Making The Medieval Relevant

Author : Chris Jones,Conor Kostick,Klaus Oschema
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 303 pages
File Size : 53,5 Mb
Release : 2019-12-02
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9783110546316

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Making the Medieval Relevant by Chris Jones,Conor Kostick,Klaus Oschema Pdf

When scholars discuss the medieval past, the temptation is to become immersed there, to deepen our appreciation of the nuances of the medieval sources through debate about their meaning. But the past informs the present in a myriad of ways and medievalists can, and should, use their research to address the concerns and interests of contemporary society. This volume presents a number of carefully commissioned essays that demonstrate the fertility and originality of recent work in Medieval Studies. Above all, they have been selected for relevance. Most contributors are in the earlier stages of their careers and their approaches clearly reflect how interdisciplinary methodologies applied to Medieval Studies have potential repercussions and value far beyond the boundaries of the Middles Ages. These chapters are powerful demonstrations of the value of medieval research to our own times, both in terms of providing answers to some of the specific questions facing humanity today and in terms of much broader considerations. Taken together, the research presented here also provides readers with confidence in the fact that Medieval Studies cannot be neglected without a great loss to the understanding of what it means to be human.

Author : Chris Jones,Conor Kostick,Klaus Oschema
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 41,5 Mb
Release : 2019
Category : Electronic
ISBN : OCLC:1236114215

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Making the Medieval Relevant by Chris Jones,Conor Kostick,Klaus Oschema Pdf

Author : Kathryn M. Rudy
Publisher : Open Book Publishers
Page : 412 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2016-09-26
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781783742363

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Piety in Pieces by Kathryn M. Rudy Pdf

Medieval manuscripts resisted obsolescence. Made by highly specialised craftspeople (scribes, illuminators, book binders) with labour-intensive processes using exclusive and sometimes exotic materials (parchment made from dozens or hundreds of skins, inks and paints made from prized minerals, animals and plants), books were expensive and built to last. They usually outlived their owners. Rather than discard them when they were superseded, book owners found ways to update, amend and upcycle books or book parts. These activities accelerated in the fifteenth century. Most manuscripts made before 1390 were bespoke and made for a particular client, but those made after 1390 (especially books of hours) were increasingly made for an open market, in which the producer was not in direct contact with the buyer. Increased efficiency led to more generic products, which owners were motivated to personalise. It also led to more blank parchment in the book, for example, the backs of inserted miniatures and the blanks ends of textual components. Book buyers of the late fourteenth and throughout the fifteenth century still held onto the old connotations of manuscripts—that they were custom-made luxury items—even when the production had become impersonal. Owners consequently purchased books made for an open market and then personalised them, filling in the blank spaces, and even adding more components later. This would give them an affordable product, but one that still smacked of luxury and met their individual needs. They kept older books in circulation by amending them, attached items to generic books to make them more relevant and valuable, and added new prayers with escalating indulgences as the culture of salvation shifted. Rudy considers ways in which book owners adjusted the contents of their books from the simplest (add a marginal note, sew in a curtain) to the most complex (take the book apart, embellish the components with painted decoration, add more quires of parchment). By making sometimes extreme adjustments, book owners kept their books fashionable and emotionally relevant. This study explores the intersection of codicology and human desire. Rudy shows how increased modularisation of book making led to more standardisation but also to more opportunities for personalisation. She asks: What properties did parchment manuscripts have that printed books lacked? What are the interrelationships among technology, efficiency, skill loss and standardisation?

Author : G. A. Loud,Martial Staub
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
Page : 258 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2017
Category : History
ISBN : 9781903153703

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The Making of Medieval History by G. A. Loud,Martial Staub Pdf

Essays on the discipline of medieval history and its practictioners, from the late eighteenth century onwards

Author : John H. Arnold
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 147 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2020-10-28
Category : History
ISBN : 9781509532582

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What is Medieval History? by John H. Arnold Pdf

Since its first publication in 2007, John H. Arnold’s What is Medieval History? has established itself as the leading introduction to the craft of the medieval historian. What is it that medieval historians do? How – and why – do they do it? Arnold discusses the creation of medieval history as a field, the nature of its sources, the intellectual tools used by medievalists, and some key areas of thematic importance from the fall of the Roman Empire to the Reformation. The fascinating case studies include a magical plot against a medieval pope, a fourteenth-century insurrection, and the importance of a kiss exchanged between two tenth-century noblemen. Throughout the book, readers are shown not only what medieval history is, but the cultural and political contexts in which it has been written. This anticipated second edition includes further exploration of the interdisciplinary techniques that can aid medieval historians, such as dialogue with scientists and archaeologists, and addresses some of the challenges – both medieval and modern – of the idea of a ‘global middle ages’. What is Medieval History? continues to demonstrate why the pursuit of medieval history is important not only to the present, but to the future. It is an invaluable guide for students, teachers, researchers and interested general readers.

Author : M. Bull
Publisher : Springer
Page : 158 pages
File Size : 43,5 Mb
Release : 2005-09-27
Category : History
ISBN : 9780230501577

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Thinking Medieval by M. Bull Pdf

This book is aimed at students coming to the study of western European medieval history for the first time, and also graduate students on interdisciplinary medieval studies programmes. It examines the place of the Middle Ages in modern popular culture, exploring the roots of the stereotypes that appear in films, on television and in the press, and asking why they remain so persistent. The book also asks whether 'medieval' is indeed a useful category in terms of historical periodization. It investigates some of the particular challenges posed by medieval sources and the ways in which they have survived. And it concludes with an exploration of the relevance of medieval history in today's world.

Author : John S. Lee
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
Page : 395 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2018
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
ISBN : 9781783273171

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The Medieval Clothier by John S. Lee Pdf

A clear and accessibly written guide to the medieval cloth-making trade in England.

Author : Teresa Pac
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 347 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 2022-02-10
Category : History
ISBN : 9781793626929

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Common Culture and the Ideology of Difference in Medieval and Contemporary Poland by Teresa Pac Pdf

This study examines shared culture in medieval and contemporary Poland. The author argues that shared culture produced by ethnically, religiously, and linguistically diverse societies—rather than elitist values or institutional, ethnic, and religious differences—was foundational to societal survival in medieval Polish cities.

Author : K. Patrick Fazioli
Publisher : Berghahn Books
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 44,8 Mb
Release : 2017-05-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9781785335457

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The Mirror of the Medieval by K. Patrick Fazioli Pdf

Since its invention by Renaissance humanists, the myth of the “Middle Ages” has held a uniquely important place in the Western historical imagination. Whether envisioned as an era of lost simplicity or a barbaric nightmare, the medieval past has always served as a mirror for modernity. This book gives an eye-opening account of the ways various political and intellectual projects—from nationalism to the discipline of anthropology—have appropriated the Middle Ages for their own ends. Deploying an interdisciplinary toolkit, author K. Patrick Fazioli grounds his analysis in contemporary struggles over power and identity in the Eastern Alps, while also considering the broader implications for scholarly research and public memory.

Author : Andrew P. Roach,James R. Simpson
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 504 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2016-04-22
Category : History
ISBN : 9781317122500

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Heresy and the Making of European Culture by Andrew P. Roach,James R. Simpson Pdf

Scholars and analysts seeking to illuminate the extraordinary creativity and innovation evident in European medieval cultures and their afterlives have thus far neglected the important role of religious heresy. The papers collected here - reflecting the disciplines of history, literature, theology, philosophy, economics and law - examine the intellectual and social investments characteristic of both deliberate religious dissent such as the Cathars of Languedoc, the Balkan Bogomils, the Hussites of Bohemia and those who knowingly or unknowingly bent or broke the rules, creating their own 'unofficial orthodoxies'. Attempts to understand, police and eradicate all these, through methods such as the Inquisition, required no less ingenuity. The ambivalent dynamic evident in the tensions between coercion and dissent is still recognisable and productive in the world today.

Author : Jack Tannous
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 664 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2018-12-04
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780691179094

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The Making of the Medieval Middle East by Jack Tannous Pdf

A bold new religious history of the late antique and medieval Middle East that places ordinary Christians at the center of the story In the second half of the first millennium CE, the Christian Middle East fractured irreparably into competing churches and Arabs conquered the region, setting in motion a process that would lead to its eventual conversion to Islam. Jack Tannous argues that key to understanding these dramatic religious transformations are ordinary religious believers, often called “the simple” in late antique and medieval sources. Largely agrarian and illiterate, these Christians outnumbered Muslims well into the era of the Crusades, and yet they have typically been invisible in our understanding of the Middle East’s history. What did it mean for Christian communities to break apart over theological disagreements that most people could not understand? How does our view of the rise of Islam change if we take seriously the fact that Muslims remained a demographic minority for much of the Middle Ages? In addressing these and other questions, Tannous provides a sweeping reinterpretation of the religious history of the medieval Middle East. This provocative book draws on a wealth of Greek, Syriac, and Arabic sources to recast these conquered lands as largely Christian ones whose growing Muslim populations are properly understood as converting away from and in competition with the non-Muslim communities around them.

Author : Jaume Aurell
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 329 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 2012-03-21
Category : History
ISBN : 9780226032344

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Authoring the Past by Jaume Aurell Pdf

Authoring the Past surveys medieval Catalan historiography, shedding light on the emergence and evolution of historical writing and autobiography in the Middle Ages, on questions of authority and authorship, and on the links between history and politics during the period. Jaume Aurell examines texts from the late twelfth to the late fourteenth century—including the Latin Gesta comitum Barcinonensium and four texts in medieval Catalan: James I’s Llibre dels fets, the Crònica of Bernat Desclot, the Crònica of Ramon Muntaner, and the Crònica of Peter the Ceremonious—and outlines the different motivations for the writing of each. For Aurell, these chronicles are not mere archaeological artifacts but rather documents that speak to their writers’ specific contemporary social and political purposes. He argues that these Catalonian counts and Aragonese kings were attempting to use their role as authors to legitimize their monarchical status, their growing political and economic power, and their aggressive expansionist policies in the Mediterranean. By analyzing these texts alongside one another, Aurell demonstrates the shifting contexts in which chronicles were conceived, written, and read throughout the Middle Ages. The first study of its kind to make medieval Catalonian writings available to English-speaking audiences, Authoring the Past will be of interest to scholars of history and comparative literature, students of Hispanic and Romance medieval studies, and medievalists who study the chronicle tradition in other languages.

Author : Amy S. Kaufman,Paul B. Sturtevant
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
Page : 207 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2020
Category : History
ISBN : 9781487587840

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The Devil's Historians by Amy S. Kaufman,Paul B. Sturtevant Pdf

The Devil's Historians offers a passionate corrective to common - and very dangerous - myths about the medieval world.

Author : Juliana Dresvina,Victoria Blud
Publisher : University of Wales Press
Page : 269 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2020-11-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9781786836755

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Cognitive Sciences and Medieval Studies by Juliana Dresvina,Victoria Blud Pdf

With the rapid development of the cognitive sciences and their importance to how we contemplate questions about the mind and society, recent research in the humanities has been characterised by a ‘cognitive turn’. For their part, the humanities play an important role in forming popular ideas of the human mind and in analysing the way cognitive, psychological and emotional phenomena are experienced in time and space. This collection aims to inspire medievalists and other scholars within the humanities to engage with the tools and investigative methodologies deriving from cognitive sciences. Contributors explore topics including medieval and modern philosophy of mind, the psychology of religion, the history of psychological medicine and the re-emergence of the body in cognition. What is the value of mapping how neurons fire when engaging with literature and art? How can we understand psychological stress as a historically specific phenomenon? What can medieval mystics teach us about contemplation and cognition?

Author : Joel T. Rosenthal
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 330 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2014-06-03
Category : History
ISBN : 9781317796305

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Understanding Medieval Primary Sources by Joel T. Rosenthal Pdf

Medieval society created many kinds of records and written material which differ considerably, giving us such sources as last wills, sermons, manorial accounts, or royal biographies. Primary sources are an exciting way for students to engage with the past and draw their own ideas about life in the medieval period. Understanding Medieval Primary Sources is a collection of essays that will introduce students to the key primary sources that are essential to studying medieval Europe. The sources are divided into two categories: the first part treats some of the many generic sources that have been preserved, such as wills, letters, royal and secular narratives and sermons. Chapter by chapter each expert author illustrates how they can be used to reveal details about medieval history. The second part focuses on areas of historical research that can only be fully discovered by using a combination of primary sources, covering fields such as maritime history, urban history, women’s history and medical history. Understanding Medieval Primary Sources will be an invaluable resource for any student embarking on medieval historical research.