Medieval Empires and the Culture of Competition: Literary Duels at Islamic and Christian Courts
Samuel England
Abstract
Medieval Empires and the Culture of Competition shows how the interactive, confrontational practice of courtly arts helped shape imperial thought in the Middle Ages. Its analysis covers Classical Arabic poetry and official prose, Spanish court documents, Galician Portuguese lyric, and Italian narrative works. The historical span is 950-1350 CE. Scholars of premodern cultures have struggled to reconcile the political violence of the late Middle Ages with the cosmopolitanism of that era’s Islamic and Christian empires. This book argues that medieval thinkers’ most pressing cultural challenge was ... More
Keywords: Arabic, Romance, Chivalry, Knights, Crusades, Poetry, Lyric, Jousts, Islam, Christianity, Troubadour, Early Renaissance
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2017 | Print ISBN-13: 9781474425223 |
| Published to Edinburgh Scholarship Online: January 2019 | DOI:10.3366/edinburgh/9781474425223.001.0001 |
