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This volume is the first to consider the golden century of Gothic ivory sculpture (1230-1330) in its material, theological, and artistic contexts. Providing a range of new sources and interpretations, Sarah Guérin charts the progressive development and deepening of material resonances expressed in these small-scale carvings. Guérin traces the journey of ivory tusks, from the intercontinental trade routes that delivered ivory tusks to northern Europe, to the workbenches of specialist artisans in medieval Paris, and, ultimately, the altars and private chapels in which these objects were venerated. She also studies the rich social lives and uses of a diverse range of art works fashioned from ivory, including standalone statuettes, diptychs, tabernacles, and altarpieces. Offering new insights into the resonances that ivory sculpture held for their makers and viewers, Guérin's study contributes to our understanding of the history of materials, craft, and later medieval devotional practices.
An anonymous minstrel in thirteenth-century France composed this gripping account of historical events in his time. Crusaders and Muslim forces battle for control of the Holy Land, while power struggles rage between and among religious authorities and their conflicting secular counterparts, pope and German emperor, the kings of England and the kings of France. Meanwhile, the kings cannot count on their independent-minded barons to support or even tolerate the royal ambitions. Although politics (and the collapse of a royal marriage) frame the narrative, the logistics of war are also in play: competing military machinery and the challenges of transporting troops and matariel. Inevitably, the c...
When animals and their symbolic representations—in the Royal Menagerie, in art, in medicine, in philosophy—helped transform the French state and culture. Peter Sahlins's brilliant new book reveals the remarkable and understudied “animal moment” in and around 1668 in which authors (including La Fontaine, whose Fables appeared in that year), anatomists, painters, sculptors, and especially the young Louis XIV turned their attention to nonhuman beings. At the center of the Year of the Animal was the Royal Menagerie in the gardens of Versailles, dominated by exotic and graceful birds. In the unfolding of his original and sophisticated argument, Sahlins shows how the animal bodies of the m...
When I was asked to write a description for this book it caused me to pause. I wanted to write that it was about history, about exiled Basque Portuguese Jews who were forced to immigrate to France, about French corsairs and the Great Pirates, about French colonization and the West Indies slave trade, about the exploration and settling of Canada, but the experience was too personal to be considered a survey of European history, and too broad to be considered just a family history. I thought, to describe patterns in epigenetic behavior and ancestral memory, to make it about how in some mysterious way our ancestors tell us their stories, but I don't want you to think that it is a book about coincidence, because it is far from that. It is all of the above.
Between Orders and Heresy foregrounds the dynamic, creative, and diverse late medieval religious landscapes that flourished within the spaces of social and ecclesiastical structures. This collection reconsiders the arguments put forward in Herbert Grundmann’s monumental book, Religious Movements in the Middle Ages, and challenges his traditional interpretive binary, recognized as the shared origins of many medieval religious movements. The contributors explore the social relationships fostered between secular clergy members, including parish priests, local canons, and aristocratic confessors, and examine the ways in which laypeople inspired and engaged in devotion beyond religious orders. ...
Les pièges de Grimtooth (Grimtooth’s Traps One) est un supplément générique de jeux de rôles sorti en 1984 en France chez Jeux Actuels. Créé à l’origine par Flying Buffalo Inc pour servir (entre autres) de supplément au jeu Tunnels & Trolls, la série comptait plusieurs autres tomes (de « Grimtooth’s Traps Too » à « Grimtooth’s Traps Ate »), restés inédits en français. Dès le début des années 90, "Grimtooth" était devenu une des icônes, sinon un des mythes, du monde du jeu de rôle francophone. Pour réexplorer le thème des pièges, il fallait se repencher sur l’antique et incontournable Grimtooth's Traps ! Le voici donc de retour, dans sa version 3.0. Cette ...