Constantinople and the West in Medieval French Literature

Constantinople and the West in Medieval French Literature PDF Author: Rima Devereaux
Publisher: DS Brewer
ISBN: 1843843021
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
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.

Constantinople and the West in Medieval French Literature

Constantinople and the West in Medieval French Literature PDF Author: Rima Devereaux
Publisher: DS Brewer
ISBN: 1843843021
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 250

Get Book Here

Book Description
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 PDF Author: Krijna Nelly Ciggaar
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9789004106376
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 450

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Book Description
This volume provides a survey of the thousands and thousands of people from the West who travelled to Constantinople between 962 and 1204, and of the influence Byzantium exerted on them and on those who remained home. Crusaders were an important group, but other social groups played a key role as well in the exchange of ideas.

A Companion to Byzantium and the West, 900-1204

A Companion to Byzantium and the West, 900-1204 PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004499245
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 591

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Book Description
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 PDF Author: Alice Hazard
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1843845873
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
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 PDF Author: Jane Gilbert
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1914049144
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
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 Medieval French Ovide Moralisé

The Medieval French Ovide Moralisé PDF Author: K. Sarah-Jane Murray
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1843846535
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 1180

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Book Description
First English translation of one of the most influential French poems of the Middle Ages. The anonymous Ovide moralisé (Moralized Ovid), composed in France in the fourteenth century, retells and explicates Ovid's Metamorphoses, with generous helpings of related texts, for a Christian audience. Working from the premise that everything in the universe, including the pagan authors of Graeco-Roman Antiquity, is part of God's plan and expresses God's truth even without knowing it, the Ovide moralisé is a massive and influential work of synthesis and creativity, a remarkable window into a certain kind of medieval thinking. It is of major importance across time and across many disciplines, including literature, philosophy, theology, and art history. This three volume set offers an English translation of this hugely significant text - the first into any modern language. Based on the only complete edition to date, that by Cornelis de Boer and others completed in 1938, it also reflects more recent editions and numerous manuscripts. The translation is accompanied by a substantial introduction, situating the Ovide moralisé in terms of the reception of Ovid, the mythographical tradition, and its medieval French religious and intellectual milieu. Notes discuss textual problems and sources, and relate the text to key issues in the thought of theologians such as Bonaventure and Aquinas.

The Logic of Idolatry in Seventeenth-century French Literature

The Logic of Idolatry in Seventeenth-century French Literature PDF Author: Ellen McClure
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1843845504
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
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.

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 PDF Author: Jennifer Saltzstein
Publisher: DS Brewer
ISBN: 1843843498
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
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.

Byzantium in Dialogue with the Mediterranean

Byzantium in Dialogue with the Mediterranean PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004393587
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
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.

Medieval French on the Move

Medieval French on the Move PDF Author: Leah Tether
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3111007065
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 450

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Book Description
When Keith Busby published his field-shaping Codex and Context in 2002, the work was referred to as ‘groundbreaking’ and ‘monumental’. It prompted scholars of medieval literature to return to manuscripts in their droves. However, Busby’s Codex and Context would also enact another, more gradual movement. His formulation of the term ‘medieval Francophonia’ to describe the presence, power and effect of French outside France would filter steadily into academic enquiry. The term and concept are now widely recognised and applied in global scholarship, including in multiple major projects dedicated to the topic. This volume brings together a series of cutting-edge studies of medieval Francophonia, covering in one place and for the first time the fullest scope of the concept’s remit, with contributions on history, historiography, language, literature, culture, society and authority. At the same time as offering a timely contribution to the field, this volume pays tribute to Busby’s life work not only to pioneer medieval Francophonia, but also, and moreover, to encourage the study of the medieval through material philology. Each of the studies here, written by Busby’s friends and colleagues, thus roots its approach in a material context.