To see the other types of publications on this topic, follow the link: Medieval narrative genres.
Journal articles on the topic 'Medieval narrative genres'
Create a spot-on reference in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, and other styles
Consult the top 50 journal articles for your research on the topic 'Medieval narrative genres.'
Next to every source in the list of references, there is an 'Add to bibliography' button. Press on it, and we will generate automatically the bibliographic reference to the chosen work in the citation style you need: APA, MLA, Harvard, Chicago, Vancouver, etc.
You can also download the full text of the academic publication as pdf and read online its abstract whenever available in the metadata.
Browse journal articles on a wide variety of disciplines and organise your bibliography correctly.
1
Chazan, Robert. "The Facticity of Medieval Narrative: A Case Study of the Hebrew First Crusade Narratives." AJS Review 16, no. 1-2 (1991): 31–56. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0364009400003111.
Full textAbstract:
In the early stages of the modern rewriting of medieval Jewish history, the sources most consulted and adduced were narrative. As the enterprise has matured, further source genres have been discovered and utilized, thus allowing for improved understanding of the medieval Jewish experience. Of late, the reliability of narrative sources has come under question, but at the same time these narrative sources have been utilized in new and creative ways. To be sure, both the questioning and the innovative utilization of medieval Jewish narrative sources have been profoundly influenced by similar tendencies among general medievalists, as they seek to refine their tools of historical reconstruction.
2
Matthews, Ricardo. "Song in Reverse: The Medieval Prosimetrum and Lyric Theory." PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 133, no. 2 (March 2018): 296–313. http://dx.doi.org/10.1632/pmla.2018.133.2.296.
Full textAbstract:
Studying the medieval prosimetrum, a genre that mixes narrative with lyric, could have important ramifications for the general study of poetics. By disrupting transhistorical theories of the lyric, which proceed from a presumed continuity between ancient Greece and modernity, the prosimetrum situates the Middle Ages at the center of our understanding of modern lyric poetry. Instead of beginning with a late-eighteenth-century understanding of lyric poetry as a self-expressive voice, which scholars must then localize in a poem's historical conditions, language, and genres, the prosimetrum begins with a conventional, rhetorical poem in a variety of stated genres and then, by including a narrative frame, stages that poem as a heartfelt song sung by lovesick knights or clerks. In the prosimetrum, the playful game of conventional art, which defines the medieval love lyric in isolation, suddenly becomes a way to imagine fictional subjectivities.
3
Klausner, David N. "Cattle-Raids and Courtships: Medieval Narrative Genres in a Traditional Context.Vincent A. Dunn." Speculum 66, no. 4 (October 1991): 862–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2864648.
Full text
4
Муталова Гулнора Сатторовна. "ОСОБЕННОСТИ РАННЕСРЕДНЕВЕКОВОГО ЭПИЧЕСКОГО ТВОРЧЕСТВА АРАБОВ." International Journal of Innovative Technologies in Social Science, no. 1(13) (January 31, 2019): 28–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.31435/rsglobal_ijitss/31012019/6326.
Full textAbstract:
The article is devoted to the most interesting phenomenon in Arabic literature - tribal legends, included in the Arab medieval literature called “Ayyam al- Arab” (“Days of the Arabs”). Oral narrative is an incomparable genre of Arab culture. Containing folklore origins and genetically related to the epic, it is at the same time quite distinctive and distinctly separate from other literary genres. The prose of Days, as well as poetry, is a work of high art with its own laws and its own poetics. And considering that for a long time, Arabic prose has not received proper development, the appearance of Ayyam Al- Arab should be regarded as one of the sources of historiographic prose, actually as the beginning of narrative prose in the history of Arabic literature.
5
Mierke, Gesine. "Transformationen Vergils in der spätmittelalterlichen Literatur: Sangspruchdichtung und Ablassverzeichnisse." Daphnis 44, no. 4 (October 5, 2016): 425–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18796583-10000008.
Full textAbstract:
The narrative complex about Vergil the magician, which is increasingly present in the Latin literature since the 11th century as well as in the vernacular literature since the 13th century, gave rise to various researches. Not all testimonials of reception are however documented, especially those of the late medieval literature. Primarily genres like the Mirabilia Romae or the Indulgentiae ecclesiarum Urbis Romae remained widely unconsidered on that premise although several facets of Vergil as a literary figure were being invoked here. Moreover, only little attention is paid so far to the question of the function that corresponds to the Vergil-narratives within the individual texts. This contribution focuses on the transformations of Vergil as a literary figure within the Indulgentiae ecclesiarum Urbis Romae as well as their functionalization in these texts. With a view to the Sangspruchdichtung of the 14th and 15th century, the possible interpretations of the narratives are being explored. Der narrative Komplex um den Zauberer Vergil, der in der lateinischen Literatur ab dem 11. Jahrhundert und in den volkssprachigen Literaturen ab dem 13. Jahrhundert zunehmend präsent ist, hat zu verschiedenen Untersuchungen Anlass gegeben. Dennoch sind nicht alle Rezeptionszeugnisse vor allem der spätmittelalterlichen Literatur erfasst. Insbesondere Gattungen wie die Mirabilia Romae oder die Ablassverzeichnisse (Indulgentiae ecclesiarum urbis Romae) blieben unter dieser Prämisse weitgehend unberücksichtigt, obwohl hier verschiedene Facetten Vergils als literarische Figur aufgerufen werden. Überdies hat man der Frage, welche Funktion den Vergil-Narrativen in den Einzeltexten zukommt, bisher nur wenig Beachtung geschenkt. Im Zentrum des Beitrags stehen die Transformationen Vergils als literarische Figur in den Indulgentiae ecclesiarum urbis Romae und deren Funktionalisierung in diesen Texten. Mit Blick auf die Sangspruchdichtung des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts werden die Deutungsmöglichkeiten der Narrative ausgelotet.
6
Seebald, Christian. "Vom Adamsspiel zur Adamsoper." Volume 60 · 2019 60, no. 1 (November 14, 2019): 205–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.3790/ljb.60.1.205.
Full textAbstract:
The thesis of the birth of opera as a result of late humanistic reception of antiquity at the turn of the 17th century has been a commonplace idea within the discussion of dramatic genres. Yet the dominant narrative of change or renewal tends to obscure phenomena of continuity and anachronism which are nonetheless relevant for the tradition of premodern theatre. Those residues of an outlasting dramatic tradition are the focus of this paper which is especially concerned with the transitions between the broad stream of medieval liturgical drama and early modern opera. It is to be shown how close the ties in particular are between the new genre of music theatre and the older theatrical models and their continuities. At the same time the specific achievements and innovations of the younger operatic genre can be accentuated even more distinctly. This paper will concentrate on a paradigmatic case from the early times of German music theatre, the Hamburg inaugural opera Adam from 1678, to demonstrate the characteristic links as well as transformations between the traditions of the medieval liturgical and early modern protestant drama and the operatic genre of the 17th century.
7
ORTIZ DE LANDÁZURI, Carlos. "The Philosophical Roots of Lazarillo de Tormes in Sem Tob Carrión's Proverbs." Revista Española de Filosofía Medieval 24 (November 24, 2017): 171. http://dx.doi.org/10.21071/refime.v24i.10458.
Full textAbstract:
In this article the continuity between two types of late medieval and Renaissance narrative is approached, although they are separated by around 200 years and belong to different literary genres. The first part of the article analyses the genre of autobiography, the experience of shared environment in urban settings, and the difficulties of its survival in a Renaissance monarchy, as shown in Sem Tob de Carrión's Proverbs and in Lazarillo de Tormes. The second part analyses the ethical principles that, according to the Sem Tob Carrión's Proverbs, justified the formulation of a legal complaint against the monarch; and it analyses the degree of moral responsibility contracted by the characters of Lazarillo de Tormes in the genesis of the scandalous ethical case in which they are involved.
8
Segal-Rudnik, Nina. "«Вечный муж» и традиция мениппеи." Roczniki Humanistyczne 69, no. 7 (August 11, 2021): 171–86. http://dx.doi.org/10.18290/rh21697-11.
Full textAbstract:
The article examines the motif structure of the main characters in Dostoevsky’s The Eternal Husband against the background of menippea and its various genres. The parodic transformations of the images and motifs of Dostoevsky's previous texts, especially the novel The Idiot, modify the traditional love triangle of the short story. The relationship between the protagonist and the antagonist reflects the ambivalence of the archetypal scheme “king vs jester” and the way it appears in Hugo’s romantic drama Le Roi s’amuse and Verdi’s opera Rigoletto. The plot of revenge and vindication of trampled dignity dates back to the genre of medieval mock mystery (R. Jakobson) and its narrative of the Easter resurrection, posing the problem of Christianity and its values in the Russian society of the time.
9
Piskunova, Larisa, and Igor Yankov. "The Narrative Structure and Postclassical Reality in G. R. Martin’s Epic Fantasy Novels A Song of Ice and Fire and the Television Series Game of Thrones." Sotsiologicheskoe Obozrenie / Russian Sociological Review 19, no. 1 (2020): 193–208. http://dx.doi.org/10.17323/1728-192x-2020-1-193-208.
Full textAbstract:
The classical novels of the 19th century corresponded with early modern national society. At the beginning of the 21st century, serials have replaced classical novels in structuring the form of social reality. The narrative structure of Game of Thronescorresponded with postclassical, postcolonial social reality. The co-existence of different genres, the different types of co-existence between “realistic medieval” and mythological reality, the co-existence of different narrators without a dominant point of view, and the asynchrony of episodes and the dramatic unexpected turns of plot are specific features of forming non-linear space and time. The specific structure of narrative is connected with the specific position of the author and the relationship between the author, the narrators, and power. The depreciation of the ground mythological structure of narrative is a cause of the inflation of catharsis, and induces unlimited series events or an unfinished principal plot. Features of the narrative of Game of Thronesare correlated with the postclassical situation of the co-existence of different social phenomenon that deny each other, but are forced to be connected.
10
Bolshakova, Alla Yu. "Вооk as a genre: medieval tradition in Russian prose of 20th century (V.P. Astafiev, F.A. Abramov)." Philological Sciences. Scientific Essays of Higher Education, no. 4 (July 2021): 123–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.20339/phs.4-21.123.
Full textAbstract:
The author aims to observe the phenomenon of “thinking by books” which has been born in the verbal creativity of Medieval Russia and promoted in Russian literature of the XX century but has been little studied yet. A special attention is paid to the formation of the book genre by such writers as V.P. Astafyev (“The Last Bow”, “The King-Fish”, “Zatesi”) and F.A. Abramov (“The Pure Book”). To fulfill the tasks set, the author relies on both the provisions of medieval studies and the concepts of genre theorists and historians of modern Russian literature. Definition of “book” as a specific meta-genre; dialectics of the novel and book genres is considered. A special attention is paid to the processes of formation of the “book” by uniting text elements into a super-genre unity. The author shows how the free form of the “book”, consisting of chapters and stories, provides creative freedom to the author and allows, in the medieval spirit, to expand the original version adding new and new texts to it. The article substantiates the position of the “book” as a narrative consisting of seemingly separate, but cyclically connected chapters and parts. This is a meta-genre that is becoming and moving along with historical reality. In conclusion the author of the article draws a conclusion about the productivity of genre of the book in the Village prose as a leading literary direction of the second half of the twentieth century and marks a continuation of this tradition in contemporary Russian prose.
11
Pinet, Simone. "Walk on the Wild Side." Medieval Encounters 14, no. 2-3 (2008): 368–89. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/157006708x366308.
Full textAbstract:
AbstractThe figure of the wild man is one that crosses artistic disciplines and genres in the cultures of medieval Iberia. In this article I show how the wild man operates within a variety of meanings in diverse literary contexts that, working simultaneously at different narrative levels, cross over from literature into daily life and spectacles, from legal to political discourses. The figure's continued presence from the medieval period into the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries suggests its use as a commonplace, as a motif with a number of fixed meanings that are put to work through context, providing the possibility of different, perhaps even contradictory readings. As commonplace, then, the wild man is presented as a case study for the reconsideration of other elements in the paintings of the Hall of Justice of the Alhambra, often interpreted to have a specific or fixed meaning, and thus programmed within a particular narrative. Seen in its entirety as a repository of commonplaces, I interpret the complex of the lateral paintings of the Hall of Justice in relation to the central one, in which a set of ten kings in Nasrid dress are depicted as conversing, as pretexts for narration that can be of a literary or juridical nature. I then go on to provide a possible itinerary of reading for the wild man scene not only in its immediate context, but as part of he overall visual project in a political key that illustrates the productive makeup of the paintings as pedagogical and ideological enterprise.
12
Calderwood, Eric. "Franco's Hajj: Moroccan Pilgrims, Spanish Fascism, and the Unexpected Journeys of Modern Arabic Literature." PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 132, no. 5 (October 2017): 1097–116. http://dx.doi.org/10.1632/pmla.2017.132.5.1097.
Full textAbstract:
Journey to Mecca (; al-Rihla al-Makkiyya; 1941), by the distinguished Moroccan historian and legal scholar Ahmad al-Rahuni, recounts a hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, sponsored by the fascist Spanish dictator Francisco Franco in 1937. Franco's support for the hajj was part of a vast propaganda effort to cast Franco's Spain as a friend of Islam and a defender of the cultural heritage of al-Andalus (medieval Muslim Iberia). Al-Rahuni's travel narrative blurs the line between Mecca and Spain by casting Spain's Islamic heritage sites as a metaphoric Mecca to which Muslims should make pilgrimage. The account thus highlights the collaboration between Spanish fascists and Moroccan elites. It also complicates the dominant scholarly narratives about modern Arabic literature, which have tended to focus on Egypt, the novel, and secular epistemologies. Al-Rahuni's text speaks, instead, to the persistence of Arabic prose genres that do not conform to a Eurocentric notion of literature.
13
Obidič, Andrejka. "Margaret Atwood’s Postcolonial and Postmodern Feminist Novels with Psychological and Mythic Influences: The Archetypal Analysis of the Novel Surfacing." Acta Neophilologica 50, no. 1-2 (November 13, 2017): 5–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.4312/an.50.1-2.5-24.
Full textAbstract:
The paper analyzes Margaret Atwood’s postcolonial and postmodern feminist novels from the psychological perspective of Carl Gustav Jung’s theory of archetypes and from the perspective of Robert Graves’s mythological figures of the triple goddess presented in his work The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth (1997). In this regard, the paper focuses on the mythic and psychological roles embodied and played by Atwood’s victimized female protagonists who actively seek their identity and professional self-realization on their path towards personal evolution in the North American patriarchal society of the twentieth century. Thus, they are no longer passive as female characters of the nineteenth-century colonial novels which are centered on the male hero and his colonial adventures. In her postcolonial and postmodern feminist novels, Atwood further introduces elements of folk tales, fairy tales, legends, myths and revives different literary genres, such as a detective story, a crime and historical novel, a gothic romance, a comedy, science fiction, etc. Moreover, she often abuses the conventions of the existing genre and mixes several genres in the same narrative. For instance, her narrative The Penelopiad (2005) is a genre-hybrid novella in which she parodies the Grecian myth of the adventurer Odysseus and his faithful wife Penelope by subverting Homer’s serious epic poem into a witty satire. In addition, the last part of the paper analyzes the author’s cult novel Surfacing (1972 (1984)) according to Joseph Campbell’s and Northrop Frye’s archetypal/myth criticism and it demonstrates that Atwood revises the biblical myth of the hero’s quest and the idealized world of medieval grail romances from the ironic prospective of the twentieth century, as it is typical of postmodernism.
14
Brown, Warren. "Conflict, Letters, and Personal Relationships in the Carolingian Formula Collections." Law and History Review 25, no. 2 (2007): 323–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0738248000002947.
Full textAbstract:
Over the last few decades, scholarship on early medieval conflict has been driven and shaped by the kinds of sources that scholars have used. The different source genres offer their own characteristic pictures of the ways that people processed disputes in the early Middle Ages. Narrative sources, for example, such as chronicles or saints' lives, tend in the process of achieving their narrative orhagiographic goals to highlight violence, extra-judicial settlement, and the ritual or symbolic expression of disputes and disputeresolution. Normative sources, such as law codes or royal legislation (for example, the capitularies issued by Carolingian kings), naturally emphasize institutional tools for handling conflict, such as formal judicial assemblies and judicial procedures, royal judicial officials, and laws. Archival sources from the period consist primarily of charters, that is, records of rights or privilege ranging from diplomas issued by kings and emperors to the property records of churches andmonasteries. These tend to blend the images produced by the first two source genres. Often they record the formal resolution of propertydisputes in judicial assemblies headed by kings, counts, or their representatives; often they refer to laws or imply that the cases theydeal with were covered by some generally recognized set of norms. Charters also, however, provide a great deal of evidence for extra-judicial negotiation and settlement, as well as for ritual and public symbolic communication as a part of dispute processing.
15
Mirza, Sarah Z. "The Peoples’ Hadith: Evidence for Popular Tradition on Hadith as Physical Object in the First Centuries of Islam." Arabica 63, no. 1-2 (February 29, 2016): 30–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15700585-12341382.
Full textAbstract:
The Prophet’s documents comprise a category of objects that are the intentions of the Prophet, legally binding texts, and physical objects that touched the Prophet all at once. Reports of these documents are found in various genres of medieval Islamic literature, where they are frequently transmitted through family isnāds. While these reports are self-consciously geared toward recording the intentions of the Prophet, in effect they reflect the concern of the subalterns of hadith literature to locate themselves somewhere within the narrative of the Prophet’s life. The reports investigated here thus preserve an element of what hadith meant to Bedouin recipients, revealing a pre-canonical arena for hadith in which hadith behaved not as text but as physical object, as a “hadith-object.”1
16
Ron-Gilboa, Guy. "ʿAnqāʾ Mughrib: The Poetics of a Mythical Creature." Journal of Abbasid Studies 8, no. 1 (June 29, 2021): 75–103. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/22142371-12340067.
Full textAbstract:
Abstract In early Arabic literature, ʿAnqāʾ Mughrib is the name of the quintessential mythical bird. The ʿAnqāʾ appears in a myriad of medieval sources of different genres: poetical, narrative, proverbial, scientific, philosophical, and mystical. This paper draws attention to the multiple ways in which this bird was represented and the functions it fulfilled in different literary contexts. It explores the intricate web of quotations, allusions, and literary innovations that facilitated its multifarious uses and re-uses. I explore the various manifestations of the ʿAnqāʾ to demonstrate the different and at times contradictory meanings ascribed to it and its diverse literary functions: as a creature of speculative zoology; as metaphor of scarcity or non-existence; as a metaphor of God; as a marker of fictionality; and more.
17
Abramowicz, Maciej. "L’amitié chevaleresque dans le miroir de la littérature médiévale française." Romanica Wratislaviensia 64 (October 27, 2017): 11–21. http://dx.doi.org/10.19195/0557-2665.64.2.
Full textAbstract:
CHIVALRIC FRIENDSHIP IN FRENCH MEDIEVAL LITERATUREThe emergence in the Middle Ages of literature in the vernacular paralleled the emergence of the new, lay social elite — the chivalry. The new literature did not so much reflect as it shaped the attitudes and the axiological system embraced by medieval knights. This fact has been recognized by historians, however they seem to take atoo homogenic view of various narrative forms of vernacular literature. Thus, the article is an attempt to identify some crucial differences between how the two key literary genres of the times — chanson de geste and romance — represent the values crucial to the medieval knight. Chanson de geste praises communal values, and the tale’s hero, rather than an individual knight, is ablood-related family of which he is an integral member. His world is founded on values such as family solidarity and asense of responsibility for the family’s well-being. The romance, on the other hand, champions an individualistic hero, seen in isolation from his ancestral context. In the romance it is friendship, born of asense of shared social mission, that represents human relationships. Admittedly, friendship does play acertain role in the world of chanson de geste, and so do the ancestral ties in the romance. However, their role in either case is disproportionately smaller and, occasionally, both are represented unfavorably. Unlike chanson de geste and the romance, 13th century mystical roman in prose questions the value of both friendship and ancestral ties, unless they are founded on exemplary religiosity.
18
Tang, Qiaomei. "From Talented Poet to Jealous Wife: Reimagining Su Hui in Late Tang Literary Culture." NAN Nü 22, no. 1 (June 8, 2020): 1–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15685268-00221p01.
Full textAbstract:
Abstract Su Hui was a late fourth century Chinese woman who is famed for her creation of brocade palindromic poems. Due to an account of her life story, attributed to the female emperor Wu Zetian, that highlighted her jealous disposition, Su Hui is remembered today primarily as a talented but jealous wife, which is in contrast with how she was viewed in the period prior to the Wu version. Tracing the genealogy of Su Hui’s narrative in pre-Tang and Tang literary and visual materials, this article demonstrates that the definitive version of Su Hui’s story is misattributed to Wu Zetian and, more importantly, that the image of this well-known figure of early medieval China underwent a transformation that reflects important aspects of Late Tang literary culture. In ‘boudoir lament’ poetry of the Southern Dynasties period, Su Hui is the stock image of a melancholy wife longing for her absent husband. In ‘frontier’ poetry of the Tang dynasty, she is a worrying wife concerned with her military husband fighting on the borderlands. It is in a Late Tang prose account misattributed to Wu Zetian that we finally see her as a jealous woman competing for her husband’s affections. The transformation of Su Hui’s image across three major literary genres over a period of half a millennium offers readers a window into the literary and cultural changes that took place in medieval China.
19
Kuresevic, Marina. "The language of the Story of the Sage Ahiqar from Serbian Manuscript No. 53 of the National Library of Serbia." Juznoslovenski filolog 72, no. 1-2 (2016): 105–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.2298/jfi1602105k.
Full textAbstract:
In terms of homogeneous diglossia, the basic characteristic of the Serbian mediaeval language situation, the usage of two language systems, Serbian Church Slavonic and Old Serbian, were clearly functionally demarcated. However, in some genres they could get closer to each other, could influence each other and could even interfere with each other. In some texts of secular character (especially those written in different sociolinguistic contexts or in peripheral shtokavian dialectal zones) as a result of the mutual influence of two language systems a hybrid language, a mixture of Serbian Church Slavonic and Old Serbian (shtokavian) elements, could have arisen. Narrative texts of non-liturgical character represented a mixed zone, that is, the texts which could have been written in different types of language. So far it was confirmed that some texts of this genre could have been written in high-style Serbian Church Slavonic (e.g. the Barlaam and Joasaph Romance), the other in its lower functional style (e.g. the Serbian Alexander Romance), and the third in almost pure Old Serbian (e.g. the Troy Romance). This paper investigates the phonological, phonetic, morphological and syntactic features of the Story of the Sage Ahiqar in order to expand the knowledge about the possibilities of language realisations in Serbian medieval non-liturgical narrative prose. Analysis was conducted on the 16th-century transcript from Serbian Manuscript No. 53 of the National library of Serbia, which originated in the west shtokavian dialectal zone. The results have confirmed the presence of elements originating both from Serbian Church Slavonic and Old Serbian (shtokavian vernacular) at every language level without a possibility to say which of them prevail. The analysis has also shown that the dominant vernacular features include those of common shtokavian character which had developed until the 15th century, while those from the later period have not been noted. Regarding the stylistic aspect, the functional style in this text is similar to the other narrative texts where traditional language patterns overlap with patterns characteristic of spoken language or oral literature.
20
Erofeeva, Irina V. "“Good” or “Saint” Janibek Khan (1342–1357) in the Oral Historical Memory of the Nomads-Kazakhs." Golden Horde Review 9, no. 1 (March 29, 2021): 149–65. http://dx.doi.org/10.22378/2313-6197.2021-9-1.149-165.
Full textAbstract:
Research objectives: To identify the main reasons for the formation of the cult of Janibek Khan of the Golden Horde in the oral historical memory of the nomadic steppe tribes which was embodied in the narrative tradition of Kazakhs from the fifteenth to eighteenth century. Research materials: The texts of the Kazakh folklore sources from the last quarter of the eighteenth to the beginning of twentieth century, published in different genres (tales, epics, legends, fairy tales) and dedicated to Janibek Khan or characters of the oral narratives closely related to him. Results and novelty of the research: The historiography of the Golden Horde and the medieval history of Kazakhstan considers it conventional wisdom that Uzbek Khan (r. 1313–1342) played the decisive role in the Islamization of the tribal population of the Ulus of Jochi during the fourteenth century. However, none of the Kazakh folklore sources recorded from the last quarter of eighteenth to beginning of twentieth century mentions his name. Rather, this role is given to the son and successor of Uzbek, Janibek Khan, who is the most popular character of oral narratives of Kazakhs dedicated to the Eurasian Middle Ages. This fact leads to the conclusion that the innovative activities of Uzbek in the field of religion covered mainly the western part of the Ulus of Jochi but had a limited impact on the steppe nomads of the Eastern Dasht-i Kipchak. The main role in the spread of Islam and Islamic culture to the east of the Ural River valley, in the territory of the ethnic nomadic ancestors of the Kazakh tribes, was played by Janibek Khan, which was reflected in the popular historical consciousness of Kazakhs. This article demonstrates the influence of Sufism’s cult of the “saints” borrowed by Muslim communities of the steppe in the process of sacralization of the historical Janibek Khan in the Kazakh narrative tradition and highlights the most characteristic features of his mythologized image. The scholarly novelty consists in the statement of the abovementioned theme of research and the structural analysis of the revealed folklore texts, which allows one to solve the long-standing problem of the association of the folk literature Janibek Khan of the Golden Horde and the historical Kazakh Khan of the same name who ruled in the eastern part of the former Ulus of Jochi in the later period.
21
Dąbrowska, Małgorzata. "Images of Trebizond and the Pontos in Contemporary Literature in English with a Gothic Conclusion." Text Matters, no. 6 (November 23, 2016): 247–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/texmat-2016-0015.
Full textAbstract:
A Byzantinist specializing in the history of the Empire of Trebizond (1204–1461), the author presents four books of different genres written in English and devoted to the medieval state on the south coast of the Black Sea. The most spectacular of them is a novel by Rose Macaulay, Towers of Trebizond. Dąbrowska wonders whether it is adequate to the Trebizondian past or whether it is a projection of the writer. She compares Macaulay’s novel with William Butler Yeats’s poems on Byzantium which excited the imagination of readers but were not meant to draw their attention to the Byzantine past. This is, obviously, the privilege of literature. As a historian, Dąbrowska juxtaposes Macaulay’s narration with the historical novel by Nicolas J. Holmes, the travelogue written by Michael Pereira and the reports of the last British Consul in Trabzon, Vorley Harris. The author of the article draws the reader’s attention to the history of a rather unknown and exotic region. The Empire of Trebizond ceased to exist in 1461, conquered by Mehmed II. At the same time the Sultan’s army attacked Wallachia and got a bitter lesson from its ruler Vlad Dracula. But this Romanian hero is remembered not because of his prowess on the battlefield but due to his cruelty which dominated literary fiction and separated historical facts from narrative reality. The contemporary reader is impressed by the image of a dreadful vampire, Dracula. The same goes for Byzantium perceived through the magic stanzas by Yeats, who never visited Istanbul. Rose Macaulay went to Trabzon but her vision of Trebizond is very close to Yeats’s images of Byzantium. In her story imagination is stronger than historical reality and it is imagination that seduces the reader.
22
Weitbrecht, Julia. "Häusliche Heiligkeit." Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 137, no. 1 (March 1, 2015): 63–79. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/bgsl-2015-0003.
Full textAbstract:
Abstract This article investigates historical conceptualizations of sanctity in medieval saints’ legends. Sanctity, in its textual representations, emerges from the interaction of traditional legendary narratives, their textual transmission, and varying models of imitability. The legend of St Oswald illustrates the versatility of the saint as persona imitabilis: While historical accounts describe Oswald as a missionary king and martyr, the ›Munich Oswald‹ links the motif of conversion by marriage to the narrative model of the bridal quest. Simultaneously, the feudal aspects of the bridal quest are questioned by references to sanctification by renunciation. This aporetical constitution of sanctity is retold and harmonized in the Berlin manuscript mgq 478. Most of the included narratives have been edited so that they lead to a happy ending. The ›Berlin Oswald‹ thus provides another new model of imitability, the socially acceptable saint, which allows for a better understanding of late medieval conceptualizations of sanctity as well as saints’ legends as a narrative genre.
23
Vanderputten, Steven. "They Lived Under That Rule as Do Those Who Have Succeeded Them: Simultaneity and Conflict in the Foundation Narratives of a French Women’s Convent (10th–18th Centuries)." Downside Review 139, no. 1 (January 2021): 82–97. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0012580620963834.
Full textAbstract:
While foundation accounts of medieval religious institutions have been the focus of intense scholarly interest for decades, so far there has been comparatively little interest in how successive versions related to each other in the perception of medieval and early modern observers. This essay considers that question via a case study of three such narratives about the 930s creation of Bouxières Abbey, a convent of women religious in France’s eastern region of Lorraine. At the heart of its argument stands the hypothesis that these conflicting narratives of origins were allowed to coexist in the memory culture of this small convent because they related to different arguments in its identity narrative. As such, it hopes to contribute to an ill-understood aspect of foundation narratives as a literary genre and a memorial practice in religious communities, with particular attention to long-term developments.
24
Volkova, Tatiana F., and Daria A. Zabrodina. "Pechora scrolls: St. Augustine’s miracle of the revelation of the Elder." Slovo.ru: Baltic accent 12, no. 1 (February 2021): 71–85. http://dx.doi.org/10.5922/2225-5346-2021-1-5.
Full textAbstract:
The Ust-Tsilemsky region of the Komi Republic is known for its collection of medieval handwritten books and manuscripts. These collections found in the area of the Lower Pechora River contain a rich variety of Old Believers’ written documents of different genres. The authors explore one of these documents — St. Augustine’s Miracle of the Revelation of the Elder, which exists in two different Pechora documents. One of them is a hagiographic text created by the famous Ust-Tsilma scribe and editor of Old Russian texts Myandin, who lived in the second half of the 19th century. The Miracle is a part of the Book of St. Augustine and has survived in only a few copies. It is noteworthy that Myandin’s works have not been previously studied. Employing textual analysis, the authors came to the conclusion which of the two Myadlin’s texts is closer to the earliest surviving scroll of the Miracle (Science Library of Moscow State University, the collection of manuscripts of the Old Believers of Bessarabia and Belaya Krinitsa, No. 2194, fol. 109—115 ob). This is a text contained in the Tsvetnik, compiled by Myandin. The study showed that the other copy is a later work of the scribe on the storyline of The Miracle, which involved the shortening of the text, the introduction of new narrative details, naming the main character, and providing a more detailed description of his appearance. The authors argue that, at a later stage of mastering the plot of the Miracle, Myandin created his own version of the events described. He employed his own vocabulary saturating the plot with details, which were missing in the first version. He cleared the text of unnecessary motives that distract the reader from the main idea of the story: holiness does not depend on rank or status; it can also be granted to a humble, illiterate person who is capable of performing miracles.
25
Léglu, Catherine. "The Vida of Queen Fredegund in Tote listoire de France: Vernacular Translation and Genre in Thirteenth-Century French and Occitan Literature." Nottingham French Studies 56, no. 1 (March 2017): 98–112. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/nfs.2017.0170.
Full textAbstract:
This article examines a translation into a hybrid French-Occitan vernacular of an eighth-century historical narrative of adultery, treason and murder. It compares this to the narrative structures and content of the troubadour vidas and razos, which were created in the same period and regions as the translation. The aim is to uncover a possible dialogue between early medieval narrative historiography and the emergence of Old Occitan narrative in prose. In so doing, this enquiry intends to develop further the question of the importance of translation to medieval vernacular literature and historical writings
26
Jussen, Bernhard. "The King's Two Bodies Today." Representations 106, no. 1 (2009): 102–17. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/rep.2009.106.1.102.
Full textAbstract:
Ernst Kantorowicz's central image of the king's doubled body has been very influential, but his main concern, medieval constitutional history, has gone largely unnoticed. His long-term constitutional narrative has hardly been discussed, and his methodological endeavor——he once called it "constitutional semantics"——has not left much of an impression on medieval scholarship. Both——his narrative and his methodological endeavor——are far from being outdated.
27
Johns, Susan M. "Queenship and narratives of power in Welsh medieval sources." Women's History Review 30, no. 5 (July 29, 2021): 738–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09612025.2020.1827733.
Full text
28
Kory, Stephan N. "Presence in Variety: De-Trivializing Female Diviners in Medieval China." Nan Nü 18, no. 1 (November 1, 2016): 3–48. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15685268-00181p02.
Full textAbstract:
This article argues that the relative absence and trivialization of female diviners apparent in medieval Chinese texts does not accurately reflect the presence of these figures in medieval Chinese society. It further contends that this dearth in representation is the direct result of a more comprehensive and sustained annihilation or marginalization of women in third- through ninth-century Chinese texts. Narrative accounts and the institutional perspectives on divination informing them are critically analyzed and compared to help de-trivialize the roles that female diviners played in medieval China. Comparative theories of divination will be considered to help expand the scope of our inquiry beyond activities explicitly identified as such, and the geographical, social, and practical variety one finds in medieval depictions of female diviners will be used as evidence of a much wider and more pervasive social presence than one finds today in received medieval records.
29
Chapman Stacey, Robin. "Gender and the social imaginary in medieval Welsh law." Journal of the British Academy 8 (2020): 267–93. http://dx.doi.org/10.5871/jba/008.267.
Full textAbstract:
This talk explores the role played by gender in the social imaginaries implicit in medieval Welsh law. It takes as its starting point the lawbooks of medieval Wales, which have narrative qualities rendering them susceptible to analyses of several different kinds, from standard historical readings, to scrutiny as law, to more literary critical methods. Of particular interest in this lecture are the ways in which ideas about male and female inform lawbook depictions of space and time, sexuality in both animal and human bodies, and everyday practices such as farming.
30
Komendová, Jitka. "The Chronicle of the Monk of Sazava and the Kievan Chronicle: A Comparison of the Historigraphical Method." Slovene 6, no. 1 (2017): 256–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.31168/2305-6754.2017.6.1.9.
Full textAbstract:
The article defines the main characteristic features of the Chronicle of the Monk of Sazava,one of a number of Bohemian Latin historiographic works that belong to the group of so-called continuations of Cosmas’s chronicles (Continuationes Cosmae); the article compares the method of the Monk of Sazava with the method used in Old Russian historiography of the same period, namely in the Kievan Chronicle. It focuses on the role of the chronological line in the narrative structure of both texts, and reveals their tendency to break the chronological narrative frame. This tendency, however, is not consistent, and the chronological line is not replaced by another structural principle (as happens, for example, in the Galician-Volhynian Chronicle). Such an approach is defined as hybridization of annalistic structure. The tendency to break the year-by-year structure is related to the insertion of independent literary works into the chronologically organized historical narration, which is particularly evident in the way in which the Monk of Sazava incorporated the text entitled De exordio Zazavensis monasterii into the chronological narration of Cosmas. The typological similarity of the Chronicle of the Monk of Sazava and the Kievan Chronicle is also evident in their ability to incorporate the texts of a non-literary (legal) character. In both chronicles under consideration, the role of the author is more important than in annals, however, the importance of the author is still lower (particularly in the case of the Kievan Chronicle) than in such Latin medieval works by an individual author, as in the Chronicle of Bohemians by Cosmas of Prague. In this respect, the texts analysed here are defined as texts that exceeded the frame of the genre of annals, but did not become chronicles, since their authors could not overcome the diverse character of the sources they used; they were not able to provide the text with a unified narrative perspective and thus to act as an authority defining the method of narration and guaranteeing the credibility of judgment.
31
Blatherwick, Helen. "‘And the Light in his Eyes Grew Dark’: The Representation of Anger in an Egyptian Popular Epic." Cultural History 8, no. 2 (October 2019): 226–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/cult.2019.0201.
Full textAbstract:
Sīrat Sayf ibn Dhī Yazan is a late-medieval Egyptian popular epic that tells the story of the foundation of Egypt and conquest of the world by its hero, the Yemeni king Sayf. It is one of a group of narratives known as the siyar shaʿbiyya, Arabic popular epics or romances. As a genre, their core concerns are issues of identity, the collective anxieties of the social unit, and that unit's struggle to maintain its integrity. Sīrat Sayf explores these issues in large part through the thematic use of gender, according to which the male, patriarchal forces of order are in tension with the female forces of chaos in an unstable and perpetually shifting balance that must be kept in equilibrium. In this context, open displays of strong emotions by its main protagonists can take on a particularly threatening aspect in the text. This article investigates the representation of anger in Sīrat Sayf, focusing first on the extent to which it can be described as gendered, and the significance of this for an understanding of both how male and female anger are conceptualised in the text and their respective roles in its textual dynamics. It then explores the part played by anger in an episode in which King Sayf offers the choice of conversion to Islam or death to a defeated enemy. In this small but key extract, the normally formulaic ‘conversion narrative’ becomes a highly emotionally charged encounter, during which characters are driven by anger to break with narrative conventions and behave in unexpected ways. This ‘emotional manipulation’ of literary conventions, which is achieved partly through the manipulation of gendered emotional codes, is one of the ways in which the narrative is able to give voice to the tensions surrounding issues of self and other, and communal identity, but also has implications for our understanding of the social codes depicted in the text.
32
Vilimonovic, Larisa. "Deconstructing the narrative, constructing a meaning: Why was the Alexiad written?" Zbornik radova Vizantoloskog instituta, no. 52 (2015): 207–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.2298/zrvi1552207v.
Full textAbstract:
In the present article I offer a narratological approach to Byzantine historiography and an aim to elucidate the key elements of narrative theory that would be useful for investigating medieval Byzantine histories and their complex narrative structures. The focus is put on the key narratological aspects - genre, author, text and the audience - as those elements represent the core of literary criticism and contemporary studies of Byzantine literature. Through useful examples from the Alexiad, I intend to show how this theoretical vehicle functions and I hope to open a new field of scholarly communication on the matter of approach towards Byzantine historiography.
33
Demchuk, S. "LOOK BUT DO NOT TOUCH: PERFECT WOMEN'S EATING BEHAVIOUR IN THE NARRATIVES AND IMAGERY OF THE LATE MIDDLE AGES." Bulletin of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. History, no. 146 (2020): 13–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.17721/1728-2640.2020.146.2.
Full textAbstract:
Food in the medieval culture functioned not only as everyday essential, but also as a tool for symbolic communication and marker of social or gender identity. From the 13th century onwards, one can grasp an exponential growth in number of various manuals, which informed their reader how one should eat healthy and courteously. These books of manners were written in prose and rhymes, in Latin and vernacular languages and were widely spread amongst medieval elite. Texts were supplemented with symbolic and allegorical illuminations with the scenes with biblical or royal banquets, which should be treated as important sources on their own. Thus, this paper aims at revealing the place that late medieval culture reserved for women in the domain of food and its consumption. Based on the rich narrative and visual evidence, I shall highlight the main elements of the medieval food culture; reveal what was considered as women's socially acceptable behaviour during the banquets and how the social norms impacted the visual culture of banqueting. Late medieval education for women envisaged a quite particular eating behaviour. A woman had to control the needs of her body much more strictly than a man had to, to keep the fast, to pray and to go to the masses at expense of taking food. Once married she had to deprive herself of delicacies, which could be only consumed with her husband. She could not renounce taking food with her husband, what should be considered as a privilege and not as a duty. Visual culture only supported the ideal shaped in the narratives. A woman involved in drinking wine at the table became an allegory of intemperance. This image was contrasted with the image of a noble woman that was excluded from the communicative space of a banquet, who kept her eyes down and her arms on her knees. A woman so temperate that she ignores the food and drinks set for her on the table. Therefore, eating behaviour became another manifestation for women's chastity and humbleness, which were considered essential virtues in late medieval courtly literature.
34
Iker, Annemarie. "Photographs of the “Dust of the Highway”: Georgiana Goddard King’s Way of Saint James." Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture 5 (November 30, 2016): 27–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.5195/contemp.2016.149.
Full textAbstract:
This article explores the use of photography in American art historian Georgiana Goddard King’s Way of Saint James (1920), a genre-defying book on the Camino de Santiago that intertwines art history with anthropology, literature, history, geography, and narrative. Despite King's groundbreaking scholarship on medieval Spain her legacy has been overshadowed by subsequent art historians, chief among them Arthur Kingsley Porter. Here, it is suggested that King’s emphasis on personal experiences of the pilgrimage—both historical and contemporary—diminished the value of her work, especially when compared with Porter’s supposedly ‘objective,’ ‘scientific’ studies. These methodological differences, visually manifest in King and Porter’s respective approaches to photographic evidence, have implications for medieval, historiographic, and feminist art historical inquiries.
35
Yeager, Suzanne M. "Medieval Pilgrimage as Heterotopia." Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 50, no. 2 (May 1, 2020): 233–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/10829636-8219542.
Full textAbstract:
Saewulf’s Relatio de situ Jerusalem is one of the most significant yet understudied pilgrim texts of the twelfth century. Documenting the Jerusalem-bound traveler’s adventures through the medieval Mediterranean, the text is the first extant pilgrim document written immediately after Latin Christian armies seized control of the holy city. This article examines the text’s remarkable interest in autobiography and explores the resonance which crusading, early crusading narrative, Islamic presence, and Mediterranean voyaging had upon the pilgrim genre. This new analysis of Saewulf’s pre-modern self-fashioning is crucial to ways in which literary historians assess pilgrim literature through the valuable anthropological theories advanced by Edith and Victor Turner. As argued here, the status of a militarized Mediterranean in the twelfth century led to a shift in how pilgrims wrote about themselves. Saewulf positioned himself as a pilgrim who is transformed by his vivid exploits, not at the locality of the shrine, but while en route to Jerusalem. This study is an intervention in pilgrim and travel theory, proposing 1104 as a watershed moment in medieval travelers’ self-perception and autobiographical portrayal.
36
Collingwood, Sharon. "Sagesse and Misogyny in the fabliau La dame escoillee." Florilegium 18, no. 1 (January 2001): 51–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/flor.18.005.
Full textAbstract:
The fabliau La dame escoillee is often cited as a disturbing example of the medieval attitude toward women. Although violence is often presented as comic in the genre as a whole, the physical abuse suffered by women in this poem is so brutal that most scholars find it offensive, and feminist scholars in particular find it distressing that it was a relatively popular tale, preserved in six manuscripts.' Norris Lacy has, somewhat apologetically, praised this fabliau for its narrative complexity and skilled construction, and has called for a reading of the poem that takes into account factors other than the narrator's misogyny. He adds that this fabliau is addressed to an all-male audience, which may explain its strongly negative portrait of women as grasping and controlling, a portrait that conforms to the medieval stereotype. Male characters, Lacy reminds us, are often held up to derisive laughter for their individual faults, not for traits that merely confirm their gender. Lacy also notes that although the six versions of this fabliau are similar in content, there is a marked difference in narrative tone. Nottingham MS 19152, used as the basis for both Willem Noomen's critical edition and the previous Montaiglon-Raynaud edition, contains a long prologue, essentially a diatribe against women, while authorial intrusions throughout this version continue in this misogynist tone; the other versions of the fabliau pay much less attention to the female characters. Lacy refuses to tackle the complex question of whether MS 19152, the longest and most complete of the six manuscripts, preserves the original version, but he does favour the idea that the prologue may be a later addition (p. 110).
37
Saltzstein, Jennifer. "Rape and Repentance in Two Medieval Motets." Journal of the American Musicological Society 70, no. 3 (2017): 583–616. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/jams.2017.70.3.583.
Full textAbstract:
Two thirteenth-century vernacular motets copied side by side in the Montpellier Codex tell a story of sin and repentance. In one a shepherd rapes a maiden, while in the other a penitent begs the Virgin Mary to forgive a great sin. The music of these two motets is nearly identical: one is a contrafactum of the other, and represents a conscious narrative continuation of the first. This article offers a close reading of this unusual pair of motets, interpreting their texts and polyphonic musical settings in the context of other motets, the pastourelle song genre, their liturgical tenor, the technique of contrafacture, the chanson pieuse, and the intertextual refrain repertory. The two motets constitute a medieval exploration of the boundary between seduction and rape, and the spiritual consequences of its transgression. Having placed the story told by the motets in the context of medieval attitudes toward rape in both legal and pedagogical spheres, I close by reflecting on the ethics of listening to artistic representations of violence for both medieval and modern audiences.
38
Eyþórsdóttir, Ingibjörg. "„Reif hann hennar stakkinn, reif hann hennar serk“." Ritið 18, no. 3 (December 20, 2018): 45–65. http://dx.doi.org/10.33112/ritid.18.3.3.
Full textAbstract:
In the Icelandic traditional ballads from medieval and post-medieval times, wo-men and their voices are very prominent, while stories of male heroes were rather portrayed in rímur. The language is very unusual and shows signs of translation, formulas are frequently used, and the mode of narration is objective and clear. Love is a common subject, and so is violence, often gender-based and sexual. In the article the background of these ballads is discussed shortly and their emergence in Icelandic oral culture and later its literature, as they were recorded by educated men, from nameless sources, most probably women. Seven ballads are then used to show different aspects of violence within the genre. All are highly dramatic, and their subject is harsh: hardship, rape, birth and loss of children, and sometimes the victims take things into their own hands and avenge in a graphic way. How ballads that tell such terrible tales, can have been sung and danced to at joyous gatherings, is an interesting food for thought. It will be reasoned that these ballads have primarily been sung by women, and they can even have been a consolation and a tool to deal with gender-based violence in their own lives.
39
Bailey, Anne E. "The Female Condition: Gender and Deformity in High‐Medieval Miracle Narratives." Gender & History 33, no. 2 (February 19, 2021): 427–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1468-0424.12519.
Full text
40
Englard, Yaffa. "The Expulsion of Hagar." Religion and the Arts 22, no. 3 (June 17, 2018): 261–93. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15685292-02203001.
Full textAbstract:
Abstract Although many other scenes from the book of Genesis have been represented visually over the centuries, Hagar’s expulsion has been largely overlooked. This article examines the history of those works devoted to the subject, focusing in particular on the planes on which Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar are placed, the effects of narrative and story-telling upon visual art, the influence of theological stances and their developments upon the understanding of the episode, its reflection of early and medieval Jewish-Christian relations, and feminist/gender biblical interpretation.
41
Neel, Carol. "Man‘s Restoration: Robert of Auxerre and the Writing of History in the Early Thirteenth Century." Traditio 44 (1988): 253–74. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0362152900007078.
Full textAbstract:
The historical work of the Premonstratensian canon Robert of Auxerre († 1211) was one of the most influential of medieval chronicles. Vincent of Beauvais († 1264) borrowed heavily from it inSpeculum historiale, the final section of his great encyclopedia. The content of the Auxerre chronicle, extant in its independent version in relatively few manuscripts, thus contributed to an essential element in the textual foundation of later medieval education. The shape of Robert's narrative, however, differed from that of Vincent's treatment of history. The canon of Auxerre wrote in an old genre and for a traditional end. His was the kind of monastic chronicle that had for centuries affirmed for Benedictine and reform congregations their connection to venerable tradition, and traced for them the workings of providence in time. Vincent's work, on the other hand, set the record of human experience alongside compendia about the divine and natural worlds. It thus represented the historiographical fulfillment of the thirteenth century's ambition to systematize knowledge.
42
Gardiner, Eileen. "Visions of Heaven and Hell: A Monastic Literature." Downside Review 139, no. 1 (January 2021): 24–43. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0012580621997061.
Full textAbstract:
Medieval otherworld visions comprise a monastic genre: monks almost universally recur as either visionaries, vision scribes or both. With this in mind, the intention of this article is to interrogate the authorial and narrative intent of these monastic visions to determine whether the audience originally addressed and the concerns expressed could be located exclusively within the monastic enclosure. After examining 36 monastic visions dating from the late 6th to the early 13th century, ranging geographically from Ireland to Italy, it emerges that while many visions specifically addressed monks, nuns, abbots and abbesses about their actions in this life and destinies in the next, many also focused on life outside the monastery.
43
Oberlin, Adam. "Brittany Erin Schorn, Speaker and Authority in Old Norse Wisdom Poetry. Trends in Medieval Philology, 34. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2017, viii, 198 pp." Mediaevistik 31, no. 1 (January 1, 2018): 387–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.3726/med012018_387.
Full textAbstract:
This slim volume, 155 pages apart from the introduction and back matter, is the revised version of a recent dissertation on the dialogic and discursive exchange of wisdom in the Gnomic genre of Old Norse-Icelandic Eddic poetry. As the author notes in the introduction (Ch. 1), this genre is well attended in the scholarly literature and many studies have addressed similar or adjacent topics. Five chapters after the introduction describe and investigate narrative and discursive aspects of wisdom poetry informed by a pre-Christian past but located firmly within a post-conversion manuscript context.
44
Manuwald, Henrike. "Fictionality and Pleasure. Traces of a Practice of Fictionality in Medieval German Short Verse Narratives?" Journal of Literary Theory 14, no. 2 (September 25, 2020): 215–40. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2020-2005.
Full textAbstract:
AbstractDespite an intense debate over the past decades the question of whether the concept of fictionality can be regarded as universal or whether it needs to be historicised is still unresolved. The same question applies to the practice (or practices?) of fictionality, which come into focus once an institutional theory of fictionality is applied. In addition to the problem that literary practices can only be reconstructed incompletely for past epochs, it is methodically difficult to determine which practices should be identified, given that the practice of fictionality might have changed over time. One possible solution is to search for historical literary practices displaying similarities to what is regarded as the contemporary practice of fictionality. This article adduces a subtype of medieval German short verse narratives (Mären) as a test case for the scope of this approach and arrives at a twofold result:The controlled anachronism implicit in the approach makes it possible to show that literary practices sketched in some Mären display parallels to the contemporary practice of fictionality (in the sense that the truth value of single predications becomes indifferent). This result contributes to our understanding of the history of the practice of fictionality, while placing the parallels in their historical contexts demonstrates that the category of ›fictionality‹ cannot capture the essence of the literary practices relevant to Mären.This approach has the advantage of making it possible to describe in a phenomenon-orientated way literary practices only potentially linked to a practice of fictionality before narrowing down the view to pre-defined features of a practice of fictionality. For the textual examples analysed it can thus be shown that the emotional effect of literature, especially the potential to arouse pleasure, is a feature regarded as decisive for the reception of a literary text. This observation opens up further links to research on the fictionality of post-medieval texts, especially the ›paradox of fiction‹.The argument builds on the assumption that we can speak of a practice of fictionality if the truth value of the sentences of a text becomes indifferent for its production and reception. Although this is a definition with universal scope, it is timebound in so far as it highlights that truth concepts depend on a propositional level of a text, while for a medieval audience the ›true meaning‹ of a text would probably have been more important. In the article this problem is illustrated by the genre of exemplary narratives. Of these the subtype of Mären is singled out in order to study literary practices. This selection is also motivated by the fact that in medieval studies Mären have received less attention in debates on fictionality than e. g. Arthurian romances or chronicles.The textual analysis focuses on prologues and other self-reflexive passages from selected late medieval Mären, where literary practices are being alluded to in an explicit way. Notwithstanding that these passages do not allow the reconstruction of actual practices, they convey an impression of what was regarded as plausible practices. Truth claims or references to sources in the selected Mären confirm that the expectation of truthfulness (whether on the literal or a deeper level) was a kind of default mode for the production and reception of narratives. However, various strategies to undermine this default mode can be observed: in some cases the truth claims are ironically questioned within the texts themselves, in other cases the aesthetic quality and/or the emotional effect of the narratives is foregrounded so that the question of authenticity becomes irrelevant. This strategy suggests a mode of reception that parallels the contemporary practice of fiction as outlined above.Since the capacity of the Mären to arouse pleasure is highlighted in the sources, the pre-modern debate of delectatio and utilitas is established here as the historical context for the self-reflexive passages of the analysed Mären. These categories were discussed in the medieval period in relation to the aspect of ›truthfulness‹, at least in normative theological discourse, and can thus be linked to questions of fictionality. This makes it possible to define a place for a practice of fictionality within a medieval Christian framework, the possibility of which had been doubted in research on medieval concepts of fictionality.On a systematic level, the foregrounding of the emotional effects of literature in some Mären opens up the opportunity to draw parallels to institutional theories of fictionality stressing the need of imaginative engagement with the text on the part of the recipient. The examples suggest that questions such as the ›paradox of fiction‹ should receive attention within a diachronic framework, too, in order to obtain a fuller picture of the history of the practice of fiction.
45
Hanne, Eric. "Women, Power, and the Eleventh and Twelfth Century Abbasid Court." Hawwa 3, no. 1 (2005): 80–110. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1569208053628519.
Full textAbstract:
AbstractThis paper focuses on the actions of a select number of elite women attached to the Abbasid court of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, addressing the differences not only in the actions of Abbasid and Saljùq women, but in the overall coverage by the medieval historians. Elite women of both households played key roles in the events surrounding the Abbasid bid to reenter the political arena as well as the ensuing chaos that followed. The question at the center of this work is how elite women were able to take advantage of the porous nature of the political arena. In the end, this study shows that whereas Saljùq women were successful in this endeavor, their Abbasid counterparts were all but written out of the narrative. An analysis of marriage alliances, attempts to maintain one's status, and succession crises support this contention, and reinforce the argument that we must readdress our notions of power, and strive to incorporate the lives of more women into the larger political narrative for this period.
46
CAROCCI, SANDRO. "Social mobility and the Middle Ages." Continuity and Change 26, no. 3 (December 2011): 367–404. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0268416011000257.
Full textAbstract:
ABSTRACTNotwithstanding its relevance, social mobility has not been at the forefront of the agenda for historians of the Middle Ages. The first part of this paper deals with the reasons for this lack of interest, highlighting the role of historical models such as the French ‘feudal revolution’, the neo-Malthusian interpretations, the English commercialisation model and the great narrative of Italian medieval merchants. The second part assesses the extent to which this lack of interest has been challenged by conceptions of social space and social mobility developed in recent decades by sociologists and anthropologists. Therefore, it is really important to indicate the gaps in our understanding, and to clarify research questions, technical problems and methods. The paper examines the constitutive elements of social identities, the plurality of social ladders, and the channels of social mobility. It touches upon the performative role of learned representations, and upon the constraints imposed upon human agency by family practices and genre. It underlines the importance of studying the mobility inside social groups, and argues that we must distinguish between two different types of medieval social mobility: autogenous social mobility, and endogenous or conflictual social mobility.
47
Smith, Julia M. H. "Material Christianity in the Early Medieval Household." Studies in Church History 50 (2014): 23–46. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0424208400001625.
Full textAbstract:
Tu autem cum oraveris, intra in cubiculum tuum, et clauso ostio, ora Patrem tuum in abscondito: et Pater tuus, qui videt in abscondito, reddet tibi. (‘But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door. Pray to your Father in private, and your Father, who sees into concealed places, will reward you’: Matt. 6: 6)Manuscript D.V.3 in the Biblioteca Nazionale of Turin is a fat, late eighth-century volume of martyr narratives. Produced at Soissons, probably in the nunnery of Notre-Dame, it may be no coincidence that eighteen of its forty texts concern female martyrs. A further four address familial groups in which wives or mothers play prominent roles. The earliest Latin version of the passion of St Adrian (BHL3744) is among them: one of many late, ‘novel-esque’ accounts of martyrdom, it is constructed out of clichéd formulae and predictable tropes for post-persecution audiences, like others of its genre. Lacking any historical verisimilitude about the age of persecutions, the passion of Adrian is characteristic of this group of hagiographies in offering valuable insights into domestic Christianity in the age in which it was composed: it brings into sharp focus links between women and material Christianity within the late antique household, the theme this essay pursues into the Carolingian period.
48
Конурбаев, Марклен, Marklen Konurbaev, Салават Конурбаев, and Salavat Konurbaev. "An Essay on the History and Hermeneutics of Naslhat al-Muluk by Ghazali, Abu HamidMuhammad Ibn Muhammad Al-Tusi: semic analysis." Servis Plus 8, no. 4 (December 3, 2014): 21–29. http://dx.doi.org/10.12737/6463.
Full textAbstract:
The series of articles entitled «An Essay on the History and Hermeneutics ofphilosophy ofFalsafa» is dedicated to the studies of Abu Hamid Muhammad Ibn Muhammad Al- TusT´s work «NasihatAl-Muluk». The Persian philosopher of lth century Al-Ghazali went down in history as one of the brightest representatives of medieval Muslim apologetics. The study of his works allows turning to different aspects of life of the medieval Muslim East. One of´his mostfamousworks, «NasihatAl-Muluk», which is part of his fundamental theological study «The Elixir of Bliss», belongs to the genre of medieval Arabic-Muslim literature — so-called «Mirrors for princes» which are simplified retellings of fundamental philosophical views on state and politics of a certain thinker in plain language. These retellings help to comprehend in practice the essence of government by series of allegories and narratives. The conducted hermeneutical analysis of«Nasihat Al-Muluk» reveals the unique approach of a brilliant Persian philosopher to determination of complicated ethical questions that underlie the art of governing. The methodological approach of the French philosopher and literary critic Roland Barthes was taken as the analysis basis. The first and the second part of the essay contain the history of formation and evolution ofphilosophy ofFalsafa and the exposition of the fundamentals of the hermeneutical teaching of Roland Barthes which underlies the instrumental basis of the analysis.
49
Harvey, Carol J. "Recovering the Author in Philippe de Remy's Manekine." Florilegium 17, no. 1 (January 2000): 115–25. http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/flor.17.007.
Full textAbstract:
If, as Roberta Krueger has suggested, "most medieval romances are sophisticated and self-reflective literary creations which invite the educated reader to observe their paradoxes and ambiguities" (Krueger 406), then La Manekine may provide particular insights into the relationship between gender and creativity. This thirteenth-century narrative by Philippe dc Remy is a rare example of a male-authored romance with a female protagonist. It is, in fact, the first recorded vernacular inscription of the archetypal folktale known as "the girl without hands," an initiation story recounting a young girl's tribulations from adolescence, in which she is an apparently powerless victim threatened with an incestuous (or other unacceptable) relationship, through to marriage, motherhood, and an acknowledged place in society.
50
Penn, Michael Philip. "A Temporarily Resurrected Dog and Other Wonders: Thomas of Margā and Early Christian/Muslim Encounters." Medieval Encounters 16, no. 2-4 (2010): 209–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/157006710x497742.
Full textAbstract:
AbstractIn the mid-ninth century, the east Syrian bishop Thomas of Margā composed a lenghy monatic history now known as The Book Of Governors. Amidst Thomas’s numerous anecdotes concerning the exploits of Christian holy men, appear over a dozen stories involving Muslim characters. A critical examination of these tales focusing on issues of word choice, characterization, and narrative assumptions provides important data for the development of Christian depictions of Muslims, as well as for the early history of Christian/Muslim relations. Despite their value, modern scholarship has almost completely neglected Syriac monastic histories such as The Book Of Governors. A recognition of how useful these texts can be for medieval history forces us to rethink modern genre distinctions and argues against a sharp delineation between the often used categories of history and hagiography.