Ruins and wonders: The poetics of cultural memory in and of early medieval England

Visions and ruins ◽

10.7228/manchester/9781526125934.003.0002 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Joshua Davies

Keyword(s):

Middle Ages ◽

Old English ◽

Cultural Memory ◽

Reception History ◽

First Century ◽

Modern World ◽

Extended Study ◽

English Poem ◽

History Of ◽

The Middle Ages

The Old English poem known as The Ruin meditates on the material remains of a long-passed civilisation and has often been read as typical of the nostalgic poetry of the Anglo-Saxons, but its reception history reveals how cultural memories of the Anglo-Saxons have been rewritten in the modern world and the importance of the idea of ruination to modern conceptions of the Middle Ages. This chapter constitutes the first extended study of the disciplinary and translation histories of The Ruin, traces the history of the poem from 1826 to the twenty-first century and explores the meanings of ruins in the Middle Ages and modernity.

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Allegra Iafrate, The Long Life of Magical Objects: A Study in the Solomonic Tradition. The Magic in History Series. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019, xi, 235 pp., 19 b/w images, 2 tables.

Mediaevistik ◽

10.3726/med.2019.01.13 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 32 (1) ◽

pp. 252-254

Author(s):

Albrecht Classen

Keyword(s):

Early Modern ◽

Middle Ages ◽

Literary Texts ◽

Modern World ◽

State University ◽

Eastern Culture ◽

Historical Objects ◽

History Of ◽

Religious Objects ◽

The Middle Ages

Throughout times, magic and magicians have exerted a tremendous influence, and this even in our (post)modern world (see now the contributions to Magic and Magicians in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Time, ed. Albrecht Classen, 2017; here not mentioned). Allegra Iafrate here presents a fourth monograph dedicated to magical objects, primarily those associated with the biblical King Solomon, especially the ring, the bottle which holds a demon, knots, and the flying carpet. She is especially interested in the reception history of those symbolic objects, both in antiquity and in the Middle Ages, both in western and in eastern culture, that is, above all, in the Arabic world, and also pursues the afterlife of those objects in the early modern age. Iafrate pursues not only the actual history of King Solomon and those religious objects associated with him, but the metaphorical objects as they made their presence felt throughout time, and this especially in literary texts and in art-historical objects.

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The Triumph of the Mule

The Donkey in Human History ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198749233.003.0012 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Peter Mitchell

Keyword(s):

Roman Empire ◽

Middle Ages ◽

Late Antiquity ◽

Early Modern Period ◽

Seventh Century ◽

First Century ◽

The New Testament ◽

History Of ◽

Symbolic Value ◽

The Middle Ages

This chapter starts as the Roman Empire fragmented, encompasses the emergence of Christianity and Islam, and explores the donkey’s place in the history of the Middle Ages, as well as what Fernand Braudel termed ‘the triumph of the mule’ in the ensuing early modern period from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Being closer in time to the present, historical documents are generally richer and more plentiful than for earlier periods, but archaeological excavations and surveys—especially of post-medieval sites and landscapes—are still undeveloped in many regions. Inevitably, therefore, what I present draws as much on textual sources as it does on them. I look first at the symbolic value of donkeys and mules in Christianity and Islam. Next, I consider their disappearance from some parts of Europe in the aftermath of Rome’s collapse and their re-expansion and persistence elsewhere. One aspect of this concerns their continuing contribution to agricultural production, another their consumption as food, a very un-Roman practice. A second theme showing continuities from previous centuries is their significance in facilitating trade and communication over both short and long distances. Tackling this requires inserting donkeys and mules into debates about how far pack animals replaced wheeled forms of transport as Late Antiquity gave way to the Middle Ages. Wide-ranging in time and space, this discussion also provides opportunities for exploring their role in human history in areas beyond those on which I have concentrated thus far. West Africa is one, the Silk Road networks linking China to Central Asia a second, and China’s southward connections into Southeast Asia a third. According to the New Testament Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday seated on a donkey (Plate 20). The seventh-century apocryphal Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew also envisages donkeys carrying His mother to Bethlehem, being present at the Nativity, and conveying the Holy Family into temporary exile in Egypt. Donkeys thus framed both ends of Jesus’ life and, given their importance in moving people and goods in first-century Palestine, must have been a familiar sight. But the implications of their place in Christianity’s narrative were originally quite different from those that are generally understood today.

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Venice Carnival from the Middle Ages to the Twenty- First Century

Journal of Festive Studies ◽

10.33823/jfs.2020.2.1.30 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

pp. 77-104

Author(s):

Gilles Bertrand

Keyword(s):

Fifteenth Century ◽

Public Space ◽

Middle Ages ◽

First Century ◽

Political Issues ◽

Mass Consumption ◽

Private Interests ◽

History Of ◽

Common Destiny ◽

The Middle Ages

As with other carnivals around the world, the history of the Venetian Carnival sheds light on the complex dialectic between festivity and politics and more particularly on the growing need for political authorities to control the urban environment. This article provides a longue durée approach to carnival in Venice and unpacks the meaning of its successive metamorphoses. During the Middle Ages, Venetians used carnival as a defense strategy for their city, intended to ensure the cohesion of its various neighborhoods around a common destiny. In the fifteenth century, the legacy of public festivals for both rich and poor gave way to a more official celebration, which allowed Venice to outdo its European rivals. The civilized and policed expressions that were elaborated from the Renaissance until the eighteenth century gradually set Venetian Carnival apart from the exuberance and invertibility displayed by rustic carnivals in other parts of Europe. However watered-down and commodified present-day Venetian Carnival may seem, it continues to raise eminently political issues, most of which have to do with the appropriation of public space by private interests and the recreation of traditions for mass consumption.

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The Middle Ages in the Modern World

10.5871/bacad/9780197266144.001.0001 ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Keyword(s):

Digital Media ◽

Middle Ages ◽

Music Videos ◽

Modern World ◽

National History ◽

Medieval Poetry ◽

History Of ◽

Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽

The Middle Ages ◽

The Way

The Middle Ages continue to provide an important touchstone for the way the modern West presents itself and its relationship with the rest of the globe. This volume brings together leading scholars of literature and history, together with musicians, novelists, librarians and museum curators in order to present exciting, up-to-date perspectives on how and why the Middle Ages continue to matter in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Presented here, their essays represent a unique dialogue between scholars and practitioners of ‘medievalism’. Framed by an introductory essay on the broad history of the continuing evolution of the idea of ‘The Middle Ages’ from the fourteenth century to the present day, chapters deal with subjects as diverse as: the use of Old Norse sagas by Republican deniers of climate change; the way figures like the Irish hero Cú Chulainn and St Patrick were used to give legitimacy to political affiliations during the Ulster ‘Troubles’; the use of the Middle Ages in films by Pasolini and Tarantino; the adoption of the ‘Green Man’ motif in popular culture; Lady Gaga’s manipulation of medieval iconography in her music videos; the translation of medieval poetry from manuscript to digital media; and the problem of writing national history free from the ‘toxic medievalism’ of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

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Introduction: The Ottoman Empire and its Frontiers

The Frontiers of the Ottoman World ◽

10.5871/bacad/9780197264423.003.0001 ◽

2009 ◽

Author(s):

A. C. S. PEACOCK

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Twentieth Century ◽

Seventeenth Century ◽

Fifteenth Century ◽

Ottoman Empire ◽

Middle Ages ◽

Modern World ◽

Early Twentieth Century ◽

History Of ◽

The Middle Ages

Stretching across Europe, Asia and Africa for half a millennium bridging the end of the Middle Ages and the early twentieth century, the Ottoman Empire was one of the major forces that forged the modern world. The chapters in this book focus on four key themes: frontier fortifications, the administration of the frontier, frontier society and relations between rulers and ruled, and the economy of the frontier. Through snapshots of aspects of Ottoman frontier policies in such diverse times and places as fifteenth-century Anatolia, seventeenth-century Hungary, nineteenth-century Iraq or twentieth-century Jordan, the book provides a richer picture than hitherto available of how this complex empire coped with the challenge of administering and defending disparate territories in an age of comparatively primitive communications. By way of introduction, this chapter seeks to provide an overview of these four themes in the history of Ottoman frontiers.

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The Middle Ages in the Modern World: Twenty-First Century Perspectives by Bettina Bildhauer and Chris Jones

Parergon ◽

10.1353/pgn.2018.0075 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 35 (2) ◽

pp. 194-196

Author(s):

Marina Gerzić

Keyword(s):

Middle Ages ◽

First Century ◽

Modern World ◽

Twenty First Century ◽

The Middle Ages

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Browning and Victorian Medievalism

Browning Institute Studies ◽

10.1017/s0092472500003199 ◽

1980 ◽

Vol 8 ◽

pp. 57-71 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Beverly Taylor

Keyword(s):

Middle Ages ◽

Modern World ◽

Morte Darthur ◽

Accurate Knowledge ◽

History Of ◽

Magnum Opus ◽

The Many ◽

Idylls Of The King ◽

Practical Scheme ◽

The Middle Ages

The fascination with the Middle Ages that stimulated Carlyle's Past and Present, Tennyson's Idylls of the King, Morris's Defence of Guenevere volume, and Swinburne's Tristram of Lyonesse registered slight effect in Browning's poetry. Perhaps alone of Victorian poets, Browning recorded no impressions of Malory's Morte Darthur — which appeared in three separate editions early in the century and not only inspired the Laureate's magnum opus and the Pre-Raphaelite murals in the Oxford Union, but nearly prompted Morris to found a chivalric order before he alighted on the more practical scheme for a furniture company. Whereas Browning used specifically medieval settings and characters in two early unsuccessful works, Sordello and The Return of the Druses, he later returned to the Middle Ages in only a small number of poems. Though Arthur Symons praised Browning for having “distilled the very essence of the Middle Ages,” the claim that “there is scarcely a salient epoch in the history of the modern world which he has not touched, always with the same vital and instinctive sympathy based on profound and accurate knowledge” holds true for the Renaissance and later periods far more than for the Middle Ages. Even though his medieval interests, compared to those of his contemporaries, seem slight, Browning's perception and uses of the Middle Ages constitute an intriguing and rather neglected facet of the many-sided phenomenon, Victorian medievalism. To understand his sense of the Middle Ages – the period's viability and meaning as a contemporary subject – we may turn, first, to Browning's evaluations of nineteenth-century medieval works, and then to his poems themselves.

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XXVI. The Secret of Kanishka

Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society ◽

10.1017/s0035869x00043562 ◽

1912 ◽

Vol 44 (4) ◽

pp. 981-1020

Author(s):

J. Kennedy

Keyword(s):

Middle Ages ◽

Direct Evidence ◽

First Century ◽

The West ◽

History Of ◽

The Middle Ages

We have considered Kanishka, so far, only as an Indian king, whose existence is revealed to us through the incidental mention of him in inscriptions and the accounts of the Yue-che (Tokhāri) given by the Chinese. And we have found that his permanent achievements were twofold. A barbarian prince, he became a convert to an alien faith, and set an example which was followed by his tribe; he also instituted an era which, although essentially Buddhist, was accepted by the Brāhmans and the Jains, and has endured to the present day. So far we might regard him merely as a prototype of many a barbarian chief of the West in the early centuries of the Middle Ages. We have now to consider him as an important figure on a much larger stage, a connecting link in the history of the earliest commerce between China and Europe. I have already brought forward direct evidence to prove that he flourished in the latter half of the first century B.C. I shall now show by two independent lines of research that he cannot be assigned to any other period. The basis of our study is the coinage of Kanishka and his successors, more particularly of Huvishka. This coinage is quite striking in its novelty.

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