Description
Book SynopsisSpoken Word and Social Practice: Orality in Europe (1400-1700) addresses historians and literary scholars. It aims to recapture oral culture in a variety of literary and non-literary sources, tracking the echo of women’s voices, on trial, or bantering and gossiping in literary works, and recapturing those of princes and magistrates, townsmen, villagers, mariners, bandits, and songsmiths. Almost all medieval and early modern writing was marked by the oral. Spoken words and turns of phrase are bedded in writings, and the mental habits of a speaking world shaped texts. Writing also shaped speech; the oral and the written zones had a porous, busy boundary. Cross-border traffic is central to this study, as is the power, range, utility, and suppleness of speech. Contributors are Matthias Bähr, Richard Blakemore, Michael Braddick, Rosanna Cantavella, Thomas V. Cohen, Gillian Colclough, Jan Dumolyn, Susana Gala Pellicer, Jelle Haemers, Marcus Harmes, Elizabeth Horodowich, Carolina Losada, Virginia Reinburg, Anne Regent-Susini, Joseph T. Snow, Sonia Suman, Lesley K. Twomey and Liv Helene Willumsen.
Trade Review"This collection of essays successfully recovers and reconstructs a variety of late medieval and early modern oral practices. [...] The essays in this volume provide remarkable insight into late medieval and early modern orality, demonstrating how recovering speech habits also affect larger historical, literary, and cultural discussions. [...] For many who could not read or write, orality provided a form of power as well as a sense of community and belonging. This theme courses throughout many of the essays in this volume, and indeed, is what makes it such a strong and intriguing read for historians and literary scholars alike." Chelsea McKelvey, Southern Methodist University in: Sixteenth Century Journal 48/2 (2017), pp. 505-506. "From the first cry at birth to the last words on the deathbed, oral communication is essential to humankind. Spoken words transmit ideas, shape identities, manage power, give pleasure. Obvious, yes, and yet all too easy to forget when interpreting the past through silent writings, images, and objects. Orality, nevertheless, was even more pervading in medieval and early modern times than today, and its interactions with writing more complex and mutual. Scholars are increasingly aware that recovering this dimension, albeit difficult and uncertain, is potentially revealing—as this book confirms.[...] thanks to the wide scope of its case studies, together with the methodological relevance of some, this collection has undoubtedly something valuable to offer to anyone interested in the study of oral culture and communication as an opportunity to sharpen and even transform our understanding of the Renaissance world." Luca Degl’Innocenti, Università degli Studi di Firenze, in: Renaissance Quarterly, 71/1 (2018), pp. 278-279
Table of ContentsContents Acknowledgements ix List of Figures x List of Contributors xi Life and Works of Alexander Francis Cowan xii Bibliography of Alexander Cowan xiV Introduction 1 Thomas V. Cohen and Lesley K. Twomey Witches’ Words 1 Oral Transfer of Ideas about Witchcraft in Seventeenth-Century Norway 47 Liv Helene Willumsen 2 St Helena and Love Magic: From the Spanish Inquisition to the Internet 84 Susana Gala Pellicer Words on Trial 3 The Power of the Spoken Word Depositions of the Imperial Chamber Court: Power, Resistance, and ‘Orality’ 115 Matthias Bähr 4 Tracking Conversation in the Italian Courts 139 Thomas V. Cohen Preaching the Word 5 Tears for Fears: Mission Preaching in Seventeenth-Century France – a Double Performance 185 Anne Régent-Susini 6 Powerful Words: St Vincent Ferrer’s Preaching and the Jews in Medieval Castile 206 Carolina Losada 7 ‘A Most Notable Spectacle’: Early Modern Easter Spital Sermons 228 Sonia Suman Word on the Street 8 Orality and Mutiny: Authority and Speech amongst the Seafarers of Early Modern London 253 Richard J. Blakemore 9 ‘A Blabbermouth Can Barely Control His Tongue’: Political Poems, Songs and Prophecies in the Low Countries (Fifteenth–Sixteenth Centuries) 280 Jan Dumolyn and Jelle Haemers 10 Proverbs and Princes in Post-Reformation England 300 Marcus Harmes and Gillian Colclough Gossip and Gossipers 11 The Meanings of Gossip in Sixteenth-Century Venice 321 Elizabeth Horodowich 12 Gossip and Social Standing in Celestina: Verbal Venom as Art 343 Joseph T. Snow Prayer, Teaching, and Religious Talk 13 Oral Rites: Prayer and Talk in Early Modern France 375 Virginia Reinburg 14 The Seducer’s Tongue: Oral and Moral Issues in Medieval Erotodidactic Schooltexts 393 Rosanna Cantavella 15 Preaching God’s Word in a Late-medieval Valencian Convent: Isabel de Villena, Writer and Preacher 421 Lesley K. Twomey 16 Afterword 446 Michael J. Braddick Bibliography 463 Index 486
