You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
The literarisation of the early modern Baltic Sea region was a long and complex process with varying trajectories for different vernacular languages. This volume highlights the interaction of local social and cultural settings with wider political and confessional contexts. With rarely examined materials, such as prints, court protocols, letters and manuscripts in Latin and a range of vernacular languages, including Estonian, Finnish, German, Ingrian, Karelian, Latvian, Lenape, Sami languages and Swedish, the thirteen authors chart the social and literary developments of the area. Wide networks of learned men and officials but also the number of native speakers in the clergy defined the ways the poetic resources of transnational and local literary and oral cultures benefited the nascent literatures. Contributors include: Eeva-Liisa Bastman, Kati Kallio, Suvi-Päivi Koski, Ulla Koskinen, Miia Kuha, Anu Lahtinen, Tuija Laine, Tuomas M. S. Lehtonen, Ilkka Leskelä, Aivar Põldvee, Sanna Raninen, Kristiina Ross, Taarna Valtonen, Kristi Viiding
Prior to the Industrial Era, the geography of Europe posed problems, but also offered possibilities for its people. Distances created obstacles to communication and state formation, but at the same time, inhabitants and officials in peripheral areas gained room to pursue more independent action and allowing unique customs to flourish. In Physical and Cultural Space in Pre-industrial Europe the authors seek to answer how early modern Europeans -- rulers, officials, aristocrats, scholars, priests, and commoners -- perceived, utilised and organised the space around them. The geographic focus is on northern Europe, where distances played a more important role in society than in the densely populated areas of Southern Europe. Written by nineteen scholars of history, archaeology and ethnology, this book takes a multidisciplinary approach to European spaces of the past and the human agents within them.
This collection of thirteen chapters answers new questions about rhyme, with views from folklore, ethnopoetics, the history of literature, literary criticism and music criticism, psychology and linguistics. The book examines rhyme as practiced or as understood in English, Old English and Old Norse, German, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish and Karelian, Estonian, Medieval Latin, Arabic, and the Central Australian language Kaytetye. Some authors examine written poetry, including modernist poetry, and others focus on various kinds of sung poetry, including rap, which now has a pioneering role in taking rhyme into new traditions. Some authors consider the relation of rhyme to other types of form, notably alliteration. An introductory chapter discusses approaches to rhyme, and ends with a list of languages whose literatures or song traditions are known to have rhyme.
'At a historic moment, when religion shows all its social and political strength in various post-modern societies around our globe, this fascinating collection of studies from the Middle Ages to twentieth-century Europe demonstrates all the richness and innovative force of investigating individual and shared experiences when questioning the cultural, political and social place of religion in society. It also makes known in English the work of a series of Finnish historians elaborating together a pioneering vision of the notion of experience in the discipline of history.' - Piroska Nagy, Universite du Quebec a Montreal, Canada This open access book offers a theoretical introduction to the his...
The Development of Commercial Law in Sweden and Finland provides a broad perspective on recent research into the history of North European commercial law in a comparative and international framework. The book brings together themes that have previously been considered largely from a national perspective. Despite Sweden's and Finland's peripheral locations in Europe, global legal phenomena took place there as well. These countries were at the crossroads of cultures and commercial interests, allowing us to re-examine them as lively laboratories for commercial laws and practices rather than dismissing them as a negligible periphery. The importance of trade and international transactions cannot be disclaimed, but the book also emphasizes the resilient nature of commercial law. Contributors are: Dave De ruysscher, Stefania Gialdroni, Ulla Ijäs, Marko Lamberg, Heikki Pihlajamäki, Jussi Sallila, and Katja Tikka.
This anthology is about the representations and uses of medieval saints, heroes, and heroic events as elements of popular, local, and national culture during the 19th and 20th centuries in the Baltic Sea region: Scandinavia, Finland, Baltic countries, Northern Germany and North-Western Russia. Authors examine the processes of how medieval saints and heroes have been remembered, commemorated, interpreted, used, and reflected during modernity, and by whom. The focus of the anthology is on "doing" memory as a practice that commemorated the past and shaped spaces and identities in the present. It approaches the memory of saints and heroes, for example, Swedish Saints Birgitta and Eric, Danish Sa...
Songs and writings: oral and literary cultures in early-modern Finland renews the understanding of exchange between the learned culture of clergymen and the culture of commoners, or “folk”. What happened when the Reformation changed the position of the oral vernacular language to literary and ecclesiastical, and when folk beliefs seem to have become an object for more intensive surveillance and correction? How did clergymen understand and use the versatile labels of popular belief, paganism, superstition and Catholic fermentation? Why did they choose particular song languages, poetic modes and melodies for their Lutheran hymns and literary poems, and why did they avoid oral poetics in ce...
The present volume is a multidisciplinary collection of research articles exploring language use, language contact and multilingualism in the history of Turku, the first town in Finland, founded around the turn of the fourteenth century. Consisting of an introduction by the editors and nine case studies in the fields of linguistics, history, archeology, and literary and cultural studies, the volume participates in a wider discussion on multilingual communities while offering a closer look into linguistic encounters in Turku and its immediate vicinity. The volume covers the period from the Middle Ages (c. 1100–1500) to the latter half of the twentieth century. The case studies illustrate the wide array of languages, linguistic varieties and registers that the inhabitants and travellers used in their daily lives, the specific contexts in which certain languages were used, and the effects of these linguistic encounters at personal, social or institutional levels.
Pre-modern, long-distance trade was conducted in a highly complex and uncertain environment. Aside from the lack of personal security, trade was characterized by slow communication, asymmetric information, and limited contract enforceability. There was no state, in the modern sense, to protect merchants. Despite these overwhelming problems, trade, and even overseas trade, flourished in medieval and early modern Europe. This book explores this paradox: how could trade thrive and the economy expand under uncertainties of many kinds? Over the past two or three decades, enormous advances have been made in explaining how institutions support the economy. This book contributes to the intense discu...
Die Aufklärung als Epoche und Denkbewegung ist eng an einen neuen Gebrauch der Medien gebunden. Erwerb, Vermittlung und Vertrieb von Wissen mögen zunächst nur das Privileg weniger gelehrter Köpfe gewesen sein, im Kern intendierte die Aufklärung jedoch eine Öffnung der respublica litteraria für alle Menschen. Diese Ausformung der Medien fand nicht nur in den Zentren der Aufklärung statt, sondern auch in deren Peripherien, wie etwa dem Baltikum. Auch dort entstanden und etablierten sich Medien der Aufklärung. Welches waren die wirkmächtigsten Medienpraktiken? Wer waren die wichtigsten Träger und an wen richtete sich die Aufklärung in Estland, Livland und Kurland? Welche Funktionen hatten die unterschiedlichen Sprachen? Das Buch stellt das Baltikum als eine exemplarische europäische Aufklärungsregion vor und zeigt durch verschiedene disziplinäre Zugriffe (Germanistik, Geschichte, Komparatistik, Kunstgeschichte, Theologie) die Wirksamkeit aufklärerischer Medienformate in dieser Region.