Author : Isoaho
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 428 pages
File Size : 31,98 MB
Release : 2006-06-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9047409493
The present study examines the evolution of the image of Aleksandr Nevskiy in close connection with the dynamics of political and cultural history by demonstrating what influence the Life of Aleksandr Nevskiy had on popular historical consciousness in medieval Russia.
Author : Paul A Cohen
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 302 pages
File Size : 47,90 MB
Release : 2014-05-13
Category : History
ISBN : 0231166362
When people experience a traumatic event, such as war or the threat of annihilation, they often turn to history for stories that promise a positive outcome to their suffering. During World War II, the French took comfort in the story of Joan of Arc and her heroic efforts to rid France of foreign occupation. To bring the Joan narrative more into line with current circumstances, popular retellings modified the original story so that what people believed took place in the past was often quite different from what actually occurred. Paul A. Cohen believes this interplay between story and history is a worldwide phenomenon found in countries of radically different cultural, religious, and social character. He focuses on Serbia, Israel, the Soviet Union, China, Great Britain, and France, all of which experienced severe crises in the twentieth century and, in response, appropriated age-old historical narratives that resonated with what was happening in the present to serve a unifying, restorative purpose. A central theme in the book is the distinction between popular memory and history. Although vitally important to historians, this distinction is routinely blurred in people’s minds, and the historian’s truth often cannot compete with the power of a compelling story from the past, even when it has been seriously distorted by myth or political manipulation. Cohen concludes by suggesting that the patterns of interaction he probes, given their near universality, may well be rooted in certain human propensities that transcend cultural difference.
Author : Nicolas Faucher
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 300 pages
File Size : 38,56 MB
Release : 2022-12-05
Category : History
ISBN : 3110748800
Recent research has challenged our view of the Abrahamic religious traditions as unilaterally intolerant and incapable of recognizing otherness in all its diversity and richness; but a diachronic and comparative study of how these traditions deal with otherness is yet to appear. This volume aims to contribute to such a study by presenting different treatments of otherness in medieval and early modern thought. Part I: Altruism deals with attitudes and behaviors that benefit others, regardless of its motives. We deal with the social rights and emotions as well as the moral obligations that the very existence of other human beings, whatever their characteristics, creates for a community. Part II: Religious recognition and toleration considers identity, toleration and mutual recognition created by the existence of religious or ethnic otherness in a given social, religious or political community. Part III: Evil deals with religious otherness that is considered evil and rejected such as heretics and malevolent, demonic entities. The volume will ultimately inform the reader on the nature of religious toleration (including beliefs and doctrines, even emotions) as well as of the self-definition of religious communities when encountering and defining otherness in different ways.
Author : Jesse Keskiaho
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Page : 300 pages
File Size : 50,84 MB
Release : 2020-11-09
Category : History
ISBN : 1527561801
The field of medieval studies has shifted towards a growing degree of inter- and multidisciplinarity during the recent decades. The concept of medieval studies covers in fact a multitude of disciplines, some of them being loyal to their long-established traditions, whereas others are very new and borrow methods from other branches of the humanities or even from modern natural or social sciences. Since this means not only new possibilities but also new challenges, sources and methodology should obviously concern anyone engaged in the history and culture of the Middle Ages. Regardless of what aspects of the medieval world a scholar is dealing with, his or her study has much to gain from a source-pluralistic approach: in order to be able to understand and even combine different types of sources, a scholar must be aware of what methods are relevant and available and how they can be adapted and applied. This collection of essays presents a comprehensive overview of current and fresh approaches to the history of medieval Europe. The topics include, among other things, the complex relationship between the spoken and the written word, explorations in social and geographic space, layers and mental images perceivable in medieval texts, source edition techniques, relics as visual and tangible items, not to mention the possibilities offered by prosopography, zooarchaelogy and the natural sciences. Also the question and significance of ethics, an ever more important issue in present-day academic circles, is discussed. The contributors to this volume themselves form a very inter- and multidisciplinary team: although they can all be labeled as medievalists, they in fact they work within different disciplines and in several different research units in different countries. Geographically, several parts of Europe are covered in the essays – not only the westernmost part of the continent but also the poorly known eastern and northern parts as well. This diversity makes the collection worthwhile reading for students and scholars alike.
Author : Reima Välimäki
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 265 pages
File Size : 45,4 MB
Release : 2022-11-03
Category : History
ISBN : 1350232904
Since the end of the Cold War, the Middle Ages has returned to debates about history, culture, and politics in Northern and Eastern Europe. This volume explores political medievalism in two language areas that are crucial to understanding global medievalism but are, due to language barriers, often inaccessible to the majority of Western scholars and students. The importance of Russian medievalism has been acknowledged, but little analysed until now. Medievalism in Finland and Russia offers a selection of chapters by Russian, Finnish and American scholars covering historiography, presidential speeches, participatory online discussions and the neo-pagan revival in Russia. Finland is currently even more poorly understood than Russia in the discussions about global medievalism. It is usually mentioned only as of the birthplace of the Soldiers of Odin. The street patrol is, however, a marginal phenomenon in Finnish medievalism as this volume demonstrates. Instead of merely adopting the medievalist interpretation of the international alt-right, even the right-wing populists in Finland refer more to the nationalistic medievalist tradition, where crusades do not mark a Western Christian victory over the Muslim East, but a Swedish occupation of Finnish lands. In addition to presenting particular cases of medievalism, the chapters here on Finland challenge and diversify today's prevailing interpretation of shared online medievalism of European and American right-wing populists. This book reveals that while medievalisms in Finland and Russia share many features with the contemporary Anglo-American medievalist imaginations, they also display many original characteristics due to particular political situations and indigenous medievalist traditions. They have their own meta-medievalisms, cumulative core ideas and interpretations about the medieval past that are thoroughly examined here in English for the very first time.
Author : Kevin Bartig
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 21,30 MB
Release : 2017-09-26
Category : Music
ISBN : 0190269596
Audiences have long enjoyed Sergei Prokofiev's musical score for Sergei Eisenstein's 1938 film Alexander Nevsky. The historical epic cast a thirteenth-century Russian victory over invading Teutonic Knights as an allegory of contemporary Soviet strength in the face of Nazi warmongering. Prokofiev's and Eisenstein's work proved an enormous success, both as a collaboration of two of the twentieth century's most prominent artists and as a means to bolster patriotism and national pride among Soviet audiences. Arranged as a cantata for concert performance, Prokofiev's music for Alexander Nevsky music proved malleable, its meaning reconfigured to suit different circumstances and times. Author Kevin Bartig draws on previously unexamined archival materials to follow Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky from its inception through the present day. He considers the music's genesis as well as the surprisingly different ways it has engaged listeners over the past eighty years, from its beginnings as state propaganda in the 1930s to showpiece for high-fidelity recording in the 1950s to open-air concert favorite in the post-Soviet 1990s.
Author : Eric G. L. Pinzelli
Publisher : Pen and Sword Military
Page : 338 pages
File Size : 28,32 MB
Release : 2022-12-02
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1399070150
In Masters of Warfare, Eric G. L. Pinzelli presents a selection of fifty commanders whose military achievements, skill or historical impact he believes to be underrated by modern opinion. He specifically does not include the household names (the "Gods of War" as he calls them) such as Alexander, Julius Caesar, Wellington, Napoléon, Rommel or Patton that have been covered in countless biographies. Those chosen come from every period of recorded military history from the sixth century BC to the Vietnam War. The selection rectifies the European/US bias of many such surveys with Asian entries such as Bai Qi (Chinese), Attila (Hunnic), Subotai (Mongol), Ieyasu Tokugawa (Japanese) and Võ Nguyên Giáp (Vietnamese). Naval commanders are also represented by the likes of Khayr al-Din Barbarossa, Francis Drake and Michiel de Ruyter. These 50 "Masters of War" are presented in a chronological order easy to follow, with a concise overview of their life and career. Altogether they present a fascinating survey of the developments and continuities in the art of command, but most importantly their contribution to the evolution of weaponry, tactic and strategy through the ages.
Author : Robert Bartlett
Publisher : Reaktion Books
Page : 289 pages
File Size : 22,61 MB
Release : 2022-08-04
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 1789145538
From Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal to Monty Python, an investigation into how eight key films have shaped our understanding of the medieval world. In The Middle Ages and the Movies, eminent historian Robert Bartlett takes a fresh, cogent look at how our view of medieval history has been shaped by eight significant films of the twentieth century. The book ranges from the concoction of sex and nationalism in Mel Gibson’s Braveheart, to Fritz Lang’s silent epic Siegfried, the art-house classic The Seventh Seal, and the epic historical drama El Cid. Bartlett examines the historical accuracy of these films, as well as other salient aspects—how was Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose translated from page to screen? Why is Monty Python and the Holy Grail funny? And how was Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky shaped by the Stalinist tyranny under which it was filmed?
Author : Felipe Fernández-Armesto
Publisher : A&C Black
Page : 353 pages
File Size : 33,67 MB
Release : 2011-01-01
Category : History
ISBN : 1408809508
The world would end in 1492 - so the prophets, soothsayers and stargazers said. They were right. Their world did end. But ours began. In search of the origins of the modern world, 1492 takes readers on a journey around the globe of the time, in the company of real-life travellers, drawing together the threads that began to bind the planet: from the way power and wealth are distributed around the globe to the way major religions and civilizations divide the world. Events that began in 1492 even transformed the whole ecological system of the planet. Wars and witchcraft, plagues and persecutions, poetry and prophecy, science and magic, art and faith - all the glories and follies of the time are in this book.
Author : Kati M.J. Parppei
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 270 pages
File Size : 10,20 MB
Release : 2017-01-05
Category : History
ISBN : 9004337946
The battle of Kulikovo, fought between Muscovite and Tatar troops in 1380, has been considered as a crucial turning point in the national history of Russia. In The Battle of Kulikovo Refought Kati Parppei examines the layers of contemporary meanings attached to the event from the Middle Ages to the present, following the formation and establishment of the collective images and perceptions concerning the battle. By utilizing a diverse set of sources she shows that the present image of the medieval battle was created in retrospect from the 15th century onwards by interpolating, interpreting and simplifying. The narrative themes emphasizing internal unity have been applicable to practically any political situation over the centuries, especially to ones involving external threat.
