Spiritual and Ecclesiastical Biographies: Research, Results, and Reading, ed. Anders Jarlert. Konferenser, 94. Stockholm: Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademien, 2017, 245 pp.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 327-327
Author(s):  
Albrecht Classen
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Life Writing ◽  
Emeritus Professor ◽  
Royal Swedish Academy ◽  
Research Results ◽  
International Audience ◽  
Binghamton University ◽  
Sciences Sociales ◽  
The Middle Ages

The papers combined in this volume were originally presented at a conference at the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities in Stockholm, June 11–12, 2015. The explicit purpose of this event and the subsequent volume was to expose the work of Swedish and other scholars on the genre of biographies to an international audience, reflecting on life-writing or ego-documents, emphasizing spiritual autobiographies. According to the brief bios at the end of the book, Robert Swanson, for instance, is Emeritus Professor at Binghamton University; Jean-Mark Ticchi teaches at the Centre d’Etudes en Sciences Sociales du Religieux in Paris; and Enock Bongani Zulu was lecturer at the Lutheran Theological Institute in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. The book cover is decorated with an image showing a page in Margery Kempe’s Book from ca. 1440, indicating that the focus might rest on the Middle Ages. This is only very partially the case.

Visuality, Violence and the Return of the Middle Ages: Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds as an Adaptation of the Nibelungen Story

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bettina Bildhauer
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
National Origin ◽  
International Audience ◽  
Origin Myth ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Middle Ages

This chapter argues for the first time that Quentin Tarantino based his film Inglourious Basterds in part on the medieval tale of the Nibelungs, as mediated chiefly through Fritz Lang’s Nibelungen. Inglourious Basterds can therefore be fruitfully read as an instance of medievalism, perpetuating as well as re-evaluating the widespread association of the Middle Ages with violence. An awareness of this intertext allows a nuanced interpretation of Inglourious Basterds’ stance on the power as well as manipulability of visual signs, always seen in the context of their materiality. Tarantino’s adaptation also allows fresh perspectives on the medieval Song of the Nibelungs, especially on its depiction of violent revenge. These in turn throw into relief Tarantino’s interpellation of the viewer through violence and other techniques to prevent the passive spectator position that popular culture is often accused of demanding. The film succeeds in subtly altering the conventions of cinematic representations of premodernity, and in re-appropriating a tainted national origin myth for an international audience.

History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ferdinand Gregorovius ◽  
Annie Hamilton
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City ◽  
The Middle Ages
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