scholarly journals The Spanish Pastoral Romances

PMLA ◽  
1892 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-119

The introduction of the pastoral romance into Spain in the middle of the sixteenth century, and the extreme favor with which it was received, may, in view of the social condition of the country, seem at first sight paradoxical. At the time of the accession of Philip II, Spain was at the zenith of her military greatness: her possessions were scattered from the North Sea to the islands of the Pacific; and her conquests had been extended over both parts of the western world. The constant wars against the Moors, during a period of over seven hundred years, and the stirring ballads founded upon them, had fostered an adventurous and chivalric spirit,—a distinguishing trait of the Spanish character. Arms and the church were the only careers that offered any opportunity for distinction, and every Spanish gentleman was, first of all, a soldier.

2009 ◽  
Vol 45 (5) ◽  
pp. 1037-1045 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolaus G. Adams ◽  
Vera L. Trainer ◽  
Gabrielle Rocap ◽  
Russell P. Herwig ◽  
Lorenz Hauser

1984 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 407-419
Author(s):  
D. W. Haslam ◽  
F. A. Pielou

Ever since man first ventured to sea, he has needed to know not only where he was in relation to the land but also what dangers lay hidden below the surface, and what courses to steer in order to avoid these unseen dangers so as to arrive safely and speedily at his destination – making due allowances for the effects of tidal streams and currents.Because his sea-maps were working documents, usually exposed to a hostile environment, fewer such old records have survived than is the case with old land maps. Undoubtedly, whilst many early voyages of exploration emanated from Europe, it should not be forgotten that in the – to European eyes – ‘unexplored’ parts of Asia and the Pacific, similar voyages were being made. However, as trade developed between Europe and the rest of the world, hydrographic surveyors from Europe began to record the information needed along the various trade routes.


Author(s):  
Thomas Pickles

Inspired by studies of Carolingian Europe, Kingship, Society, and the Church in Anglo-Saxon Yorkshire argues that the social strategies of local kin groups drove conversion to Christianity and church building in Yorkshire from AD 400 to 1066. It challenges an emphasis on the role and agency of Anglo-Saxon kings in conversion and church building. It moves forward debates surrounding the ‘minster hypothesis’ through an interdisciplinary case study. The kingdom of the Deirans stretched from the Humber to the Tees and the North Sea to the Pennines between 600 and 867. The Scandinavian kings at York probably established an administration for much of this area between 867 and 954. The West Saxon kings incorporated it into an English kingdom between 954 and 1066 and established the ‘shire’ from which the name Yorkshire derives. Members of Deiran kin groups faced uncertainties that predisposed them to consider conversion as a social strategy. Their decisions to convert produced a new social fraction—the ‘ecclesiastical aristocracy’—with a distinctive but fragile identity. The ‘ecclesiastical aristocracy’ transformed kingship, established a network of religious communities, and engaged in the conversion of the laity. The social and political instabilities produced by conversion along with the fragility of ecclesiastical identity resulted in the expropriation and reorganization of many religious communities. Nevertheless, the Scandinavian and West Saxon kings and their nobles allied with wealthy and influential archbishops of York, and there is evidence for the survival, revival, or foundation of religious communities as well as the establishment of local churches.


Author(s):  
Robert Van de Noort

Movements between different lands around the North Sea have always been taking place. While the North Sea was evolving gradually, over the millennia, following the melting of the Devensian ice sheet, close contacts across what remained of the North Sea Plain never ceased, as evidenced by near-parallel developments of the Maglemosian-type tools in southern Scandinavia and Britain (Clark 1936), and by particular practices such as the deliberate deposition of barbed points (see chapter 3). Connections across the North Sea throughout the Mesolithic and the beginning of the Neolithic would have been made easier because of the number of islands surviving within the rising sea. The polished axes from Dogger Bank and Brown Bank either represent human presence on these islands in the early Neolithic or else indicate that the existence of these islands sometime in the pre-Neolithic past was embedded in the social memory of later periods. Both possibilities emphasize the fact that the North Sea was a knowable and visited place. Movements across the North Sea took various forms: as exchange between elites from different regions of exotic or ‘prestige’ goods, and possibly of marriage partners; as trade in both luxury and bulk commodities; and in the transfer of people, in some cases as individuals such as pilgrims and missionaries, and in other cases as groups of pirates or as part of larger-scale migrations. Over time, connectedness across the North Sea changed both in nature and in intensity; this was due in no small part to changes in the nature of the craft available. An outline of the movement of goods from the Neolithic through to the end of the Middle Ages illustrates this. Contacts across the North Sea for the Neolithic and the Bronze Age are demonstrated in the long-distance exchange of exotic objects and artefacts, including Beaker pottery, jewellery, or other adornments of gold, amber, faience, jet, and tin; also copper and bronze weapons and tools, and flint daggers, arrowheads, and wrist guards (e.g. Butler, 1963; O’Connor, 1980; Bradley 1984; Clarke, Cowie, and Foxon 1985).


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Astrid Nyland ◽  
Graeme Warren ◽  
James Walker

<p>Around 8200 years ago, the Storegga tsunami, caused by a massive submarine landslide off the coast of Central Norway, struck the coasts of west Norway, Scotland and Doggerland. This event is well known from wide ranging geological and palaeobotanical work undertaken over the last 30 years. What has been less explored, however, is the potential social impact that this natural freak event had on the Mesolithic hunter-gatherer societies living on the coasts and shores of the North Sea. What happened in the tsunami’s aftermath? It has been widely assumed to have been a disaster – but was it? What constituted a disaster in the Mesolithic? In the Mesolithic, people were hunter-gatherer-fishers, they lived by, off, and with the sea. Settlement sites in West Norway were concentrated along the outer coast. People lived on the shores of islands and headlands, or along resource rich tidal currents. Eastern Scottish Mesolithic sites are also found on contemporary coasts, while the coasts of central Doggerland have long since become submerged. What happened to groups in these landscapes on the day the sea became a monster and in the years that followed? In this paper, we will outline a newly started project that will investigate the social impact of the tsunami in areas of the North Sea that have distinctive Mesolithic histories. These coastal inhabitants had, for millennia, developed their own traditions to engage with and learn how to exploit and keep safe from the sea. What can we learn about Mesolithic societies by investigating how communities handled the forces of a tsunami? Responses identified in the archaeological material and environmental archives can potentially inform us of social structures, institutions or ways of living that made the existing societies resilient or vulnerable.</p>


1830 ◽  
Vol 120 ◽  
pp. 59-68

In November 1827 I received a special commission from General Bolivar to make a survey of the Isthmus of Panamá and Darien, in order to ascertain the best and most eligible line for a communication (whether by road or canal) between the two seas. On my arrival in Panamá in March 1828 I was joined by a brother officer of Engineers, a Swede in the Colombian service, a good mathematician and of habits of great correctness in observation. Upon consulting together, we found that we could combine the particular object of the commission with a second object in which we both felt a deep interest, namely, the determination of the relative height of the ocean on either side of the Isthmus; and that we could best accomplish both, by taking a part of the present line of road between Porto Velo and Panamá, until we should fall in with the river Chagres about twenty miles above Cruces, which village is the usual landing-place for all articles of commerce in their transit from the North Sea to Panamá.


Author(s):  
Robert Van de Noort

Despite the wealth of information available on the North Sea, surprisingly few archaeologists have set out to study how people related to and connected to this sea, and other seas, in the past. In fact, we can distinguish four established traditions in archaeological research of the sea, all of which originated in the 20th century. First, many (or most) land-locked archaeologists working on any side of the North Sea have simply disregarded the sea itself, seeing it merely as the natural boundary of their study areas rather than considering its role in any significant way. At best, they are seeing the sea from the land, without genuinely engaging with it (cf. Cooney 2003: 323), although the panorama is slowly changing (e.g. cf. Bradley 1984 with Bradley 2007). Second, there are those archaeologists with an interest in long-distance exchange and exotic objects, who focused initially on the Neolithic and Bronze Age periods but have also been concerned, in more recent decades, with the early medieval period. Although these archaeologists have recognized the seas as conduits of long-distance exchange, they have rarely questioned how the practice of travel across the sea impacted on the social products of such exchange (e.g. Butler 1963, O’Connor 1980, Bradley 1984, Clarke, Cowie, and Foxon 1985, for the Neolithic and early Bronze Age; Hodges 1982, Loveluck and Tys 2006, for the early medieval period). Third, a group of archaeologists have studied the exploitation of the sea, especially for fish and salt, and the occupation and the reclamation of the edges of the sea in the Roman period and afterwards; but these studies have generally not strayed beyond the functional utilization of the sea and coast both for food and for land for food production (e.g. Clark 1961; Van den Broeke 1985; Andersen 1995, 2007; Rippon 2000; Smart 2003; Milner et al. 2004; De Kraker and Borger 2007). And fourth, maritime archaeologists’ focus has been on ships and waterside structures directly relating to shipping activities, but the development of a fuller appreciation of the significance of the sea and seafaring to past societies remains something of a distant aspiration (e.g. Ellmers 1972; McGrail 2003: 1).


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