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This book is an account of the rise of definite and indefinite articles in Danish, Swedish and Icelandic, as documented in a choice of extant texts from 1200-1550. These three North Germanic languages show different development patterns in the rise of articles, despite the common origin, but each reveals interdependencies between the two processes. The matter is approached from both a quantitative and a qualitative perspective. The statistical analysis provides an improved overview on article grammaticalization, focusing on the factors at the basis of such process. The in-depth qualitative analysis of longer text passages places the crucial stage of the definite article grammaticalization with the so-called indirect anaphoric reference.
This book is an account of the variation between two possessive constructions in Danish and Swedish: the s-genitive (husets tak ‘the house’s roof’), and the prepositional construction (taket på huset ‘the roof of the house’). Present-day corpus data, as well as historical data (texts from 1250–1550) are explored. Through statistical and qualitative analysis, various factors that influence the choice between the two constructions are identified. The book offers new data on the genitive variation in Danish and Swedish. The approach is also novel as two closely related Scandinavian languages are compared from both a historical and a contemporary perspective.
Mention Civil War naval confrontations and the Monitor instantly springs to mind. The first of the ironclads, the Monitor not only took part in a major battle, it forever changed the face of naval construction. But who was the man behind the ship? Born in Filipstad, Sweden, in 1803, the brilliant and somewhat eccentric engineer John Ericsson spent his childhood observing his father's work in mining and later learned his engineering skills at the North Atlantic-Baltic canal. As a young man Ericsson turned to a variety of projects. In England, he introduced the ship's propeller, built an Arctic expedition vessel and designed some of the first successful steam locomotives. Moving to New York in...
Stemmatology studies aspects of textual criticism that use genealogical methods to analyse a set of copies of a text whose autograph has been lost. This handbook is the first to cover the entire field, encompassing both theoretical and practical aspects of traditional as well as modern digital methods and their history. As an art (ars), stemmatology’s main goal is editing and thus presenting to the reader a historical text in the most satisfactory way. As a more abstract discipline (scientia), it is interested in the general principles of how texts change in the process of being copied. Thirty eight experts from all of the fields involved have joined forces to write this handbook, whose ei...
This volume offers the first comprehensive account of the monetary logic that guided the payment of wergild and blood money in early medieval conflict resolution. In the early middle ages, wergild played multiple roles: it was used to measure a person’s status, to prevent and end conflicts, and to negotiate between an individual and the agents of statehood. This collection of interlocking essays by historians, philologists and jurists represents a major contribution to the study of law and society in Western Europe during the early Middle Ages. Contributors are Lukas Bothe, Warren Brown, Stefan Esders, Wolfgang Haubrichs, Paul Hyams, Tom Lambert, Ralph W. Mathisen, Rob Meens, Han Nijdam, Lisi Oliver, Harald Siems, Karl Ubl, and Helle Vogt. See inside the book.
Focusing on visual sources and the cultural landscape, Kersti Markus offers a fresh perspective on the Baltic crusades in Visual Culture and Politics in the Baltic Sea Region, 1100-1250. The book examines how visual propaganda was used by the Danish rulers as an instrument in establishing supremacy in the Baltic Sea region. In recent decades, Danish historians have highlighted the central role of the Valdemar dynasty and the bishops supporting them in the Baltic crusades, but visual sources show how the entire society was mentally prepared for a journey with redemption waiting at the end. A New Jerusalem was being built in Scandinavia, and the crusade to Livonia was conducted under the banner of Christ. See inside the book.
Why devote a Companion to the "mirrors for princes", whose very existence is debated? These texts offer key insights into political thoughts of the past. Their ambiguous, problematic status further enhances their interest. And although recent research has fundamentally challenged established views of these texts, until now there has been no critical introduction to the genre. This volume therefore fills this important gap, while promoting a global historical perspective of different “mirrors for princes” traditions from antiquity to humanism, via Byzantium, Persia, Islam, and the medieval West. This Companion also proposes new avenues of reflection on the anchoring of these texts in their historical realities. Contributors are Makram Abbès, Denise Aigle, Olivier Biaggini, Hugo Bizzarri, Charles F. Briggs, Sylvène Edouard, Jean-Philippe Genet, John R. Lenz, Louise Marlow, Cary J. Nederman, Corinne Peneau, Stéphane Péquignot, Noëlle-Laetitia Perret, Günter Prinzing, Volker Reinhardt, Hans-Joachim Schmidt, Tom Stevenson, Karl Ubl, and Steven J. Williams.