This volume collects some of the papers presented at two international conferences, held in Vienna, on historical sociolinguistics and late Byzantine historiography.

Drawing on a wealth of new source material from the Low Countries, this book offers a new approach to the transition from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Period by providing an alternative interpretation to the predominantly Italo-centric perspective of the current literature, and its concomitant focus on style and on Vitruvian theory.

Explores the manifold manifestations of pleasure in medieval culture and the various rationales to its appearance and use.