Results by title
3745 books match the query 'Europe' and 307 start with m
Marvelous Possessions
The Wonder of the New WorldStephen Greenblatt
University of Chicago Press, 2017
A masterwork of history and cultural studies, Marvelous Possessions is a brilliant meditation on the interconnected ways in which Europeans of the Age of Discovery represented non-European peoples and took possession of their lands, particularly in the New World. In a series of innovative readings of travel narratives, judicial documents, and official reports, Stephen Greenblatt shows that the experience of the marvelous, central to both art and philosophy, was manipulated by Columbus and others in the service of colonial appropriation. Much more than simply a collection of the odd and exotic, Marvelous Possessions is both a highly original extension of Greenblatt’s thinking on a subject that has permeated his career and a thrilling tale of wandering, kidnapping, and go-betweens—of daring improvisation, betrayal, and violence. Reaching back to the ancient Greeks, forward to the present, and, in his new preface, even to fantastical meetings between humans and aliens in movies like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Greenblatt would have us ask: How is it possible, in a time of disorientation, hatred of the other, and possessiveness, to keep the capacity for wonder—for tolerant recognition of cultural difference—from being poisoned?
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Marx and the French Revolution
François Furet
University of Chicago Press, 1988
Throughout his life Karl Marx commented on the French Revolution, but never was able to realize his project of a systematic work on this immense event. This book assembles for the first time all that Marx wrote on this subject. François Furet provides an extended discussion of Marx's thinking on the revolution, and Lucien Calvié situates each of the selections, drawn from existing translations as well as previously untranslated material, in its larger historical context.
With his early critique of Hegel, Marx started moving toward his fundamental thesis: that the state is a product of civil society and that the French Revolution was the triumph of bourgeois society. Furet's interpretation follows the evolution of this idea and examines the dilemmas it created for Marx as he considered all the faces the new state assumed over the course of the Revolution: the Jacobin Terror following the constitutional monarchy, Bonaparte's dictatorship following the parliamentary republic.
The problem of reconciling his theory with the reality of the Revolution's various manifestations is one of the major difficulties Marx contended with throughout his work. The hesitation, the remorse, and the contradictions of the resulting analyses offer a glimpse of a great thinker struggling with the constraints of his own system. Marx never did elaborate a theory of an autonomous state, but he never stopped wrestling with the challenge to his doctrine posed by late eighteenth-century France, whose changing conditions and successive regimes prompted some of his most intriguing and, until now, unexplored thought.
With his early critique of Hegel, Marx started moving toward his fundamental thesis: that the state is a product of civil society and that the French Revolution was the triumph of bourgeois society. Furet's interpretation follows the evolution of this idea and examines the dilemmas it created for Marx as he considered all the faces the new state assumed over the course of the Revolution: the Jacobin Terror following the constitutional monarchy, Bonaparte's dictatorship following the parliamentary republic.
The problem of reconciling his theory with the reality of the Revolution's various manifestations is one of the major difficulties Marx contended with throughout his work. The hesitation, the remorse, and the contradictions of the resulting analyses offer a glimpse of a great thinker struggling with the constraints of his own system. Marx never did elaborate a theory of an autonomous state, but he never stopped wrestling with the challenge to his doctrine posed by late eighteenth-century France, whose changing conditions and successive regimes prompted some of his most intriguing and, until now, unexplored thought.
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Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture
Edited by Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg
University of Illinois Press, 1988
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Mary Magdalene and Her Sister Martha
An Edition and Translation of the Medieval Welsh LivesJane Cartwright
Catholic University of America Press, 2013
Mary Magdalene and Her Sister Martha: An Edition and Translation of the Medieval Welsh Lives provides scholarly editions and English translations of the medieval Welsh versions of the legends of Mary Magdalene and Martha. Described by Victor Saxer as medieval best sellers, these hagiographical tales, which described how Mary Magdalene and her sister Martha survived a perilous sea voyage from the holy land and evangelized Provence, were available in many different Latin and vernacular versions and circulated widely in the medieval West. The texts were translated or adapted into Middle Welsh some time before the mid-fourteenth century: the Middle Welsh Life of Mary Magdalene is extant in thirteen manuscripts and the Middle Welsh Life of Martha is preserved in eight of the same manuscripts. Jane Cartwright makes the Middle Welsh versions available to an international audience for the first time and provides a detailed study of the Welsh manuscripts that contain the texts, a comparison between the different manuscripts versions and a discussion of the wider hagiographical context of the texts in Wales. The volume includes transcriptions, editions and translations of the two Lives based on the oldest most complete extant versions found in the Red Book of Talgarth c. 1400, as well as an additional section of text describing Mary Magdalenes life before Christs crucifixion from the fifteenth-century Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, Peniarth MS 27ii. The edition is accompanied by a comprehensive glossary which provides translations of all medieval Welsh words that occur in the texts, an analysis of the development and transmission of the legends, as well as a discussion of the relevance and popularity of these two female saints in late medieval Wales: medieval Welsh poetry, church dedications, and holy wells are also considered.
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Mary Wroth
The Countess of Montgomery's Urania (Abridged)Edited by Mary Ellen Lamb
Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2000
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Masculine Figures
Fashioning Men and the Novel in Nineteenth-Century SpainNicholas Wolters
Vanderbilt University Press, 2022
Based on years of archival research in Madrid and Barcelona, this interdisciplinary study offers a fresh approach to understanding how men visualized themselves and their place in a nation that struggled to modernize after nearly a century of civil war, colonial entanglement, and imperial loss. Masculine Figures is the first study to provide a comprehensive overview of competing models of masculinity in nineteenth-century Spain, and it is particularly novel in its treatment of Catalan texts and previously unstudied evidence (e.g., department store catalogs, commercial advertisements, fashion plates, and men’s tailoring journals).
Fictional masculinity performs a symbolic role in representing and negotiating the contradictions male novelists often encountered in their attempts to professionalize not only as writers, but also as businessmen, professors, lawyers, and politicians. Through specific and recurring figures like the student, the priest, the businessman, and the heir, male novelists portray and represent an increasingly middle-class world at odds with the values and virtues it inherited from an imperial Spanish past, and those it imported from more industrialized nations like England and France. The visual culture of the time and place marks the material turn in middle-class masculinity and sets the stage for discussions of race and sexuality.
Fictional masculinity performs a symbolic role in representing and negotiating the contradictions male novelists often encountered in their attempts to professionalize not only as writers, but also as businessmen, professors, lawyers, and politicians. Through specific and recurring figures like the student, the priest, the businessman, and the heir, male novelists portray and represent an increasingly middle-class world at odds with the values and virtues it inherited from an imperial Spanish past, and those it imported from more industrialized nations like England and France. The visual culture of the time and place marks the material turn in middle-class masculinity and sets the stage for discussions of race and sexuality.
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Masculine Singular
French New Wave CinemaGeneviève Sellier
Duke University Press, 2008
Masculine Singular is an original interpretation of French New Wave cinema by one of France’s leading feminist film scholars. While most criticism of the New Wave has concentrated on the filmmakers and their films, Geneviève Sellier focuses on the social and cultural turbulence of the cinema’s formative years, from 1957 to 1962. The New Wave filmmakers were members of a young generation emerging on the French cultural scene, eager to acquire sexual and economic freedom. Almost all of them were men, and they “wrote” in the masculine first-person singular, often using male protagonists as stand-ins for themselves. In their films, they explored relations between men and women, and they expressed ambivalence about the new liberated woman. Sellier argues that gender relations and the construction of sexual identities were the primary subject of New Wave cinema.
Sellier draws on sociological surveys, box office data, and popular magazines of the period, as well as analyses of specific New Wave films. She examines the development of the New Wave movement, its sociocultural and economic context, and the popular and critical reception of such well-known films as Jules et Jim and Hiroshima mon amour. In light of the filmmakers’ focus on gender relations, Sellier reflects on the careers of New Wave’s iconic female stars, including Jeanne Moreau and Brigitte Bardot. Sellier’s thorough exploration of early New Wave cinema culminates in her contention that its principal legacy—the triumph of a certain kind of cinephilic discourse and of an “auteur theory” recognizing the director as artist—came at a steep price: creativity was reduced to a formalist game, and affirmation of New Wave cinema’s modernity was accompanied by an association of creativity with masculinity.
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Masculinity and Danger on the Eighteenth-Century Grand Tour
Sarah Goldsmith
University of London Press, 2020
The Grand Tour, a customary trip through Europe undertaken by British nobility and wealthy landed gentry during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, played an important role in the formation of contemporary notions of elite masculinity. Through an examination of testimonies written by Grand Tourists, tutors, and their families, Sarah Goldsmith argues that the Grand Tour educated young men in a wide variety of skills, virtues, and vices that extended well beyond polite society.
Goldsmith demonstrates that the Grand Tour was a means of constructing Britain’s next generation of leaders. Influenced by aristocratic concepts of honor and inspired by military-style leadership, elite society viewed experiences of danger and hardship as powerfully transformative and therefore as central to constructing masculinity. Scaling mountains, volcanoes, and glaciers, and even encountering war and disease, Grand Tourists willingly tackled a variety of perils. Through her study of these dangers, Goldsmith offers a bold revision of eighteenth-century elite masculine culture and the critical role the Grand Tour played within it.
Goldsmith demonstrates that the Grand Tour was a means of constructing Britain’s next generation of leaders. Influenced by aristocratic concepts of honor and inspired by military-style leadership, elite society viewed experiences of danger and hardship as powerfully transformative and therefore as central to constructing masculinity. Scaling mountains, volcanoes, and glaciers, and even encountering war and disease, Grand Tourists willingly tackled a variety of perils. Through her study of these dangers, Goldsmith offers a bold revision of eighteenth-century elite masculine culture and the critical role the Grand Tour played within it.
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Masses and Man
Nationalist and Fascist Perceptions of RealityGeorge L. Mosse
University of Wisconsin Press, 2024
In fourteen essays that speak to the full breadth of George L. Mosse’s intellectual horizons and scholarly legacy, Masses and Man explores radical nationalism, fascism, and Jewish modernity in twentieth-century Europe. Breaking from the conventions of historical analysis, Mosse shows that “secular religions” like fascism cannot be understood only as the products of socioeconomic or intellectual histories but rather must be approached first and foremost as cultural phenomena.
Masses and Man comprises three parts. The first lays out a cultural history of nationalism, essentially the first of its kind, emphasizing the importance of sacred expressions like myths, symbols, and rituals as appropriated in a political context. The second zeroes in on fascism’s most dramatic irruptions in European history in the rise of Italian Fascism and the Nazi Party in Germany, elucidating these as not just political movements but also cultural and even aesthetic ones. The third part considers nationalism and fascism from the particular standpoint of German Jews.
Taken in full, the volume offers an eloquent summation of Mosse’s groundbreaking insights into European nationalism, fascism, and Jewish history in the twentieth century. A new critical introduction by Enzo Traverso helpfully situates Mosse’s work in context and exposes the many ways in which Masses and Man, first published in 1980, remains relevant today.
Masses and Man comprises three parts. The first lays out a cultural history of nationalism, essentially the first of its kind, emphasizing the importance of sacred expressions like myths, symbols, and rituals as appropriated in a political context. The second zeroes in on fascism’s most dramatic irruptions in European history in the rise of Italian Fascism and the Nazi Party in Germany, elucidating these as not just political movements but also cultural and even aesthetic ones. The third part considers nationalism and fascism from the particular standpoint of German Jews.
Taken in full, the volume offers an eloquent summation of Mosse’s groundbreaking insights into European nationalism, fascism, and Jewish history in the twentieth century. A new critical introduction by Enzo Traverso helpfully situates Mosse’s work in context and exposes the many ways in which Masses and Man, first published in 1980, remains relevant today.
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Mastering the Niger
James MacQueen's African Geography and the Struggle over Atlantic SlaveryDavid Lambert
University of Chicago Press, 2013
In Mastering the Niger, David Lambert recalls Scotsman James MacQueen (1778–1870) and his publication of A New Map of Africa in 1841 to show that Atlantic slavery—as a practice of subjugation, a source of wealth, and a focus of political struggle—was entangled with the production, circulation, and reception of geographical knowledge. The British empire banned the slave trade in 1807 and abolished slavery itself in 1833, creating a need for a new British imperial economy. Without ever setting foot on the continent, MacQueen took on the task of solving the “Niger problem,” that is, to successfully map the course of the river and its tributaries, and thus breathe life into his scheme for the exploration, colonization, and commercial exploitation of West Africa.
Lambert illustrates how MacQueen’s geographical research began, four decades before the publication of the New Map, when he was managing a sugar estate on the West Indian colony of Grenada. There MacQueen encountered slaves with firsthand knowledge of West Africa, whose accounts would form the basis of his geographical claims. Lambert examines the inspirations and foundations for MacQueen’s geographical theory as well as its reception, arguing that Atlantic slavery and ideas for alternatives to it helped produce geographical knowledge, while geographical discourse informed the struggle over slavery.
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Masterpieces of History
The Peaceful End of the Cold War in Europe, 1989The National Security Archive Savranskaya
Central European University Press, 2010
Twenty years in the making, this collection presents 122 top-level Soviet, European and American records on the superpowers' role in the annus mirabilis of 1989. Consisting of Politburo minutes; diary entries from Gorbachev's senior aide, Anatoly Chernyaev; meeting notes and private communications of Gorbachev with George H.W. Bush, Margaret Thatcher, Helmut Kohl and François Mitterrand; and high-level CIA analyses, this volume offers a rare insider's look at the historic, world-transforming events that culminated in the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the end of the Cold War. Most of these records have never been published before.
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Materials and Expertise in Early Modern Europe
Between Market and LaboratoryEdited by Ursula Klein and E. C. Spary
University of Chicago Press, 2010
It is often assumed that natural philosophy was the forerunner of early modern natural sciences. But where did these sciences’ systematic observation and experimentation get their starts? In Materials and Expertise in Early Modern Europe, the laboratories, workshops, and marketplaces emerge as arenas where hands-on experience united with higher learning. In an age when chemistry, mineralogy, geology, and botany intersected with mining, metallurgy, pharmacy, and gardening, materials were objects that crossed disciplines.
Here, the contributors tell the stories of metals, clay, gunpowder, pigments, and foods, and thereby demonstrate the innovative practices of technical experts, the development of the consumer market, and the formation of the observational and experimental sciences in the early modern period. Materials and Expertise in Early Modern Europe showcases a broad variety of forms of knowledge, from ineffable bodily skills and technical competence to articulated know-how and connoisseurship, from methods of measuring, data gathering, and classification to analytical and theoretical knowledge. By exploring the hybrid expertise involved in the making, consumption, and promotion of various materials, and the fluid boundaries they traversed, the book offers an original perspective on important issues in the history of science, medicine, and technology.
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Materials of the Mind
Phrenology, Race, and the Global History of Science, 1815-1920James Poskett
University of Chicago Press, 2019
This is not only the first global history of nineteenth-century science but the first global history of phrenology.
Phrenology was the most popular mental science of the Victorian age. From American senators to Indian social reformers, this new mental science found supporters around the globe. Materials of the Mind tells the story of how phrenology changed the world—and how the world changed phrenology.
This is a story of skulls from the Arctic, plaster casts from Haiti, books from Bengal, and letters from the Pacific. Drawing on far-flung museum and archival collections, and addressing sources in six different languages, Materials of the Mind is an impressively innovative account of science in the nineteenth century as part of global history. It shows how the circulation of material culture underpinned the emergence of a new materialist philosophy of the mind, while also demonstrating how a global approach to history can help us reassess issues such as race, technology, and politics today.
Phrenology was the most popular mental science of the Victorian age. From American senators to Indian social reformers, this new mental science found supporters around the globe. Materials of the Mind tells the story of how phrenology changed the world—and how the world changed phrenology.
This is a story of skulls from the Arctic, plaster casts from Haiti, books from Bengal, and letters from the Pacific. Drawing on far-flung museum and archival collections, and addressing sources in six different languages, Materials of the Mind is an impressively innovative account of science in the nineteenth century as part of global history. It shows how the circulation of material culture underpinned the emergence of a new materialist philosophy of the mind, while also demonstrating how a global approach to history can help us reassess issues such as race, technology, and politics today.
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May '68
Donald M. Reid and Daniel J. Sherman, special issue editors
Duke University Press, 2018
This issue presents new directions in the study of the civil unrest in France during May 1968 on its fiftieth anniversary. Authors from France and the United States emphasize the nature and experience of the political upheaval in May 1968, the long-term cultural impacts of events in Paris, and the ways in which these events figures into a global context. Contributors offer new ways of understanding and interpreting the discord by focusing on the emotional and cultural resonance of the events of May 1968 in activism and popular culture. Other essays explore the relation of student activism in former French colonies to events in France, place the events of May 1968 in a global context by considering diplomatic and radical networks between Europe and the United States, and examine the cultural relationship between France and Germany.
Contributors: Ludivine Bantigny, Françoise Blum, Tony Côme, Boris Gobille, Bethany Keenan, Salar Mohandesi, Donald Reid, Sandrine Sanos, Daniel Sherman
Contributors: Ludivine Bantigny, Françoise Blum, Tony Côme, Boris Gobille, Bethany Keenan, Salar Mohandesi, Donald Reid, Sandrine Sanos, Daniel Sherman
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May '68 and Its Afterlives
Kristin Ross
University of Chicago Press, 2002
During May 1968, students and workers in France united in the biggest strike and the largest mass movement in French history. Protesting capitalism, American imperialism, and Gaullism, 9 million people from all walks of life, from shipbuilders to department store clerks, stopped working. The nation was paralyzed—no sector of the workplace was untouched. Yet, just thirty years later, the mainstream image of May '68 in France has become that of a mellow youth revolt, a cultural transformation stripped of its violence and profound sociopolitical implications.
Kristin Ross shows how the current official memory of May '68 came to serve a political agenda antithetical to the movement's aspirations. She examines the roles played by sociologists, repentant ex-student leaders, and the mainstream media in giving what was a political event a predominantly cultural and ethical meaning. Recovering the political language of May '68 through the tracts, pamphlets, and documentary film footage of the era, Ross reveals how the original movement, concerned above all with the question of equality, gained a new and counterfeit history, one that erased police violence and the deaths of participants, removed workers from the picture, and eliminated all traces of anti-Americanism, anti-imperialism, and the influences of Algeria and Vietnam. May '68 and Its Afterlives is especially timely given the rise of a new mass political movement opposing global capitalism, from labor strikes and anti-McDonald's protests in France to the demonstrations against the World Trade Organization in Seattle.
Kristin Ross shows how the current official memory of May '68 came to serve a political agenda antithetical to the movement's aspirations. She examines the roles played by sociologists, repentant ex-student leaders, and the mainstream media in giving what was a political event a predominantly cultural and ethical meaning. Recovering the political language of May '68 through the tracts, pamphlets, and documentary film footage of the era, Ross reveals how the original movement, concerned above all with the question of equality, gained a new and counterfeit history, one that erased police violence and the deaths of participants, removed workers from the picture, and eliminated all traces of anti-Americanism, anti-imperialism, and the influences of Algeria and Vietnam. May '68 and Its Afterlives is especially timely given the rise of a new mass political movement opposing global capitalism, from labor strikes and anti-McDonald's protests in France to the demonstrations against the World Trade Organization in Seattle.
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Measuring the New World
Enlightenment Science and South AmericaNeil Safier
University of Chicago Press, 2008
Prior to 1735, South America was terra incognita to many Europeans. But that year, the Paris Academy of Sciences sent a mission to the Spanish American province of Quito (in present-day Ecuador) to study the curvature of the earth at the Equator. Equipped with quadrants and telescopes, the mission’s participants referred to the transfer of scientific knowledge from Europe to the Andes as a “sacred fire” passing mysteriously through European astronomical instruments to observers in South America.
By taking an innovative interdisciplinary look at the traces of this expedition, Measuring the New World examines the transatlantic flow of knowledge from West to East. Through ephemeral monuments and geographical maps, this book explores how the social and cultural worlds of South America contributed to the production of European scientific knowledge during the Enlightenment. Neil Safier uses the notebooks of traveling philosophers, as well as specimens from the expedition, to place this particular scientific endeavor in the larger context of early modern print culture and the emerging intellectual category of scientist as author.
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Meat, Modernity, and the Rise of the Slaughterhouse
Paula Young Lee
University of New Hampshire Press, 2008
Over the course of the nineteenth century, factory slaughterhouses replaced the hand-slaughter of livestock by individual butchers, who often performed this task in back rooms, letting blood run through streets. A wholly modern invention, the centralized municipal slaughterhouse was a political response to the public's increasing lack of tolerance for "dirty" butchering practices, corresponding to changing norms of social hygiene and fear of meat-borne disease. The slaughterhouse, in Europe and the Americas, rationalized animal slaughter according to capitalist imperatives. What is lost and what is gained when meat becomes a commodity? What do the sites of animal slaughter reveal about our relationship to animals and nature? Essays by the best international scholars come together in this cutting-edge interdisciplinary volume to examine the cultural significance of the slaughterhouse and its impact on modernity.
Contributors include: Dorothee Brantz, Kyri Claflin, Jared Day, Roger Horowitz, Lindgren Johnson, Ian MacLachlan, Christopher Otter, Dominic Pacyga, Richard Perren, Jeffrey Pilcher, and Sydney Watts.
Contributors include: Dorothee Brantz, Kyri Claflin, Jared Day, Roger Horowitz, Lindgren Johnson, Ian MacLachlan, Christopher Otter, Dominic Pacyga, Richard Perren, Jeffrey Pilcher, and Sydney Watts.
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Meddling in Middle Europe
Britain and the 'Lands Between' 1919-1925Miklos Lojkó
Central European University Press, 2006
This work addresses the much-ignored history of British policy towards Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland following the creation of nation states in Central Europe at the end of the First World War. Lojkó convincingly argues that the absence of trust in the new political settlement and the discrediting of the traditional channels of diplomacy resulted in British influence in the region, being exerted mainly in the form of commercial and financial undertakings. While not always successful, the emergence of this new policy affected the development of diplomatic ties with these new nations.Yet no lasting diplomatic leverage resulted from this British involvement, and the absence of such influence proved fatal in the late 1930's when the new system of nations was disintegrating under the pressure of escalating violence.
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Media Amnesia
Rewriting the Economic CrisisLaura Basu
Pluto Press, 2018
One of the major questions confronting us in the wake of the 2016 presidential election, the Brexit vote, and the rise of populism around the world, is what role the media has played in shaping our current political moment. This book offers an unprecedented dive into that question, reaching back more than a decade to show the stance of the media toward the 2008 financial crash, the recession that followed, austerity in the UK, the Eurozone crisis, and more. Throughout, we see—with damning clarity—that even as capitalism is in crisis, the media remains devoted to a narrative of a swollen public sector, welfare scams, and immigration threats. What does this mean for those who are committed to solving our manifest economic and social problems? How can we use what we know about the workings of the media to break through their filter and force progress? The insights in this book are the first step.
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Media Constrained by Context
International Assistance and Democratic Media Transition in the Western BalkansKristina Irion
Central European University Press, 2018
This books draws a comparative balance of twenty years' international media assistance in the five countries of the Western Balkans. The central question was what happens to imported models when they are transposed onto the newly evolving media systems of transitional societies. Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia and Serbia undertook a range of media reforms to conform with accession requirements of the European Union and the standards of the Council of Europe, among others. The essays explore the nexus between the democratic transformation of the media and international media assistance. The cross-national analysis concludes that the effects of international assistance are highly constrained by the local context. From today's vantage point it becomes obvious, that scaling media assistance does not necessarily improve outcomes. The experiences in the region suggest that imported solutions have not been very cognitive in all aspects of local conditions but international strategies tent to be rather schematic and lacked strategic approaches to promote media policy stability, credible media reform and implementation. The book offers valuable insights into the nature and effects of media assistance and the strategies deployed by international aid agencies, local political forces, media professionals, civil society organizations and other actors.
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Media Freedom and Pluralism
Media Policy Challenges in the Enlarged EuropeBeata Klimkiewicz
Central European University Press, 2010
Addresses a critical analysis of major media policies in the European Union and Council of Europe at the period of profound changes affecting both media environments and use, as well as the logic of media policy-making and reconfiguration of traditional regulatory models. The analytical problem-related approach seems to better reflect a media policy process as an interrelated part of European integration, formation of European citizenship, and exercise of communication rights within the European communicative space. The question of normative expectations is to be compared in this case with media policy rationales, mechanisms of implementation (transposing rules from EU to national levels), and outcomes.
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Media and Identity in Contemporary Europe
Consequences of global convergenceRichard Collins
Intellect Books, 1995
Chapters focus on technological change and its impact on cultural and political identities, the role of the cultural industries in the 'New Economy' and the impact of European integration on national institutions - public service broadcasting in particular.
Because technological change in broadcasting has enabled us to open up media markets, the shape of media and of society has become more internationally-oriented. Indeed, modern international media has bought into question the very legitimacy of national communities and ideologies. And this is a phenomenon whose greatest impact has been in Europe.
These studies address the future of public service broadcasting and the power of national regulators to shape trans-national media relationships. The author takes an empirical approach to analysis of these issues, exploring media and communication studies very much as a social science.
Because technological change in broadcasting has enabled us to open up media markets, the shape of media and of society has become more internationally-oriented. Indeed, modern international media has bought into question the very legitimacy of national communities and ideologies. And this is a phenomenon whose greatest impact has been in Europe.
These studies address the future of public service broadcasting and the power of national regulators to shape trans-national media relationships. The author takes an empirical approach to analysis of these issues, exploring media and communication studies very much as a social science.
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Media and the Mind
Art, Science, and Notebooks as Paper Machines, 1700-1830Matthew Daniel Eddy
University of Chicago Press, 2022
A beautifully illustrated argument that reveals notebooks as extraordinary paper machines that transformed knowledge on the page and in the mind.
We often think of reason as a fixed entity, as a definitive body of facts that do not change over time. But during the Enlightenment, reason also was seen as a process, as a set of skills enacted on a daily basis. How, why, and where were these skills learned? Concentrating on Scottish students living during the long eighteenth century, this book argues that notebooks were paper machines and that notekeeping was a capability-building exercise that enabled young notekeepers to mobilize everyday handwritten and printed forms of material and visual media in a way that empowered them to judge and enact the enlightened principles they encountered in the classroom. Covering a rich selection of material ranging from simple scribbles to intricate watercolor diagrams, the book reinterprets John Locke’s comparison of the mind to a blank piece of paper, the tabula rasa. Although one of the most recognizable metaphors of the British Enlightenment, scholars seldom consider why it was so successful for those who used it. Each chapter uses one core notekeeping skill to reveal the fascinating world of material culture that enabled students in the arts, sciences, and humanities to transform the tabula rasa metaphor into a dynamic cognitive model. Starting in the home, moving to schools, and ending with universities, the book reconstructs the relationship between media and the mind from the bottom up. It reveals that the cognitive skills required to make and use notebooks were not simply aids to reason; rather, they were part of reason itself.
We often think of reason as a fixed entity, as a definitive body of facts that do not change over time. But during the Enlightenment, reason also was seen as a process, as a set of skills enacted on a daily basis. How, why, and where were these skills learned? Concentrating on Scottish students living during the long eighteenth century, this book argues that notebooks were paper machines and that notekeeping was a capability-building exercise that enabled young notekeepers to mobilize everyday handwritten and printed forms of material and visual media in a way that empowered them to judge and enact the enlightened principles they encountered in the classroom. Covering a rich selection of material ranging from simple scribbles to intricate watercolor diagrams, the book reinterprets John Locke’s comparison of the mind to a blank piece of paper, the tabula rasa. Although one of the most recognizable metaphors of the British Enlightenment, scholars seldom consider why it was so successful for those who used it. Each chapter uses one core notekeeping skill to reveal the fascinating world of material culture that enabled students in the arts, sciences, and humanities to transform the tabula rasa metaphor into a dynamic cognitive model. Starting in the home, moving to schools, and ending with universities, the book reconstructs the relationship between media and the mind from the bottom up. It reveals that the cognitive skills required to make and use notebooks were not simply aids to reason; rather, they were part of reason itself.
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Media in Europe Today
Edited by Josef Trappel, Werner A. Meier, Leen d’Haenens, Jeanette Steemers, and Barbara Thomass for the Euromedia Research Group
Intellect Books, 2011
Media in Europe Today provides a comprehensive overview of European media in its current state of transformation. Through a focus on specific European media sectors, it assesses the impact of new technologies across industries and addresses a wide range of practices, strategies, and challenges facing European media today. The Euromedia Research Group has more than twenty years of experience in the observation of trends affecting media today, and this book marks the strong continuation of that long tradition.
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Media, Monarchy and Power
Neil Blain and Hugh O'Donnell
Intellect Books, 2013
Is obsession with the Royal Family in Britain a fact of culture or an illusion of media culture? What interest do the European media display in their royal families? Does twenty-first century monarchy remain a political and ideological force - or is it just an economic commodity? Media, Monarchy and Power provides a radical insight into the cultural and political functioning of royalty in five countries. Blain and O'Donnell examine the bonds between monarchies and their 'subjects' or 'citizens', and the relationships between royal families, the media, and nation-states. Numerous case-studies from press and television in Europe and the UK support a theoretical account of the operation of monarchy and royalty in the media. Central to the concerns of Media, Monarchy and Power are the complex relationship between Britain and Europe and the limits of British political modernization.
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Media, Nationalism and European Identities
Karol Jakubowicz
Central European University Press, 2011
Explores patterns of interaction between the mass media and identity formation in the context of Europeanization. On the one hand, the major contribution of the volume is a comprehensive framework that considers media impacts on four levels of identity: European, regional, national, and ethnic minority identities. On the other hand, authors offer cutting edge analysis of the structural transformation of European media institutions, and policies that shape the future of European media.
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Mediating Culture in the Seventeenth-Century German Novel
Eberhard Werner Happel, 1647-1690Gerhild Scholz Williams
University of Michigan Press, 2014
Eberhard Happel, German Baroque author of an extensive body of work of fiction and nonfiction, has for many years been categorized as a “courtly-gallant” novelist. In Mediating Culture in the Seventeenth-Century German Novel, author Gerhild Scholz Williams argues that categorizing him thus is to seriously misread him and to miss out on a fascinating perspective on this dynamic period in German history.
Happel primarily lived and worked in the vigorous port city of Hamburg, which was a “media center” in terms of the access it offered to a wide library of books in public and private collections. Hamburg’s port status meant it buzzed with news and information, and Happel drew on this flow of data in his novels. His books deal with many topics of current interest—national identity formation, gender and sexualities, Western European encounters with neighbors to the East, confrontations with non-European and non-Western powers and cultures—and they feature multiple media, including news reports, news collections, and travel writings. As a result, Happel’s use of contemporary source material in his novels feeds our current interest in the impact of the production of knowledge on seventeenth-century narrative. Mediating Culture in the Seventeenth-Century German Novel explores the narrative wealth and multiversity of Happel’s work, examines Happel’s novels as illustrative of seventeenth-century novel writing in Germany, and investigates the synergistic relationship in Happel’s writings between the booming print media industry and the evolution of the German novel.
[more]
Medical Misinformation in Early Modern Germany
Christopher Hutchinson
University of Delaware Press, 2026
Medical Misinformation in Early Modern Germany examines how doctors, writers, and printers in sixteenth-century Germany responded to the rapid expansion of print and its implications for medical knowledge. The spread of printed texts generated widespread suspicion about print’s reliability as a conduit of information and led writers to reflect on questions of audience, vernacularity, and medical authority in their responses to disease. The book investigates literary texts alongside popular vernacular medical pamphlets on the major epidemic diseases of the period––plague, syphilis, and the English sweating sickness––to reveal a widespread concern with the impact of printed texts on public health. During the 1529 outbreak of the English sweating sickness, this concern culminated in writers’ use of a “rhetoric of virality,” explicitly comparing the circulation of texts to the spread of disease, as they confronted the parallel contagions of disease and information.
[more]
Medieval Callings
Edited by Jacques Le Goff
University of Chicago Press, 1990
These essays by eleven internationally renowned historians present nuanced profiles of the major social and professional groups—the callings-of the Middle Ages.
The contributors focus on attitudes of medieval men and women toward their own society. Through a variety of techniques, from a reading of the Song of Roland to a reading of administrative records, they identify characteristic viewpoints of members of the fighting class, the clergy, and the peasantry. Along with vivid descriptions of what life was like for warrior knights, monks, high churchmen, criminals, lepers, shepherds, and prostitutes, this innovative approach offers a valuable new perspective on the complex social dynamics of feudal Europe.
"Very useful discussions of texts, both learned and literary."—Christopher Dyer, Times Literary Supplement
Contributors: Mariateresa Fumagalli Beonio Brocchieri, Franco Cardini, Enrico Castelnuovo, Giovanni Cherubini, Bronislaw Geremek, Aron Ja. Gurevich, Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Jacques Le Goff, Giovanni Miccoli, Jacques Rossiaud, and André Vauchez.
The contributors focus on attitudes of medieval men and women toward their own society. Through a variety of techniques, from a reading of the Song of Roland to a reading of administrative records, they identify characteristic viewpoints of members of the fighting class, the clergy, and the peasantry. Along with vivid descriptions of what life was like for warrior knights, monks, high churchmen, criminals, lepers, shepherds, and prostitutes, this innovative approach offers a valuable new perspective on the complex social dynamics of feudal Europe.
"Very useful discussions of texts, both learned and literary."—Christopher Dyer, Times Literary Supplement
Contributors: Mariateresa Fumagalli Beonio Brocchieri, Franco Cardini, Enrico Castelnuovo, Giovanni Cherubini, Bronislaw Geremek, Aron Ja. Gurevich, Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Jacques Le Goff, Giovanni Miccoli, Jacques Rossiaud, and André Vauchez.
[more]
Medieval Church Law and the Origins of the Western Legal Tradition
A Tribute to Kenneth PenningtonWolfgang P. Müller
Catholic University of America Press, 2006
In this volume dedicated to medieval canon law expert Kenneth Pennington, leading scholars from around the world discuss the contribution of medieval church law to the origins of the western legal tradition.
[more]
Medieval Cosmology
Theories of Infinity, Place, Time, Void, and the Plurality of WorldsPierre Duhem
University of Chicago Press, 1987
These selections from Le système du monde, the classic ten-volume history of the physical sciences written by the great French physicist Pierre Duhem (1861-1916), focus on cosmology, Duhem's greatest interest. By reconsidering the work of such Arab and Christian scholars as Averroes, Avicenna, Gregory of Rimini, Albert of Saxony, Nicole Oresme, Duns Scotus, and William of Occam, Duhem demonstrated the sophistication of medieval science and cosmology.
[more]
Medieval Crime and Social Control
Barbara A. Hanawalt
University of Minnesota Press, 1998
Uses historical and literary insights to consider crime and punishment in the Middle Ages.
Crime is a matter of interpretation, and never was this truer than in the Middle Ages, when societies faced with new ideas and pressures were continually forced to rethink what a crime was-and what was a crime. This collection undertakes a thorough exploration of shifting definitions of crime and changing attitudes toward social control in medieval Europe.
These essays-by leading specialists in European history and literature-reveal how various forces in medieval society interacted and competed in interpreting and influencing mechanisms for social control. They also demonstrate how well the different methods of history and literature combine to illuminate these developments.The essays show how the play with boundaries between legitimate and illegitimate actions took place not only in laws and courts, but also in the writing of social commentators such as John Fortescue and Jean Gerson, in the works of authors such as William Langland and Geoffrey Chaucer, and in popular literature such as sagas and romances. Drawing on a wide range of historical and literary sources-legal treatises, court cases, statutes, poems, romances, and comic tales-the contributors consider topics including fear of crime, rape and violence against women, revenge and condemnations of crime, learned dispute about crime and social control, and legal and political struggles over hunting rights. Their work shows how medieval society also defined its boundaries in contested spaces such as taverns and forests and in the different rules applying to the behavior and treatment of men and women.Contributors: Christopher Cannon, Oxford U; Elizabeth Fowler, Yale U; Louise O. Fradenburg, U of California, Santa Barbara; Claude Gauvard, Sorbonne; James H. Landman, U of North Texas; William Perry Marvin, Colorado State U; William Ian Miller, U of Michigan; Louise Mirrer, CUNY; Walter Prevenier, U of Ghent.ISBN 0-8166-3168-9 Cloth $49.95xxISBN 0-8166-3169-7 Paper $19.95x268 pages 5 7/8 x 9 JanuaryMedieval Cultures Series, volume 16Translation inquiries: University of Minnesota Press[more]
Medieval Identity Machines
Jeffrey J. Cohen
University of Minnesota Press, 2003
A provocative new approach to medieval culture
In Medieval Identity Machines, Jeffrey J. Cohen examines the messiness, permeability, and perversity of medieval bodies, arguing that human identity always exceeds the limits of the flesh. Combining critical theory with a rigorous reading of medieval texts, Cohen asks if the category “human” isn’t too small to contain the multiplicity of identities. As such, this book is the first to argue for a “posthuman” Middle Ages and to make extensive use of the philosophical writings of Gilles Deleuze to rethink the medieval.
Among the topics that Cohen covers are the passionate bond between men and horses in chivalric training; the interrelation of demons, celibacy, and colonialism in an Anglo-Saxon saint’s life; Lancelot’s masochism as envisioned by Chrétien de Troyes; the voice of thunder echoing from Margery Kempe; and the fantasies that sustained some dominant conceptions of race. This tour of identity—in all its fragility and diffusion—illustrates the centrality of the Middle Ages to theory as it enhances our understanding of self, embodiment, and temporality in the medieval world.[more]
Medieval Islam
A Study in Cultural OrientationGustave E. von Grunebaum
University of Chicago Press, 1946
From the Preface:
"This book book has grown out of a series of public lectures delivered in the spring of 1945 in the Division of the Humanities of the University of Chicago. It proposes to outline the cultural orientation of the Muslim Middle Ages, with eastern Islam as the center of attention. It attempts to characterize the medieval Muslim's view of himself and his peculiarly defined universe, the fundamental intellectual and emotional attitudes that governed his works, and the mood in which he lived his life. It strives to explain the structure of his universe in terms of inherited, borrowed, and original elements, the institutional framework within which it functioned, and its place in relation to the contemporary Christian world.
"A consideration of the various fields of cultural activity requires an analysis of the dominant interest, the intentions, and, to some extent, the methods of reasoning with which the Muslim approached his special subjects and to which achievement and limitations of achievement are due. Achievements referred to or personalities discussed will never be introduced for their own sake, let alone for the sake of listing the sum total of this civilization's major contributions. They are dealt with rather to evidence the peculiar ways in which the Muslim essayed to understand and to organize his world.
"The plan of the book thus rules out the narration of political history beyond the barest skeleton, but it requires the ascertaining of the exact position of Islam in the medieval world and its significance. This plan also excludes a study of Muslim economy, but it leads to an interpretation of the social structure as molded by the prime loyalties cherished by the Muslim."
[more]
Medieval Islamic Maps
An ExplorationKaren C. Pinto
University of Chicago Press, 2016
Hundreds of exceptional cartographic images are scattered throughout medieval and early modern Arabic, Persian, and Turkish manuscript collections. The plethora of copies created around the Islamic world over the course of eight centuries testifies to the enduring importance of these medieval visions for the Muslim cartographic imagination. With Medieval Islamic Maps, historian Karen C. Pinto brings us the first in-depth exploration of medieval Islamic cartography from the mid-tenth to the nineteenth century.
Pinto focuses on the distinct tradition of maps known collectively as the Book of Roads and Kingdoms (Kitab al-Masalik wa al-Mamalik, or KMMS), examining them from three distinct angles—iconography, context, and patronage. She untangles the history of the KMMS maps, traces their inception and evolution, and analyzes them to reveal the identities of their creators, painters, and patrons, as well as the vivid realities of the social and physical world they depicted. In doing so, Pinto develops innovative techniques for approaching the visual record of Islamic history, explores how medieval Muslims perceived themselves and their world, and brings Middle Eastern maps into the forefront of the study of the history of cartography.
Pinto focuses on the distinct tradition of maps known collectively as the Book of Roads and Kingdoms (Kitab al-Masalik wa al-Mamalik, or KMMS), examining them from three distinct angles—iconography, context, and patronage. She untangles the history of the KMMS maps, traces their inception and evolution, and analyzes them to reveal the identities of their creators, painters, and patrons, as well as the vivid realities of the social and physical world they depicted. In doing so, Pinto develops innovative techniques for approaching the visual record of Islamic history, explores how medieval Muslims perceived themselves and their world, and brings Middle Eastern maps into the forefront of the study of the history of cartography.
[more]
Medieval Jerusalem
Forging an Islamic City in Spaces Sacred to Christians and JewsJacob Lassner
University of Michigan Press, 2017
Medieval Jerusalem examines an old question that has recently surfaced and given rise to spirited discussion among Islamic historians and archeologists: what role did a city revered for its holiness play in the unfolding politics of the early Islamic period? Was there an historic moment when the city, holy to Jews, Christians, and Muslims, may have been considered as the administrative center of a vast Islamic world, as some scholars on early Islam have recently claimed? Medieval Jerusalem also emphasizes the city’s evolution as a revered Islamic religious site comparable to the holy cities Mecca and Medina.
Examining Muslim historiography and religious lore in light of Jewish traditions about the city, Jacob Lassner points out how these reworked Jewish traditions and the imposing monumental Islamic architecture of the city were meant to demonstrate that Islam had superseded Judaism and Christianity as the religion for all monotheists. He interrogates the literary sources of medieval Islamic historiography and their modern interpreters as if they were witnesses in a court of law, and applies the same method for the arguments about the monuments of the city’s material culture, including the great archaeological discoveries along the south wall of the ancient Temple Mount.
This book will be of interest to a broad range of readers given the significance of the city in the current politics of the Near East. It will in part serve as a corrective to narratives of Jerusalem’s past that are currently popular for scholarly and political reasons.
Examining Muslim historiography and religious lore in light of Jewish traditions about the city, Jacob Lassner points out how these reworked Jewish traditions and the imposing monumental Islamic architecture of the city were meant to demonstrate that Islam had superseded Judaism and Christianity as the religion for all monotheists. He interrogates the literary sources of medieval Islamic historiography and their modern interpreters as if they were witnesses in a court of law, and applies the same method for the arguments about the monuments of the city’s material culture, including the great archaeological discoveries along the south wall of the ancient Temple Mount.
This book will be of interest to a broad range of readers given the significance of the city in the current politics of the Near East. It will in part serve as a corrective to narratives of Jerusalem’s past that are currently popular for scholarly and political reasons.
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Medieval Londoners
essays to mark the eightieth birthday of Caroline M. BarronEdited by Christian Steer and Elizabeth New
University of London Press, 2019
Medieval Londoners were a diverse group, some born in the city, and others drawn to the capital from across the realm and from overseas. For some, London became the sole focus of their lives, while others retained or developed networks and loyalties that spread far and wide. The rich evidence for the medieval city, including archaeological and documentary evidence, means that the study of London and its inhabitants remains a vibrant field. Medieval Londoners brings together archaeologists, historians, art-historians and literary scholars whose essays provide glimpses of medieval Londoners in all their variety. This volume is offered to Caroline M. Barron, Emeritus Professor of the History of London at Royal Holloway, University of London, on the occasion of her 80th birthday. Her remarkable career – over some fifty years – has revitalized the way in which we consider London and its people. This volume is a tribute to her scholarship and her friendship and encouragement to others. It is thanks to Caroline M. Barron that the study of medieval London remains as vibrant today as it has ever been.
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Medieval Manuscripts from Würzburg in the Bodleian Library
A Descriptive CatalogueDaniela Mairhofer
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2015
The Bodleian Library holds a significant collection of Latin medieval manuscripts from Germany—more specifically from Würzburg, Eberbach, and Mainz. The medieval manuscripts from Würzburg, most of which were acquired by William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, during the period of the Thirty Years’ War, constitute an invaluable collection. Most of these codices originally belonged to the cathedral chapter of Würzburg, the Domstift St. Kilian, and date back to the ninth century.
Presenting detailed descriptions of more than fifty of manuscripts, Medieval Manuscripts from Würzburg in the Bodleian Library, Oxford provides an authoritative catalog, including many important early copies of the manuscripts of church fathers during the Carolingian period. Daniela Mairhofer examines each from both a textual and paleographic point of view, paying careful attention to the provenance of the manuscript, as well as to physical characteristics like decoration and binding. Entries are accompanied by copious color plates.
Presenting detailed descriptions of more than fifty of manuscripts, Medieval Manuscripts from Würzburg in the Bodleian Library, Oxford provides an authoritative catalog, including many important early copies of the manuscripts of church fathers during the Carolingian period. Daniela Mairhofer examines each from both a textual and paleographic point of view, paying careful attention to the provenance of the manuscript, as well as to physical characteristics like decoration and binding. Entries are accompanied by copious color plates.
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Medieval Merchants and Money
Essays in Honour of James L. BoltonEdited by Matthew Davies
University of London Press, 2016
This volume contains selected essays in celebration of the scholarship of the medieval historian Professor James L. Bolton. The essays address a number of different questions in medieval economic and social history, as the volume looks at the activities of merchants, their trade, legal interactions and identities, and on the importance of money and credit in the rural and urban economies. Other essays look more widely at patterns of immigration to London, trade and royal policy, and the role that merchants played in the Hundred Years War.
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Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love
R. Howard Bloch
University of Chicago Press, 1991
Until now the advent of Western romantic love has been seen as a liberation from—or antidote to—ten centuries of misogyny. In this major contribution to gender studies, R. Howard Bloch demonstrates how similar the ubiquitous antifeminism of medieval times and the romantic idealization of woman actually are.
Through analyses of a broad range of patristic and medieval texts, Bloch explores the Christian construction of gender in which the flesh is feminized, the feminine is aestheticized, and aesthetics are condemned in theological terms. Tracing the underlying theme of virginity from the Church Fathers to the courtly poets, Bloch establishes the continuity between early Christian antifeminism and the idealization of woman that emerged in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In conclusion he explains the likely social, economic, and legal causes for the seeming inversion of the terms of misogyny into those of an idealizing tradition of love that exists alongside its earlier avatar until the current era.
This startling study will be of great value to students of medieval literature as well as to historians of culture and gender.
Through analyses of a broad range of patristic and medieval texts, Bloch explores the Christian construction of gender in which the flesh is feminized, the feminine is aestheticized, and aesthetics are condemned in theological terms. Tracing the underlying theme of virginity from the Church Fathers to the courtly poets, Bloch establishes the continuity between early Christian antifeminism and the idealization of woman that emerged in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In conclusion he explains the likely social, economic, and legal causes for the seeming inversion of the terms of misogyny into those of an idealizing tradition of love that exists alongside its earlier avatar until the current era.
This startling study will be of great value to students of medieval literature as well as to historians of culture and gender.
[more]
Medieval Practices Of Space
Barbara A. Hanawalt
University of Minnesota Press, 2000
Interprets space and place in the medieval era.
Interprets space and place in the medieval era.
A glance at medieval maps tells us that cartographers of the Middle Ages divided space differently than we do today. In the great mappae mundi, for instance, Jerusalem takes center stage, with an image of the crucified Christ separating one place from another. The architects of medieval cathedrals manipulated space to clarify the roles and status of all who entered. Even in the most everyday context, space was allotted according to gender and class and was freighted with infinitely subtle meanings. The contributors to this volume cross disciplinary and theoretical boundaries to read the words, metaphors, images, signs, poetic illusions, and identities with which medieval men and women used space and place to add meaning to the world.Contributors: Kathleen Biddick, U of Notre Dame; Charles Burroughs, SUNY, Binghamton; Michael Camille, U of Chicago; Tom Conley, Harvard U; Donnalee Dox, U of Arizona; Jody Enders, U of California, Santa Barbara; Valerie K. J. Flint, U of Hull, UK; Andrzej Piotrowski, U of Minnesota; Daniel Lord Smail, Fordham U.Barbara A. Hanawalt is King George III Professor of British History at Ohio State University. Michal Kobialka is associate professor of theatre at University of Minnesota.[more]
Medieval Scandinavia
From Conversion to Reformation, circa 800-1500Birgit Sawyer
University of Minnesota Press, 1993
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Medieval Sovereignty
Marsilius of Padua and Bartolous of SaxoferratoFrancesco Maiolo
Eburon Academic Publishers, 2007
Medieval Sovereignty examines the idea of sovereignty in the Middle Ages and asks if it can be considered a fundamental element of medieval constitutional order. Francesco Maiolo analyzes the writings of Marsilius of Padua (1275/80–1342/43) and Bartolous of Saxoferrato (1314–57) and assesses their relative contributions as early proponents of popular sovereignty. Both are credited with having provided the legal justification for medieval popular government. Maiolo’s cogent reconsideration of this primacy is an important addition to current medieval studies.
[more]
Medieval Views of the Cosmos
E. Edson and E. Savage-Smith
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2004
Once upon a time, the universe was much simpler: before our modern understanding of an infinite formless space scattered with pulsating stars, revolving planets, and mysterious black holes, the universe was seen as a rigid hierarchical system with the earth and the human race at its center. Medieval Views of the Cosmos investigates this worldview shared by medieval societies, revealing how their modes of thought affect us even today.
In the medieval world system—inherited by Christians and Muslims from the Greeks and Romans, and modified by their own religious tenets—spheres bearing the planets and stars wheeled around the earth, and at every level there was a moral lesson for humanity and a satisfying metaphor for the nature of God. The authors of this volume explain how the medieval view of the universe was harmonious on theological and practical levels, providing answers to the most puzzling of questions.
Medieval Views of the Cosmos is an engaging and beautifully illustrated introduction to a world where every moment was a theater of human drama directed by the hand of God.
In the medieval world system—inherited by Christians and Muslims from the Greeks and Romans, and modified by their own religious tenets—spheres bearing the planets and stars wheeled around the earth, and at every level there was a moral lesson for humanity and a satisfying metaphor for the nature of God. The authors of this volume explain how the medieval view of the universe was harmonious on theological and practical levels, providing answers to the most puzzling of questions.
Medieval Views of the Cosmos is an engaging and beautifully illustrated introduction to a world where every moment was a theater of human drama directed by the hand of God.
[more]
Medieval Wellness
From Beauty to BloodlettingLarisa Grollemond
J. Paul Getty Trust, The, 0
Dispelling myths of a dirty, superstitious Middle Ages, this entertaining volume explores medieval approaches to health and wellness.
Often maligned as an era of darkness and superstition, the Middle Ages in Europe have been stereotyped as lacking standards for basic hygiene, or, at the very least, for having a laughably simplistic approach to self-care and medicine. With wit and expert analysis, medievalist Larisa Grollemond explores everyday practices and beliefs of medieval life. She uncovers a world as nuanced and self-aware as our own while playfully connecting traditions from the Middle Ages to modern wellness culture.
- Challenges misconceptions of medieval Europe with engaging, evidence-based insights into hygiene and healthcare practices.
- Answers popular questions about daily life, including bathing, cosmetics, contraception, and the realities of medieval medical treatments.
- Features over 130 illustrations of illuminated manuscripts, medieval artifacts, and other art works that bring the past vividly to life.
- Connects medieval wellness practices to contemporary self-care trends, offering surprising parallels and fresh perspective.
If you think the Middle Ages were primitive and unsophisticated, this book will change your mind. With Medieval Wellness, you’ll discover a world of care, curiosity, and complexity that will feel familiar to your own.
[more]
Medieval Women and Their Objects
Jenny Adams and Nancy Mason Bradbury, editors
University of Michigan Press, 2016
The essays gathered in this volume present multifaceted considerations of the intersection of objects and gender within the cultural contexts of late medieval France and England. Some take a material view of objects, showing buildings, books, and pictures as sites of gender negotiation and resistance and as extensions of women’s bodies. Others reconsider the concept of objectification in the lives of fictional and historical medieval women by looking closely at their relation to gendered material objects, taken literally as women’s possessions and as figurative manifestations of their desires.
The opening section looks at how medieval authors imagined fictional and legendary women using particular objects in ways that reinforce or challenge gender roles. These women bring objects into the orbit of gender identity, employing and relating to them in a literal sense, while also taking advantage of their symbolic meanings. The second section focuses on the use of texts both as objects in their own right and as mechanisms by which other objects are defined. The possessors of objects in these essays lived in the world, their lives documented by historical records, yet like their fictional and legendary counterparts, they too used objects for instrumental ends and with symbolic resonances. The final section considers the objectification of medieval women’s bodies as well as its limits. While this at times seems to allow for a trade in women, authorial attempts to give definitive shapes and boundaries to women’s bodies either complicate the gender boundaries they try to contain or reduce gender to an ideological abstraction. This volume contributes to the ongoing effort to calibrate female agency in the late Middle Ages, honoring the groundbreaking work of Carolyn P. Collette.
The opening section looks at how medieval authors imagined fictional and legendary women using particular objects in ways that reinforce or challenge gender roles. These women bring objects into the orbit of gender identity, employing and relating to them in a literal sense, while also taking advantage of their symbolic meanings. The second section focuses on the use of texts both as objects in their own right and as mechanisms by which other objects are defined. The possessors of objects in these essays lived in the world, their lives documented by historical records, yet like their fictional and legendary counterparts, they too used objects for instrumental ends and with symbolic resonances. The final section considers the objectification of medieval women’s bodies as well as its limits. While this at times seems to allow for a trade in women, authorial attempts to give definitive shapes and boundaries to women’s bodies either complicate the gender boundaries they try to contain or reduce gender to an ideological abstraction. This volume contributes to the ongoing effort to calibrate female agency in the late Middle Ages, honoring the groundbreaking work of Carolyn P. Collette.
[more]
Medieval Worlds
Barbarians, Heretics and Artists in the Middle AgesArno Borst
University of Chicago Press, 1992
In Medieval Worlds: Barbarians, Heretics, and Artists, medieval historian Arno Borst offers at once an imaginatively narrated tour of medieval society. Issues of language, power, and cultural change come to life as he examines how knights, witches and heretics, monks and kings, women poets, and disputatious university professors existed in the medieval world.
Clearly interested in the forms of medieval behavior which gave rise to the seeds of modern society, Borst focuses on three in particular that gave momentum to medieval religious, social, and intellectual movements: the barbaric, heretical, and artistic. Borst concludes by reflecting on his own life as a scholar and draws out lessons for us from the turbulence of the Middle Ages.
Clearly interested in the forms of medieval behavior which gave rise to the seeds of modern society, Borst focuses on three in particular that gave momentum to medieval religious, social, and intellectual movements: the barbaric, heretical, and artistic. Borst concludes by reflecting on his own life as a scholar and draws out lessons for us from the turbulence of the Middle Ages.
[more]
Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine
An Introduction to Knowledge and PracticeNancy G. Siraisi
University of Chicago Press, 1990
Western Europe supported a highly developed and diverse medical community in the late medieval and early Renaissance periods. In her absorbing history of this complex era in medicine, Siraisi explores the inner workings of the medical community and illustrates the connections of medicine to both natural philosophy and technical skills.
[more]
Medievalism, Popular Culture and Politics in Metal Music
The Case of Hispanic Epic ThemesAmaranta Saguar García
Intellect Books, 2026
A groundbreaking book exploring how metal music uses medieval Hispanic epic themes and how this engagement carries complex cultural and political implications.
Challenging the common view of metal music as just a form of Western pop culture, this innovative book draws attention to medievalizing epicism, a distinctive strand within metal that evokes the medieval and the epic in both aesthetics and sensibility. While often shaped by fantasy literature, cinema, and more recently, video games, this fascination with the medieval has deeper roots in nationalist ideologies. Through a rich exploration of Spain and Portugal’s transitions after their period of authoritarian rule, this book reveals how medievalizing epicism plays a key role in shaping nationalist and ethnocentric discourses, fascist narratives, and official efforts to foster patriotic sentiment, and how metal bands confront these origins.
Drawing on an impressive breadth of scholarship and a deep knowledge of metal music culture, Amaranta Saguar García skillfully weaves together diverse reference points without losing focus or clarity. This book invites both scholars and music fans to reflect more broadly on how metal music imagines and reuses medieval heritage.
Challenging the common view of metal music as just a form of Western pop culture, this innovative book draws attention to medievalizing epicism, a distinctive strand within metal that evokes the medieval and the epic in both aesthetics and sensibility. While often shaped by fantasy literature, cinema, and more recently, video games, this fascination with the medieval has deeper roots in nationalist ideologies. Through a rich exploration of Spain and Portugal’s transitions after their period of authoritarian rule, this book reveals how medievalizing epicism plays a key role in shaping nationalist and ethnocentric discourses, fascist narratives, and official efforts to foster patriotic sentiment, and how metal bands confront these origins.
Drawing on an impressive breadth of scholarship and a deep knowledge of metal music culture, Amaranta Saguar García skillfully weaves together diverse reference points without losing focus or clarity. This book invites both scholars and music fans to reflect more broadly on how metal music imagines and reuses medieval heritage.
[more]
Meditations on the Incarnation, Passion, and Death of Jesus Christ
Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg
University of Chicago Press, 2009
Read by Protestants and Catholics alike, Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg (1633–94) was the foremost German woman poet and writer in the seventeenth-century German-speaking world. Privileged by her social station and education, she published a large body of religious writings under her own name to a reception unequaled by any other German woman during her lifetime. But once the popularity of devotional writings as a genre waned, Catharina’s works went largely unread until scholars devoted renewed attention to them in the twentieth century.
For this volume, Lynne Tatlock translates for the first time into English three of the thirty-six meditations, restoring Catharina to her rightful place in print. These meditations foreground women in the life of Jesus Christ—including accounts of women at the Incarnation and the Tomb—and in Scripture in general. Tatlock’s selections give the modern reader a sense of the structure and nature of Catharina’s devotional writings, highlighting the alternative they offer to the male-centered view of early modern literary and cultural production during her day, and redefining the role of women in Christian history.
[more]