Reading Medieval French Literature from a Global Perspective

PMLA ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 130 (2) ◽  
pp. 367-374 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sahar Amer
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
French Literature ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
Literary Production ◽  
Medieval French Literature ◽  
Revisionist History ◽  
Literary Relations ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Literature

Only in the last decade has the field of medieval french literature recognized the need for a critical gaze that looks outside France and beyond the persistent Eurocentric accounts of medieval French literary history. These accounts long viewed medieval French literary production primarily in relation to the Latin, Celtic, and Provençal traditions. My research over the last twenty years has called for a revisionist history of literature and of empires and has highlighted the fact that throughout the Middle Ages France entertained “inter-imperial” literary relations—not only with European traditions but also with extra-European cultures, specifically with the Islamicate world.

scholarly journals Global Middle Ages ou as virtudes do anacronismo. A lição do texto medieval

2019 ◽  
Vol 02 ◽  
pp. 117-149
Author(s):  
Carlos Carreto
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Medieval Literature ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
The Other ◽  
New Meanings ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
Literature Mapping ◽  
History Of Literature

Has the Middle Ages invented globalization or revealed a clear consciousness of globality? On the other hand, may this anachronistic notion prove to be an appropriate and productive operative and analytical concept for rethinking medieval literature beyond its territorial and linguistic boundaries and the epistemological view of the world imposed by a (neo)positivist conception of the history of literature? Mapping the medieval literature in a global perspective implies a methodological repositioning and a process of deterritorialization of the concepts themselves that leads us to reinvest motives, forms, structuring notions (from the chivalric queste to the concept of romance as translatio, passing through the status of the marvelous) with new meanings and, consequently, new cultural and poetic implications.

scholarly journals “thi all vores lærdom er dog mesten halfverk og stumpeviis”: en islandsk litteraturhistorie fra det 18. århundrede

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 32-54
Author(s):  
Guðrún Ingólfsdóttir ◽  
Þórunn Sigurðardóttir
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Precise Information ◽  
Narrative Style ◽  
Interesting Part ◽  
History Of ◽  
Literary Histories ◽  
History Of Literature

Apparatus Literariam Islandicam: An Icelandic History of Literature from the Eighteenth CenturyThis article discusses an Icelandic literary history, compiled in the first half of the eighteenth century. The author was Jón Ólafsson from Grunnavík, who is best known for his work at the Arnamagneana collection in Copenhagen. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, European intellectuals began to write literary histories where literature was classified and defined in a novel manner, and which included precise information on various authors and their literary products. Jón Ólafsson’s history is a part of this effort. In his work, he deals with Icelandic poets and literati from the Middle Ages to his own time. The work demonstrates many of the main characteristics of literary histories of this period. The author borrows, for example, the methods of the Danish literary historian Albert Thura, but he is also influenced by Icelandic intellectuals such as Árni Magnússon, Þormóður Torfason and Páll Vídalín. Jón Ólafsson’s narrative style is, however, rather peculiar and his text is partly based on Icelandic oral tradition. An interesting part of Jón Ólafsson’s work is a chapter on female intellectuals and poets, but there he follows Thura’s example. Jón Ólafsson’s history has never been printed; neither has it been widely used by scholars. The authors of this article are preparing an edition of the work.

Connecting the Dots. Italian Literature in a Global History of Literature

2013 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 300-308
Author(s):  
Bart Van Den Bossche
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Italian Literature ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
Global History ◽  
Literary Traditions ◽  
Literary Historiography ◽  
History Of ◽  
Connecting The Dots ◽  
History Of Literature ◽  
Looking Glass

The goals and methods of a global history of literature may not always be easily reconcilable with those pertinent to local (‘national’ or ‘regional’) literary traditions; however, behind the, at times, lengthy or painstaking discussions on the criteria of selection, emphasis, and on more or less necessary nuances, there are also a number of deeper and more fundamental issues at stake in a global history of literature that can be fruitfully approached through the looking-glass of a local literary tradition. Even characteristics of a particular tradition of literature that may seem specific, even highly specific, can give rise to intriguing questions bearing on some of the wide-ranging issues tied to a global perspective on literature. More in particular, with regard to Italian literature, three issues come to the fore: the way literary history deals with the question of agency, the connections between literary history and cultural repertoires, and the question of canonicity and ideology in literary historiography.

Iuwers zornes unmâze / missevellet uns sêre – Legitimität von Maßlosigkeit im mittelalterlichen Erzählkosmos

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-28
Author(s):  
Amelie Bendheim
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
The Other ◽  
Epic Hero ◽  
Heroic Epic ◽  
History Of ◽  
Flore Und Blanscheflur ◽  
The One ◽  
History Of Literature ◽  
Historical Epoch ◽  
Flexible Model

AbstractStarting from the deficiencies of current approaches regarding the description of the hero in medieval narratives, this article aims to functionalise exorbitance (unmâze) as a new category of literary history. Unlike the conceptual and binary typing of the protagonist as ‘hero’ resp. ‘knight’, this category promotes a flexible model that operates relationally and hence enables gradual differentiations between the texts.Examples of medieval (heroic) epic (‘Nibelungenlied’) and (chivalric) romance (‘Flore und Blanscheflur’, ‘Wigalois’) will show the narrative treatment and stylisation of the exorbitant hero. The focus will be on the varying assessments of his acts: If the epic hero is able to defy social norms and current laws (cf. Siegfried’s courtship, Hagen’s murdering of Siegfried) without being penalised, the exorbitance in the romance falls within the scope of ‘ratio’. Thus, exorbitance is on the one hand confined and ‘assessed’, on the other hand excessive acts are rigorously sanctioned and inhibited. Referring to the current manifestations of exorbitance in the socio-political context, the concept of exorbitance emerges as an unchanged productive pattern. Its socio-political relevance encourages a literary-historical, epoch-spanning use of this concept, whose scope is a re-assessment of the history of literature as the history of exorbitance.

Corruption and Redemption: The Legend of Valluvar and Tamil Literary History

2000 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 449-482 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Blackburn
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Language Ideologies ◽  
Cultural Identities ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Literary Historiography ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Literary Histories ◽  
History Of Literature

This [the Valluvar legend] is one of the traditions which are so repugnant to inveterate popular prejudice that they appear too strange for fiction, and are probably founded on fact. (Robert Caldwell 1875:132).If we now recognize that literary history is more than a history of literature, it is perhaps less widely accepted that the writing of literary history is an important subject for literary historiography. Yet literary histories are a rich source for understanding local conceptions of both history and literature. More accessible than archaeology, more tangible than ethnology, literary histories are culturally constructed narratives in which the past is reimagined in the light of contemporary concerns. Certainly in nineteenth-century India, the focus of this essay, literary history was seized upon as evidence to be advanced in the major debates of the time; cultural identities, language ideologies, civilization hierarchies and nationalism were all asserted and challenged through literary histories in colonial India. Asserted and challenged by Europeans, as well as Indians.

A Literary History of Spain. The Middle Ages

1973 ◽  
Vol 57 (7) ◽  
pp. 377
Author(s):  
Ines Dolz Henry ◽  
A. D. Deyermond ◽  
R. O. Jones
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Literary History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Middle Ages

scholarly journals Komparatystyka i (inna) Historia Literatury / Comparative Literature Studies and (an Alternative ) History of Literature

2012 ◽  
Vol 53 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 401-422
Author(s):  
Andrzej Hejmej
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Comparative Studies ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
Critical Thought ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
National Model ◽  
David Damrosch ◽  
History Of Literature

Summary This article examines the relationship between comparative studies and history of literature. While paying special attention to the present-day condition of these two disciplines, the author surveys various approaches, formulated since the early 19th century, which sought to break with the traditional, national model of the history of literature and the ethnocentric model of traditional comparative studies, driven by an impatience with both nationalism and crypto-nationalism. In this context he focuses on the most recent projects of literary history like ‘comparative history of literature’, ‘international history of literature’, ‘transcultural history of literature’, or ‘world literature’ - all of which are oriented towards the international dimension of literary history. The article explores the possible reasons for the late 20th and early 21st- century revival of Goethe’s idea of Weltliteratur (in the critical thought of Pascal Casanova, David Damrosch, and Franco Moretti) and the recent vogue for ‘alternative’ histories of literature produced under the auspices of comparative cultural studies. At the same time it voices some skepticism about the radical reinvention of comparative studies (along the lines of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s Death of a Discipline).

scholarly journals Suvremena strujanja u komparatistici

2008 ◽  
Vol 3 (1.) ◽  
Author(s):  
Katarina Ivon
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Literature ◽  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Literary History ◽  
European Studies ◽  
Research Paradigms ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Literature ◽  
Focus Point

This paper is a preview of contemporary trends in comparative literature. The starting point of this research is the fact that change of research paradigms is a key feature of contemporary comparative literature. Change of research paradigms refers to imagery research, a new focus point of comparative literature that deals with images of certain country and its culture in another cultural surrounding, and to the notion of intercultural history of literature, which also includes the concept of interliterary community. The author also presents two new tendencies in contemporary comparative literature: cultural studies and European studies. The paper analyzes the responses of these new trends in Croatian literary history, but it also focuses on their impact on further researches in Croatian literature.

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