EMISCS14

Le XIIe siècle marque une fracture épistémologique dont les symptômes les plus visibles sont l’apparition des questionnements identitaires, qu’il s’agisse d’une meilleure définition de l’individu, des familles ou des groupes. Ils se laissent entrevoir avec une force sans précédent sur le fond d’une double mutation, sociale et culturelle. L’éclosion de la littérature vernaculaire, l’effondrement progressif durant tout le XIIe siècle de la suprématie du latin écrit, provoque un bouleversement épistémique. Les marqueurs de l’identité comme les signes héraldiques commencent à préoccuper l’homme médiéval. Les contributions de ce volume se proposent de suivre le développement et la rationalisation de ces marqueurs qui définissent les rapports entre les individus et leurs groupes jusqu’à la fin du Moyen Âge. Cette enquête est menée à travers la fiction vernaculaire, le lieu par excellence où les problématiques identitaires trouvent une voie d’expression à la fois transparente et complexe.

In recent years, various branches of memory studies have provided useful tools of analysis that offer new ways of understanding medieval cultures. The articles in this collection draw on these new theoretical tools for studying - and conceptualizing - memory, in order to reassess the function of memory in medieval Nordic culture. Despite its interdisciplinary and comparative basis, the volume remains very much an empirical study of memory and memory-dependent issues as these took form in the Nordic world.

In addition, the articles deal with a variety of theoretical concepts and areas of investigation which are of relevance when dealing with memory studies in general, such as transmission and media, preservation and storage, forgetting and erasure, and authenticity and falsity. The articles cover a wide range of medieval texts, such as saga, myth, poetry, law, historiography, learned literature, and other forms of verbal expression, such as runic inscriptions.

Traditionally women were denied access to positions of official religious authority within Christianity and were therefore compelled to explore other avenues to acquire and express spiritual leadership. Through twelve case studies covering different regions in Europe, this volume considers the nuances of what constituted female spiritual authority, how it was acquired and manifested by religious women, and how it evolved from the high Middle Ages to the Early Modern period. Whilst current scholarship often emphasizes binaries within the fields of gender and religious authority, this volume examines the manifestation of female religious authority in its multiple facets. It looks both at individuals displaying exceptional forms of agency such as prophesying, as well as more commonplace, communal activities such as letter-writing and music-making. By taking into account the pervasiveness of spirituality in society as a whole in the Pre-Modern era, this collection of essays renegotiates the relationship between the spiritual and the social domain. Through the chronological organization of the contributions insight is gained into the changes in the means and forms female religious authority could take between 1150 and 1750. The narrative is clearly impacted by late medieval enclosure policies and by changing modes of spirituality. Whereas women in the earlier period tended to represent themselves as a door through which God could advance towards mankind, later on they functioned more frequently as a portal through which others could advance towards God.