Constantinople and the West in Medieval French Literature

Constantinople and the West in Medieval French Literature
Author :
Publisher : DS Brewer
Total Pages : 250
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781843843023
ISBN-13 : 1843843021
Rating : 4/5 (23 Downloads)

Synopsis Constantinople and the West in Medieval French Literature by : Rima Devereaux

An indepth examination of the presentation of Constantinople and its complex relationship with the west in medieval French texts. Medieval France saw Constantinople as something of a quintessential ideal city. Aspects of Byzantine life were imitated in and assimilated to the West in a movement of political and cultural renewal, but the Byzantine capital wasalso celebrated as the locus of a categorical and inimitable difference. This book analyses the debate between renewal and utopia in Western attitudes to Constantinople as it evolved through the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in a series of vernacular (Old French, Occitan and Franco-Italian) texts, including the Pèlerinage de Charlemagne, Girart de Roussillon, Partonopeus de Blois, the poetry of Rutebeuf, and the chronicles by Geoffroy de Villehardouin and Robert de Clari, both known as the Conquête de Constantinople. It establishes how the texts' representation of the West's relationship with Constantinople enacts this debate between renewal andutopia; demonstrates that analysis of this relationship can contribute to a discussion on the generic status of the texts themselves; and shows that the texts both react to the socio-cultural context in which they were produced, and fulfil a role within that context. Dr Rima Devereaux is an independent scholar based in London.

Western Travellers to Constantinople

Western Travellers to Constantinople
Author :
Publisher : BRILL
Total Pages : 433
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9789004478053
ISBN-13 : 9004478051
Rating : 4/5 (53 Downloads)

Synopsis Western Travellers to Constantinople by : K.N. Ciggaar

This volume deals with relations between the West and Byzantium, from the accession of Otto I the Great in Germany in 962, until the Fourth Crusade when Constantinople was conquered by the Western crusading armies in 1204. The impact which these contacts and confrontations had on both sides is discussed in sections dealing with specific areas (such as the North, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain) as well as in sections dealing with specific aspects of the process: the journey, the attractions of the East, and the idea of "autoritates" and "translationes" of various political and intellectual ideas. An extensive index will help readers to find specific topics. The book is illustrated with maps, and with a number of objects betraying Byzantine influence in the West, or Western presence in Byzantium.

A Companion to Byzantium and the West, 900-1204

A Companion to Byzantium and the West, 900-1204
Author :
Publisher : BRILL
Total Pages : 591
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9789004499249
ISBN-13 : 9004499245
Rating : 4/5 (49 Downloads)

Synopsis A Companion to Byzantium and the West, 900-1204 by :

This book explores the complex history of contact and exchange between Byzantium and the Latin West over a formative period of more than three hundred years, with a focus on the political, ecclesiastical and cultural spheres.

The Face and Faciality in Medieval French Literature, 1170-1390

The Face and Faciality in Medieval French Literature, 1170-1390
Author :
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages : 242
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781843845874
ISBN-13 : 1843845873
Rating : 4/5 (74 Downloads)

Synopsis The Face and Faciality in Medieval French Literature, 1170-1390 by : Alice Hazard

Modern theoretical approaches throw new light on the concepts of face and faciality in the Roman de la Rose and other French texts from the Middle Ages.

Medieval French Interlocutions

Medieval French Interlocutions
Author :
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages : 370
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781914049149
ISBN-13 : 1914049144
Rating : 4/5 (49 Downloads)

Synopsis Medieval French Interlocutions by : Jane Gilbert

Specialists in other languages offer perspectives on the widespread use of French in a range of contexts, from German courtly narratives to biblical exegesis in Hebrew. French came into contact with many other languages in the Middle Ages: not just English, Italian and Latin, but also Arabic, Dutch, German, Greek, Hebrew, Irish, Occitan, Sicilian, Spanish and Welsh. Its movement was impelled by trade, pilgrimage, crusade, migration, colonisation and conquest, and its contact zones included Muslim, Jewish and Christian communities, among others. Writers in these contact zones often expressed themselves and their worlds in French; but other languages and cultural settings could also challenge, reframe or even ignore French-users' prestige and self-understanding. The essays collected here offer cross-disciplinary perspectives on the use of French in the medieval world, moving away from canonical texts, well-known controversies and conventional framings. Whether considering theories of the vernacular in Outremer, Marco Polo and the global Middle Ages, or the literary patronage of aristocrats and urban patricians, their interlocutions throw new light on connected and contested literary cultures in Europe and beyond.

The Logic of Idolatry in Seventeenth-century French Literature

The Logic of Idolatry in Seventeenth-century French Literature
Author :
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages : 255
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781843845508
ISBN-13 : 1843845504
Rating : 4/5 (08 Downloads)

Synopsis The Logic of Idolatry in Seventeenth-century French Literature by : Ellen McClure

Idolatry was one of the dominant and most contentious themes of early modern religious polemics. This book argues that many of the best-known literary and philosophical works of the French seventeenth century were deeply engaged and concerned with the theme. In a series of case studies and close readings, it shows that authors used the logic of idolatry to interrogate the fractured and fragile relationship between the divine and the human, with particular attention to the increasingly fraught question of the legitimacy of human agency. Reading d'Urf , Descartes, La Fontaine, S vign , Molire, and Racine through the lens of idolatry reveals heretofore hidden aspects of their work, all while demonstrating the link between the emergent autonomy of literature and philosophy and the confessional conflicts that dominated the period. In so doing, Professor McClure illustrates how religion can become a source of interpretive complexity, and how this dynamism can and should be taken into account in early modern French studies and beyond. ELLEN MCCLURE is Associate Professor of History and French, University of Illinois at Chicago.

Sea of Silk

Sea of Silk
Author :
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages : 273
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780812291254
ISBN-13 : 0812291255
Rating : 4/5 (54 Downloads)

Synopsis Sea of Silk by : E. Jane Burns

The story of silk is an old and familiar one, a tale involving mercantile travel and commercial exchange along the broad land mass that connects ancient China to the west and extending eventually to sites on the eastern Mediterranean and along sea routes to India. But if we shift our focus from economic histories that chart the exchange of silk along Asian and Mediterranean trade routes to medieval literary depictions of silk, a strikingly different picture comes into view. In Old French literary texts from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, emphasis falls on production rather than trade and on female protagonists who make, decorate, and handle silk. Sea of Silk maps a textile geography of silk work done by these fictional women. Situated in northern France and across the medieval Mediterranean, from Saint-Denis to Constantinople, from North Africa to Muslim Spain, and even from the fantasy realm of Arthurian romance to the historical silkworks of the Norman kings in Palermo, these medieval heroines provide important glimpses of distant economic and cultural geographies. E. Jane Burns argues, in brief, that literary portraits of medieval heroines who produce and decorate silk cloth or otherwise manipulate items of silk outline a metaphorical geography that includes France as an important cultural player in the silk economics of the Mediterranean. Within this literary sea of silk, female protagonists who "work" silk in a variety of ways often deploy it successfully as a social and cultural currency that enables them to traverse religious and political barriers while also crossing lines of gender and class.

The Refrain and the Rise of the Vernacular in Medieval French Music and Poetry

The Refrain and the Rise of the Vernacular in Medieval French Music and Poetry
Author :
Publisher : DS Brewer
Total Pages : 210
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781843843498
ISBN-13 : 1843843498
Rating : 4/5 (98 Downloads)

Synopsis The Refrain and the Rise of the Vernacular in Medieval French Music and Poetry by : Jennifer Saltzstein

A survey of the use of the refrain in thirteenth and fourteenth-century French music and poetry, showing how it was skilfully deployed to assert the validity of the vernacular. The relationship between song quotation and the elevation of French as a literary language that could challenge the cultural authority of Latin is the focus of this book. It approaches this phenomenon through a close examination of the refrain, a short phrase of music and text quoted intertextually across thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century musical and poetic genres. The author draws on a wide range of case studies, from motets, trouvère song, plays, romance, vernacular translations, and proverb collections, to show that medieval composers quoted refrains as vernacular auctoritates; she argues that their appropriation of scholastic, Latinate writing techniques workedto authorize Old French music and poetry as media suitable for the transmission of knowledge. Beginning with an exploration of the quasi-scholastic usage of refrains in anonymous and less familiar clerical contexts, the book goeson to articulate a new framework for understanding the emergence of the first two named authors of vernacular polyphonic music, the cleric-trouvères Adam de la Halle and Guillaume de Machaut. It shows how, by blending their craftwith the writing practices of the universities, composers could use refrain quotation to assert their status as authors with a new self-consciousness, and to position works in the vernacular as worthy of study and interpretation. Jennifer Saltzstein is Assistant Professor of Musicology at the University of Oklahoma.

Sacred Fictions of Medieval France

Sacred Fictions of Medieval France
Author :
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages : 396
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781843844143
ISBN-13 : 1843844141
Rating : 4/5 (43 Downloads)

Synopsis Sacred Fictions of Medieval France by : Maureen Barry McCann Boulton

A study of the immensely popular "lives" of Christ and the Virgin in medieval France.

Byzantium in Dialogue with the Mediterranean

Byzantium in Dialogue with the Mediterranean
Author :
Publisher : BRILL
Total Pages : 300
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9789004393585
ISBN-13 : 9004393587
Rating : 4/5 (85 Downloads)

Synopsis Byzantium in Dialogue with the Mediterranean by :

In thirteen contributions, Byzantium in Dialogue with the Mediterranean. History and Heritage shows that throughout the centuries of its existence, Byzantium continuously communicated with other cultures and societies on the European continent, as well as North Africa and in the East. In this volume, ‘History’ represents not only the chronological, geographical and narrative background of the historical reality of Byzantium, but it also stands for an all-inclusive scholarly approach to the Byzantine world that transcends the boundaries of traditionally separate disciplines such as history, art history or archaeology. The second notion, ‘Heritage’, refers to both material remains and immaterial traditions, and traces that have survived or have been appropriated. Contributors are Hans Bloemsma, Elena Boeck, Averil Cameron, Elsa Fernandes Cardoso, Cristian Caselli, Evangelos Chrysos, Konstantinos Chryssogelos, Penelope Mougoyianni, Daphne Penna, Marko Petrak, Matthew Savage, Daniëlle Slootjes, Karen Stock, Alex Rodriguez Suarez and Mariëtte Verhoeven.