Ockham and Political Discourse in the Late Middle Ages

Author(s):  
Takashi Shogimen
Author(s):  
Pavlína Rychterová

This chapter examines the growing importance of the vernacular languages during the later Middle Ages in shaping the form, content, and audiences of political discourse. It presents a famously wicked king of the late Middle Ages, Wenceslas IV (1361–1419), as a case study and traces the origins of his bad reputation to a group of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century writings. These have often been dismissed as fictions or studied solely as literature, but in fact they represent new modes of articulating good and bad kingship. The chapter shows that, in the context of an increasingly literate bourgeois culture, especially in university cities, these vernacular works transformed Latin theological approaches to monarchy, while rendering mirrors for princes and related literatures accessible to an unprecedented audience.


Author(s):  
Josué Villa Prieto

This article examines the tensions between the wish to write an impartial history, in the late medieval chroniclers, and their work developed under patronage of political authorities. Three double groups of late medieval chronicles are distinguished (royal and general, Castilian and Aragon, Romanic and Latin), each of them to design different purposes with different strategies in their discourses. The list of examined authors includes Rada, Ayala, Pérez de Guzmán, Cartagena, Arévalo, Palencia, Domenech, Tomic, Viana, Turell, Valla, Margarit, and Carbonell. In order to find influences, similarities and differences, an approach to conception of their historical writing is offered too.Key WordsHistoriography, chronicle, late Middle Ages, political discourse, propaganda of power, history of ideas.ResumenEl presente artículo analiza las tensiones existentes, en los cronistas bajomedievales, entre su voluntad de escribir una historia imparcial y su trabajo desarrollado bajo el patrocinio de las autoridades políticas. Se distinguen tres grupos dobles de crónicas bajomedievales (reales y generales, castellanas y aragonesas, romances y latinas), cada uno de los cuales dotado de una intencionalidad distinta y de distintas estrategias en sus propios discursos. La lista de autores examinados incluye a Rada, Ayala, Pérez de Guzmán, Cartagena, Arévalo, Palencia, Domenech, Tomic, Viana, Turell, Valla, Margarit y Carbonell. Se ofrece, además, una aproximación a la concepción de su forma de escribir historia, detectando influencias, similitudes y diferencias.Palabras claveHistoriografía, crónicas, baja Edad Media, discursos políticos, propaganda del poder, historia de las ideas.


2003 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-46
Author(s):  
A. D. M. Barrell

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