New Orleans’s reputation as a decadent city stems in part from its environmental precariousness, its Francophilia, its Afro-Caribbean connections, its Catholicism, and its litany of alleged “vices,” encompassing prostitution, miscegenation, homosexuality, and any number of the seven deadly sins. An evocative work of cultural criticism, Robert Azzarello’s Three Hundred Years of Decadence argues that decadence can convey a more nuanced meaning than simple decay or decline conceived in physical, social, or moral terms. Instead, within New Orleans literature, decadence possesses a complex, even paradoxical relationship with concepts like beauty and health, progress, and technological advance. Azzarello presents the concept of decadence, along with its perception and the uneasy social relations that result, as a suggestive avenue for decoding the long, shifting story of New Orleans and its position in the transatlantic world. By analyzing literary works that span from the late seventeenth century to contemporary speculations about the city’s future, Azzarello uncovers how decadence often names a transfiguration of values, in which ideas about supposed good and bad cannot maintain their stability and end up morphing into one another. These evolving representations of a decadent New Orleans, which Azzarello traces with attention to both details of local history and insights from critical theory, reveal the extent to which the city functions as a contact zone for peoples and cultures from Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Drawing on a deep and understudied archive of New Orleans literature, Azzarello considers texts from multiple genres (fiction, poetry, drama, song, and travel writing), including many written in languages other than English. His analysis includes such works of transcription and translation as George Washington Cable’s “Creole Slave Songs” and Mary Haas’s Tunica Texts, which he places in dialogue with canonical and recent works about the city, as well as with neglected texts like Ludwig von Reizenstein’s German-language serial The Mysteries of New Orleans and Charles Chesnutt’s novel Paul Marchand, F.M.C. With its careful analysis and focused scope, Three Hundred Years of Decadence uncovers the immense significance—historically, politically, and aesthetically—that literary imaginings of a decadent New Orleans hold for understanding the city’s position as a multicultural, transatlantic contact zone.

New Orleans’s reputation as a decadent city stems in part from its environmental precariousness, its Francophilia, its Afro-Caribbean connections, its Catholicism, and its litany of alleged “vices,” encompassing prostitution, miscegenation, homosexuality, and any number of the seven deadly sins. An evocative work of cultural criticism, Robert Azzarello’s Three Hundred Years of Decadence argues that decadence can convey a more nuanced meaning than simple decay or decline conceived in physical, social, or moral terms. Instead, within New Orleans literature, decadence possesses a complex, even paradoxical relationship with concepts like beauty and health, progress, and technological advance. Azzarello presents the concept of decadence, along with its perception and the uneasy social relations that result, as a suggestive avenue for decoding the long, shifting story of New Orleans and its position in the transatlantic world. By analyzing literary works that span from the late seventeenth century to contemporary speculations about the city’s future, Azzarello uncovers how decadence often names a transfiguration of values, in which ideas about supposed good and bad cannot maintain their stability and end up morphing into one another. These evolving representations of a decadent New Orleans, which Azzarello traces with attention to both details of local history and insights from critical theory, reveal the extent to which the city functions as a contact zone for peoples and cultures from Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Drawing on a deep and understudied archive of New Orleans literature, Azzarello considers texts from multiple genres (fiction, poetry, drama, song, and travel writing), including many written in languages other than English. His analysis includes such works of transcription and translation as George Washington Cable’s “Creole Slave Songs” and Mary Haas’s Tunica Texts, which he places in dialogue with canonical and recent works about the city, as well as with neglected texts like Ludwig von Reizenstein’s German-language serial The Mysteries of New Orleans and Charles Chesnutt’s novel Paul Marchand, F.M.C. With its careful analysis and focused scope, Three Hundred Years of Decadence uncovers the immense significance—historically, politically, and aesthetically—that literary imaginings of a decadent New Orleans hold for understanding the city’s position as a multicultural, transatlantic contact zone.

The VADE MECUM IN TRIBULACIONE was meant as an eschatological manual for the thirteen catastrophic years between its composition in December 1356 and the Thousand-Year Reign of Christ expected to begin in 1370. This manual, permeated by passion for clerical reform, was intended to give righteous Christians practical and spiritual advice on how to survive this period of tribulation. Likewise, it aimed to inform them about what to expect from the envoys of Satan, the Western and the Eastern Antichrists, but also from Christ’s warriors, the papal restorer and his secular assistant, the French-Roman Emperor. Moreover, it offered a brief outline of Christ’s Thousand-Year Reign and of Armageddon. The VADE MECUM was written by John of Rupescissa OFM (c. 1310-1366), the most prolific apocalyptic author of the Middle Ages, as the central work of in all three manuals designed to prepare Christendom for the impending crises. As a completely new text type and summary of the late Rupescissa’s doctrines, this eschatological manual fascinated numerous readers in the Late Middle Ages, who copied, reworked and translated it and made it thus a pivotal text of medieval apocalypticism: ten versions of the Latin VADE MECUM in more than forty manuscripts have come down to us. Rupescissa’s eschatological manual is his last known and most widely distributed work; the present study provides an annotated critical edition equipped with an English translation. It inducts in the manual’s contents, places them in the context of Rupescissa’s work and medieval prophetic literature, investigates important aspects of its reception and clarifies the relationships between its different versions. Furthermore, it ends with a critical edition of the VENI MECUM IN TRIBULACIONE, the most influential compendious version of the VADE MECUM. Thus this book offers an indispensable fundamental contribution to the flourishing studies of Rupescissa and medieval apocalypticism.

Rather than a media history of the region or a history of southern media, Remediating Region: New Media and the U.S. South formulates a critical methodology for studying the continuous reinventions of regional space across media platforms. This innovative collection demonstrates that structures of media undergird American regionalism through the representation of a given geography’s peoples, places, and ideologies. It also outlines how the region answers back to the national media by circulating ever-shifting ideas of place via new platforms that allow for self-representation outside previously sanctioned media forms. Remediating Region recognizes that all media was once new media. In examining how changes in information and media modify concepts of region, it both articulates the virtual realities of the twenty-first-century U.S. South and historicizes the impact of “new” media on a region that has long been mediated. Eleven essays examine media moments ranging from the nineteenth century to the present day, among them Frederick Douglass’s utilization of early photography, video game representations of a late capitalist landscape, rural queer communities’ engagement with social media platforms, and contemporary technologies focused on revitalizing Indigenous cultural practices. Interdisciplinary in scope and execution, Remediating Region argues that on an increasingly networked planet, concerns over the mediated region continue to inform how audiences and participants understand their entrée into a global world through local space.

The Messianic Line A Succinct Summary of the Book The purpose of this Book is twofold. Its purview is God’s promise to Abraham regarding his seeds and to David regarding his Davidic Messianic patrilineal (that is, male-only) divine line, which was eventually fulfilled through the birth of the Son of God, the MESSIAH, Jesus. Secondly, it attempts to answer the question that results from the differences between the two genealogies in the Gospels of Matthew (1:1-16) and Luke (3:23-38). In order to achieve this mundane but profound objective, we must start with the story of the first couple, Adam and Eve, who lived in the Garden of Eden. Then we proceed to God’s call for Abraham, instructing him to move from Haran to Canaan, “unto a land that I will shew thee”, with a promise to give him a great name, to make him a blessing, to bless those who bless him, and curse those who cursed him and finally to give him the Promised Land and through his descendants to bless all the families of the earth with a Redeemer. (Gen. 12:1-9; Gen. 13:14-17; Gen.15:7, 18; Gen.17:5-8). We will subsequently take a cursory look at Abraham and his descendants/lineage with a return to Adam and Eve. We will trace the lineage of their son Seth directly to Abraham. Given the number of persons involved from Adam to the fulfillment of the two promises, I can only make short and brief references to the quality of the character, shortcomings, and obedience to divine commandments (in the sight of God) of the people considered significant and God’s choices for the lineage of his son, Jesus Christ. In pursuit of uniformity and ease of reading, I’ve adopted Matthew’s descending-order format to present the lineage in both Gospels. In 0fairness to Luke—who presents it in ascending order—I also adopted his genealogy format from Adam (the first earthly man; Gen.1:26) to Jesus (the heavenly/Spiritual man; Luke 1:26-38; cf. Luke 1:18,20,23). In addition, I accept Luke’s coverage of the complete history of God’s redemption beginning with Adam and Eve, not Abraham, for the following reasons: God first showed the path to salvation for a fallen mankind through the promise of the “seed” of the woman: “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel” (Gen. 3:15). The words “her seed” refer to Jesus Christ, who would be conceived through Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit (Matt. 1:18). Christ came through virgin Mary as a seed of woman and not of man; “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (Isa. 7:14; cf. Luke 1:30-35). The promise of the woman’s seed was expanded to the covenant with Noah (Gen. 6:18; 9:8-17) and with Abraham (Gen. 12:1-3; 22:15-18). It then developed into the Sinaitic covenant— a conditional covenant of works, written on a stone given to Moses on Mount Sinai (Ex. 24:1-8; Deut. 29:1) whereby God promised to “... forgive their iniquity”(Ex.34:6-7)—and, finally, to the Davidic covenant --- unconditional covenant of grace based on the atoning works of Jesus Christ, where God declared “... But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel;...I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, know the Lord: for they shall all know me... for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jer. 31:31-34; 2 Sam. 7:11-16; 1 Chr. 17:10-14). The important features of the universality of the knowledge of God, vital inwardness of his laws and the fact that “I will remember their sin no more”, that is the full guarantee of forgiveness of sin, are what make the New Covenant unique and superior to the Sinaitic one. All of the above covenants are eternal. They became “promises.” God promised a “seed.” This promise was fulfilled in Jesus Christ, and it was contained in the covenant ratified by God (Gal. 3:16-17). From the foundation of the world, God had a plan for man’s redemption through his only begotten son, Jesus Christ. He manifested this divine plan in sanctified1 human genealogy of a chosen “...to them who are the called according to his purpose...he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren...whom he did predestinate, them he also called; and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified (Rom.8:28-30), until “...when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his son, made of a woman, made under the law...that we might receive the adoption of sons” (Gal. 4:4-5). ____________________________________________ Sanctified—set apart, declare Holy or separate for God’s purposes.

From the New York Times columnist and bestselling author of Bad Religion, a “clever and stimulating” (The New York Times Book Review) portrait of how our turbulent age is defined by dark forces seemingly beyond our control. The era of the coronavirus has tested America, and our leaders and institutions have conspicuously failed. That failure shouldn’t be surprising: Beneath social-media frenzy and reality-television politics, our era’s deep truths are elite incompetence, cultural exhaustion, and the flight from reality into fantasy. Casting a cold eye on these trends, The Decadent Society explains what happens when a powerful society ceases advancing—how the combination of wealth and technological proficiency with economic stagnation, political stalemate, and demographic decline creates a unique civilizational crisis. Ranging from the futility of our ideological debates to the repetitions of our pop culture, from the decline of sex and childbearing to the escapism of drug use, Ross Douthat argues that our age is defined by disappointment—by the feeling that all the frontiers are closed, that the paths forward lead only to the grave. Correcting both optimism and despair, Douthat provides an enlightening explanation of how we got here, how long our frustrations might last, and how, in renaissance or catastrophe, our decadence might ultimately end.