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The Companion to Music in the Age of the Catholic Monarchs, edited by Tess Knighton, offers a major new study that deepens and enriches our understanding of the forms and functions of music that flourished in late medieval Spanish society. The fifteen essays, written by leading authorities in the field, present a synthesis based on recently discovered material that throws new light on different aspects of musical life during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabel (1474-1516): sacred and secular music-making in royal and aristocratic circles; the cathedral music environment; liturgy and power; musical connections with Rome, Portugal and the New World; theoretical and unwritten musical practices; women as patrons and performers; and the legacy of Jewish musical tradition. Contributors are Mercedes Castillo Ferreira, Giuseppe Fiorentino, Roberta Freund Schwartz, Eleazar Gutwirth, Tess Knighton, Kenneth Kreitner, Javier Marín López, Ascensión Mazuela-Anguita, Bernadette Nelson, Pilar Ramos López, Emilio Ros-Fábregas, Juan Ruiz Jiménez, Richard Sherr, Ronald Surtz, and Jane Whetnall.
In On Both Sides of the Strait of Gibraltar Julio Samsó studies the history of medieval astronomy in al-Andalus (Muslim Spain), the Maghrib and the Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula. He proves that the Arabic, Latin, Hebrew, Castilian and Catalan sources belong to the same tradition whose origin can be dated in the 11th century due to the changes in Ptolemy’s astronomical theory introduced by the Toledan astronomer Ibn al-Zarqālluh/Azarquiel. The book also analyses the role of al-Andalus and the Iberian Peninsula in the transmission of Islamic astronomy to Europe and justifies the fact that Eastern Islamic works published after ca. 950 CE were not accessible to medieval European scholars because they had not reached al-Andalus.
This collection of essays explores the dialogue between Arabic and European cultures during the medieval period starting from the year 700. Using critical approaches the contributors examine a variety of thematic and cultural concerns.
Up-to-date Coverage of the scope and extent of the important tradition of Arthurian material in Iberian languages and of the modern scholarship on it. (= Wide-ranging bibliographical coverage and guide to both texts and research on them.) Written by Specialists in the different Romance languages of the Iberian Peninsula (Portuguese, Catalan, Galician, Spanish and its dialects). (= Expert analysis of different traditions by leading scholars from Spain and the UK.) Wide-ranging Study not only of medieval and Renaissance literary texts, but also of modern Arthurian fiction, of the global spread of Arthurian legends in the Spanish and Portuguese worlds, and of the social impact of the legends through adoption of names of Arthurian characters and imitation of practices narrated in the legends. (=A comprehensive guide to both literary and social impact of Arthurian material in major world languages.)
Despite the fact that, if only by number, small and peripheral cities played an important role in fifteenth and sixteenth-century European print culture, book history has mainly been dominated by monographs on individual big book centres. Through a number of specific case studies, which deploy a variety of methods and a wide range of sources, this volume seeks to enhance our understanding of printing and the book trade in small and peripheral European cities in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and to emphasize the necessity of new research for the study of print culture in such cities.
As the first translator of Plato's complete works into Latin, the Florentine writer Marsilio Ficino (1433-99) and his blend of Neoplatonic and Hermetic philosophy were fundamental to the intellectual atmosphere of the Renaissance. In Spain, his works were regularly read, quoted, and referenced, at least until the nineteenth century, when literary critics and philosophers wrote him out of the history of early modern Spain. In Ficino in Spain, Susan Byrne uses textual and bibliographic evidence to show the pervasive impact of Ficino's writings and translations on the Spanish Renaissance. Cataloguing everything from specific mentions of his name in major texts to glossed volumes of his works in Spanish libraries, Byrne shows that Spanish writers such as Miguel de Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Bartolomé de las Casas, and Garcilaso de la Vega all responded to Ficino and adapted his imagery for their own works. An important contribution to the study of Spanish literature and culture from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries, Ficino in Spain recovers the role that Hermetic and Neoplatonic thought played in the world of Spanish literature.
Remarkable products of a nation deeply implicated in the Atlantic slave trade, the seventeenth-century Spanish plays Juan Latino, The Brave Black Soldier, and Virtues Overcome Appearances appear together in English for the first time in this volume. The three protagonists not only defy the period’s color-based prejudices but smash through its ultimate social barrier: marriage into the white nobility. Michael Kidd’s fluid translations and extensive critical introduction, bibliography, and glossary are enhanced by Hackett’s title support webpage. Black Protagonists of Early Modern Spain is essential reading for students of theater history, Spanish literature, and the African diaspora.
What can stories of magical engraved rings or prophetic inscriptions on walls tell us about how writing was perceived before print transformed the world? Writing beyond Pen and Parchment introduces readers to a Middle Ages where writing is not confined to manuscripts but is inscribed in the broader material world, in textiles and tombs, on weapons or human skin. Drawing on the work done at the Collaborative Research Centre “Material Text Cultures,” (SFB 933) this volume presents a comparative overview of how and where text-bearing artefacts appear in medieval German, Old Norse, British, French, Italian and Iberian literary traditions, and also traces the paths inscribed objects chart across multiple linguistic and cultural traditions. The volume’s focus on the raw materials and practices that shaped artefacts both mundane or fantastical in medieval narratives offers a fresh perspective on the medieval world that takes seriously the vibrancy of matter as a vital aspect of textual culture often overlooked.
The sources, content and fate of the 15th-century allegorical fable Visión Deleytable are examined from three angles: as a medieval compendium of religious philosophy, as a major influence in Spanish literature, and as an invaluable historical source on Jewish-Christian interactions in medieval Spain. The volume is divided into three sections. The first part considers Visión's didacticism within the Jewish and Christian frames of education in 15th-century Spain. The second part includes a review of Visión's philosophical content as a comprehensive articulation of a rationalist Weltanschauung. The final section traces its intriguing editorial fate and literary influence through the 17th century in Spain, Italy and the Netherlands. It is Visión's first systematic study from the dual perspective of a Hispanist and a Hebraist.
Fortalitium fidei is one of the central texts in the controversy surrounding the religious and social status of conversos in fifteenth-century Castile. This monograph provides a close analysis of the text itself and contextualizes this study through comparison with pro-converso texts and with reference to Alonso de Espina's career as an Observant Franciscan. After an outline of the development of the converso problem, it offers a biography of Espina and a discussion of the context of production of Fortalitium fidei. There is then a discussion of three works of theology in defence of conversos: Alonso de Cartagena's Defensorium unitatis christianae, Juan de Torquemada's Tractatus contra madianitas et ismaelitas, and Alonso de Oropesa's Lumen ad revelationem gentium. The rest of the work is detailed reading of Fortalitium fidei, with chapters on the image of the fortress, the treatment of Jews and Judaism, and of conversos. This volume addresses the extent and nature of the debate about conversos, the development of models of genealogical exclusion, and the role of Espina and his text in the ending of religious plurality in Spain.