Illuminated History Books in the Anglo-Norman World, 1066-1272

Author(s):  
Laura Cleaver

During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries texts about the recent and more distant past were produced in remarkable numbers in the lands controlled by the kings of England. This may be seen, in part, as a response to changing social and political circumstances in the wake of the Norman conquest of England in 1066. The names of many of the twelfth- and thirteenth-century historians are well known, and they include Orderic Vitalis, William of Malmesbury, John of Worcester, Henry of Huntingdon, Gerald of Wales, and Matthew Paris. Yet the manuscripts in which these works survive are also evidence for the involvement of many other people in the production of history, as patrons, scribes, and artists. This study focuses on history books of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to examine what they reveal about the creation, circulation, and reception of history in this period. In particular, this research concentrates on illuminated manuscripts. These volumes represent an additional investment of time, labour, and resources, and combinations of text and imagery shed light on engagements with the past as manuscripts were copied at specific times and places. Imagery could be used to reproduce the features of older sources, but it was also used to call attention to particular elements of a text, and to impose frameworks onto the past. As a result the study of illuminated history books has the potential to change the way in which we see the medieval past and its historians.

2020 ◽  
Vol 135 (575) ◽  
pp. 743-774
Author(s):  
Susan Raich Sequeira

Abstract This article investigates the naval strategies of England’s post-Conquest kings, especially from c.1100–1189, a period for which modern scholarship has yet to recognise the existence of a royal navy. It demonstrates that post-Conquest kings deployed warships, summoned defensive fleets, and launched their own invasion navies throughout the long twelfth century. Previously unnoticed evidence for the maintenance of warships under Henry II is discussed and records of fleet recruitment are used to shed light on the systems behind naval levies. Given all this evidence, it can firmly be concluded that there was a navy at the disposal of England’s Anglo-Norman and Angevin kings. The origins of this navy are twofold. Firstly, twelfth-century tactics drew on Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Danish systems and precedents, suggesting the long continuity of post-Conquest naval activities rather than sudden naval innovation under any particular king. The ‘English navy’ therefore did not decline after the Norman Conquest, nor was it a new foundation of Richard I. Secondly, England’s twelfth-century rulers relied upon the maritime skills and co-operation of coastal and port inhabitants across the realm. These coastal denizens’ motivations for participation in royal navies reveal both the extent and the limitations of English royal power. Royal naval activities took place against the backdrop of a European north that was becoming ever more connected by sea routes. English navies were therefore a crucial component of territorial expansion and warfare across a realm situated in the midst of extensive pan-European trading networks.


2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 100-123
Author(s):  
Tyler S. Schafer ◽  
David R. Dickens

Disputes over historical representations often revolve around competing narratives about the past, but the processes through which these narratives are constructed are often neglected. In this paper, we extend the concept of collective memory using Brekhus’ notion of social marking to investigate the creation and maintenance of collective representations of the Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata. We analyze the claims made in speeches and communiqués produced by two opposing groups—the Mexican government and the Zapatista movement—in a decades-long dispute over land and indigenous rights. Moreover, we argue that processes of social marking can further explain the selective nature of collective memory, that is, how certain parts of the past are remem­bered and emphasized while others are de-emphasized and forgotten. Also, in our analysis of social marking, we identify a naturalization process that is utilized by actors in mnemonic battles to recast their constructed representations of the past as natural, pure, and true. We close with a discussion of how understanding the naturalization process as outlined here can shed light on current political and historical disputes.


Author(s):  
Laura Cleaver

This chapter explores combinations of text and imagery in histories produced in England between 1066 and 1272. It focuses on case studies of the Worcester chronicle, and the works of Henry of Huntingdon, Gerald of Wales, Ralph Diceto, and Matthew Paris. Through an examination of page design and the content and location of imagery, it argues that decoration could be used to attract and engage readers, and to add nuance to text. Imagery was used to draw attention to elements of the narrative, prompt a reader to connect chronologically distant events, and impose interpretative frameworks onto the past. This chapter argues that the imagery in many of these histories was intended to help a reader connect the past and present, but that this, together with the complexity of such page designs, often led to images being omitted when text was subsequently copied.


2018 ◽  
Vol 86 ◽  
pp. 153-181
Author(s):  
Iben Fonnesberg-Schmidt ◽  
William Kynan-Wilson

This article examines textual descriptions of smiling, laughing and joking with the pope in thirteenth-century Rome. It focuses on two Anglo-Norman accounts of conducting litigation at the papal curia: Thomas of Marlborough's (d.1236) Chronicon abbatiae de Eveshamand Gerald of Wales's (c. 1146–1220×23)De jure et statu Menevensis ecclesiae. Both authors include several careful and prominent references to smiling, laughing and joking, and specifically in relation to Pope Innocent III. These passages have previously been read as straightforward examples of wit and friendship, but this study shows that the authors use these physiological expressions to convey complex and subtly different pictures of the papal curia. Above all, this article demonstrates how Thomas and Gerald's descriptions of humorous interactions with the pope play crucial narrative and mnemonic roles within their work.


Slavic Review ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 766-791 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Rann

This article examines Vladimir Maiakovskii's frequent references to statues and monuments in his poetry in relation to traditions of iconoclasm in Russian culture in order not only to shed light on the poet's attitude toward the role of the past in the creation of a new culture but also to investigate the way in which the destruction, relocation, and transformation of monuments, both in the urban landscape and in art, reflects political change in Russia. James Rann demonstrates that, while Maiakovskii often invoked a binary iconoclastic discourse in which creation necessitates destruction, his poetry also articulated a more nuanced vision of cultural change through the symbol of the moving monument: the statue is preserved but also transformed and liberated. Finally, an analysis of “Vo ves' golos” shows how Maiakovskii's myth of the statue helped him articulate his relationship to Soviet power and to his own poetic legacy.


2017 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 83-100
Author(s):  
Susana Costa e Silva ◽  
Ana Isabel Tavares Vieira

Abstract Over the past few years, a large number of projects related to entrepreneurship ideas have appeared daily in the media, due to the fact that they were sold as new solutions for companies or gave origin to new companies. These projects were mainly created by individuals who were students, unemployed persons or working people and, consequently, did not have a company of their own and, in most of the cases, also did not have the means to finance their idea. In some situations, the creation of a crowdfunding project presents itself as a convenient and riskless option for funding and this is frequently the reason why some project initiators decide to launch a campaign. The assessment of each campaign depends on the expectations of the project creator, who is in the best position to decide whether it was actually successful. Untangling how a project owner can assess the performance of its project is of major importance, namely when projects are launched by individuals who ultimately carry all the tasks involved in the initiative. This is a field of research within crowdfunding that remains, to the best of our knowledge, under researched. We propose a framework for the analysis of the success of these projects and we test it on six crowdfunding projects launched in Portugal. Our goal is to shed light to the factors that can be used by project creators in the assessment of the performance of their initiatives.


2009 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
JUDITH M. BROADBENT

The absence ofI amn'tfor the first person singular present tense negative form is taken to indicate that there is a gap in the paradigm. Recent accounts take a morphosyntactic approach and phonology is largely ignored. Such accounts typically focus on contemporary forms of Standard English. This paper, in contrast, compares nineteenth-century and contemporary West Yorkshire (WY) aux+n'tforms and pursues a largely phonological solution. The paper sets out to demonstrate that WY has never had a *amn'tgap and that changes over the past century shed light on the *amn'tgap problem. Contemporary WY is known to exhibit a phenomenon called secondary contraction, wherebyshouldn't[ʃʊdʔ], for example, may be pronounced [ʃunʔ]. I argue that secondary contraction is responsible for the creation of homophones foramn'tandaren't: [aːnt]/[aːt]. I will consider the possibility that certain aux+n'tforms have become lexicalised and that this has triggered secondary contraction as a phonological repair strategy. With the analysis of WY data as a backdrop, the paper then pursues the possibility that lexicalisation may have occurred, at a much earlier date, in precursors of Standard British English (SBE). Indeed, it seems plausible that homophony foramn'tandaren'tmay have led to prescription against new realisations ofamn't. The paper will show that grammaticallyamn'thas evolved in exactly the same way as other auxn'tforms, and it is only commentators who have treated it differently. If this is so, the *amn'tgap in SBE is man-made rather than grammatical in nature.


2014 ◽  
Vol 2013 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kalerante Evagelia

AbstractThe present paper is involved with the Pedagogical faculties’ students’ critique on the current educational system as it has been altered after 1981. The research was carried out utilizing both quantitative and qualitative tools. Students-voters participated in the interviews whereas active voters were difficult to be located to meet the research requirements. The dynamics of the specific political party is based on a popular profile in terms of standpoints related to economic, social and political issues. The research findings depict the students’ strong wish for a change of the curricula and a turn towards History and Religion as well as an elevation of the Greek historic events, as the History books that have been written and taught at schools over the past years contributed to the downgrading of the Greek national and cultural identity. There is also a students’ strong belief that globalization and the immigrants’ presence in Greece have functioned in a negative way against the Greek ideal. Therefore, an overall change of the educational content could open the path towards the reconstruction of the moral values and the Greek national identity.


Author(s):  
المختار الأحمر

الملخّص يتناول البحث علاقة الفطرة بالشريعة في التفكير الإسلامي، وما تطرحه هذه العلاقة سواء على مستوى بيان الجوانب المتعلقة بخَلْق الإنسان وما فُطِر عليه ابتداء، وهذا البعد يمثّل الجانب التكوني في مفهوم الفطرة، أو على المستوى المتعلق بالشريعة وفطريتها، أي أنها جارية وفق ما يدركه العقل وتشهد به الفطرة، وهذا البعد يمثّل الجانب التشريعي الذي يطرحه مفهوم الفطرة. لقد زخرت أغلب الكتابات بتناول جانبا واحدا مما يتيحه أو يعكسه مفهوم الفطرة، لكن البحث في العلاقة التناسبية بين الفطرة والشريعة، وما يتيحه هذا النظر المتلازم بين المفهومين على مستوى الإمكانات المتعلقة بقدرات الإنسان الفطرية في فهم وتعقّل الخطاب الشرعي والأحكام التكليفية، والوقوف على غاياته ومقاصده، يبقى في حاجة إلى البحث والاستقصاء. ولذلك تأتي هذه الدراسة لتسليط الضوء على الجانب التشريعي والتكويني في علاقة الشريعة بالفطرة، باعتبارهما نظامين متلازمين يتيحان فهم طبيعة الشريعة وأحكامها ومقاصدها من جهة، وتحديد جوهر وماهية الإنسان الفطرية وإمكاناته في تعقّل هذه الشريعة من جهة ثانية.                  الكلمات المفتاحية: الفطرة، الشريعة، الدين، التكاليف، العقل. Abstract This research addresses the relationship between premordial human nature (fitrah) and Islamic law (SharÊÑah) within the frame of Islamic thought, while exploring the questions it raises at two levels. The first level explains the aspects related to the creation of man and what has initially been bestowed upon him, which represents the evolutionary aspect of the concept of fiÏrah. The second level is related to SharÊÑah and its nature, which evolves according to what is percieved by reason and witnessed by fiÏrah; this represents the legislative aspect presented by the concept of fiÏrah. The majority of studies to date address a single aspect of the illustrations of the concept of fiÏrah. However, research on the dialectic relationship between fiÏrah and SharÊÑah and what its relevant concurrent view provides at the level of potentials related to human innate capacities in understanding and realizing SharÊÑah discourse and mandatory provisions as well as understanding its objectives  remains scarce and requires further research and investigation. Therefore, this study intends to shed light on the legislative and evolutionary aspects of the relationship between SharÊÑah and fiÏrah as two interconnected systems that allow for the understanding of the nature of SharÊÑah, its provisions and purposes, as well as identifying the essence of human innate nature and its potential in perceiving SharÊÑah. Keywords: human nature (fiÏrah), Islamic law (SharÊÑah), religious mandates (TakÉlif), religion, intellect (ÑAqal).


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