Popular Romance in Iceland

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheryl McDonald Werronen
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
Literature Discussion ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Popular Romance ◽  
Manuscript Tradition ◽  
The World ◽  
King Of France ◽  
Manuscript Context

A late medieval Icelandic romance about the ‘maiden-king’ of France, Nítída saga generated interest in its day and grew in popularity in post-Reformation Iceland, yet until now it has not received the comprehensive scholarly analysis that it much deserves. Analysing this saga from a variety of perspectives, this book sheds light on the manner in which Nítída saga explores and negotiates the romance genre from an Icelandic perspective, showcasing this exciting saga’s strong female characters, worldviews, and long manuscript tradition. Beginning with Nítída saga’s manuscript context, including its reception and transformation in early modern Iceland, this study also discusses how Nítída saga was influenced by, and also later influenced, other Icelandic romances. Considering the text as literature, discussion of its unusual depiction of world geography, as well as the various characters and their relationships, provides insights into medieval Icelanders’ ideas about themselves and the world they lived in, including questions about Icelandic identity, gender, female solidarity, and the literary genre of romance itself. The book also includes a newly revised reading edition and translation of Nítída saga.

Poeta in Vinculis I

2019 ◽  
pp. 109-170
Author(s):  
Monika Fludernik
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Traumatic Experience ◽  
John Bunyan ◽  
Major Focus ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The World ◽  
Psychological Coping

Chapter 2 contrasts the writings of Thomas More and John Bunyan. The chapter foregrounds these authors’ strategies of imaginative and psychological coping, considering how their texts reflect the traumatic experience of incarceration in the imaginative re-enactment of their fiction. The chapter introduces a number of prison tropes besides the WORLD AS PRISON/PRISON AS WORLD metaphor, most prominently in Bunyan the SIN AS PRISON trope. A major focus of the chapter concerns the difficult relationship between fact, fiction, and allegory in the work of the two authors and their contemporaries. A final section of the chapter links Bunyan’s poetry to the tradition of late medieval and early modern prison verse.

‘I, Too, am a Christian’: Early Martyrs and their Lives in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Irish Manuscript Tradition

2011 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 193-207
Author(s):  
Salvador Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Christian Life ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Manuscript Tradition ◽  
Over Time

Veneration of the martyrs as powerful intercessors and exemplars of Christ-like fortitude is one of the earliest and most powerful manifestations of Christian religious practice. Not only were martyrs thought to be assured of salvation, but the blood which they shed was conceived by Tertullian as ‘seed’ for the upbuilding of the Christian Church. As legends of their lives and, more importantly, the manner of their deaths developed over time, martyrs would also function as valuable instructors in the essentials of the Christian life, their speeches before death often assuming a sermon-like quality. By the fifth century recourse to the relics of martyrs was also already well established. The cult of the martyrs would have a long future.

Wangara, Akan and Portuguese in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. I. The matter of Bitu

1982 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivor Wilks
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Trade Agreements ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The World ◽  
Early Modern Times ◽  
Late Fifteenth

In late medieval and early modern times West Africa was one of the principal suppliers of gold to the world bullion market. In this context the Matter of Bitu is one of much importance. Bitu lay on the frontiers of the Malian world and was one of its most flourishing gold marts. So much is clear from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writings, both African and European. A review of this body of evidence indicates that the gold trade at Bitu was controlled by the Wangara, who played a central role in organizing trade between the Akan goldfields and the towns of the Western Sudan. It is shown that Bitu cannot be other than Bighu (Begho, Bew, etc.), the abandoned Wangara town lying on the northwestern fringes of the Akan forest country, which is known (from excavation) to have flourished in the relevant period. In the late fifteenth century the Portuguese established posts on the southern shores of the Akan country, so challenging the monopolistic position which the Wangara had hitherto enjoyed in the gold trade. The Portuguese sent envoys to Mali, presumably to negotiate trade agreements. The bid was apparently unsuccessful. The struggle for the Akan trade in the sixteenth century between Portuguese and Malian interests will be treated in the second part of this paper.

4. The age of exploration

2015 ◽  
pp. 40-61
Author(s):  
Stewart A. Weaver
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Human History ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Christopher Columbus ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Global Power ◽  
Age Of Exploration ◽  
The World ◽  
Modern Europe

‘The age of exploration ’ considers why textbooks and teachers privilege late-medieval and early-modern Europe when designating “the age of exploration” and not the earlier Greek, Roman, Arab, Norse, Polynesian, or Mongol achievements in terms of exploration and cultural reach. It is for three main reasons. Firstly, because the late-medieval extrusion of European maritime power and the associated record of exploration were global in reach. Secondly, they were unprecedented in scope and daring. Thirdly, the exploration of the world by fifteenth- and sixteenth-century European mariners, such as Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama, permanently and decisively altered the lineaments of global power and set human history on the broad common course that it still to this day follows.

Some conspicuous women in the Original Chronicle, Scotichronicon and Scotorum Historia

2008 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicola Royan
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Late Medieval

This piece argues that female characters in late medieval and early modern Scottish historiography can have a function beyond their individual identities. This function may be to represent the realm, particularly when under attack or in pursuit of justice; or, alternatively, to figure and to contain rebellion and dissent. Through selected examples from three narratives, the article explores the various emphases placed by different writers and suggests the significance of this for the wider interpretation of the historiography under consideration.

The World of Image in Islamic Philosophy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. W. C. van Lit
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Islamic Philosophy ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Ibn Sina ◽  
The World ◽  
Innovative Thinking ◽  
History Of ◽  
Insight Into

This book traces the notion of a world of image from its conception until today. This notion is one of the most original innovations in medieval Islamic philosophy, and is unique compared to other parts of the history of philosophy. The notion originated out of discussions on the fate of human beings after death; would this be spiritual only or physical as well? The world of image suggests that there exists a world of non-physical (imagined) bodies, beyond our earthly existence. This world may be entered after death and glimpses of it may already be witnessed during sleep or meditation. Ibn Sīnā (d. 1037) was the first to suggest something along these lines, arguing that people could simply imagine their afterlife without the need for it to be actually physical. Suhrawardī (d. 1191) included this suggestion in his innovative thinking on epistemology, known as ‘knowledge by presence’, without fully ontologizing it. Shahrazūrī (d. > 1286), finally, turned Suhrawardī’s thinking into the full-blown notion of a world of image. Notably through Taftāzānī (d. 1390) and Shaykh Bahāʾī (d. 1621), the idea gained wider popularity and continued to be discussed, especially in Shīʿī circles, up to this day. This book gives an insight into late medieval and early modern Islamic philosophy, especially the role of commentary writing. It sets the record straight for the provenance and development of the world of image and reconsiders the importance of Suhrawardī for the development of philosophy in the Islamic world.

scholarly journals Alchemy and the Transgendering of Mercury

2015 ◽  
Vol 19 (1 and 2) ◽  
pp. 99-113
Author(s):  
M. E. Warlick
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Early Modern Science ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Philosophical Concept ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Printed Books

Within late medieval alchemical texts, Latin authors adopted both classical and Arabic concepts of physical matter. They assumed that metals were composed of two polarized substances – hot, dry and masculine Philosophic Sulphur, and cool, wet and feminine Philosophic Mercury – whose ‘Chemical Wedding’ within the laboratory produced the Philosophers’ Stone. As visual illustrations developed in alchemical manuscripts and early printed books from the late fourteenth century onward, artists represented these substances with a variety of male and female characters, with Philosophic Mercury almost always depicted as a woman. At the same time, the planet Mercury, which oversaw the ripening of the metal Quicksilver within the earth, also played an important role within alchemical illustrations. This paper will examine how artists navigated this confusion by examining gendered images of the philosophical concept Mercury, the metal Mercury, and the planet Mercury, in light of shifting attitudes towards women in early modern science.

“All in a Garden Green”: Shakespeare's Staging of Garden Imagery

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-252
Author(s):  
Deborah Solomon
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
The Public ◽  
The World ◽  
Audience Interaction ◽  
The Many ◽  
Green World

This essay draws attention to the surprising lack of scholarship on the staging of garden scenes in Shakespeare's oeuvre. In particular, it explores how garden scenes promote collaborative acts of audience agency and present new renditions of the familiar early modern contrast between the public and the private. Too often the mention of Shakespeare's gardens calls to mind literal rather than literary interpretations: the work of garden enthusiasts like Henry Ellacombe, Eleanour Sinclair Rohde, and Caroline Spurgeon, who present their copious gatherings of plant and flower references as proof that Shakespeare was a garden lover, or the many “Shakespeare Gardens” around the world, bringing to life such lists of plant references. This essay instead seeks to locate Shakespeare's garden imagery within a literary tradition more complex than these literalizations of Shakespeare's “flowers” would suggest. To stage a garden during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries signified much more than a personal affinity for the green world; it served as a way of engaging time-honored literary comparisons between poetic forms, methods of audience interaction, and types of media. Through its metaphoric evocation of the commonplace tradition, in which flowers double as textual cuttings to be picked, revised, judged, and displayed, the staged garden offered a way to dramatize the tensions produced by creative practices involving collaborative composition and audience agency.

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