Polemic: Language as Violence in Medieval and Early Modern Discourse

ISBN-13: 9781472425065 / Angielski / Twarda / 2015 / 302 str.

Almut Suerbaum;Benjamin Thompson;George Southcombe

Opis

If terms are associated with particular historical periods, then polemic is firmly rooted within early modern print culture, the apparently inevitable result of religious controversy and the rise of print media. Taking a broad European approach, this collection brings together specialists on medieval as well as early modern culture in order to challenge stubborn assumptions that medieval culture was homogenous and characterized by consensus; and that literary discourse is by nature eirenic . Instead, the volume shows more clearly the continuities and discontinuities, especially how medieval discourse on the sins of the tongue continued into early modern discussion; how popular and influential medieval genres such as sermons and hagiography dealt with potentially heterodox positions; and the role of literary, especially fictional, debate in developing modes of articulating discord, as well as demonstrating polemic in action in political and ecclesiastical debate. Within this historical context, the position of early modern debates as part of a more general culture of articulating discord becomes more clearly visible. The structure of the volume moves from an internal textual focus, where the nature of polemic can be debated, through a middle section where these concerns are also played out in social practice, to a more historical group investigating applied polemic. In this way a more nuanced view is provided of the meaning, role, and effect of polemic both broadly across time and space, and more narrowly within specific circumstances."

Spis treści

Introduction; I: Textual Strategies; 1: Between Autobiography and Apocalypse; 2: The Ends of Polemic and the Beginning of Lohengrin; 3: Feeling the Polemic of an Early Motet; 4: ‘Why do you concern yourself with these words?' Rhetoric and Polemic in Medieval Castilian Female Saints' Lives; II: Social Practice; 5: Dissing the Teacher; 6: Language of Violence; 7: Psalms as Polemic; 8: Maximos the Greek; III: Historical Narratives; 9: The Polemic of Reform in the Later Medieval English Church; 10: Lamenting the Church? Bishop Andrzej Krzycki and Early Reformation Polemic; 11: The Polemics of Moderation in Late Seventeenth-Century England

O autorze

Dr Almut Suerbaum, Fellow and Tutor in German, Somerville College, Oxford, UK Dr Benjamin Thompson, Fellow and Tutor in History, Somerville College, Oxford, UK Dr George Southcombe, Sarah Lawrence College, USA and Director of the Sarah Lawrence Programme at Wadham College, Oxford, UK.