Literature & literary studies
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Reconsidering Consent and Coercion
Power, Vulnerability, and Sexual Violence in Medieval Literature
How can contemporary theorisations of consent help us to nuance our understanding of consent and coercion in the Middle Ages? And what can reconsidering medieval attitudes towards consent offer to our own ‘consent culture’? Contemporary feminist approaches have identified consent both as a potent political framework for liberation and as an inherently limited concept that opens out onto other important ethical questions. Proceeding from this moment this book looks in two directions to understand the varied ways in which structural inequalities impact meaningful consent and facilitate coercion in the Middle Ages and today.
Building upon the momentum of ‘medieval consent studies’ as a newly defined field this volume expands the focus beyond rape and raptus assessing more varied representations of consent and coercion through an intersectional consideration of power inequality and sexual violence. The contributions bring together different methodologies cultural contexts and literary traditions to highlight literature’s capacity to reflect otherwise undocumented forms of sexual vulnerability. Offering a compelling case for integrating critical approaches like trans history codicology animal studies ecocriticism and disability studies into this field Reconsidering Consent and Coercion demonstrates the vital necessity of a nuanced and inclusive understanding of the past for our present discourses of consent.
Nouvelles traductions et réceptions indirectes de la Grèce ancienne. Tome 2 : Traductions de traductions de textes grecs et translatio studii
L’essor des traductions directes du grec au français commence dans les années 1550. Du début du XIVe siècle jusqu’au milieu du XVIe siècle les auteurs-traducteurs en langue française qui représentent la Grèce ancienne n’ont sauf exception aucune connaissance directe des œuvres grecques. Les savoirs sur la Grèce qu’ils transmettent et réinventent sont médiatisés par des filtres divers. Leur réception est indirecte elle prend appui sur des œuvres antérieures textuelles et iconographiques dont les représentations de la Grèce ancienne sont déjà le fruit d’une ou de plusieurs réceptions.Les œuvres latines qu’ils traduisent et adaptentsont pour une part des œuvres antiques et médiévales qui ne sont pas des traductions et pour une part des traductions ou adaptations d’œuvres grecques avec parfois plusieurs transferts linguistiques à partir du grec. Elles sont très diverses : des textes antiques jusqu’aux traductions humanistes latines d’œuvres grecques réalisées en Italie et aux Pays-Bas en passant par des œuvres latines médiévales originales des traductions latines du français et des traductions arabo-latines et arabo-hispano-latines.
Les auteurs-traducteurs en langue française héritent ainsi de réceptions antérieures diverses qu’ils s’approprient et transforment poursuivant le processus d’invention de représentations de la Grèce ancienne. Comme les manuscrits et les imprimés de leurs nouvelles traductions sont souvent très illustrés les artistes offrent dans le même temps des traductions visuelles qui elles aussi s’appuient sur des sources diverses et des réceptions antérieures et donnent à voir de nouvelles images de la Grèce ancienne. La question de la réception de l’Antiquité grecque sera donc explorée par une entrée différente de celle qui a été adoptée jusqu’à présent et qui a consisté en l’étude de la transmission et de la traduction directes des œuvres grecques. Le présent volume se focalise sur les traductions au second degré de textes grecs.
The Byzantine Historiographical Prefaces (4th–15th Centuries)
A Study on the Praxis and Culture of Writing History in Byzantium
In recent years a lively debate has developed on the features of Byzantine historiography. The increasingly dominant tendency today is to treat historical texts more as pleasant literary narratives than as systematic historical accounts of the political and military history of Byzantium. The present study aims to contribute to this debate by revisiting the voices of the Byzantine authors themselves focusing on the extant historical prefaces from the Early Middle and Late Byzantine eras. This seemed timely more than a century after the publication of Ηeinrich Lieberich’s fundamental work on Byzantine historiographical proems.
Obviously not all prefaces are of equal interest: some serve a purely conventional function while others are composed more thoughtfully and merit more careful attention. The book’s goal is twofold: firstly to outline the details of the prefatory function of the Byzantine historiographical proems as microtexts; secondly to detect and evaluate the theoretical views expressed by the authors of each period regarding the genre of Byzantine historiography. This will expand our knowledge of how the Byzantines wrote (praxis) and thought (culture) about historiography.
«Nelli occhi della filosofia». La logica nell’opera di Dante Alighieri
Codificata a partire da una sezione specifica del corpus aristotelico la logica rappresentava nel Medioevo latino quell’"arte delle arti" (ars artium) che studiava le regole del ragionamento corretto e le era riconosciuta una universalità di tipo strumentale. Come notato sin dai primi biografi e commentatori Dante dimostra in svariate occasioni una maestria e una padronanza della materia del tutto degne per dirla col Boccaccio di un «maraviglioso loïco». Giustamente celebri sono i versi di Inferno XXVII in cui «un d’i neri cherubini» con un raffinato ragionamento strappa l’anima di Guido da Montefeltro all’impotente San Francesco («forse / tu non pensavi ch’io loïco fossi!» v. 123); ma è soprattutto nel Convivio nella Monarchia e nella controversa Questio de aqua et terra che l’Alighieri sfoggia una competenza difficilmente riducibile alla consultazione occasionale di qualche ‘manuale’. Questo studio analizza sistematicamente i passaggi dell’opera dantesca riconducibili a questo specifico ambito disciplinare; e offre una panoramica sugli ambienti culturali in cui il Poeta avrebbe verosimilmente potuto formarsi (Firenze Bologna la Toscana occidentale la marca Trevigiana). Da un lato quindi si inserisce nel fortunato filone di studi che si è occupato di valutare la conoscenza che Dante poté avere delle dottrine di Aristotele e dei suoi interpreti. Dall’altro tenta di ricostruire i tempi i luoghi e i modi in cui «peregrino quasi mendicando» poté acquisire tale competenza specialistica. In tal modo non viene solo illuminato un lato inesplorato di questo eccezionale «amatore di sapienza» ma viene anche offerto uno scorcio privilegiato sullo stato delle conoscenze filosofiche in Italia fra XIII e XIV secolo.
Ælius Aristide et Xénophon
Regards d’un orateur gréco-romain sur un classique de l’hellénisme
Several ancient literary sources show that Xenophon was regarded during the Imperial period as a preeminent model. This study looks at how Xenophon was received in the speeches of Ælius Aristides – an angle that has not been explored until now. The speeches examined include the Platonic speeches (or. 2-4) the speech Concerning a remark in passing (or. 28) the declamation On behalf of making peace with the Athenians (or. 8) the group of the five Leuctran orations (or. 11-15) the evidence for the lost declamation Callixenus the Panathenaicus (or. 1) and the speech To Rome (or. 26). Greek history plays a key role in this inquiry especially since Aristides showed a particular interest in the aftermath of the Battle of Leuctra. The historical allusions to Xenophon’s Hellenica reveal Aristides’ erudition and his attention to the speeches within that work. Studying how Aristides draws on Xenophon can help deepen our understanding of his orations and open up new directions for research on Xenophon’s reception.
The Multilingual Dynamics of Medieval Literature in Western Europe, c. 1200–c. 1600
While the multilingualism of the medieval world has been at the forefront of research agendas across medieval studies in recent years there nonetheless remain many questions to answer. What for example were the stakes and consequences of multilingualism for literary culture? And how do these change if we think of multilingualism through cultural social artistic or material lenses? Taking such concerns as their starting point the essays in this volume address a variety of aspects of medieval literature and literary culture related to multilingualism. They deal with multilingualism in relation to manuscripts literary contexts and historical contexts. The chapters gathered together here address considerations that have been overlooked in previous scholarship and ask where the future of the study of medieval multilingualism lies. Contributions to the volume are grouped thematically rather than by date or period in order to draw out comparative perspectives with the aim of encouraging innovative new approaches to future research in the field.
Storyworlds and Worldbuilding in Old Norse‑Icelandic Literature
The storyworlds of Old Norse-Icelandic literature are multifaceted and variable ranging from the worlds of heroic poetry and popular romance to the recognizable narrative universe built by the Sagas of Icelanders. Despite this they have rarely been explored and narratological theories of storyworlds or fantasy scholarship have had little impact on the field. Yet given that every story creates its own storyworld it can be assumed that Old Norse-Icelandic literary texts too build worlds — and these worlds are diverse and complex as shown by the contributors in this volume: they constantly engage with one another exploring shaping and expanding while also entering into a dialogue with the primary world from which they draw.
This volume brings together scholars from different areas of Old Norse-Icelandic studies to explore questions related to not only the storyworlds of medieval Icelandic literature but also those of legal and learned texts and to the way that they are built. Together they inquire into the nature of these worlds into their preservation and transmission in manuscripts their transmediality transnarrativity and reception. In doing so these inquiries showcase the breadth of new perspectives on medieval Icelandic literature made possible by the application of narratological theory in its study.
Don Quichotte en ses métamorphoses. Sur les traces des traducteurs anglais et français du « long dix-huitième siècle » *
Metamorphoses
Tracing the Translator in the Long Eighteenth Century, 1660–1830
Translators are crucial to the constitution dissemination and adaptation of literatures cultures and ideas. However their presence in the historical record often proves difficult to recognise or retrace. This volume places front and centre this key problem for historians of translation as well as for historians of literature culture and ideas. It sheds new light on the much-debated (in)visibility of historical translators by investigating in what contexts and through what strategies translators sought to render themselves either (in)visible and how critics and scholars can now trace these efforts. When and how does the visible metamorphose into the invisible and vice versa?
The volume focuses on the long eighteenth century a period which witnesses a metamorphosis in literature and culture that tells powerfully on translators. From relatively visible cultural actors they are reduced to enforced invisibility as cultural products stabilised their meanings around singular authors. Tracing this shift across a swathe of products and practices the book conducts its investigations across a range of genres ranging from radical politics over philosophy to opera; taking in languages and cultures across Western Europe.
Chapters employ case studies to develop methodological and theoretical models that will empower scholars of translation history to recover translators both from the direct evidence of their work and from the networks and tools that supported them.