestigious, such as Durand or Choudens, to the least known, such as Paul Dupont. Jacques Durand was a both a friend and business associate during the latter part of Debussy’s life, for he took over the publishing of Debussy’s music and helped him out in many ways. Their extensive correspondence is consequently revealing.

During this period consumerism developed apace, so that the society of Debussy’s world closely resembles our own in its fondness for shopping as a form of recreation. This was due in part to growing prosperity, at least amongst the middle classes, and increased leisure time. Fine dining, though hardly new, was also an aspect of growing consumerism. Debussy was a product of his time in his fondness for good food and collecting it. from local dealers. Especially pertinent to Debussy is the manner in which music was consumed as a leisure activity, for he catered for the demand for ‘leisure’ music in his early songs and piano works. Developing rapidly in this period of prosperity and stability was tourism, which Debussy participated in, if not from choice, certainly from the preferences of his wives and mistresses. Understanding this part of Debussy’s environment and appreciating Paris’s centrality on the European map (with many borrowings from Great Britain, including afternoon tea and whisky, both much to Debussy’s taste) throws light on Debussy the man as he negotiated the free time that many periods of inactivity as a musician created.