Medieval Alterities Race Religion and Orientalism Richard Lionheart
- Slides: 11
Medieval Alterities: Race, Religion, and Orientalism Richard Lionheart unhorses Saladdin Luttrell Psalter, MS London, BL, Add. 42130, F. 82
Imagination: Representation of ‘Alterity’ as construction of Identity Representation of difference in… Religion Race / ethnicity ‘Space’ or geography ‘Time’ or history The ‘self’ vs. the ‘other’ Definitions? Attention to Specific Historical Context
The Image of the World: symbolic and spiritual geography T-O Maps ‘Zonal’ Maps Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae Augsburg 1472 MS Oxford, Bodleian Library, D’Orville 77, fol. 100 r.
Jerusalem as Centre of the world Øperiphery? Ømargins? Psalter Map MS BL Add. 28681 (after 1262)
Medieval Maps Conceptual / symbolic geography Establish hierarchies and dichotomies (centre/periphery ; order/chaos) Encyclopedic maps: history as well as geography Cosmological maps
Monstrous Races: Livre des Merveilles du Monde MS BNF fr 2810 Fol. 76 v / 29
The monstrous races: Influence of Late classical natural philosophy (Pliny) Presumed link between climate and ‘biological’ aptitude / predisposition (e. g. Bartolomeus Anglicus, De Proprietatibus Rerum) The Three Races sprung from the three sons of Noah (Ham, Japhet, Shem) Monstrous creatures as descendents of Cain
Pre-modern ‘race’? How is Race conceptualised in the Middle Ages? Ø Less rigidly ‘biological’ category than nowadays Ø Shaped by climate and living conditions Ø Race, like other bodily characteristics (deformity, illness…), is an outward manifestation of interior disposition Ø Race often blurred with religious definitions (i. e. a Saracens are always BOTH ethnical and religious ‘others’) Ø Race, ultimately, is not a stable, reliable or independent signifier of identity: need to relate ‘Race’ to other discourses of cultural, linguistic, religious difference.
The East or Orient Site of Monstrosity but also Exoticism, Marvels, Portents, Wonders (Alexander the Great Tradition) Mixture of attraction / repulsion Legendary History + Geography, e. g. Prester John ‘space’ for the projection of both fantasies and anxieties ‘Desire’? - Wonder vs. Appropriation / Encounter vs. Colonisation Importance for Sacred History (Jerusalem); destination of Pilgrimage Eschatological / apocalyptic association (Heavenly Jerusalem).
Identity and difference: Travel, the Orient and Exoticism as (self-)discovery Mandeville’s Travels (1355 -71) Curiosity / wonder Encounter Mutual intelligibility of East and West Travel is as much about a reassessment of Western ‘Self’ than an encounter with the Eastern ‘Other’ > doubts about the stability of the ‘self’; potential blurring of the identitarian boundary
Jews and Muslims in the Christian Middle Ages Jews Muslims Previous Hebrew Tradition Later development (Old Testament) History Diaspora Economic importance of Jews > Geographic interpenetration and historical continuity-but‘separateness’: ‘supersessionist’ history Geographical separateness Oriental / Eastern location Crusade > Geographic and historical separation; Islam as either Idolatry or debased Christian Heresy
- Impulse and reaction turbine difference
- Function of spillway
- Japanese orientalism
- Said definition of orientalism
- Galdi
- Latent orientalism
- Introduction to orientalism
- Data race vs race condition
- Looking for richard analysis
- Western religion vs eastern religion
- My aurora health care
- Chapter 8: race and ethnicity as lived experience