Postcolonising The Medieval Image

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- List of figures -- Acknowledgements -- List of contributors -- Introduction -- Part 1 The language of the postcolonial -- 1 Decolonising gold bracteates: From Late Roman medallions to Scandinavian Migration Period pendants -- 2 The Franks Casket speaks back: The bones of the past, the becoming of England -- 3 Camouflaging and echoing the Latin mass in an illuminated French-language missal -- Part 2 The location of the postcolonial -- 4 Mandeville's Jews, colonialism, certainty, and art history -- 5 Conquest and coexistence in sixteenth-century Granada: Imposing orders in the Alhambra's Mexuar -- 6 Beyond Foucault's laugh: On the ethical practice of medieval art history -- Part 3 The ambivalence of the postcolonial -- 7 Postcolonialising Thomas Becket: The saint as resistant site -- 8 Defining a merchant identity and aesthetic in Pisa: Muslim ceramics as commodities, mementos, and architectural decoration on eleventh-century churches -- 9 The Muslim warrior at the Seder meal: Dynamics between minorities in the Rylands Haggadah -- 10 Neighbouring and mixta in thirteenth-century Ashkenaz -- Bibliography -- Index

Postcolonial theories have transformed literary, historical and cultural studies over the past three decades. Yet the study of medieval art and visualities has, in general, remained Eurocentric in its canon and conservative in its approaches. 'Postcolonising', as the eleven essays in this volume show, entails active intervention into the field of medieval art history and visual studies through a theoretical reframing of research. This approach poses and elicits new research questions, and tests how concepts current in postcolonial studies - such as diaspora and migration, under-represented artistic cultures, accented art making, displacement, intercultural versus transcultural, hybridity, presence/absence - can help medievalists to reinvigorate the study of art and visuality. Postcolonial concepts are deployed in order to redraft the canon of medieval art, thereby seeking to build bridges between medievalist and modernist communities of scholars. Among the varied topics explored in the volume are the appropriation of Roman iconography by early medieval Scandinavian metalworkers, multilingualism and materiality in Anglo-Saxon culture, the circulation and display of Islamic secular ceramics on Pisan churches, cultural negotiation by Jewish minorities in Central Europe and the Iberian peninsula, Holy Land maps and medieval imaginative geography, and the uses of Thomas Becket in the colonial imaginary of the Plantagenet court.

Scholarship often treats the post-Roman art produced in central and north-western Europe as representative of the pagan identities of the new 'Germanic' rulers of the early medieval world. In this book, Matthias Friedrich offers a critical reevaluation of the ethnic and religious categories of art that still inform our understanding of early medieval art and archaeology. He scrutinises early medieval visual culture by combining archaeological approaches with art historical methods based on contemporary theory. Friedrich examines the transformation of Roman imperial images, together with the contemporary, highly ornamented material culture that is epitomized by 'animal art.' Through a rigorous analysis of a range of objects, he demonstrates how these pathways produced an aesthetic that promoted variety (varietas), a cross-cultural concept that bridged the various ethnic and religious identities of post-Roman Europe and the Mediterranean worlds.

In his academic career, that by now spans six decades, Daniel J. Lasker distinguished himself by the wide range of his scholarly interests. In the field of Jewish theology and philosophy he contributed significantly to the study of Rabbinic as well as Karaite authors. In the field of Jewish polemics his studies explore Judeo-Arabic and Hebrew texts, analyzing them in the context of their Christian and Muslim backgrounds. His contributions refer to a wide variety of authors who lived from the 9th century to the 18th century and beyond, in the Muslim East, in Muslin and Christian parts of the Mediterranean Sea, and in west and east Europe. This Festschrift for Daniel J. Lasker consists of four parts. The first highlights his academic career and scholarly achievements. In the three other parts, colleagues and students of Daniel J. Lasker offer their own findings and insights in topics strongly connected to his studies, namely, intersections of Jewish theology and Biblical exegesis with the Islamic and Christian cultures, as well as Jewish-Muslim and Jewish-Christian relations. Thus, this wide-scoped and rich volume offers significant contributions to a variety of topics in Jewish Studies.

This is the first study of monstrosity in Jewish history from the Middle Ages to modernity. Drawing on Jewish history, literary studies, folklore, art history and the history of science, it examines both the historical depiction of Jews as monsters and the creative use of monstrous beings in Jewish culture. Jews have occupied a liminal position within European society and culture, being deeply immersed yet outsiders to it. For this reason, they were perceived in terms of otherness and were often represented as monstrous beings. However, at the same time, European Jews invoked, with tantalizing ubiquity, images of magical, terrifying and hybrid beings in their texts, art and folktales. These images were used by Jewish authors and artists to push back against their own identification as monstrous or diabolical and to tackle concerns about religious persecution, assimilation and acculturation, gender and sexuality, science and technology and the rise of antisemitism. Bringing together an impressive cast of contributors from around the world, this fascinating volume is an invaluable resource for academics, postgraduates and advanced undergraduates interested in Jewish studies, as well as the history of monsters.

This collection explores multiple artefactual, visual, textual and conceptual adaptations, developments and exchanges across the medieval world in the context of their contemporary and subsequent re-appropriations.

This volume contains work by scholars actively publishing on origin legends across early medieval western Europe, from the fall of Rome to the high Middle Ages. Its thematic structure creates dialogue between texts and regions traditionally studied in isolation.

This volume examines various manifestations and understandings of the concept of monstrosity in medieval Europe around 500-1500 ce through a collection of contextual chapters and primary sources. The main chapters focus on a specific theme, a type of monster or representation of monstrosity, and consist of a contextual essay synthesizing recent scholarship on that theme, excerpts from primary sources and a bibliography of additional primary and secondary sources on the topics addressed in the chapter. In addition to building upon the wealth of scholarship on monsters and monstrosity produced in recent decades, the book engages with the current fascination with monsters in popular culture, especially in movies, television, and video games. The book presents a survey of medieval monstrosity for a non-specialist audience and provides a theoretical framework for interpreting the monstrous. This book is ideal for undergraduate students working on the theme of monstrosity, as well as being useful for undergraduate courses that cover the supernatural and manifestations of the monstrous covered in the book. With materials drawn from a wide range of medieval sources, it will also appeal to courses in English, French, Art History, and Medieval Studies.