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.

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.

scholarly journals Early Slavic housing from Belz surroundings

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 224-234
Author(s):  
Taras Mylian
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Key Words ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
The Other ◽  
Compacted Clay ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Big City ◽  
Conservation Research ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Middle Ages

Territory of the upper reaches of Western Bug River, especially the annalistic of Belz in Solokiya and its surroundings, is rich in archeological sites. In 2016, as part of the Program «Protection and Preservation of the Cultural Heritage of the Lviv Region for 2016–2018», conservation research was conducted at the settlement Belz 22 (Hora). It is a multi-layered settlement with cultural and chronological horizons from the final Paleolithic to modern times. Information and research on it were conducted with advantages during XX century however, for the first time in the settlement; remains of a Slavic dwelling-semi-dugout (object 20) of the Prague culture were discovered and studied. Research has shown that dwelling had two periods of functioning. Traces of restructuring were confirmed, which led to a reduction of the area and changing of the shape – from rectangular to square. Evidence of the reconstruction was the remains of two clay ovens, the oldest of which was partially cut down by a later wall. Under the remains of this wall above the furnace a Roman denarius of the II century was found. Ovens are built on special sites made of compacted clay. The older oven has a dome lined with special rollers. Discovered material is represented mainly by handmade ceramic pots, some of them are reconstructed. Some of the forms of utensils were common during the late V – early VI centuries, and the other part – during the second half of VI – early VII century. This division corresponded to the periods of housing. An important find was the weights for the loom, which were reused to build the oven. An additional evidence of the development of weaving in the settlement is a bi-conical spinner with flat platforms, which comes from dwelling. The settlement on the outskirts of the annalistic Belz is characterized by permanence and genetic connection throughout the Middle Ages – from individual Slavic settlements in this region to the creation of a separate principality around the big city. Key words: Prague culture, Belz, Solokiya, dwelling, oven, ceramics, denarius.

XXI Jewish Knowledge of the Samaritan Alphabet in the Middle Ages

1913 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 613-626 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Gaster
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Western World ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Middle Ages

The Jews have never practically lost sight of the Samaritans, unlike the Christians, who for at least a thousand years had entirely forgotten their existence, as no writer or pilgrim to the Holy Land speaks of them with the solitary exception of Mandeville. It was therefore a great surprise to the Western world when at the beginning of the seventeenth century the darkness began to be lifted, and through Scaliger, Huntingdon, and Della Valle for the first time authentic news about the Samaritans, their language, and their Bible began to reach Europe.

scholarly journals The Monobloc Chair: Democratising the Practice of Sitting

Res Mobilis ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (11) ◽  
pp. 3-18
Author(s):  
Carsten Kullmann
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of ◽  
Multiple Meanings ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Middle Ages

This article examines the cultural history of chairs to understand the many meanings the Monobloc can acquire. The history of chairs is traced from post nomadic culture through the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment period and the French Revolution. Subsequently, I will examine the Monobloc from a Cultural Studies perspective and demonstrate how its unique characteristics allow multiple meanings, which are always dependent on context and discourse. Thus, the Monobloc becomes an utterly democratic symbol of popular culture that can be appropriated for any use.

Census of a Reception Centre

1968 ◽  
Vol 114 (513) ◽  
pp. 1031-1039 ◽  
Author(s):  
Griffith Edwards ◽  
Valerie Williamson ◽  
Ann Hawker ◽  
Celia Hensman ◽  
Seta Postoyan
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Black Death ◽  
Contractual Relationship ◽  
Local Relief ◽  
First Time ◽  
Reception Centre ◽  
The Middle Ages

In the second half of the fourteenth century, the whole problem of poverty became in England for the first time a matter of government concern. The contractual relationship between landlord and villein which had prevailed during the Middle Ages, was breaking down, and the Black Death hastened this process. Statutes dealing with vagrancy and poverty were promulgated in 1349, 1351 and 1388: the able-bodied beggar was punished in the stocks and generally repression was the keynote, but despite harsh laws vagrancy increased. In a series of statutes from 1531–1601 the Tudor sovereigns initiated a system of local relief based on the Parish unit. In 1576, Houses of Correction were established:“to the intent youth may be accustomed and brought up in labour and work, and then not likely to grow to be able rogues, and to the intent that such as be already grown up in idleness and so rogues at this present, may not have any just excuse in saying that they cannot get any service of work”.(De Schweinitz, 1943).

Matei Cazacu, Dracula. Ed. Stephen W. Reinert, trans. Nicole Mordarski et al. East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–1450, 46. Leiden: Brill, 2017, pp. xxxiii, 457, 27 illus.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 438-439
Author(s):  
Thomas Farmer
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
The Public ◽  
Historical Figure ◽  
The Middle Ages

The name Vlad III Ţepeş may be unfamiliar to the public, but Dracula certainly is not; the latter conjures up a host of images from popular culture, most of which have only a tenuous connection to the former. Yet Dracula was an actual historical figure, and Matei Cazacu’s biography reveals that his life and reign are worthy of study in their own right. Having originally appeared in French in 2004, it has now been translated into English by Nicole Mordarski, a student of Stephen Reinert at Rutgers. As Reinert explains in his introduction, Mordarski translated Cazacu’s French narrative (with assistance), while he handled translations of the quotations from their original languages into English and updated the bibliography. The result is a godsend for Anglophone readers, who now have access to a thorough, scholarly account of the Impaler’s life and times.

The term “Macedonian(s)” in Ottoman Macedonia: on the map and in the mind

2012 ◽  
Vol 40 (5) ◽  
pp. 747-766
Author(s):  
Maria Pandevska
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Historical Reality ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
The Mind ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Middle Ages

In this article I analyze the term “Macedonian(s)” based on the discourse of the Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (1893–1908) from the aspect of the internal understanding of the term as a supra-local and supra-church identity. Another matter for analysis in this article is that of the stereotypes in the interpretation of Macedonian historical processes inherited from the nineteenth century, still present in some contemporary historiographies. Hence, the article makes an attempt to bring down the stereotype about the existence of some unique Macedonian ethnic phenomenon known as the “Macedonian salad.” This article also deals with the significance of the geopolitical position of Ottoman Macedonia within the empire. More specifically, the emphasis is placed on the change of its position after the Great Eastern Crisis (1875–1881). Namely, for the first time since the Ottoman conquests in the Middle Ages, Macedonia's position within the empire changed from being a central to a peripheral Ottoman province, with all the advantages and disadvantages that this change brought about. This aspect of Macedonian historical reality is often neglected in the historiography.

Heriger and the Study of Philosophy at Lobbes in the Tenth Century

Traditio ◽  
1984 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 307-317
Author(s):  
Robert G. Babcock
Keyword(s):  
Small Group ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Recent Article ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Clear Indication ◽  
First Time ◽  
Gerbert Of Aurillac ◽  
The Middle Ages ◽  
Peri Hermeneias

In a recent article on the study of Boethian logical works during the Middle Ages, Osmund Lewry discusses the revival of logical studies at the end of the tenth century, focusing on the period after ca. 970 when Abbo of Fleury and Gerbert of Aurillac (later Pope Sylvester II) renewed the teaching and study of dialectical works, and when Notker Labeo translated some logical texts into German. To this small group of tenth-century scholars known to have been concerned with dialectic and philosophy may be added the name of Heriger, schoolmaster and abbot (990–1007) of the Belgian monastery of Lobbes. The present study begins with the identification of quotations by Heriger from dialectical and philosophical works, then discusses Heriger's use of dialectic in theological argumentation, and finally considers the influence of his philosophical teaching at Lobbes. Heriger's interest in dialectic is revealed by quotations in his Vita Remacli from Boethius' In Topica Ciceronis and Apuleius' Peri Hermeneias. These quotations are identified for the first time in the present study. The application of dialectical learning to theological questions, specifically his use of logical principles in his tract De corpore et sanguine domini (PL 139.179–88), indicates that Heriger's quotations from logical texts reflect more than bookish antiquarianism; the study of dialectic was useful to him in theological argumentation. The evidence of Heriger's philosophical pursuits provides the first clear indication that Lobbes was one of the important Lotharingian centers for philosophical studies.

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