Celtic, Slavonic & Indo-Iranian langs & lits
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A Latin-Polish Sermon Collection and the Emergence of Vernacularisation
This monograph offers an analysis of the so-called Kazania augustiańskie (‘The Augustinian sermons’) a unique manuscript which represents a very early phase in the vernacularisation of medieval Polish textual culture when vernacular or bilingual texts started to manifest their independent development. The relationships between Latin and the Polish vernacular in this text surviving in a contemporary manuscript sheds light on the ways in which Latin determined the development of written Polish in the textual genre of the sermon. The detailed and multifaceted analysis of the linguistic features of the Kazania augustiańskie contributes to the continuing discussion in medieval studies on the emergence of the earliest texts in the vernacular languages and on the preconditions and dynamics of vernacularisation.
At a first glance this book may appear to be the tale of a single manuscript told solely from the point of view of a historian of language. However it also explores both the birth of a particular medieval text and more generally the growing ability to compose vernacular texts. This capacity which developed over the medieval period was based on Latin models; over the centuries it contributed to vernacular texts becoming a fundamental component of European culture.
Navigating Language in the Early Islamic World
Multilingualism and Language Change in the First Centuries of Islam
Traditional accounts of Arabicization have often favoured linear narratives of language change instead of delving into the diversity of peoples processes and languages that informed the fate of Arabic in the early Islamic world. Using a wide range of case studies from the caliphal centres at Damascus and Baghdad to the provinces of Arabia Egypt Armenia and Central Asia Navigating Language reconsiders these prevailing narratives by analysing language change in different regions of the early Islamic world through the lens of multilingualism and language change. This volume complicates the story of Arabic by building on the work of scholars in Late Antiquity who have abundantly demonstrated the benefits of embracing multilingualism as a heuristic framework. The three main themes include imperial strategies of language use the participation of local elites in the process of language change and the encounters between languages on the page in the markets and at work. This volume brings together historians and art historians working on the interplay of Arabic and other languages during the early Islamic period to provide a critical resource and reference tool for students and scholars of the cultural and social history of language in the Near East and beyond.
Une quête tibétaine de la sagesse
Prajñāraśmi (1518-1584) et l’attitude impartiale (ris med)
Prajñāraśmi (1518-1584) ou « Lumière de Sagesse » est le nom de plume sanskrit d’un auteur tibétain qui vécut durant une période de crise politico-religieuse située entre la pleine assimilation du bouddhisme indien par les Tibétains et l’instauration du régime des Dalaï-Lamas. Dans ce contexte d’instabilité Prajñāraśmi se distingua par une formation éclectique exceptionnelle et un enseignement qui centré sur l’idée de sagesse – ou gnose – chercha à montrer l’unité des différentes traditions du bouddhisme au Tibet.
Ses grands textes sont présentés et traduits dans cet ouvrage notamment l’Ambroisie de l’étude de la réflexion et de la méditation et la Lampe qui illumine les deux vérités qui traite de la philosophie de la voie du milieu (Madhyamaka). Sa biographie ainsi que l’étude de son oeuvre et de son héritage révèlent une filiation entre les renouveaux de l’école des Anciens (Rnying ma pa) durant la réunification du Tibet sous le Ve Dalaï-Lama (xvii e s.) la nouvelle révélation de ’Jigs med gling pa (xviii e s.) et la floraison du mouvement « impartial » (ris med xix e siècle) avec la collection transsectaire du Trésor des instructions spirituelles.
Il se dessine ici une quête tibétaine de la sagesse qui conjuguant l’histoire des traditions le discours philosophique le yoga et la contemplation visait à une liberté intérieure conçue au-delà de tout parti pris « intention unique » de tous les enseignements du Bouddha ou selon sa propre lignée de la Grande Perfection (Rdzogs chen) « sphère de la libération ».
Le guide du monde imaginal
Présentation, édition et traduction de la Risāla mithāliyya (Épître sur l’imaginal) de Quṭb al-Dīn Ashkevarī
Le monde imaginal (‘ālam al-mithāl) concept élaboré entre l’école de la sagesse illuminative (ishrāq) de Suhrawardī et l’école de mystique spéculative d’Ibn ‘Arabī est l’une des innovations majeures de la philosophie en Islam après Averroès. Intermédiaire entre les mondes matériel et spirituel sensible et intelligible il permet de rendre raison des événements des rêves des phénomènes d’apparition des ascensions célestes des sages et des saints ainsi que des plaisirs et des tourments de la « résurrection mineure » dans la tombe.
L’on doit à Quṭb al-Dīn Ashkevarī philosophe shi’ite méconnu de l’Iran safavide (11ème/17ème siècle) la première monographie sur ce nouveau monde composée en arabe et en persan : Fānūs al-khayāl fī irā’at ‘ālam al-mithāl « la Lanterne de l’imagination. Sur la vision du monde imaginal » aussi intitulé al-Risāla al-mithāliyya « l’Épître sur l’imaginal ». Il s’agit à la fois d’une compilation rassemblant des sources variées sur le monde imaginal et d’une œuvre personnelle à contre-courant de son temps soutenant l’harmonie entre le shi’isme imâmite la philosophie et le soufisme et appelant à une quête de salut par la connaissance hors du monde d’ici-bas.
Le présent ouvrage contient une présentation une traduction inédite et la première édition de cette épître. En retraçant une « histoire-géographie » du monde imaginal tout en analysant l’œuvre dans son caractère personnel singulier il entend éclairer les relations profondes entre les trois courants de l’islam spirituel que sont le shi’isme imâmite le soufisme et la philosophie.
Celts, Gaels, and Britons
Studies in Language and Literature from Antiquity to the Middle Ages in Honour of Patrick Sims-Williams
Celts Gaels and Britons offers a miscellany of essays exploring three closely connected areas within the fields of Celtic Studies in order to shed new light on the ancient and medieval Celtic languages and their literatures. Taking as its inspiration the scholarship of Professor Patrick Sims-Williams to whom this volume is dedicated the papers gathered together here explore the Continental Celtic languages texts from the Irish Sea world and the literature and linguistics of the British languages among them Welsh and Cornish. With essays from eighteen leading scholars in the field this in-depth volume serves not only as a monument to the rich and varied career of Sims-Williams but also offers a wealth of commentary and information to present significant primary research and reconsiderations of existing scholarship.
Narrating Power and Authority in Late Antique and Medieval Hagiography from East to West
This collection of essays explores the multifaceted representation of power and authority in a variety of late antique and medieval hagiographical narratives (Lives Martyr Acts oneiric and miraculous accounts). The narratives under analysis written in some of the major languages of the Islamicate world and the Christian East and Christian West - Arabic Armenian Georgian Greek Latin Middle Persian Ottoman Turkish and Persian - prominently feature a diverse range of historical and fictional figures from a wide cross-section of society - from female lay saints in Italy and Zoroastrians in Sasanian and Islamic Iran to apostles and bishops and emperors and caliphs. Each chapter investigates how power and authority were narrated from above (courts/ saints) and below (saints/laity) and by extension navigated in various communities. As each chapter delves into the specific literary and social scene of a particular time place or hagiographer the volume as a whole offers a broad view; it brings to the fore important shared literary and social historical aspects such as the possible itineraries of popular narratives and motifs across Eurasia and commonly held notions in the religio-political thought worlds of hagiographers and their communities. Through close readings and varied analyses this collection contributes to the burgeoning interest in reading hagiography as literature while it offers new perspectives on the social and religious history of late antique and medieval communities.
Presbyter Kozma, Gegen die Bogomilen
Orthodoxie und Häresie auf dem mittelalterlichen Balkan
The Homily of the Unworthy Priest Cosmas Against the Newly-Appeared Heresy of Bogomil (10th century) is a key source for the religious history of the Balkan peninsula. It is one of the earliest and richest sources for the rise of the dualistic religious movement of Bogomilism in the early Middle Ages. Written in a period of war and crisis of the Bulgarian Empire Cosmas sermon is also an important work of Eastern Christian Theology calling for a thorough reform of clergy and monasticism.
During the subsequent centuries Cosmas' work was copied and excerpted by Bulgarian Serbian and Russian churchmen who were seeking inspiration in their struggle for ecclesial reform and against religious dissent of various heretical movements. In the processes of national identity construction on the Balkans during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Cosmas' Homily again played a remarkable role.
The present study provides the first complete translation into a western language of Begunov's 1973 critical edition. The German translation is accompanied by an introduction and a commentary.
Raison et quête de la sagesse
Hommage à Christian Jambet
Une vingtaine d’amis de collègues d’anciens et actuels étudiants de Christian Jambet se sont réunis ici pour présenter leurs recherches sur les nombreux domaines de compétence de celui-ci : la philosophie en général et la philosophie islamique en particulier la mystique musulmane la littérature persane les aspects historiques intellectuels et spirituels des deux principales branches du shi’isme l’imamisme duodécimain et l’ismaélisme. Ils rendent ainsi hommage à l’homme et à son œuvre considérable qui ont marqué depuis plusieurs décennies les études iraniennes et islamiques et d’une manière plus générale le paysage intellectuel français.
Franks and Crusades in Medieval Eastern Christian Historiography
This volume is an introduction to eleven of the main medieval Eastern Christian historians used by modern scholars to reconstruct the events and personalities of the crusading period in the Levant. Each of the chapters examines one historian and their work(s) and first contains an introductory examination of their life background and influences. This is then followed by a study of their work(s) relevant to the Crusades including the reasons for writing themes and methodology. Such an approach will allow modern researchers to better understand the background and contexts to these texts and thus to reconstruct the past in a more nuanced and detailed way. Written by eleven eminent scholars in their fields and examining chronicles written in Armenian Greek Syriac and Arabic this book will be essential reading for anybody engaged in research on the Crusades as well as Eastern Christian and Islamic history and medieval historiography.
Crossing Borders in the Insular Middle Ages
This volume offers an in-depth exploration of the cultural connections between and across Britain Ireland and Iceland during the high and late Middle Ages. Drawing together new research from international scholars working in Celtic Studies Norse and English the contributions gathered together here establish the coherence of the medieval Insular world as an area for literary analysis and engage with a range of contemporary approaches to examine the ways and the degrees to which Insular literatures and cultures connect both with each other and with the wider European mainstream.
The articles in this collection discuss the Insular histories of some of the most widely read literary works and authors of the Middle Ages including Geoffrey of Monmouth and William Langland. They trace the legends of Troy and of Charlemagne as they travelled across linguistic and geographical borders give fresh attention to the multilingual manuscript collections of great households and families and explore the political implications of language choice in a linguistically plural society. In doing so they shed light on a complex network of literary and cultural connections and establish the Insular world not as a periphery but as a centre.
Norse-Gaelic Contacts in a Viking World
This multi-disciplinary volume draws on the combined expertise of specialists in the history and literature of medieval Ireland Iceland Norway and Scotland to shed new light on the interplay of Norse and Gaelic literary traditions. Through four detailed case-studies which examine the Norwegian Konungs skuggsjá the Icelandic Njáls saga and Landnámabók and the Gaelic text Baile Suthach Sith Emhna the volume explores the linguistic cultural and political contacts that existed between Norse and Gaelic speakers in the High Middle Ages and examines the impetus behind these texts including oral tradition transfer of written sources and authorial adaption and invention. Crucially these texts are not only examined as literary products of the thirteenth century but also as repositories of older historical traditions and the authors seek to explore these wider historical contexts as well as analyse how and why historical and literary material was transmitted. The volume contains English translations of key extracts and also provides a detailed discussion of sources and methodologies to ensure that this milestone of scholarship is accessible to both students and subject-specialists.
‘This is a brilliant and genuinely ground-breaking book representing a significant step forward in literary and historical analysis of the Norse-Gaelic interface’. (Professor Ralph O’Connor University of Aberdeen).
The Ever-New Tongue – In Tenga Bithnúa
The Text in the Book of Lismore
The Ever-New Tongue (In Tenga Bithnúa) is a medieval Irish account of the mysteries of the universe remarkable for its exotic background and for the fiery exuberance of its style. This translation based on the definitive edition of the text renders this extraordinary work available to a wider readership.
Composed in Ireland in the ninth or tenth century The Ever-New Tongue purports to reveal the mysteries of the creation of the cosmos and of the end of the world as related by the soul of the apostle Philip speaking in the language of the angels. Drawing on a multitude of sources both mainstream and heterodox it reflects the richness of early Irish learning as well as the vitality of its author’s imagination. Two apocryphal texts appear to have inspired its original composition: a lost Egyptian apocalyptic discourse and one of the segments of the Acts of Philip (a work otherwise unknown in Latin Christendom).
Based on the critical edition of The Ever-New Tongue in the Corpus Christianorum Series Apocryphorum this book presents an English translation of the oldest (and most conservative) version of the text preserved in the Book of Lismore together with a fully updated introduction.
Landscape and Myth in North-Western Europe
This volume explores the intersection of landscape and myth in the context of northwestern Atlantic Europe. From the landscapes of literature to the landscape as a lived environment and from myths about supernatural beings to tales about the mythical roots of kingship the contributions gathered here each develop their own take on the meanings behind ‘landscape’ and ‘myth’ and thus provide a broad cross-section of how these widely discussed concepts might be understood.
Arising from papers delivered at the conference Landscape and Myth in North-Western Europe held in Munich in April 2016 the volume draws together a wide selection of material ranging from texts and toponyms to maps and archaeological data and it uses this diversity in method and material to explore the meaning of these terms in medieval Ireland Wales and Iceland. In doing so it provides a broadly inclusive and yet carefully focused discussion of the inescapable and productive intertwining of landscape and myth.
L’écriture et la sainteté dans la Serbie médiévale
Étude d’hagiographie
Le livre L’écriture et la sainteté dans la Serbie médiévale. Étude d’hagiographie porte pour l’essentiel sur un riche corpus de sources serbes qui s’échelonnent de la fin du xii e jusqu’au xv e siècle. Il s’agit bien d’une étude d’hagiographie dans laquelle l’auteur a eu pour ambition de montrer comment dans les textes hagiographiques a été construite l’image de la royauté serbe. Smilja Marjanović-Dušanić partant de ce corpus impressionnant décrit à la fois sa genèse et son originalité. La dette à l’égard de l’hagiographie byzantine est sensible mais l’auteur a raison d’insister sur l’aspect profondément original de l’hagiographie royale serbe pour laquelle elle trouve des parallèles en Hongrie ou ailleurs dans l’Europe centrale.
Les analyses proposées sont indissociablement hagiographiques et politiques. L’auteur montre bien l’importance de l’écriture hagiographique dans le projet qu’ont eu les souverains serbes de sacraliser leur dynastie et leur pouvoir en organisant le culte de saints rois en particulier celui du « couple » que forment Sava et Syméon. L’évolution idéologique peut être étudiée aisément grâce à la continuité qui s’établit entre les œuvres. L’étude des réécritures permet à l’auteur de mettre en évidence l’importance accrue des récits de miracles. Ce livre est important pour deux raisons principales. Du point de vue de l’hagiographie il fait connaître un riche corpus de textes souvent ignorés dans le monde occidental qui constituent un développement inattendu de l’hagiographie byzantine et un pont avec l’Europe catholique. Surtout ce corpus est important pour comprendre comment s’est constituée autour de la figure des saints rois et des lieux conservant leur mémoire l’identité serbe.
Islands in the West
Classical Myth and the Medieval Norse and Irish Geographical Imagination
This monograph traces the history of one of the most prominent types of geographical myths of the North-West Atlantic Ocean: transmarine otherworlds of blessedness and immortality. Taking the mythologization of the Viking Age discovery of North America in the earliest extant account of Vínland (‘Wine-Land’) and the Norse transmarine otherworlds of Hvítramannaland (‘The Land of White Men’) and the Ódáinsakr/Glæsisvellir (‘Field of the Not-Dead’/‘Shining Fields’) as its starting point the book explores the historical entanglements of these imaginative places in a wider European context. It follows how these Norse otherworld myths adopt adapt and transform concepts from early Irish vernacular tradition and Medieval Latin geographical literature and pursues their connection to the geographical mythology of classical antiquity. In doing so it shows how myths as far distant in time and space as Homer’s Elysian Plain and the transmarine otherworlds of the Norse are connected by a continuous history of creative processes of adaptation and reinterpretation. Furthermore viewing this material as a whole the question arises as to whether the Norse mythologization of the North Atlantic might not only have accompanied the Norse westward expansion that led to the discovery of North America but might even have been among the factors that induced it.
French in Medieval Ireland, Ireland in Medieval French
The Paradox of Two Worlds
This book is a ground-breaking study of the cultural and linguistic consequences of the English invasion of Ireland in 1169 and examines the ways in which the country is portrayed in French literature of the twelfth thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Works such as La geste des Engleis en Yrlande and The Walling of New Ross written in French in a multilingual Ireland are studied in their literary and historical contexts and the works of the Dominican friar Jofroi de Waterford (c. 1300) are shown to have been written in Ireland rather than Paris as has always been assumed.
After exploring how the dissemination and translation of early Latin texts of Irish origin concerning Ireland led to the country acquiring a reputation as a land of marvels this study argues that increasing knowledge of the real Ireland did little to stymie the mirabilia hibernica in French vernacular literature. On the contrary the image persisted to the extent of retrospectively associating central motifs and figures of Arthurian romance with Ireland. This book incorporates the results of original archival research and is characterized by close attention to linguistic details of expression and communication as well as historical codicological and literary contexts.
Conceptualizing the Enemy in Early Northwest Europe
Metaphors of Conflict and Alterity in Anglo-Saxon, Old Norse, and Early Irish Poetry
Despite the prominence of conflicts in all mythological and heroic literature perceptions of these conflicts and their participants are shaped by different cultural influences. Socio-economic political and religious factors all influence how conflict is perceived and depicted in literary form. This volume provides the first comparative analysis to explore conceptions of conflict and otherness in the literary and cultural contexts of the early North Sea world by investigating the use of metaphor in Old English Old Norse and Early Irish poetry. Applying Conceptual Metaphor Theory together with literary and anthropological analysis the study examines metaphors of conflict and alterity in a range of (pseudo-)mythological heroic and occasional poetry including Beowulf Old Norse skaldic and eddic verse and poems from the celebrated ‘Ulster Cycle’. This unique approach not only sheds new light on a wide spectrum of metaphorical techniques but also draws important conclusions concerning the common cultural heritage behind these three poetic corpora.
Medieval Welsh Perceptions of the Orient
This book introduces a new theoretical framework for the examination of medieval Western European perceptions of the Orient. Through the application of the medieval concept of translatio studii et imperii it proposes the identification of three distinct conceptions of the Orient in medieval sources: Biblical Classical and Contemporary. Welsh textual material from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries is used as a case-study to develop and illustrate this theory.
This study brings historical sources to bear on previously unexplained literary phenomena and it examines the evolution of texts and ideas in the process of transmission and translation. The sources analysed here include vernacular and Latin texts produced in Wales as well as material that has been translated into Welsh such as Imago mundi and legends about Charlemagne. It thus combines an important and much-needed account of the development of Welsh attitudes to the East with a unique analysis of Oriental references across an extensive literary corpus.
D’Orient en Occident
Les recueils de fables enchâssées avant les Mille et une Nuits de Galland (Barlaam et Josaphat, Calila et Dimna, Disciplina clericalis, Roman des Sept Sages)
Des Mille et une Nuits aux Canterbury Tales du Panchatantra au Décaméron en passant par Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus un vaste réseau de textes témoigne de la richesse et de l’originalité du ‘récit à tiroirs’ hérité de la tradition orientale. Le nombre impressionnant des récits concernés de même que l’extraordinaire diffusion qu’ils ont connue en Orient comme en Occident au Moyen Âge comme à l’époque moderne illustrent l’urgence qu’il y a à repenser l’étude de ces textes dont plusieurs comptent parmi les fleurons les plus illustres de la littérature universelle.
Les travaux ici réunis se concentrent sur quatre recueils le Calila et Dimna (ou Panchatantra) la légende de Barlaam et Josaphat le Roman des Sept Sages (ou Livre de Sindibad) et la Disciplina clericalis de Pierre Alphonse dont les trois premiers ont marqué bien avant leur apparition en Occident toute l’histoire de la littérature orientale. Quant au quatrième il constitue l’un des recueils les plus importants que le Moyen Âge nous a transmis comme en témoigne son immense diffusion du Roman de Renart au Décaméron de Boccace. C’est à partir du XIIe siècle que ces récits-recueils font connaître les traditions narratives du Levant dans l’Europe médiévale. Leur influence se fait sentir jusqu’à l’époque moderne dans le domaine occidental à travers des réécritures et des adaptations. En réunissant les travaux de plus d’une vingtaine de spécialistes des domaines et des littératures concernés par cette transmission le présent volume entend suivre le parcours des quatre textes de l’Antiquité tardive et du Moyen Âge à l’aube des Lumières.
Vernacularity in England and Wales, c. 1300-1550
Studies of the vernacular in the period 1300-1550 have tended to focus exclusively upon language to the exception of the wider vernacular culture within which this was located. In a period when the status of English and ideas of Englishness were transforming in response to a variety of social political cultural and economic factors the changing nature and perception of the vernacular deserves to be explored comprehensively and in detail. Vernacularity in England and Wales examines the vernacular in and across literature art and architecture to reach a more inclusive understanding of the nature of late medieval vernacularity.
The essays in this collection draw upon a wide range of source material including buildings devotional and educational literature and parliamentary and civic records in order to expand and elaborate our idea of the vernacular. Each contributor addresses central ideas about the nature and identity of the vernacular and how we appraise it involving questions about nationhood popularity the commonalty and the conflict and conjunction of the vernacular with the non-vernacular. These notions of vernacularity are situated within studies of reading practices heresy translation gentry identity seditious speech and language politics. By considering the nature of vernacularity these essays explore whether it is possible to perceive a common theory of vernacular use and practice at this time.