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The last fifty years have seen a significant change in the focus of saga studies, from a preoccupation with origins and development to a renewed interest in other topics, such as the nature of the sagas and their value as sources to medieval ideologies and mentalities. The Routledge Research Companion to the Medieval Icelandic Sagas presents a detailed interdisciplinary examination of saga scholarship over the last fifty years, sometimes juxtaposing it with earlier views and examining the sagas both as works of art and as source materials. This volume will be of interest to Old Norse and medieval Scandinavian scholars and accessible to medievalists in general.
What did medieval authors know about their world? Were they parochial and focused on just their monastery, town, or kingdom? Or were they aware of the broader medieval Europe that modern historians write about? This collection brings the focus back to medieval authors to see how they described their world. While we see that each author certainly had their own biases, the vast majority of them did not view the world as constrained to their small piece of it. Instead, they talked about the wider world, and often they had informants or textual sources that informed them about the world, even if they did not visit it themselves. This volume shows that they also used similar ideas to create space and identity – whether talking about the desert, the holy land, or food practices in their texts. By examining medieval authors and their own perceptions of their world, this collection offers a framework for discussions of medieval Europe in the twenty-first century.
Studies in gender in medieval culture have tended to focus on femininity, however the study of medieval masculinities has developed greatly over the last few years. Holiness and Masculinity in the Middle Ages is the first volume to concentrate on this specific aspect of medieval gender studies, and looks at the ways in which varieties of medieval masculinity intersected with concepts of holiness. Patricia Cullum and Katherine J. Lewis have collected an exceptional group of essays that explore differing notions of medieval holiness, understood variously as religious, saintly, sacred, pure, morally perfect, and consider topics such as significance of the tonsure, sanctity and martyrdom, eunuch saints, and the writings of Henry Suso. Holiness and Masculinity in the Middle Ages deals with a wide variety of texts and historical contexts, from Byzantium to Anglo-Saxon and late-medieval England.
An epic adventure: from the Vikings to the Enlightenment, from barbaric outpost to global hub, this book tells the dazzling history of northern Europe's transformation by sea. 'Pye writes like a dream. Magnificent' Jerry Brotton, author of A History of the World in Twelve Maps ______________ This is a story of saints and spies, of anglers and pirates, traders and marauders - and of how their wild and daring journeys across the North Sea built the world we know. When the Roman Empire retreated, northern Europe was a barbarian outpost at the very edge of everything. A thousand years later, it was the heart of global empires and the home of science, art, enlightenment and money. We owe this tra...
In the late 16th century, hundreds of travelers made their way to the Habsburg ambassador's residence, known as the German House, in Constantinople. In this centrally located inn, subjects of the emperor found food, wine, shelter, and good company—and left an incredible collection of albums filled with images, messages, decorated papers, and more. Portraits of Empires offers a complete account of this early form of social media, which had a profound impact on later European iconography. Revealing a vibrant transimperial culture as viewed from all walks of life—Muslim and Christian, noble and servant, scholar and stable boy—the pocket-sized albums containing these curiosities have never...
This book is concerned with the social and gendered meanings of love in medieval Norway and Iceland. In the Viking Age, to love would most often imply a submissive social position, while being loved by a woman could elevate a man above the status of her family. Women were supposed to love upwards in the social hierarchy, but could also use their desire to negotiate the social position of men. A close reading of the skaldic poetry shows the dilemma men faced when longing for women's love and approval. These ideas of love relations shaped Norse interpretations of courtly love and marriage formation by consent in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. However, new ideas of sexuality, gender and ...
"Marianne Kalinke, who retired from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in May 2006, made profound contributions in Old Norse-Icelandic literature over her distinguished career of teaching and writing. She is perhaps best known for her Bridal-Quest Romance in Medieval Iceland, also in the Islandica series. This volume in her honor features new essays by fourteen authors on the theme of Old Norse-Icelandic romance and love." "Several chapters examine love between a man and a woman with special focus on the ways in which the Sagas of Icelanders differ from courtly romances; tragic and comic elements of Icelandic tales of love; and the differing societal roles of women and men. Other chapters explore the intersection of folklore, mythology, and romance; the role of dwarfs in fourteenth-century Icelandic romances; and the characteristics that distinguish heroic epics from romances. Aspects of love as expressed through religion are highlighted in chapters on sacred and hagiographic texts." --Book Jacket.
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This volume presents twenty essays by leading scholars of Old Norse which bring into focus the nature of learned traditions - both oral and written - in medieval Scandinavia and the interpretation and re-interpretation of them over time. Theoretical frameworks for understanding Old Norse literature is the initial topic of the collection, which then moves on to present recent work on Old Norse myth and society; current perspectives on oral traditions in performance and text; and reflections on medieval ideas about language, both vernacular and Latin. The collection is rounded off by a section on prolonged traditions - the transformation of local and imported traditions into new literary forms...