Download or read book Der Niederrheinische Orientbericht C 1350 written by Albrecht Classen and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2024-05-14 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First English translation and detailed commentary of a fourteenth-century Low-German work about the Near and Middle East. That extensive travel took place during the Middle Ages has long been established, via such accounts as, for example, Marco Polo's Devisement du Monde; but there remains a relative paucity of documents or narratives confirming and dealing with this phenomenon. Der Niederrheinische Orientbericht ("An Account of the Middle East"), composed around 1350/55 by an anonymous author in Low German, is powerful evidence of international relations between east and west during this period; it provides extensive information, dealing with such matters as the local culture, fauna and flora, and offers spectacular insights into the co-existence of many different religions and peoples. It is therefore an important source for our knowledge; but it has hitherto been neglected by scholars, not least because of the difficulty of its language. This volume offers the first translation into English, thereby making the work available to a wider audience; it is accompanied by a detailed commentary on its historical, religious, military, architectural and political elements, elucidating the narrative fully. The volume also contains a contextual introduction, considering what can be known of the author, and the manuscript tradition.
Download or read book Criticism of the Court and the Evil King in the Middle Ages written by Albrecht Classen and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2024-08-15 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining literary narratives from the tenth through the fifteenth centuries, this book explores how writers used their craft to voice harsh criticism of the ruling class and unearths a deep distrust of kings and other authority figures during the Middle Ages.
Download or read book Globalism in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Age written by Albrecht Classen and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2023-09-05 with total page 628 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although it is fashionable among modernists to claim that globalism emerged only since ca. 1800, the opposite can well be documented through careful comparative and transdisciplinary studies, as this volume demonstrates, offering a wide range of innovative perspectives on often neglected literary, philosophical, historical, or medical documents. Texts, images, ideas, knowledge, and objects migrated throughout the world already in the pre-modern world, even if the quantitative level compared to the modern world might have been different. In fact, by means of translations and trade, for instance, global connections were established and maintained over the centuries. Archetypal motifs developed in many literatures indicate how much pre-modern people actually shared. But we also discover hard-core facts of global economic exchange, import of exotic medicine, and, on another level, intensive intellectual debates on religious issues. Literary evidence serves best to expose the extent to which contacts with people in foreign countries were imaginable, often desirable, and at times feared, of course. The pre-modern world was much more on the move and reached out to distant lands out of curiosity, economic interests, and political and military concerns. Diplomats crisscrossed the continents, and artists, poets, and craftsmen traveled widely. We can identify, for instance, both the Vikings and the Arabs as global players long before the rise of modern globalism, so this volume promises to rewrite many of our traditional notions about pre-modern worldviews, economic conditions, and the literary sharing on a global level, as perhaps best expressed by the genre of the fable.
Download or read book Nature in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Times written by Albrecht Classen and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2024-07-01 with total page 606 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The study of pre-modern anthropology requires the close examination of the relationship between nature and human society, which has been both precarious and threatening as well as productive, soothing, inviting, and pleasurable. Much depends on the specific circumstances, as the works by philosophers, theologians, poets, artists, and medical practitioners have regularly demonstrated. It would not be good enough, as previous scholarship has commonly done, to examine simply what the various writers or artists had to say about nature. While modern scientists consider just the hard-core data of the objective world, cultural historians and literary scholars endeavor to comprehend the deeper meaning of the concept of nature presented by countless writers and artists. Only when we have a good grasp of the interactions between people and their natural environment, are we in a position to identify and interpret mental structures, social and economic relationships, medical and scientific concepts of human health, and the messages about all existence as depicted in major art works. In light of the current conditions threatening to bring upon us a global crisis, it matters centrally to take into consideration pre-modern discourses on nature and its enormous powers to understand the topoi and tropes determining the concepts through which we perceive nature. Nature thus proves to be a force far beyond all human comprehensibility, being both material and spiritual depending on our critical approaches.
Download or read book The Routledge Companion to Humanism and Literature written by Michael Bryson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-03-31 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Companion to Humanism and Literature provides readers with a comprehensive reassessment of the value of humanism in an intellectual landscape. Offering contributions by leading international scholars, this volume seeks to define literature as a core expressive form and an essential constitutive element of newly reformulated understandings of humanism. While the value of humanism has recently been dominated by anti-humanist and post-humanist perspectives which focused on the flaws and exclusions of previous definitions of humanism, this volume examines the human problems, dilemmas, fears, and aspirations expressed in literature, as a fundamentally humanist art form and activity. Divided into three overarching categories, this companion will explore the histories, developments, debates, and contestations of humanism in literature, and deliver fresh definitions of "the new humanism" for the humanities. This focus aims to transcend the boundaries of a world in which human life is all too often defined in terms of restrictions—political, economic, theological, intellectual—and lived in terms of obedience, conformity, isolation, and fear. The Routledge Companion to Humanism and Literature will provide invaluable support to humanities students and scholars alike seeking to navigate the relevance and resilience of humanism across world cultures and literatures.
Download or read book Beethoven s Conversation Books written by Ludwig van Beethoven and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2018 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume 1.Nos. 1 to 8 (February 1818 to March 1820) --Volume 2.Nos. 9 to 16 (March 1820 to September 1820) --Volume 3.Nos. 17 to 31 (May 1822 to May 1823).
Download or read book Charlemagne in Medieval German and Dutch Literature written by Albrecht Classen and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2021 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The legend of the Frankish emperor Charlemagne is widespread through the literature of the European Middle Ages. This book offers a detailed and critical analysis of how this myth emerged and developed in medieval German and Dutch literatures, bringing to light the vast array of narratives either idealizing, if not glorifying, Charlemagne as a political and religious leader, or, at times, criticizing or even ridiculing him as a pompous and ineffectual ruler. The motif is traced from its earliest origins in chronicles, in the Kaiserchronik, through the Rolandslied and Der Stricker's Karl der Große, to his recasting as a saint in the Zürcher Buch vom Heiligen Karl.
Download or read book Late Medieval German Women s Poetry written by Albrecht Classen and published by DS Brewer. This book was released on 2004 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A considerable collection of German women's poetry in translation, results of ingenious archival research.
Download or read book Beyond Fingal s Cave written by James Porter and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Demonstrates the profound impact of The Poems of Ossian on composers of the Romantic Era and later: Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Massenet, and many others. Beyond Fingal's Cave: Ossian in the Musical Imagination is the first study in English of musical compositions inspired by the poems published in the 1760s and attributed to a purported ancient Scottish bard named Ossian. From around 1780 onwards, the poems stimulated poets, artists, and composers in Europe as well as North America to break away from the formality of the Enlightenment. The admiration for Ossian's poems -shared by Napoleon, Goethe, and Thomas Jefferson - was an important stimulus in the development of Romanticism and the music that was a central part of it. More important still was the view of the German cultural philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder, who saw past the controversy over the poems' authenticity to the traditional elements in these heroic poems and their mood of lament. James Porter's long-awaited book traces the traditional sources used by James Macpherson for his epoch-making prose poems and examines crucial works by composers such as Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Brahms, and Massenet. Many other relatively unknown composers were also moved to write operas, cantatas, songs, and instrumental pieces, some of which have proven to be powerfully evocative and well worth performing and recording.
Download or read book A Critical Companion to English Mappae Mundi of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries written by Dan Terkla and published by Boydell Studies in Medieval Ar. This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mappae mundi (maps of the world), beautiful objects in themselves, offer huge insights into how medieval scholars conceived the world and their place within it. They are a fusion of "real" geographical locations with fantasical, geographic, historical, legendary and theological material. Their production reached its height in England in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, with such well-known examples as the Hereford map, the maps of Matthew Paris, and the Vercelli map. This volume provides a comprehensive Companion to the seven most significant English mappae mundi. It begins with a survey of the maps' materials, types, shapes, sources, contents, conventions, idiosyncrasies, commissioners and users, moving on to locate the maps' creation and use in the realms of medieval rhetoric, Victorine memory theory and clerical pedagogy. It also establishes the shared history of map and book making, and demonstrates how pre-and post-Conquest monastic libraries in Britain fostered and fed their complementary relationship. A chapter is then devoted to each individual map. An annotated bibliography of multilingual resources completes the volume. DAN TERKLA is Emeritus Professor of English at Illinois Wesleyan University; NICK MILLEA is Map Librarian, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. Contributors: Nathalie Bouloux, Michelle Brown. Daniel Connolly, Helen Davies, Gregory Heyworth, Alfred Hiatt, Marcia Kupfer, Nick Millea, Asa Simon Mittman, Dan Terkla, Chet Van Duzer. Contributors: Nathalie Bouloux, Michelle Brown. Daniel Connolly, Helen Davies, Gregory Heyworth, Alfred Hiatt, Marcia Kupfer, Nick Millea, Asa Simon Mittman, Dan Terkla, Chet Van Duzer.
Download or read book The New Beethoven written by Jeremy Yudkin and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2020 with total page 573 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marking the 250th anniversary of the composer's birth, this volume presents twenty-one completely new essays on aspects of Beethoven's personal life, his composing process, his manuscripts, and his greatest works.
Download or read book Murder Rape and Treason written by Freelance Academy Press and published by Freelance Academy Press. This book was released on 2019-11-30 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Deeds of arms - formal, limited combats - were an important part of late medieval warrior culture, allowing men-at-arms the chance to display their identities and establish their martial worth before an audience that included their peers, their lords and captains, and the ladies who inspired them. Among the most interesting, unusual and prominent deeds of arms were the judicial duels of the late Middle Ages (14th and 15th centuries). The word "duel" suggests to modern audiences a conflict over honor, but although medieval trials by combat were likewise concerned with issues of reputation and shame, their purpose was judicial: a method of reaching a verdict when other methods could not. If evidence or testimony was not clear or was rejected by participants in a legal case, one could always turn to God. But there was, in fact, no guarantee of clarity even in the case of the duel, and unlike their portrayal in popular media, it was rare for duels to be fought to a lethal conclusion. A settlement was often negotiated before the trial was ever fought, or halted by the judge in mid-combat before either combatant could be slain. For a millennium, the trial by battle had been a fairly routine part of law enforcement in many parts of Europe, but by the second half of the 13th century, they were increasingly restricted to adjudicating guilt for capital crimes such as murder, rape, and treason. Yet even as such combats became increasingly rare, their scarcity lent them an aura of prestige, making the late 14th century a golden age for duels, drawing a great deal of popular, clerical and legal attention. The cases in which duels were approved were often controversial, as was the legal procedure itself. Was the result of a judicial combat truly an expression of the will of God? Medieval lawyers and ordinary observers often had their doubts. The controversies surrounding duels resulted in a number of late medieval duels being recorded in some detail. These duels are therefore among the best-known medieval deeds of arms, and accounts of some of the most sanguine, unusual or controversial are contained herein.
Download or read book Trade Travel and Exploration in the Middle Ages written by John Block Friedman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-07-04 with total page 756 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Trade, Travel, and Exploration: An Encyclopedia is a reference book that covers the peoples, places, technologies, and intellectual concepts that contributed to trade, travel and exploration during the Middle Ages, from the years A.D. 525 to 1492.
Download or read book The Strange Case of Ermine de Reims written by Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2015-05-28 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines Ermine de Reim's life in fourteenth-century France, her relationship with her confessor, her ascetic and devotional practices, and her reported encounters with heavenly and hellish beings.--Publisher's description.
Download or read book Emma and Claude Debussy written by Gillian Opstad and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2022 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Emma Bardac and her relationship with Claude Debussy take centre stage in this insightful exploration of their lives together. The singer Emma Bardac (1862-1934) has often been presented as a woman who ensnared Claude Debussy (1862-1918) because she wanted to be associated with his fame and to live a life of luxury. Indeed, in many biographies and composer-related studies of Debussy, the only mentions that she receives are brief and derogatory. Here Emma Bardac and her relationship with the composer take centre stage. The book traces Emma's Jewish ancestry and her background, the significant role of her wealthy uncle Osiris, her marriage at seventeen to the wealthy Jewish banker Sigismond Bardac, her affair with Gabriel Fauré and her liaison with and subsequent marriage to Debussy. As Gillian Opstad shows, the pressure and stifling effects of domestic life on Debussy's attitude to his composing were considerable. The financial consequences of their partnership were disastrous, and their circle of close friends was small. Emma suffered physically and mentally from the tensions of the marriage, particularly money worries, and the possibility that Debussy was attracted to her older daughter. She considered divorce but supported him through his deepest depression and during the First World War until he succumbed to cancer in 1918. After Debussy's death, Emma felt driven both on his behalf and for financial reasons to further performances of the composer's works and provoked the annoyance of other musicians by having early compositions resurrected, completed and performed. In this engagingly written biography, Gillian Opstad brings to light little-known facts about Emma's background and family, advances new insights into her relationship with Debussy, and provides a glimpse of an early twentieth-century Parisian milieu that experienced wide-spread antisemitism.
Download or read book Storyland written by Amy Jeffs and published by Andrews McMeel Publishing. This book was released on 2023-08-22 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Immersed in mist and old magic, Storyland is an exquisitely illustrated new mythology of Britain, set in its wildest landscapes. Historian and printmaker Amy Jeffs reimagines ancient legends in wondrous detail in this this gift-worthy collection for all lovers of myth, folklore, and mysticism. Storyland begins between the Creation and Noah's Flood, follows the footsteps of the earliest generation of giants, covers the founding of Britain, England, Wales, and Scotland, the birth of Christ, the wars between Britons, Saxons and Vikings, and closes with the arrival of the Normans. These are retellings of medieval tales of legend, landscape, and the yearning to belong, inhabited by characters now half-remembered: Arthur, Brutus, Albina, and more. Told with narrative flair, embellished in stunning, original linocuts and glossed with a rich and erudite commentary, Storyland illuminates a collective memory that still informs the identity and culture of Britain and its descendants. Readers will visit beautiful, sacred places that include prehistoric monuments like Stonehenge and Wayland's Smithy; mountains and lakes such as Snowdon and Loch Etive; and rivers including the Ness, the Soar, and the storied Thames in this vivid, beautiful tale of a land steeped in myth.
Download or read book Exhibitions Music and the British Empire written by Sarah Kirby and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2022 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "International exhibitions were among the most significant cultural phenomena of the late nineteenth century. These vast events aimed to illustrate, through displays of physical objects, the full spectrum of the world's achievements, from industry and manufacturing, to art and design. But exhibitions were not just visual spaces. Music was ever present, as a fundamental part of these events' sonic landscape, and integral to the visitor experience. This book explores music at international exhibitions held in Australia, India, and the United Kingdom during the 1880s. At these exhibitions, music was codified, ordered, and all-round 'exhibited' in manifold ways. Displays of physical instruments from the past and present were accompanied by performances intended to educate or to entertain, while music was heard at exhibitors' stands, in concert halls, and in the pleasure gardens that surrounded the exhibition buildings. Music was depicted as a symbol of human artistic achievement, or employed for commercial ends. At times it was presented in nationalist terms, at others as a marker of universalism. This book argues, by interrogating the multiple ways that music was used, experienced, and represented, that exhibitions can demonstrate in microcosm many of the broader musical traditions, purposes, arguments, and anxieties of the day. Its nine chapters focus on sociocultural themes, covering issues of race, class, public education, economics, and entertainment in the context of music, trading these through the networks of communication that existed within the British Empire at the time. Combining approaches from reception studies and historical musicology, this book demonstrates how the representation of music at exhibitions drew the press and public into broader debates about music's role in society"--Page 4 of cover.
