Urban Literacy in Late Medieval Poland
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Book Series
Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy, vol. 33
- Pages: x + 471 p.
- Size:156 x 234 mm
- Illustrations:22 b/w
- Language(s):English, Italian, French
- Publication Year:2015
- € 130,00 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE
- ISBN: 978-2-503-55520-1
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- € 130,00 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE
- ISBN: 978-2-503-56189-9
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An updated status quaestionis on medieval epistolography, including debates on disputed texts and information about new discoveries
Review(s)
"(...) this unique book also documents the debate on unedited texts – including women’s love letters –and on celebrated cases of disputed authorship such as the Epistolae duorum amantium and Dante’s Epistola to Cangrande. It thus offers a significant re-evaluation of the huge and partly unpublished heritage of medieval letters across Europe, and provides important insights into the use of these unique sources in social, literary, and legal history." (in: Studi Medievali Ser. 3, 57, 1, 2016, p. 457)
“the book has much to offer the medievalist working on these highly complex and multiform types of texts. Most importantly, the methodological essays in particular offer highly useful reflections on the nature of medieval letter-writing as well as its use as historical sources. As such (…) the book is a very welcome and valuable addition to the growing body of scholarship on medieval letters as literature as well as crucial and useful sources of historical information.” (Mia Münster-Swendsen, in The Medieval Review, 09.05.2016)
“Questa pubblicazione testimonia una fruttuosa e felice iniziativa culturale ed editoriale che rende più chiari aspetti e dinamiche della segmentata e frastagliata epistolografia medievale e pone le premesse per ulteriori e feconde ricerche che coinvolgono anche i contatti tra epistolografia e gli altri generi letterari allora praticati. Il volume si presenta pieno di ‘scoperte’ (…) Insomma un volume che deve trovare posto nella libreria di ogni medievista, e comunque certamente di ogni studioso di epistolografia medievale.” (Edoardo D’Angelo, in Studi Medievali, LIX / 1, 2018, p. 374-375)
Summary
Modern scholarship on medieval letters has often focused on the divide between fictionality and historicity. Attempts have been made to distinguish between ‘real’ letters and those that were used as stylistic models, and discussion has focused on how to make use of these texts as historical sources. In this volume, which draws on the proceedings of the ‘Medieval Letters between Fiction and Document’ conference held in Siena in 2013, scholars including Peter Dronke, Ronald Witt, Joan Ferrante, and Sylvie Lefèvre analyse the historical value of medieval letters in both Latin and other European languages and explore different disciplinary approaches to the field. Comprising contributions on methodology, Latin literature up to the fifteenth century, Byzantine and Romance literature, and courtly letters, this unique book also documents the debate on unedited texts — including women’s love letters — and on celebrated cases of disputed authorship such as the Epistolae duorum amantium and Dante’s Epistola to Cangrande. It thus offers a significant re-evaluation of the huge and partly unpublished heritage of medieval letters across Europe, and provides important insights into the use of these unique sources in social, literary, and legal history.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface - FRANCESCO STELLA and LARS BOJE MORTENSEN
Part I: Methods
Epistolary Voices and the Fiction of History - WIM VERBAAL
Medieval Letters and Letter Collections as Historical Sources: Methodological Questions, Reflections, and Research Perspectives (Sixth-Fifteenth Centuries) WALTER YSEBAERT
Lettere fittizie e lettere autentiche nel medioevo italiano (secoli XII-XIV) PAOLO CAMMAROSANO
Part II: Before ars dictaminis: The Early Middle Ages
La lettera di Ermenrico tra finzione e realtà - FRANCESCO MOSETTI CASARETTO
Un precedente del ars dictaminis medieval: las epistolae de Eginardo - CARLOS PÉREZ GONZÁLEZ
Part III: The Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries: Ars Dictaminis and the ‘epistolary turn’
Il valore sociale dell’ars dictaminis e il self-fashioning dei dettatori communali - FLORIAN HARTMANN
Da Maestro Guido a Guido Faba: autobiografismo e lettera d’amore tra la seconda e la terza generazione di dettatori - ELISABETTA BARTOLI
Il Registrum di Paolo Camaldolese: elementi contenutistici e stilistici - VITO SIVO
Aegidius of Paris and His Two Letters to Bishop Odo - GRETI DINKOVA-BRUUN
Powerful Women in the Epistles of Hildebert of Lavardin - ROBERTO ANGELINI
Part IV: Women and Love Letters
What Really Matters in Medieval Women’s Correspondence - JOAN M. FERRANTE
Il pubblico della Rota Veneris di Boncompagno di Signa - PAOLO GARBINI
Women’s Love Letters from Tegernsee - PETER DRONKE
The Play of Ambiguity in the Medieval Latin Love Letters of the Ovidian Age (Baudri of Bourgeuil and Gerald of Wales) - MAREK THUE KRETSCHMER
Queen Kunhuta’s Epistles to Her Husband - FRANCESCA BATTISTA
Irony and Subtext in Latin Letters of the Eleventh and Twelfth Century - C. STEPHEN JAEGER
Part V: Documents, Literary Letters and Collections in Byzantium and Beyond
From Letter to Literature: A Byzantine Story of Transformation - MICHAEL GRÜNBART
The Actual Words of Theodore Graptos: A Byzantine Saint’s Letter as Inserted Document - CHRISTIAN HØGEL
‘If It Looks Like a Letter, Reads Like a Letter, and Talks Like a Letter’: The case of Nikephoros Gregoras’ Letter Collection - DIVNA MANOLOVA
La lettre et ses adresses - SYLVIE LEFÈVRE
Part VI: The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries and The Diffusion of Epistolary Rhetoric
Ars Dictaminis: Victim of Ars Notarie? - RONALD WITT
Indagine su un disguido epistolare: l’Epistola a Cangrande fra Verona e Padova - THOMAS RICKLIN
Essential Issues Concerning the Epistle to Cangrande - ALBERTO CASADEI
Dalle lettere cancelleresche ai dictamina: processi di finzionalizzazione e tradizione testuale - FULVIO DELLE DONNE
From Letters to Dictamina and Back: Recycling Texts and Textual Collections in Late Medieval Europe (Thirteenth-Fourteenth Centuries) - BENOÎT GRÉVIN
Brown Ink, Red Blood: The Plotting of the Sicilian Vespers - JULIA BOLTON HOLLOWAY
Part VII: Late Medieval Court Letters
Tra resoconto della quotidianità e progetto di futuro: la lettera come strumento pedagogico nella corte sforzesca della seconda metà del Quattrocento - MONICA FERRARI e FEDERICO PISERI
Christine de Pizan in Correspondence: The Epistolary Exchange Waxes Poetic with Eustache Deschamps - MARIA A. SOLETI
Memorial de Agravios: Letters of Grievances as Documents in Fifteenth-Century Castilian Historiography - SACRAMENTO ROSELLÓ-MARTÍNEZ
