Languages Of Love And Hate: Conflict, Communication, And Identity In The Medieval Mediterranean (international Medieval Research)
by Liz James /
2012 / English / PDF
20.1 MB Download
'There is no world of thought that is not a world of language and
one sees of the world only what is provided for by language'
(Walter Benjamin, 1936). In the medieval Mediterranean, cultural
groups were frequently labelled, fixed, and identified by language,
and these linguistic groupings were consistently in states of
conflict and/or exchange. This collection takes one of the many
available approaches to the various types of cultural clash and
exchange, and examines some of the ways in which language was used
to express difference, to mark out 'our' culture from 'theirs', and
to further label those cultures - often as alien and inferior, but
occasionally as different and worthy of respect. This theme unites
papers coming from a range of perspectives and engaging with a
whole series of cultural interchanges and conflicts. It brings
together work on a wide range of peoples - Latins, Byzantines,
Muslims, and Jews - commenting on and writing about each other, as
well as a wide variety of different genres, from theology to farce.
This volume seeks to offer a broad and wide-ranging approach to
understanding the world at the time of the crusades through the
words of participants and observers.
'There is no world of thought that is not a world of language and
one sees of the world only what is provided for by language'
(Walter Benjamin, 1936). In the medieval Mediterranean, cultural
groups were frequently labelled, fixed, and identified by language,
and these linguistic groupings were consistently in states of
conflict and/or exchange. This collection takes one of the many
available approaches to the various types of cultural clash and
exchange, and examines some of the ways in which language was used
to express difference, to mark out 'our' culture from 'theirs', and
to further label those cultures - often as alien and inferior, but
occasionally as different and worthy of respect. This theme unites
papers coming from a range of perspectives and engaging with a
whole series of cultural interchanges and conflicts. It brings
together work on a wide range of peoples - Latins, Byzantines,
Muslims, and Jews - commenting on and writing about each other, as
well as a wide variety of different genres, from theology to farce.
This volume seeks to offer a broad and wide-ranging approach to
understanding the world at the time of the crusades through the
words of participants and observers.
