The successful transmediation of books and documents through digitization requires the synergetic partnership of many professional figures, that have what may sometimes appear as contrasting goals at heart. On one side, there are those who look after the physical objects and strive to preserve them for future generations, and on the other those involved in the digitization of the objects, the information that they contain, and the management of the digital data. These complementary activities are generally considered as separate and when the current literature addresses both fields, it does so strictly within technical reports and guidelines, concentrating on procedures and optimal workflow, standards, and technical metadata. In particular, more often than not, conservation is presented as ancillary to digitization, with the role of the conservator restricted to the preparation of items for scanning, with no input into the digital product, leading to misunderstanding and clashes of interests. Surveying a variety of projects and approaches to the challenging conservation-digitization balance and fostering a dialogue amongst practitioners, this book aims at demonstrating that a dialogue between apparently contrasting fields not only is possible, but it is in fact desirable and fruitful. Only through the synergetic collaboration of all people involved in the digitization process, conservators included, can cultural digital objects that represent more fully the original objects and their materiality be generated, encouraging and enabling new research and widening the horizons of scholarship.

This book explores a millennium of literary exchanges among the peoples of the Maghrib, or westernmost strongholds of medieval Islam. In the seventh century, Muslim expansion into the western Mediterranean initiated a new phase in the layering of heterogeneous peoples and languages in this contact zone: Arabs and Berbers, Christians and Jews, Sunnī and Shīʿa Muslims, Greeks and Latins all helped shape identities, hybrid genealogies of knowledge, and political alliances. These essays excavate the literary artefacts produced in these times of turmoil, offering new perspectives on the intellectual networks and traditions that proved instrumental in overcoming the often traumatic transitions among political and/or religious regimes.

This is the first ever book in English solely devoted to one of the most important reliquary shrines of the Mosan Rhineland, the Heribert Shrine. Carolyn M. Carty investigates how liturgy, history, politics, and geography all converge to influence the creation and the message of a work of art in the aftermath of the Investiture Controversy between the Church and the Holy Roman Empire. She argues that the Heribert Shrine's images and inscriptions support the supremacy of the Church over the State with consequent implications for the shrine's intended viewers.

How was violence understood and justified during the time of the crusades? This book argues that although just/holy war theory has long provided the framework for explaining crusading violence, cultural history gives us deeper insights into the meaning and conduct of medieval crusading warfare. Using a range of sources including histories, letters, and material culture from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, this book provides fresh insights into medieval violence and the history of the crusades. It shows how violence was debated, defined, worried about, celebrated, and condemned, and that the boundaries of legitimate and illegitimate conduct in crusading warfare were constantly and consciously tested.

This study is the first to investigate how cultural interpretations of "genius" influence, and are reflected in, fictional portraits of Shakespeare. It explores the wide range of portraits (including children's books, romance novels, graphic novels, and film) that bring Shakespeare to life, and suggests that different portrayals present different conceptions of genius. How does Shakespeare become a genius? How does being a genius affect his life? In some portraits Shakespeare is a man in love with life, fully immersed in the world around him and therefore able to transform the richness of the world into words. But other portrayals present a man cut off from the world, unable to connect to anyone because his creations are more real to him than people, while others suggest that Shakespeare's genius can only be understood as a supernatural or magical gift. In each portrait, Shakespeare mirrors back to us what we believe about what it means to be a genius.

Performing Disability is a landmark examination of performance history in the medieval and early modern era. Seeking to provide a fact-based assessment of disabled performance, this survey examines the nature and socialization of disabled performers in the medieval and early Tudor periods. Using Records of Early English Drama, literary representations, and targeted histories of disability in the medieval period, this study takes a new and welcome look at the evidence for, and the conceptualization of, “impairment” as a performative act in the premodern era. It features discussions on the different societal constructions pertaining to “disability” (mental incapacity, blindness and deafness, dwarfism, gigantism, etc.), and how the evidence for such conditions was socialized through performance. Taking an evidence-based and multidisciplinary approach to perceptions of identity and “othering” in premodern society, this study is certain to appeal to a wide audience, including historians of theatre and performance, disability advocates and theorists, and social historians.

This book explores the ways in which contemporary authors respond to and rework key aspects of Old Norse history and viking culture for young twenty-first-century audiences. Why are contemporary authors and audiences so manifestly attracted to the viking past? In what ways do writers respond to Norse sources? How do the narratives they tell reflect our beliefs about and desires for the past, our constructions of childhood and adolescence, our anxieties around gender, sexuality, and ethnicity? How do these texts engage with a future occluded by apocalyptic ecological threat? David Clark explores these questions through readings of a rich body of diverse material which retells, updates, and transforms Norse culture. The volume contextualizes Norse medievalism and explores how thematic foci on gender, sexuality, disability, and ethnicity relate to contemporary concerns around these topics, and the construction of childhood.

This book explores medieval cityscapes within the modern urban environment, using place as a catalyst to forge connections between past and present, and investigating timely questions concerning theoretical approaches to medieval urban heritage, as well as the presentation and interpretation of that heritage for public audiences. Written by a specialist in literary and cultural history with substantial experience of multi-disciplinary research into medieval towns, <i>Medieval Cityscapes Today</i> teases out stories and strata of meaning from the urban landscape, bringing techniques of close reading to the material fabric of the city, as well as textual artefacts associated with it.

The St. Thomas Way is a new heritage route from Swansea to Hereford which invites visitors to step into history of the medieval March of Wales. This multi-faceted volume offers new insights into the story of St. Thomas of Hereford, medieval and modern-day pilgrimage, professional aspects of heritage, tourism and regional development, and the application of digital methods and tools in heritage contexts. It also reflects on the St. Thomas Way as a spiritual and artistic experience.

Tiron was a reformed Benedictine congregation founded ca. 1109 by Bernard of Abbeville. Though little known to medieval and religious historians, this in-depth study shows how it expanded from obscurity in the forests of the Perche to become an international congregation with headquarters in Chartres and Paris and abbeys and priories in France and the British Isles. The congregation become noted for building, crafts, education, and horse-breeding. Tiron preceded the Cistercians in Britain and traded in rising towns, and by 1147 it had a centrally-controlled network of riverine and coastal properties connecting its production hubs with towns and ports.

The first extended study of supernatural discourse in Old English poetry, Supernatural Speakers in Old English Verse fills a conspicuous gap in the scholarship of early medieval literature. Drawing insights from various disciplines, including critical discourse analysis, social psychology, and oral poetry studies, Supernatural Speakers demonstrates how and why three poets—the poets of Genesis A, Christ C, and Guthlac A—marshalled their distinction as experts of the Old English poetic medium to perform the power of supernatural speech by means of masterful poetics. By offering new analytical paths through these early medieval poems, Supernatural Speakers elucidates the importance of poetics as a critical window on the social and religious functions of verbal art in early medieval England.

Debates about migration and heritage largely discuss how newcomers integrate into the host societies, and how they manage (or not) to embrace local and national heritage as part of their new cultural landscape. But relatively little attention has been paid to how the host society is changing culturally because its new citizens have collective memories constructed upon different geographies/events, and emotional attachments to non-European forms of cultural heritages. This short book explores how new cultural identities in transformation are challenging the notions and the significance of heritage today in Europe. It asks the questions: How far are contemporary Authorized Heritage Discourses in Europe changing due to migration and globalization? Could heritage sites and museums be a meeting point for socio-cultural dialogue between locals and newcomers? Could heritage become a source of creative platforms for other heritage discourses, better "tuned" with today’s European multicultural profile?

It is well known that in several of her works, Christine de Pizan actively sought to valorize and empower women; she notably made the case for women’s education, argued for the protection of widows, and famously attacked the misogyny of the all-pervasive Roman de la Rose. Whilst numerous examinations have shown that Christine sought to empower women through her texts, this book demonstrates that the visual programmes of her works offer further evidence of Christine’s championing women in their role as educators and activists, whilst challenging some assumptions made about gender in Christine’s works. It also examines the conduits and structures by which power is conferred upon women within them. When read together, the text and image across Christine’s œuvre reveal a consistent picture: one in which women educate and empower one another.

French Lessons in Late-Medieval England presents two fifteenth-century manuals designed to support facility in French among the English, the Liber donati and Commune parlance. These texts treat the grammar, lexis, and orthography of French as well as compiling a selection of entertaining dialogues that model the language in action. Together, they paint a vivid picture of the kinds of French that English learners might desire to wield and of the high levels of fluency that they could achieve. Critten's comprehensive introduction discusses his materials' relevance both for histories of language education and for recent reassessments of the longevity of French in medieval England. His pairing of first-time modern-English translations with facing-page original text makes these fascinating works newly available for a twenty-first-century audience.

This book explores shared religious practices among Jews, Christians, and Muslims, focusing primarily on the medieval Mediterranean. It examines the meanings members of each community ascribed to the presence of the religious other at "their" festivals or holy sites during pilgrimage. Communal boundaries were often redefined or dissolved during pilgrimage and religious festivals. Yet, paradoxically, shared practices served to enforce communal boundaries, since many of the religious elite devised polemical interpretations of these phenomena which highlighted the superiority of their own faith. Such interpretations became integral to each group’s theological understanding of self and other to such a degree that in some regions, religious minorities were required to participate in the festivals of the ruling community. In all formulations, “otherness” remained an essential component of both polemic and prayer.