Description
Book SynopsisThis volume showcases a range of different approaches to strangers and strangeness across medieval western Europe. It focuses on how communities responded to the arrival of strangers and to different ways in which individuals and groups were constructed as estranged. Further, it reflects on different forms of border-crossing, from lived experience to literary imagination and from specific journeys in precise contexts to the conceptualisation of the shift from life to death. In the range of its contributions – applying linguistic, historical, archaeological, architectural, archival, literary, and theological analyses – it seeks to bring together disciplines and geographical areas of study that are too often strangers to one another in medieval studies. Contributors are Sherif Abdelkarim, Anna Adamska, Adrien Carbonnet, Wim De Clercq, Florian Dolberg, Joshua S. Easterling, Susan Irvine, Marco Mostert, Richard North, James Plumtree, Euan McCartney Robson, Beatrice Saletti, Simon C. Thomson and Gerben Verbrugghe.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements List of Figures and Tables Notes on Contributors Introduction: Fearing, Facing, and Being a Stranger S.C. Thomson 1 Studying Communication in the Margins of Medieval Society Marco Mostert 2 HITting on Migration in the Murky Middle Ages: Advocating an Interdisciplinary Approach A Case Study in Old English/Old Norse Language Contact Florian Dolberg 3 The Language of the Mute Strangers: The Ambivalent Position of the German Language in the Late Medieval Polish Kingdom Anna Adamska 4 How Foreigners Entered Italian Cities in the Fifteenth Century: The Case of Bologna Beatrice Saletti 5 Little Flanders Beyond Wales: The Historical Context of Flemish Settlement Landscapes in South Pembrokeshire Gerben Verbrugghe and Wim De Clercq 6 Repopulating the City with Strangers: The Forced Colonization of Arras by the King of France Louis XI (1479–1484) Adrien Carbonnet 7 Strangers in the Cathedral: Place, Landscape and Nostalgia in Symeon of Durham’s Libellus de Exordio Euan McCartney Robson 8 Resident Stranger: Sæmundr in the Ashkenaz Richard North 9 The Perils of Medieval Bridges: Gregory, Grendel and Gawain Susan Irvine 10 Strange Confessions: Salvation and Prayers for the Dead in Caesarius of Heisterbach’s Dialogue on Miracles Joshua S. Easterling 11 Placing the Green Children of Woolpit James Plumtree 12 Afterword Sherif Abdelkarim Bibliography Index
