Text and Textuality in Early Medieval Iberia

Text and Textuality in Early Medieval Iberia
Author: Graham Barrett
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 549
Release: 2023-06-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 0192648667

Text and Textuality in Early Medieval Iberia is a study of the functions and conceptions of writing and reading, documentation and archives, and the role of literate authorities in the Christian kingdoms of the northern Iberian Peninsula between the Muslim conquest of 711 and the fall of the Islamic caliphate at Córdoba in 1031. Based on the first complete survey of the over 4,000 surviving Latin charters from the period, it is an essay in the archaeology and biography of text: part one concerns materiality, tracing the lifecycle of charters from initiation and composition to preservation and reuse, while part two addresses connectivity, delineating a network of texts through painstaking identification of more than 2,000 citations of other charters, secular and canon law, the Bible, liturgy, and monastic rules. Few may have been able to read or write, yet the extent of textuality was broad and deep, in the authority conferred upon text and the arrangements made to use it. Via charter and scribe, society and social arrangements came increasingly to be influenced by norms originating from a network of texts. By profiling the intersection and interaction of text with society and culture, Graham Barrett reconstructs textuality, how the authority of the written and the structures to access it framed and constrained actions and cultural norms, and proposes a new model of early medieval reading. As they cited other texts, charters circulated fragments of those texts; we must rethink the relationship of sources and audiences to reflect fragmentary transmission, in a textuality of imperfect knowledge.

Records and Processes of Dispute Settlement in Early Medieval Societies

Records and Processes of Dispute Settlement in Early Medieval Societies
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 441
Release: 2023-11-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004683003

How can dispute records shed light on the study of dispute settlement processes and their social and political underpinnings? This volume addresses this question by investigating the interplay between record-making, disputing process, and the social and political contexts of conflicts. The authors make use of exceptionally rich charter materials from the Iberian Peninsula, Italy, and Scandinavia, including different types of texts directly and indirectly related to conflicts, in order to contribute to a comparative survey of early medieval dispute records and to a better understanding of the interplay between judicial and other less formal modes of conflict resolution. Contributors are Isabel Alfonso, José M. Andrade, François Bougard, Warren C. Brown, Wendy Davies, Julio Escalona, Kim Esmark, Adam J. Kosto, Juan José Larrea, André Evangelista Marques, Josep M. Salrach, Igor Santos Salazar, and Francesca Tinti.

Languages and Communities in the Late and Post-Roman Western Provinces

Languages and Communities in the Late and Post-Roman Western Provinces
Author: Alex Mullen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 363
Release: 2024-03-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 0198888953

This volume provides a collection of chapters by a multidisciplinary collection of experts on the linguistic variegation of the later-Roman and post-imperial period in the Roman west. It offers the first comprehensive modern study of the main developments, key features, and debates of the later-Roman and post-imperial linguistic environment.

Languages and Communities in the Late-Roman and Post-Imperial Western Provinces

Languages and Communities in the Late-Roman and Post-Imperial Western Provinces
Author: Alex Mullen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 363
Release: 2023-12-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 019888897X

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on Oxford Academic and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Languages are central to the creation and expression of identities and cultures, as well as to life itself, yet the linguistic variegation of the later-Roman and post-imperial period in the Roman west is remarkably understudied. A deeper understanding of this important issue is crucial to any reconstruction of the broader story of linguistic continuity and change in Europe and the Mediterranean, as well as to the history of the communities who wrote, read, and spoke Latin and other languages. Languages and Communities in the Late-Roman and Post-Imperial Western Provinces offers the first comprehensive modern study of the main developments, key features and debates of the later-Roman and post-imperial linguistic environment, focusing on the Iberian Peninsula, North Africa, Gaul, the Germanies, Britain and Ireland. The chapters collected in this volume help us to understand better the embeddedness, or not, of Latin, at different social levels and across provinces, to consider (socio)linguistic variegation, bi-/multi-lingualism, and attitudes towards languages, and to confront the complex role of language in the communities, identities, and cultures of the later- and post-imperial Roman western world. This volume will be accompanied by two further volumes from the European Research Council-funded LatinNow project: Social Factors in the Latinization of the Roman West and Latinization, Local Languages, and Literacies in the Roman West.

The Routledge Hispanic Studies Companion to Medieval Iberia

The Routledge Hispanic Studies Companion to Medieval Iberia
Author: E. Michael Gerli
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 589
Release: 2021-05-30
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1351809784

The Routledge Hispanic Studies Companion to Medieval Iberia: Unity in Diversity draws together the innovative work of renowned scholars as well as several thought-provoking essays from emergent academics, in order to provide broad-range, in-depth coverage of the major aspects of the Iberian medieval world. Exploring the social, political, cultural, religious, and economic history of the Iberian Peninsula, the volume includes 37 original essays grouped around fundamental themes such as Languages and Literatures, Spiritualities, and Visual Culture. This interdisciplinary volume is an excellent introduction and reference work for students and scholars in Iberian Studies and Medieval Studies. SERIES EDITOR: BRAD EPPS SPANISH LIST ADVISOR: JAVIER MUÑOZ-BASOLS

Gender and Exemplarity in Medieval and Early Modern Spain

Gender and Exemplarity in Medieval and Early Modern Spain
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2020-09-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004438440

Gender and Exemplarity in Medieval and Early Modern Spain gathers a series of studies on the interplay between gender, sanctity and exemplarity in regard to literary production in the Iberian peninsula. The first section examines how women were con¬strued as saintly examples through narratives, mostly composed by male writers; the second focuses on the use made of exemplary life-accounts by women writers in order to fashion their own social identity and their role as authors. The volume includes studies on relevant models (Mary Magdalen, Virgin Mary, living saints), means of transmission, sponsorship and agency (reading circles, print, patronage), and female writers (Leonor López de Córdoba, Isabel de Villena, Teresa of Ávila) involved in creating textual exemplars for women. Contributors are: Pablo Acosta-García, Andrew M. Beresford, Jimena Gamba Corradine, Ryan D. Giles, María Morrás, Lesley K. Twomey, Roa Vidal Doval, and Christopher van Ginhoven Rey.

The Book of the Knight Zifar

The Book of the Knight Zifar
Author: Charles L. Nelson
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2014-07-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 081316415X

The Book of the Knight Zifar (or Cifar), Spain's first novel of chivalry, is the tale of a virtuous but unfortunate knight who has fallen from grace and must seek redemption through suffering and good deeds. Because of a curse that repeatedly deprives him of that most important of knightly accoutrements—his horse—Zifar and his family must flee their native India and wander through distant lands seeking to regain their rank and fortune. A series of mishaps divides the family, and the novel follows their separate adventures—alternatively heroic, comic, and miraculous—until at length they are reunited and their honor restored. The anonymous author of Zifar based his early fourteenth-century novel on the medieval story of the life of St. Eustacius, but onto this trunk he grafted a surprising variety of narrative types: Oriental tales of romance and magic, biblical stories, moralizing fables popular since the Middle Ages, including several from Aesop, and instructions in the rules of proper knightly conduct. Humor in the form of puns, jokes, and old proverbs also runs through the novel. In particular, the foolish/wise Knave offers a comic contrast to the heroic Knight, whom he must continually rescue through the application of common sense. Zifar was to have an important influence on later Spanish literature, and perhaps on Cervantes' great tale of a knight and his squire, Don Quixote. All those with an interest in Spanish literature and medieval life will be grateful for Mr. Nelson's excellent translation, which brings to life this extraordinary early novel.

Textual Agency: Writing Culture and Social Networks in Fifteenth-Century Spain

Textual Agency: Writing Culture and Social Networks in Fifteenth-Century Spain
Author: Ana M. Gómez-Bravo
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2013-01-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1442647205

Gómez-Bravo also explores how authorial and textual agency were competing forces in the midst of an era marked by the institution of the Inquisition, the advent of the absolutist state, the growth of cities, and the constitution of the Spanish nation.

The Eulogius Corpus

The Eulogius Corpus
Author: Saint Eulogius (of Córdoba)
Publisher: Translated Texts for Historian
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781789621211

Eulogius (d. 859), a priest living under Islamic rule in C rdoba, is our principal source for the so-called "C rdoban martyrs' movement" (850-859), in the course of which forty-eight Christians were decapitated for religious offenses against Islam. The majority of the victims were condemned for blasphemy, having deliberately flouted proscriptions against public expressions of disrespect for Muhammad. Interestingly enough, the C rdoban Christian community was not of one mind when it came to interpreting such provocative acts. While some were inclined to embrace the executed Christians as martyrs of the classic Roman type, others criticized them as self-immolators whose unprovoked outbursts only complicated the working relationship between the Christian community and the Muslim authorities. The writings of Eulogius, which were designed to record the deaths and present them as legitimate martyrdoms, allow both for the reconstruction of Christian life under Muslim rule and an appreciation for the range of Christian attitudes toward Islam in ninth-century al-Spain. They also capture Eulogius' self-conscious effort to construct a saint cult despite the absence of wide support for the "martyrs". This is the first complete rendering of Eulogius' writings into English, and will be a valuable resource for historians and theologians alike.