The Medieval Underworld

Author : Andrew McCall
Publisher : Marboro Books
Page : 324 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 1991
Category : History
ISBN : 088029714X

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The Medieval Underworld by Andrew McCall Pdf

In medieval times there existed an insistence on conformity which bordered on the obsessive. This account explores those times from the viewpoint of the men and women who were seen to be on the margins of society - who either would not, or could not, conform to the conventions of their era. The activities of outlaws, brigands, homosexuals, heretics, witches, Jews, prostitutes, thieves, vagabonds and other 'transgressors' are detailed here, as are the punishments - often barbarously savage - which were meted out to them by State and Church. Full of fascinating and unusual characters and facts which greatly enhance our view of the Middle Ages, The Medieval Underworld will enthral anyone interested in medieval social history or the history of crime and punishment.

Author : John C. Stephens
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 183 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2019-02-14
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781476634975

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Journeys to the Underworld and Heavenly Realm in Ancient and Medieval Literature by John C. Stephens Pdf

 Concepts of heaven and hell are among the oldest, most widespread religious beliefs in history. In Western literature, they are frequently embedded in stories of underworld explorations and celestial journeys—stories examining the nature of the universe, life on earth and the existence of the gods. The author analyzes tales of wonder in both ancient and medieval European literature. Other-worldly narratives appeared in literary contexts in the ancient world, including mythology, poetry and philosophical writings. In medieval times, they remained a popular form of literary expression. These stories are primarily religious in nature, describing fantastic worlds filled with miracles and supernatural beings.

Author : Cheeyun Lilian Kwon
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
Page : 225 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2019-02-28
Category : Art
ISBN : 9780824856021

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Efficacious Underworld by Cheeyun Lilian Kwon Pdf

The Ten Kings hanging scrolls at Tokyo’s Seikadō Bunko Art Museum are among the most resplendent renderings of the Buddhist purgatory extant, but their origin and significance have yet to be fully explored. Cheeyun Kwon unfurls this exquisite set of scrolls within the existing Ten Kings painting tradition while investigating textual, scriptural, archaeological, and visual materials from East Asia to shed light on its possible provenance. She constructs a model scheme of the paintings’ evolution based on more than five hundred works and reveals channels of popularization, mass production, and agglomeration. The earliest images of the Ten Kings are found in the tenth-century sūtra The Scripture on the Ten Kings, known to be the work of the monk Zangchuan. By the mid-twelfth century, typological conventions associated with the Ten Kings were widely established, and paintings depicting them, primarily large-scale and stand-alone, became popular export commodities, spreading via land and sea routes to the Korean peninsula and the Japanese archipelago. An examination of materials in Korea suggests a unique development path for Ten Kings subject matter, and this—in conjunction with a close analysis of the Seikadō paintings—forms the core of Kwon’s book. Among the Korean works discussed is a woodblock edition of The Scripture on the Ten Kings from 1246. It is markedly different from its Chinese counterparts and provides strong evidence of the subject’s permutations during the Koryŏ period (918–1392), when Northern Song (960–1127) visual art and culture were avidly imported. In the Seikadō paintings, Northern Song figural, architectural, landscape, and decorative elements were acculturated to the Koryŏ milieu, situating them in the twelfth to early thirteenth centuries and among the oldest and most significant surviving examples of Koryŏ Buddhist painting. Efficacious Underworld fills major lacunae in Korean, East Asian, and Ten Kings painting traditions while illuminating Korea’s contribution to the evolution of a Buddhist theme on its trajectory across East Asia. With its rich set of color reproductions and detailed analysis of textual and visual materials, this volume will invite significant revision to previously held notions on Koryŏ painting.

Author : Carl F. Petry
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2012
Category : Crime
ISBN : 0970819986

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The Criminal Underworld in a Medieval Islamic Society by Carl F. Petry Pdf

The narrative histories generated during the Mamluk Period in Cairo and Damascus (648 922H/ 1250-1517CE) addressed a wide range of domestic issues, in addition to their commentaries on imperial politics and international events. Topics such as the local economy, relations between sectarian communities, and the conduct of civil litigation under Sharia statutes were elaborated in minute detail, and have attracted the attention of contemporary historians. Less studied have been the chroniclers numerous references to criminal activity committed at all levels of society, from its elite military echelons to individuals or groups who occupied its margins. The latter elements, despite their demographic visibility, have in many instances evaded the notice of modern scholarship on medieval Islamic cultures. This study aims at disclosing their impact on society in the two largest cities of the Mamluk State, as depicted by those who witnessed it at close range. These local chroniclers pursued an agenda when they dwelled on the criminal acts they observed. Rather than offering simple decrials of wrongdoing, their comments collectively targeted the agents charged with policing social interaction and upholding public security. Disclosure of collusion in crime by those formally pledged to suppress it emerged as a covert, yet signal, objective of these chroniclers. The book examines this objective as it was discerned in more than a thousand incidents of criminal activity in Cairo and Damascus during the Late Middle Ages. The complicity it exposed provides insights that revise current views about the working of government under the Mamluks, and the perspectives of groups whose voices have gone largely unheard in the Historiography of pre-modern Islamic societies.

Author : Clifford Edmund Bosworth
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 216 pages
File Size : 51,6 Mb
Release : 1976
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 9004043926

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The Mediaeval Islamic Underworld by Clifford Edmund Bosworth Pdf

Author : Thomas A. Fudgé
Publisher : Springer
Page : 300 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 2016-10-20
Category : History
ISBN : 9781137566102

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Medieval Religion and its Anxieties by Thomas A. Fudgé Pdf

This book examines the broad varieties of religious belief, religious practices, and the influence of religion within medieval society. Religion in the Middle Ages was not monolithic. Medieval religion and the Latin Church are not synonymous. While theology and liturgy are important, an examination of animal trials, gargoyles, last judgments, various aspects of the medieval underworld, and the quest for salvation illuminate lesser known dimensions of religion in the Middle Ages. Several themes run throughout the book including visual culture, heresy and heretics, law and legal procedure, along with sexuality and an awareness of mentalities and anxieties. Although an expanse of 800 years has passed, the remains of those other Middle Ages can be seen today, forcing us to reassess our evaluations of this alluring and often overlooked past.

Author : John Kleiner
Publisher : Stanford University Press
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 1994
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0804721432

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Mismapping the Underworld by John Kleiner Pdf

The three central chapters of the book each examine a different type of error or anomaly: a mismeasured giant, a self-defeating experiment, an erring citation of Virgil. These apparently trivial discrepancies are linked, the author suggests, to much larger questions. What is the status of mimetic realism in Dante's poem? By what right does a poet pretend to represent the order of God's mind? Where does aggressive allegoresis cross over into interpretive error? Through the study of error, the author offers an alternative account of Dante's poetic project, one that gives priority to wit and self-irony rather than didactic seriousness.

Author : Greg Cox,Danny McBride,Kevin Grevioux,Len Wiseman
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 386 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2003
Category : Fantasy
ISBN : 9780743480710

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Underworld by Greg Cox,Danny McBride,Kevin Grevioux,Len Wiseman Pdf

The official novelization of the third installment of the Underworld film series--a prequel to the first two films that explores the origins of the centuries-old blood feud between the ageless, aristocratic vampires known as Death Dealers and their onetime slaves, the Lycans. The film opens in theaters on January 23. Original.

Author : John C. Stephens
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 184 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2019-02-14
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781476674513

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Journeys to the Underworld and Heavenly Realm in Ancient and Medieval Literature by John C. Stephens Pdf

Concepts of heaven and hell are among the oldest, most widespread religious beliefs in history. In Western literature, they are frequently embedded in stories of underworld explorations and celestial journeys--stories examining the nature of the universe, life on earth and the existence of the gods. The author analyzes tales of wonder in both ancient and medieval European literature. Other-worldly narratives appeared in literary contexts in the ancient world, including mythology, poetry and philosophical writings. In medieval times, they remained a popular form of literary expression. These stories are primarily religious in nature, describing fantastic worlds filled with miracles and supernatural beings.

Author : Kristina Richardson
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 195 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2021-11-18
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780755635795

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Roma in the Medieval Islamic World by Kristina Richardson Pdf

Winner of the 2022 Dan David Prize for outstanding scholarship that illuminates the past and seeks to anchor public discourse in a deeper understanding of history In Middle Eastern cities as early as the mid-8th century, the Sons of Sasan begged, trained animals, sold medicinal plants and potions, and told fortunes. They captivated the imagination of Arab writers and playwrights, who immortalized their strange ways in poems, plays, and the Thousand and One Nights. Using a wide range of sources, Richardson investigates the lived experiences of these Sons of Sasan, who changed their name to Ghuraba' (Strangers) by the late 1200s. This name became the Arabic word for the Roma and Roma-affiliated groups also known under the pejorative term 'Gypsies'. This book uses mostly Ghuraba'-authored works to understand their tribal organization and professional niches as well as providing a glossary of their language Sin. It also examines the urban homes, neighborhoods, and cemeteries that they constructed. Within these isolated communities they developed and nurtured a deep literary culture and astrological tradition, broadening our appreciation of the cultural contributions of medieval minority communities. Remarkably, the Ghuraba' began blockprinting textual amulets by the 10th century, centuries before printing on paper arrived in central Europe. When Roma tribes migrated from Ottoman territories into Bavaria and Bohemia in the 1410s, they may have carried this printing technology into the Holy Roman Empire.

Author : Jonathan P. Berkey
Publisher : University of Washington Press
Page : 156 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 2012-03-15
Category : History
ISBN : 9780295800981

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Popular Preaching and Religious Authority in the Medieval Islamic Near East by Jonathan P. Berkey Pdf

Islamic popular preachers and storytellers had enormous influence in defining common religious knowledge and faith in the medieval Near East. Jonathan Berkey’s book illuminates the popular culture of religious storytelling. It draws on chronicles, biographical dictionaries, sermons, and tales — but especially on a number of medieval treatises critical of popular preachers, and also a vigorous defense of them which emerged in fourteenth-century Egyptian Sufi circles. Popular preachers drew inspiration and legitimacy from the rise of Sufi mysticism, with its emphasis on internal spiritual activity and direct enlightenment, enabling them to challenge or reinforce social and political hierarchies as they entertained the masses with tales of moral edification. As these charismatic figures developed a popular following, they often aroused the wrath of scholars and elites, who resented innovative interpretations of Islam that undermined orthodox religious authority and blurred social and gender barriers. Critics of popular preachers and storytellers worried that they would corrupt their audiences’ understanding of Islam. Their defenders argued that preachers and storytellers could contribute to the consensus of the Islamic community as to what constituted acceptable religious knowledge. In the end, religious knowledge, and the definition of Islam as it was commonly understood, remained porous and flexible throughout the Middle Period, thanks in part to the activities of popular preachers and storytellers.

Author : David Lawrence Pike
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 326 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 1997
Category : Civilization, Medieval, in literature
ISBN : 0801431638

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Passage Through Hell by David Lawrence Pike Pdf

Taking the culturally resonant motif of the descent to the underworld as his guiding thread, David L. Pike traces the interplay between myth and history in medieval and modernist literature. Passage through Hell suggests new approaches to the practice of comparative literature, and a possible escape from the current morass of competing critical schools and ideologies. Pike's readings of Louis Ferdinand Céline and Walter Benjamin reveal the tensions at work in the modern appropriation of structures derived from ancient and medieval descents. His book shows how these structures were redefined in modernism and persist in contemporary critical practice. In order to recover the historical corpus of modernism, he asserts, it is necessary to acknowledge the attraction that medieval forms and motifs held for modernist literature and theory. By pairing the writings of the postwar German dramatist and novelist Peter Weiss with Dante's Commedia, and Christine de Pizan with Virginia Woolf, Pike argues for a new level of complexity in the relation between medieval and modern poetics. Pike's supple and persuasive reading of the Commedia resituates that text within the contradictions of medieval tradition. He contends that the Dantean allegory of conversion, altered to suit the exigencies of modernism, maintains its hold over current literature and theory. The postwar writers Pike treats--Weiss, Seamus Heaney, and Derek Walcott--exemplify alternate strategies for negotiating the legacy of modernism. The passage through hell emerges as a way of disentangling images of the past from their interpretation in the present.

Author : Dominique Kalifa
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 430 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2019-04-16
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780231547260

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Vice, Crime, and Poverty by Dominique Kalifa Pdf

Beggars, outcasts, urchins, waifs, prostitutes, criminals, convicts, madmen, fallen women, lunatics, degenerates—part reality, part fantasy, these are the grotesque faces that populate the underworld, the dark inverse of our everyday world. Lurking in the mirror that we hold up to our society, they are our counterparts and our doubles, repelling us and yet offering the tantalizing promise of escape. Although these images testify to undeniable social realities, the sordid lower depths make up a symbolic and social imaginary that reflects our fears and anxieties—as well as our desires. In Vice, Crime, and Poverty, Dominique Kalifa traces the untold history of the concept of the underworld and its representations in popular culture. He examines how the myth of the lower depths came into being in nineteenth-century Europe, as biblical figures and Christian traditions were adapted for a world turned upside-down by the era of industrialization, democratization, and mass culture. From the Parisian demimonde to Victorian squalor, from the slums of New York to the sewers of Buenos Aires, Kalifa deciphers the making of an image that has cast an enduring spell on its audience. While the social conditions that created that underworld have changed, Vice, Crime, and Poverty shows that, from social-scientific ideas of the underclass to contemporary cinema and steampunk culture, its shadows continue to haunt us.

Author : Bronislaw Geremek
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 338 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2006-04-27
Category : History
ISBN : 0521026121

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The Margins of Society in Late Medieval Paris by Bronislaw Geremek Pdf

This book discusses the 'marginal' people of late medieval Paris, the large and shifting group of men and women who existed on the margins of conventional organized society. Professor Geremek examines the various groups which made up the marginal world - beggars, prostitutes, procuresses and pimps, petty criminals, casual workers and the unemployed - their haunts in and around Paris, their way of life, and their relation to 'normal' society. Professor Geremek has made with this book a major contribution to the study of late medieval society which illuminates the little-known area of the medieval underworld in a fascinating and very accessible manner. Translated by Jean Birrell from the French edition of 1976, this edition includes a new introduction by Jean-Claude Schmitt, which offers a frank appraisal of the author's life and career to date.

Author : Richard Matthew Pollard
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 377 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2020-12-17
Category : Art
ISBN : 9781107177918

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Imagining the Medieval Afterlife by Richard Matthew Pollard Pdf

A comprehensive, innovative study of how medieval people envisioned heaven, hell, and purgatory - images and imaginings that endure today.