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In Light of Another's Word
Challenging the traditional conception of medieval Europe as insular and even xenophobic, Shirin A. Khanmohamadi'sIn Light of Another's Wordlooks to early ethnographic writers who were surprisingly aware of their own otherness, especially when faced with the far-flung peoples and cultures they meant to describe. These authors-William of Rubruck among the Mongols, \"John Mandeville\" cataloguing the world's diverse wonders, Geraldus Cambrensis describing the manners of the twelfth-century Welsh, and Jean de Joinville in his account of the various Saracens encountered on the Seventh Crusade-display an uncanny ability to see and understand from the perspective of the very strangers who are their subjects.Khanmohamadi elaborates on a distinctive late medieval ethnographic poetics marked by both a profound openness to alternative perspectives and voices and a sense of the formidable threat of such openness to Europe's governing religious and cultural orthodoxies. That we can hear the voices of medieval Europe's others in these narratives in spite of such orthodoxies allows us to take full measure of the productive forces of disorientation and destabilization at work on these early ethnographic writers.Poised at the intersection of medieval studies, anthropology, and visual culture,In Light of Another's Wordis an innovative departure from each, extending existing studies of medieval travel writing into the realm of poetics, of ethnographic form into the premodern realm, and of early visual culture into the realm of ethnographic encounter.
eBook
Emperor of the World
Emperor of the World , traces the curious history of the
story of the alliances forged by Charlemagne while visiting
Jerusalem and Constantinople, revealing how the memory of the
Frankish Emperor was manipulated to shape the institutions of
kingship and empire in the High Middle Ages.
The legend incorporates apocalyptic themes such as the
succession of world monarchies at the End of Days and the prophecy
of the Last Roman Emperor. Charlemagne's apocryphal journey to the
East increasingly resembled the eschatological final journey of the
Last Emperor, who was expected to end his reign in Jerusalem after
reuniting the Roman Empire prior to the Last Judgment. Latowsky
finds that the writers who incorporated this legend did so to
support, or in certain cases to criticize, the imperial pretentions
of the regimes under which they wrote. Latowsky removes
Charlemagne's encounters with the East from their long-presumed
Crusading context and shows how a story that began as a rhetorical
commonplace of imperial praise evolved over the centuries as an
expression of Christian Roman universalism.
eBook
Confused Categories: Russia and the East-West Divide in William Plomer’s Sado
The East-West divide in literature from the late nineteenth century to the 1930s can be significantly reconceptualized by focusing on the role of Russian novels in William Plomer’s Sado (1931). At a time when conflict between Russia and Japan was casting the East-West dichotomy into doubt, the spread of translated nineteenth-century Russian novels in Western Europe and Japan established Russian culture as an important mediator between the two halves of Eurasia. Yet this function of Russia as an ostensibly semi-Asiatic region that frustrates categorical distinctions has largely gone unstudied in the context of global modernism. Sado deploys this image of Russia to ironize its characters’ numerous assertions that East and West are self-contained entities, an image that is less concerned with the actual state of Russia than with the inadequacy of geopolitical categories in the interwar period.
Journal Article
Mutual Mirroring between East and West: An Imagological Analysis of phrase omitted
The novel [phrase omitted] (Mr. Ma and Son) by Lao She, the only one of his works set in a foreign country, offers Chinese readers a portrayal of 1920s Britain from various perspectives. However, these portrayals should not be seen as objective representations of Britain, but rather as Lao She's own interpretation and reflection of what he saw and thought, influenced by his creative motivations and attitudes. The primary objective of the novel is to use the exotic image of Britain as a benchmark or reference point to critically examine Chinese society and its national character. By employing an imagological lens, this article reevaluates Mr. Ma and Son, focusing on the images of British citizens, scenes, and social ethos depicted in the novel. It argues that the deliberate shaping of these images serves to highlight the stark disparities in development and modernization between China and Britain. Through this comparison, Lao She aims to reflect the state of Chinese society and national character. Furthermore, Lao She's portrayal of Britain as a utopia suggests that he views it as an idealized model for comparison with the challenges faced by Chinese society in its modernization process. In doing so, Lao She reveals a complex mix of resentment and envy toward the British society. Keywords: Britain, complex of resentment and envy, image, imagology, Mr. Ma and Son
Journal Article
