Böcker utgivna av Arc Humanities Press

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 oeuvre reveal a consistent picture: one in which women educate and empower one another.

This book uses sociological perspectives to bring together work on war and identity in the Middle Ages relating to a range of peoples and geographical settings from Europe, the eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East, and Asia. Focusing on the interrelation between ideological practices and group formation, it examines the role of warfare in the emergence and decline of particular social structures, and changing patterns of collective identification. It contributes to the debate on the longue durée development of the phenomena of ethnicity and nationhood by drawing attention to the impact of war on the evolution of various types of polity and visions of community in the Middle Ages. Its use of non-European as well as European exemplars provides a wealth of fruitful comparative material, shedding new light on the relationship between medieval warfare and high-level identities.

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.

Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda, historia septentrional (1617) is Miguel de Cervantes's last major work. Virtually ignored for the past four hundred years and overshadowed by the acclaim accorded Don Quixote, it is due a revival. As indicated by this new English title, The Perils of Persiles and Sigismunda, a Northern Saga, this challenging saga-like fiction follows an attractive young prince and princess who undertake a perilous pilgrimage by sea and on land from their North Atlantic islands to Rome. This new translation by William Thomas Little takes full account of recent scholars' ground-breaking research and their new readings. It also includes a selected bibliography, a contextualizing introduction, and footnotes on the text that clarify for contemporary readers cultural issues that were readily known to seventeenth-century readers in Spain, France, Italy, Portugal, and England.

This book explores the dimensions of medieval monastic meditation, prayer, and contemplation in the heyday of Benedictine and Cistercian spiritual writing, the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Mancia aims to answer the following questions: What did extra-liturgical prayer and meditation look like for medieval monks and nuns in western medieval Europe? When, where, and how was it practised? Was there a set way to engage with monastic meditation, or were there a variety of medieval monastic meditative experiences in the eleventh and twelfth centuries? What did monks and nuns perceive as the limitations of monastic prayer and meditation, and how did they understand their own imperfections and failures to perform "perfect" devotion? What extra-textual tools--art, manuscripts, diagrams, spaces--did monks and nuns rely upon to stimulate their practices of meditation? What does monastic meditation reveal about the emotional lives of Benedictine and Cistercian monks and nuns in the high Middle Ages? And, finally, what does the monastic struggle to pursue a prayerful Christian life have to teach the secular world of the twenty-first century?

This collection explores playful ways of fostering creative engagements with the medieval and early modern past and its own literary and artistic products, especially among those new to their study. As scholars and teachers of early English, the contributors cover literary and cultural material from a range of genres within the Old English, Middle English, Tudor, and Stuart periods and collectively delve into a shared interest in facilitating what we might loosely define as "newcomer" or "non-specialist" encounters with the past: initial, exploratory contact in which prior knowledge cannot be assumed, whether involving creative professionals, experts from other disciplines, undergraduate and school students, or members of the public. Considering artworks and installation, theatre and performance and curation practices, case studies offer practice-based examples of learning and engagement which proceed primarily through creative and playful approaches. The case studies are arranged into two broad groups: those which work through performance and theatrical play of various kinds, and those which work through playful practices of production and making. All share a perspective of irreverence, of vivid immersion, and of the possibilities of conjuring with the past.

Museums have long been viewed as exclusive, excluding, and as antiseptic to intimacy. In the past few decades, however, humanized experiences--cultivated by curators, educators, artists, activists, and marketers alike--have emerged as the reason for being for these cornerstones of community. Such experiences are often possible only in museum settings, where cultural exploration, probing conversation, and safe risk-taking can occur in spaces now becoming sacred through inclusiveness. This book brings together an interdisciplinary collection of essays examining the kinds of human experiences and interactions that have converted the once-sterile museum into a space of enlivenment and enrichment, as well as physical and emotional well-being. The essays focus for the first time on the uniquely human and humanizing experiences to be found in the collections, programs, exhibitions, and spaces of today's museums.

This book is a new cultural and intellectual history of the natural world in the early medieval Latin West. It examines the complex relationships between language, texts, and the physical world they describe, focusing on the manuscripts of the Physiologus--the foundation of the medieval bestiary. The Physiologus helped to shape the post-Roman worldview about the role and place of human beings in Creation. This process drew on classical ideas, but in its emphasis on allegory, etymology, and a plurality of readings, it was original and distinctive. This study demonstrates precisely how the early medieval re-contextualization of existing knowledge, together with a substantial amount of new writing, set the course of ideas about faith and nature for centuries to come. In doing so, it establishes the importance of multi-text miscellanies for early medieval written culture.

Describes the Almoravid transformation of western North Africa through trans-Saharan and trans-Mediterranean commerce, urbanization, and the epic encounter with the Christian, Muslim, and Jewish cultures of Iberia.

The concept of the Rus' Land became and remained an historical myth of modern Russian nationalism as the equivalent of "Russia." This book looks at the history of the use of the concept of the Rus' Land from the tenth to the seventeenth century.

These teaching and reference materials paint a vivid picture of the kinds of French that medieval English learners might desire to wield and of the high levels of fluency they could achieve.

"Europe" has become a modern political concept, but it has a long and varied history. This volume analyzes medieval ideas of Europe and their representations by modern historians.

Using histories, letters, and material culture from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, this book explores how violence was understood and justified during the time of the crusades.

A comparative approach to the role of women in religious and monastic life in Europe and the Americas during the medieval and early modern periods.

Sixteenth-century ethnographic accounts of Baltic paganism in English translation for the first time. With a critical introduction placing these texts in the contexts of early modern ethnography, Baltic history, and Reformation religious polemic.

An annual publication of historiographical essays on the pre-modern world; this issue celebrating the life and work of Paul E. Szarmach.

A comparative analysis tackling the impact of the growth of centralized government on elite women's power in later twelfth- and thirteenth-century Boulogne and northern France.

Grounds mythologized stories of Desert Ascetics with insights into lived monasticism and monastic archaeology in Egypt.

A study of medieval Marian laments, a performative genre that offered clerical and lay audiences a deeply inspiring devotional experience.

Evidence that the Second Plague Pandemic was already ravaging China by the early thirteenth century--over a century before it made its virulent appearance in the Mediterranean.

Analyzes how biblical analogy functioned as a religio-political tool for Elizabeth across her reign, and argues that their widespread use demonstrates their potency as a tool for legitimizing and sustaining her power.

This volume examines new ways to design, develop, explore, and visualize spatial datasets to investigate spatial dimensions and world perceptions in pre-modern sources and societies.

An overarching, comprehensive analysis of the French military in the medieval period, focusing on the armies of the French monarchy and the lands close around them, and extending from the Low Countries to Provence.

The concept of the Rus' Land became and remained an historical myth of modern Russian nationalism as the equivalent of "Russia." This book looks at the history of the use of the concept of the Rus' Land from the tenth to the seventeenth century.

This study shows the importance of carolling in the celebrations and festivities of medieval Britain and demonstrates its longevity from the eleventh century to the sixteenth.

This book examines how the military orders and the ideology of crusading gave rise to a new sacred landscape in the medieval Baltic region, an outpost of Latin Christianity.

The first biography of John Vitez, an influential figure of the Early Renaissance, presenting a complex picture of cultural, political, and religious developments in Central Europe.