Archives de catégorie : Vient de paraître

Rorgo Fretellus

Vient de paraître:

Rorgo Fretellus, Descriptio de locis sanctis Edizione critica a cura di Giulia Greco, Sismel Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2025, 282 p., coll. “Geographica et Hodoeporica” 1.

Les éditions de la SISMEL lance une nouvelle collection intitulée “Geographica et Hodoeporica”. Le premier volume est l’édition critique de la Description des Lieux saints par Rorgo Fretellus.

Présentation du volume :

La Descriptio de locis sanctis di Rorgone Fretello, un trattato di geografia sacra per scopi devozionali, è una delle topografie bibliche più diffuse della prima età crociata. Il volume offre l’edizione critica delle due redazioni dell’opera, valorizzando un testo chiave della produzione latina d’Oltremare e dando un nuovo contributo alla conoscenza del filone delle guide di pellegrinaggio.

Présentation de la collection:

The Cambridge Guide to Global Medieval Travel Writing

Vient de paraître:

The Cambridge Guide to Global Medieval Travel Writing, éd. Sebastian Sobecki, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2025

Présentation:

The Middle Ages laid the foundations for the long European and Middle Eastern history of voyaging, colonialism, and expansion: the Papal embassies that took over a year of overland travel to reach Mongolia, Ibn Battuta’s thirty years of voyaging to Africa and East Asia, or the arrival of European colonialism in the Americas. With a focus on medieval Europe, this is the first book to cover global medieval travel writing from Iceland to Indonesia, providing unrivalled insight into the experiences of early travellers. Paying special attention to race, gender and manuscript culture, the volume’s vast geographical and linguistic range provides expert coverage of Persian, Arabic, Hebrew, and Chinese literature. An essential resource for teaching and research, the collection challenges established views of the Middle Ages and Western ideas of history.

  • Using a European starting point, this is the first book to cover medieval travel writing globally from Iceland to Indonesia, demonstrating both differences and shared experiences among travellers from the entire known world of the period
  • Pays particular attention to race, women, language, and manuscript culture, exploring the role of central questions in current scholarship across diverse medieval cultures
  • Challenges Western ideas of history through coverage of Persian, Arabic, Hebrew, and Chinese literatures, among others
  • Introduction: towards a global history of medieval travel writing, Sebastian Sobecki
  • Part I. Contexts:
  • 1. Travel writing in late antiquity, Scott Fitzgerald Johnson
  • 2. The crusades, Andrew Jotischky
  • 3. Women travellers, Kim M. Phillips
  • 4. Rape and violence in medieval travel narratives, Carissa M. Harris
  • 5. Making race: from travel writing to discourse, Sierra Lomuto
  • 6. Globalising whiteness: transmission, idolatry, and fetishism, Wan-Chuan Kao
  • 7. Travel accounts in manuscript and print, Aditi Nafde
  • 8. Disabilities in transit, Jonathan Hsy
  • 9. Ibn Battuta, Christine Chism
  • 10. Jewish travellers, Martin Jacobs
  • Part II. Traditions: I. The Nordic World and the British Isles:
  • 11. Iceland, Sverrir Jakobsson
  • 12. Scandinavia, Jonas Wellendorf
  • 13. England, Sebastian Sobecki
  • 14. Scotland, Daniel Davies
  • 15. Ireland, Joseph Falaky Nagy
  • 16. Wales, Helen Fulton
  • II. France, Italy, and Iberia:
  • 17. France, Elizaveta Strakhov
  • 18. Iberia, Geraldine Hazbun
  • 19. Santiago de Compostela, George D. Greenia
  • 20. Italy, Theodore J. Cachey, Jr
  • 21. Rome, Chiara Sbordoni
  • III. The Empire and Central Europe:
  • 22. The holy Roman empire, Albrecht Classen
  • 23. The Teutonic state, Prussia, and the Baltic, Ralf G. Päsler
  • 24. Bohemia, Michael Van Dussen
  • 25. Hungary, Balázs Nagy
  • IV. Poland-Lithuania, Rus’, and Byzantium:
  • 26. Poland and Lithuania, Paul Srodecki
  • 27. Russia, Ralph Cleminson
  • 28. Byzantium, Marina Toumpouri
  • V. Africa and the Middle East:
  • 29. West Africa, Iona McCleery
  • 30. Jerusalem, Anthony Bale
  • 31. Arabia, Shazia Jagot
  • 32. Mecca, Karen C. Pinto
  • VI. Asia and the Americas:
  • 33. Persia, Ladan Niayesh
  • 34. The Mongol empire, Irene Malfatto
  • 35. China and India, Sharon Kinoshita
  • 36. Chinese travel writing, James M. Hargett
  • 37. South-East Asia, Marianne O’Doherty
  • 38. The Atlantic and the Americas, Sebastian Sobecki
  • Thinking about a world in motion: An afterword, Geraldine Heng.

Enfants d’Hermès

Vient de paraître:

Enfants d’Hermès

Voyage, altérités et réception de l’antique

éd. Albrecht Burkardt, Laurence Bernard-Pradelle et François Brizay, Paris, Classiques Garnier, 2025, coll. Rencontres, n° 659, 514 p.

Présentation:

Le livre analyse l’usage des savoirs et des cultures antiques chez les voyageurs, en particulier ceux de l’époque moderne, qu’ils aient parcouru le Vieux Continent ou les terres d’outremer, dans la confrontation à d’autres cultures.

Table des matières:

Albrecht Burkardt et François Brizay, Introduction
Alain Schnapp, Le voyage et la curiosité antiquaire. Une approche comparée

Première partie: VOYAGES EN OCCIDENT, GUIDÉS PAR LA CULTURE CLASSIQUE

Christine Gadrat-Ouerfelli, En cheminant avec Ptolémée. Les voyageurs européens du xve siècle et les géographes antiques

Laurence Bernard-Pradelle, La traversée des Alpes par Leonardo Bruni Aretino et Poggio Bracciolini. Une « historia peregrinationis » d’un nouveau genre à l’orée du Quattrocento ?

Frank Lestringant, Ruines grecques et romaines dans les îles de la mer Égée, d’après le Grand Insulaire et Pilotage d’André Thevet (1588)

Gilles Bertrand, Voyage en Italie et découvertes archéologiques. Le cas des Français dans la seconde moitié du xviiie siècle

Alessia Zambon et Stefano Paderni, À la recherche des frontières de la Lucanie. Français, Britanniques et Italiens en Calabre septentrionale (1778-1836)

Fabien Desset, Percy Bysshe Shelley, voyageur « classique » ?

Deuxième partie: CULTURE CLASSIQUE ET VOYAGES AU LEVANT

Étienne Jouhaud, D’Istanbul à Constantinople. Le traitement des vestiges antiques dans quelques récits de voyage du début de l’époque moderne

Anne-Marie Cheny, Comment la recherche de manuscrits antiques inventa « Byzance » (xvie -xviie siècle)

Jean-François Morin, Un antiquaire au Levant. Les voyages du sieur Paul Lucas (1699-1717)

Philippe Mainterot, Interpréter les sources antiques. L’exemple du Voyage à l’Oasis de Thèbes de Frédéric Cailliaud (1787-1869)

Maria Cecilia D’Ercole, Dans les Balkans avec les classiques. Les voyages de Mary Edith Durham (1863-1944)

Troisième partie: les Classiques au service de la découverte des altérités d’Outremer

Amélie Ferrigno, La « Vénus de Floride » de Cesare Vecellio. Ou l’invention d’une mythologie américaine dans l’édition italienne du xvie siècle

Paola von Wyss-Giacosa, Le bouclier d’Énée. l’inde au miroir de l’antiquité classique et biblique dans le frontispice de A Display of two Forraigne Sects in the East Indies (1630) d’Henry Lord

François Brizay, le Japon au prisme des auteurs antiques. les Ambassades mémorables de la Compagnie des Indes Orientales des Provinces-Unies vers les empereurs du Japon, d’Arnoldus Montanus

Diego Stefanelli, « But what dependance can we place on these, without a knowledge of their originals? » Éloquence iroquoise, modèles anciens et problèmes de traduction au xviiie siècle

Quatrième partie: VOYAGES ET RÉCEPTION DE L’ANTIQUE USAGES POLITIQUES

Virginie Hollard, Les voyages en Grèce et la connaissance de la culture grecque des premiers empereurs julio-claudiens. Mobilisation d’une mémoire et construction d’un projet politique

Auderic Maret, La Provence, une région exceptionnelle d’après le De laudibus Provinciae (1551) de Pierre Quiqueran de Beaujeu

Ida Gilda Mastrorosa, Les merveilles d’outre-Manche dans la culture italienne du xvie siècle. Réception de l’antique et altérité environnementale

Philippe Prudent, Les voyageurs britanniques du Grand Tour, héritiers des élites de la Rome républicaine ?

Gilles Bertrand, Quand le voyage passait par l’Antiquité. Perspectives conclusives

Mobility in the Early Middle Ages

Vient de paraître:

Mobility in the Early Middle Ages, and Beyond – Mobilität im Frühmittelalter und darüber hinaus

Interdisciplinary Approaches – Interdisziplinäre Zugänge

Edited by: Laury Sarti and Helene von Trott zu Solz, Berlin, De Gruyter, 2025, VIII–317 p. (Europa im Mittelalter, 46).

Présentation:

This interdisciplinary volume deals with new methodological approaches to studying early medieval mobility. The chapters address innovative methods from the fields of history, archaeology, and the natural sciences, discussing the potential and limits of each methodological approach and shining the spotlight on historical and archaeological as well as scientific methods.

Table des matières:

Laury Sarti, Introduction. Interdisciplinary approaches to early medieval mobility
I Mobility of People and Objects
Marco Cristini, Exotic gifts and learned envoys. Sixthcentury cultural diplomacy on the move
Michel Summer, Studying the networks and the mobility of clerics between Ireland, Britain and Francia (c. 640–750)
Shigeto Kikuchi, Motivations and purposes of travel in the Carolingian age
Tobias Gärtner, Friesen in der Fremde? Zur Mobilität friesischer Händler im Spiegel der Keramikfunde
Abel de Lorenzo Rodríguez, Out of the village. Short-distance exile and local communities in Iberia (c. 700–1200)
Laury Sarti, Mobility and networks from 976 to 991 in the letters of Gerbert of Reims. A quantitative approach
Russell Ó Ríagáin, Shifting patterns of mobility in the Insular Scandinavian diaspora between the ninth and eleventh centuries

II Landscapes and Infrastructure

Michael Kahle and Rüdiger Glaser, Climatic conditions and mobility from 1000 to 1500. Hermeneutic and statistical approaches
Pierre Fütterer, Die ottonische Machtbasis im Fokus. GIS als Mittel zur Analyse mittelalterlicher Raumstrukturen
Irmela Herzog, Reconstructing past movement patterns on the basis of known old roads. A case study on pre-industrial roads in a hilly area in Germany
Anna Swieder, Forgotten pathways. The potential of LiDAR data to record old roads and tracks in medieval cultural landscapes
Wouter Verschoof-van der Vaart, Eva Kaptijn, Quentin Bourgeois and Karsten Lambers, Using Citizen Science to map hollow roads in LiDAR data from the Netherlands. Results from the Heritage Quest project
Bart Holterman, Sources and methods for the reconstruction of medieval and early modern sea routes in northern Europe
Helene von Trott zu Solz, Conclusion. New paths to the study of early medieval mobility

 

Voyages réels et imaginaires

Vient de paraître:

Le Moyen Français – 94 (2024)

Voyages réels et imaginaires

Actes du VIIIe colloque de l’AIEMF (Lafayette College, 2021)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Les voyages maritimes dans les Miracles de Nostre Dame de Jean le Conte
Elisabetta Barale

Gender and Travel in Octovien de Saint-Gelais’ XXI Epistres d’Ovide. Textual and Visual Translations of Departures
Cynthia J. Brown

The 1st-Person Voice of the Traveller in Marco Polo and John Mandeville
Kevin Brownlee

Quand le Huon en prose révise l’image du monde et les moyens de le parcourir
Caroline Cazanave

Le monde des héros-voyageurs au XVe siècle. Toponymie, itinéraires et description géographique dans l’Ovide moralisé en prose (version brugeoise)
Stefania Cerrito

Deux voyages en un. Octovien de Saint-Gelais et le problème du bivium
François Cornilliat

Les « voyages » des Rhétoriqueurs. Un genre entre narratio et laudatio
Ellen Delvallée

Quelques problèmes relatifs à la description des realia dans les récits de voyage (1490-1550)
Marie-Christine Gomez-Géraud

Ascending the Mountain in Antoine de La Sale’s Paradis de la Reine Sibylle The Mental Pilgrimage at the Heart of a Secular Text
S.C. Kaplan

Naufrages et captures par des pirates. Les tourmentes et fortunes de mer dans la littérature romanesque bourguignonne du XVe siècle
Matthieu Marchal

La Nef des folz (1497) de Pierre Rivière. Quand le voyage est objet de méfiance
Anne-Laure Metzger-Rambach

La Fleur des estoires de la terre d’Orient illustrée. Étude de miniatures dans le manuscrit Paris, BnF, fr. 2810
Priscilla Mourgues

La langue de l’Autre dans le Voyage d’Outremer de Bertrandon de la Broquière
Sandra Otte

« Chacun appelle barbarie ce qui n’est pas de son usage ». Voyage, altérité et satire dans la première Renaissance en France
Bernd Renner

Latin Timur

Vient de paraître:

Geoffrey Goddard, Latin Timur. Representing a Central Asia Emir in Fifteenth-Century Europe, Rome, Istituto per l’Oriente C. A. Nallino, 2025, 419 p.

Cette publication est issue d’une thèse de doctorat, soutenue en décembre 2023, en cotutelle entre l’Université d’Aix-Marseille et l’Université de Tübingen.

Table des matières:

Géographies imaginaires

Vient de paraître:

Géographies imaginaires

dans Astrolabe, 56, 2025, numéro préparé par Christine Gadrat-Ouerfelli et Sylvie Requemora

Table des matières:

1. L’imaginaire géographique dans les écrits de voyages réels

Julia ROUMIER, “Un monde d’encre et de papier ? La part de la fiction dans la description géographique”

Jean-Marc RIVIERE, “Le récit de voyage comme forme d’expérimentation historiographique. Missions d’ambassade et expériences hodéporiques sous la première République florentine (1494-1512)”

Fanny MOGHASSASSI, “Du haut de la tour : le voyage vertical dans la littérature moyen-anglaise”

Mathilde MOUGIN, “Les scènes de sérail de Bernier et Tavernier : d’une esthétique de la turquerie à un laboratoire de pensée politique”

Vanezia PARLEA, “La figure du Derviche dans les Mémoires du chevalier d’Arvieux : l’altérité religieuse en question”

Patrick MATHIEU, “Flaubert, Vie et mort de l’exotisme”

Yannick GOUCHAN, “Voyage physique en Italie, voyage mental dans la littérature, ou comment penser l’altérité (Eraldo Affinati, Peregrin d’amore, 2010)”

2. L’imaginaire géographique dans la fiction viatique

Christine GADRAT-OUERFELLI, “Le voyage merveilleux de Jacopo da Sansoverino (1416-1418)”

Andrea GOESCHL, “Voyage entre la Baie d’Antongil et le Royaume d’Antangil. Les relations entre la littérature viatique et la première utopie française”

Fanny DELGADO, “La folie de l’imaginaire comme projection utopique au théâtre : Les Folies amoureuses de Jean-François Regnard”

Guy SPIELMANN, “Le genre viatique au défi de Munchausen : Tribulations d’un voyageur atypique”

Cécile PAYET,” Promenade à fenêtre au clair de lune : l’Expédition nocturne de Xavier de Maistre”

Gianluca LEONCINI, “Voyage au paradis des pièges”

Yannick GOUCHAN, « Une autre Terre, autour / de cette Terre » : Giovanni Pascoli, Gli emigranti nella luna (1903-1909)

Michela TOPPANO, “Entre utopie scientifique et pays de Cocagne : un voyage dans le monde spectaculaire de la science dans Orkinzia o Terra del « radium » (1908) d’Amos Giupponi”

Benoît GUIDI, “Errances urbaines et anamorphoses : passage vers le merveilleux dans Nadja d’André Breton et Vertigo d’Alfred Hitchcock”

Yann ETIENNE, “La géographie imaginaire comme seuil de la fiction romanesque : le territoire poétique des Jardins statuaires

Laurent BAZIN, “Un sillon tracé dans les airs : formes et enjeux de la cartographie dans les fictions de l’imaginaire”

Vanezia PARLEA, “Le dialogue entre cultures à partir du roman Boussole de Mathias Énard (Prix Goncourt 2015)”

Tous les articles sont consultables en ligne sur le site d’Astrolabe.

 

The Mongol Archive

Vient de paraître:

Mark Cruse, The Mongol Archive in Late Medieval France: Texts, Objects, Encounters, 1221-1422, Cornell University Press, 2025, 360 p.

Présentation:

The Mongol Archive in Late Medieval France is the first comprehensive study of contact between France and the Mongols in the late Middle Ages. As these realms expanded across Eurasia—the French through crusade and settlement, the Mongols through conquest—their encounters altered each other’s understanding of the world and their place in it.

The Mongol influence on French culture is visible in what Mark Cruse calls the Mongol archive—a wide range of materials including chronicles, crusade treatises, encyclopedias, manuscript illuminations, maps, romances, and travel accounts—revealing how the French court made sense of a people previously unknown to the European intellectual tradition. Cruse mines this archive of Franco-Mongol contact to reassess France’s place in the continental history of medieval Eurasia.

By comparing the French and Mongol courts, Cruse shows how their similarities allowed meaningful communication between them and highlights the surprising connections—diplomatic, intellectual, and genealogical—across vast distances. The library of King Charles V (r. 1364–1380), one of the largest in medieval Europe, is a monument to the richness of these encounters, which anticipate the global interconnectedness of the modern world. Ultimately, the innovative approach in The Mongol Archive in Late Medieval France toward French conceptions of and relations with the Mongols demonstrates how a global perspective transforms our understanding of the medieval world.

Table des matières:

Introduction: The Mongol Archive in Late Medieval France
1. The Origins of the Mongol Archive in Late Medieval France
2. Louis IX, the Mongols, and International Court Culture
3. Eurasian France: the Cumans, the Valois and Marco Polo
4. The Mongol Archive and the Library of King Charles V
5. The Mongol Archive during the Reign of King Charles VI
Conclusion: The Afterlives of the Mongol Archive

Festschrift für Felicitas Schmieder

Gerda Brunnlechner / Nadine Holzmeier / Daniel Syrbe / Petra Waffner / Petra Widmer (Hg.) Positionsbestimmungen Mediävistik im kulturgeschichtlichen Kontinuum Festschrift für Felicitas Schmieder zum 60. Geburtstag, Göttingen, V&R Unipress, Brill, 2025.

Présentation:

Der Band ist eine Würdigung der Mediävistin Felicitas Schmieder. Ihre Arbeitsschwerpunkte sind Kulturkontakte und Wahrnehmungsgeschichte, Prophetie als politische Sprache, Kartographie, Stadtgeschichte, Geschichte ‘Europas’ und europäische Erinnerungskultur. Der Band spiegelt wesentliche Entwicklungslinien hin zu einer kulturgeschichtlichen Mediävistik, die eng mit ihrer wissenschaftlichen Biographie verknüpft sind. Die Beiträger*innen zeigen die thematischen Weiterentwicklungen ihrer Arbeit in den Themenfeldern vormoderne Kartographie, soziale Gemeinschaften und Stadtgeschichte, kulturelle Begegnungen sowie Prophetie als politische Sprache und Erinnerungskulturen auf. Das Spektrum der Beiträge reicht chronologisch von der Spätantike bis in die Moderne, räumlich vom Indischen Ozean über Ostmitteleuropa bis zur Iberischen Halbinsel, methodisch von quellenerschließenden bis theoriegeleiteten Studien. Damit bietet der Band eine Standortbestimmung einer modernen, epochen-, raum- und disziplinenübergreifenden mediävistischen Geschichtswissenschaft. As a tribute to Felicitas Schmieder, the volume reflects essential lines of development towards a culturally orientated approach in medieval studies closely linked to her academic biography. The authors contributing to the volume further advance her work in the thematic fields of pre-modern cartography, social communities and urban history, cultural encounters, prophecy as a political language and the perception of pre-modern history. The contributions presented here delineate a modern, interdisciplinary approach to medival studies by covering a broad spectrum, ranging chronologically from late antiquity to modernity, spatially from the Indian Ocean to Eastern Central Europe to the Iberian Peninsula, and methodologically from source- to theory-based studies.

Table des matières:

Daniel Syrbe / Gerda Brunnlechner Einleitende Positionsbestimmungen

Kartographie

Martina Stercken, Die Stadt als Zeitenraum. Schriftbildliche Konzeptionen Zürichs im Spätmittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit

Ingrid Baumgärtner / Franziska Haarhaus, Andrea Biancos Atlante Nautico. Zur Organisation praktischen Wissens im 15. Jahrhundert

Gerda Brunnlechner, Der mandelförmige Rahmen der Genuesischen Weltkartevon 1457 zwischen ptolemäischer Projektion und Transzendenz Gottes

Elisabeth Kisker, Sorpe, Lippe, Wevelsbecke Wasserläufe auf zwei handgezeichneten Karten aus Westfalen (1566 / um 1600)

Reinhard Wendt, Übersee: fern und doch nah. Der kartographische Verlag von Johann Baptist Homann und Nürnbergs Verflechtung mit der außereuropäischen Welt

Nicolas Pethes, Literarische Landvermesser. Landnahme, Kartographie und Geopolitik in der Literatur der Moderne

Gemeinschaften

Gabriel Zeilinger, Mehrfache Schnittstellen. Höfe auswärtiger Klöster und Stifte in vormodernen Städten

Katalin Szende, By Choice or by Force? Natural and man-made factors in the siting of bishops’ seats in East Central Europe in the Christianization period

Ellen Diehm, Handwerker im Frankfurter Rat im Spätmittelalter

Petra Widmer, Nützliche Freundschaft – Johanna Sophie zu Schaumburg-Lippe und ihr Verhältnis zu Kurfürstin Sophie von Hannover

Marc von der Höh, Die Totenschilde der Dogen von Venedig. Ein Beitrag zur europäischen Funeralheraldik des Mittelalters

Thomas Sokoll, Wo liegt die ‚bürgerliche Mitte‘? Historisch-semantische und sozialhistorische Beobachtungen zur politischen Klassentheorie aus deutsch-englischer Diplopie

Begegnungen

Wolfram Brandes, 718 n. Chr. – Weltgeschichte in Asturien. Byzanz und der arabische Islam

Ana Echevarría, Military Conversion: Mechanisms of Religious Change in Frontier History

Emir O. Filipovic´, An Early Example of Conversion to Islam among Ragusan Merchants in the Late Middle Ages. Legal Complications and Issues of Judicial Jurisdiction in the Ottoman Balkans

Jürgen G. Nagel, Grenzenloses Wissen zur See. Die Kenntnis des Indischen Ozeans zwischen Kontinenten und Epochen

Prophetie

Zaroui Pogossian, The Armenian Vision of St. Nerse¯s and its Latin Version: Text, Transmission History, Translation

Frances Kneupper, Female Prophets Transcending Gender Expectations During the Great Schism – The Revelations of Constance of Rabastens and Marie Robine

Barbara Schlieben, Was ‚falsche‘ Propheten falsch machen: Kritische Stimmen zu Beginn des 10. Jahrhunderts

Wolfgang Kruse, Weltuntergang und Neubeginn 1914. Visionen einer säkularen Apokalypse

Erinnern

Nadine Holzmeier / Daniel Syrbe, Paolino und seine Goten. Der Übergang vom westgotischen regnum zum asturischen Königreich in der Chronologia Magna des Paolino Veneto (14. Jh.)

Michele Campopiano, Weltgeschichte in der Mitte der Welt: Guglingens Traktat über das Heilige Land als Universalchronik

Stavroula Constantinou, History in Hagiography. Writing and Rewriting Byzantine Rulership and Imperial Ideology in Miracle Stories

Dan Terkla, Forgetting the Hereford Mappa Mundi

Olga Kozubska-Andrusiv, Magdeburg Law: Medieval Phenomenon in the Public Memory of present-day Ukraine

Kristin Skottki, Das Mittelalter deprovinzialisieren? Ein Praxisbericht aus Lehre und Forschung zum ‚globalen Mittelalter‘

Abbildungsverzeichnis
Quellen- und Literaturverzeichnis

Transforming Europe in the Images of the World

Vient de paraître:

 Natalia I. Petrovskaia, Transforming Europe in the Images of the World, 1100-1500. Fuzzy Geographies, Amsterdam University Press, 2025, 208 p.

Présentation:

This is the first book to examine the wide and important geographical tradition that arose from the description of the world in the Imago mundi – a medieval encyclopedic bestseller, almost unrivalled in popularity from its composition in the 1110s well into the age of print. The Imago mundi was translated into most European vernaculars, and extracts from it were adapted into works ranging from encyclopedias to literary fiction, verse and prose. This is the first study to examine this tradition as a unified whole. It focuses in particular on the permutations undergone by the depiction of the region designated as ‘Europe’ in the original text and its later adaptations. The book demonstrates the incredible flexibility of the original text and how this enabled the transformation of this spatial description to suit the linguistic, political and cultural needs of its adaptations.

Table des matières:

List of Figures and Tables
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: Starting Out. ‘Europes’, Hippogriffs, and Mathematics
Europe: What’s in a Name?
Of Space-Time, Borders, and Mathematics
A Roadmap for this Book

Part I An Introduction to the Imago Mundi tradition
1. Understanding the World. An Overview of the Imago mundi
Medieval ‘Encyclopedias’
About the Author and Concerning Context
The Contents of the Imago Mundi

2. Translating Knowledge. An Introduction to the Imago Mundi Family
Vernacular Translations of Imago mundi
Adaptations of Imago mundi i and Insertion of Translated Extracts in Encyclopedic Contexts
Adaptations and Translated Extracts Drawn into Other Genres
Adaptation into Latin

Part II Modes of Reading Geography
3. Time. Authority and Archaism
Authority in Fragments
The Timelessness of Archaism
Overlapping Maps: The Cases of paludes Meotides, Spain, and Rome

4. Space. Geographical Regions as Fuzzy Sets
Divide or Describe? Dirimere, deviser
Regions as Fuzzy Sets
Overlap between Fuzzy Sets in the Image du monde
The Mediterranean as Fuzzy Set

5. Movement. The Hodoeporical Descriptive Technique
Reader, Listener, or Viewer?
Going through the Text
Significant Itinerary Variations in the Latin Text
Local Interest

Conclusion: Looking Back and Looking Ahead
Looking Back
Looking Ahead

Appendices
Appendix 1: List of Imago Mundi chapters
Appendix 2: Texts of the Imago Mundi Tradition
Bibliography
Manuscripts
Primary Sources
Secondary Sources
Electronic Resources
Index

Lies of the land

Vient de paraître:

Camille Serchuk, Lies of the Land. Painted Maps in Late Medieval and Early Modern France, Penn State University Press, 2025, 234 p.

Présentation:

Lies of the Land examines the often-overlooked artistic roots of mapmaking practice in early modern France, offering an original perspective on discourses of accuracy and their relationship to the pictorial origins of modern mapmaking.

Until the seventeenth century, most mapmakers in France were painters. Schooled in techniques of drawing and perspective—and in the careful study of nature that we associate with early modernity—they also learned the more expressive and imaginative Mannerist forms that dominated French painting in this period. Their maps draw on conventions of both painting and mapmaking to create beautiful, informative, and persuasive images for a wide variety of contexts and purposes. In this book, Camille Serchuk explores the strategies these cartographers deployed to weave together accuracy, ornament, and artifice in maps at all scales. Looking beyond the techniques of measurement and perspective, Serchuk shows how painterly interventions framed and manipulated the appearance and reception of cartographic objects.

Lies of the Land is an important new assessment of the character and status of early modern cartography that challenges binary distinctions between art and science and between decorative and epistemic images. It will appeal especially to art historians and historians of sixteenth-century France as well as scholars of map history.

Mapping insularity

Vient de paraître:

Kevin Rodríguez Wittmann, Mapping Insularity: A Visual History of Islands in Medieval and Early Modern Worlds, Leyde-Boston, Brill (Brill Research Perspectives in Map History), 2024.

Présentation:

What lies behind an island? Is an island just a piece of land surrounded by water? Or is it from a cultural, symbolic, and even geographical perspective much more than that? Considering the symbolic nature of islands as a longue durée and through the analysis of maps, texts, and historical accounts, this book explores how the depiction of insularity encodes specific meanings and analytical levels which shed light on medieval and modern worldviews.

Table des matières:

Acknowledgments vii
List of Figures
viii
Introduction 2

1 What Is an Island? Concepts, Definitions, and Phenomenology 6

1.1
Islands Surrounded by Water 8
1.2
Island vs Mainland 13
1.3
Floating Islands 17
2 Island and Ocean 20

2.1
Depicting the World in Medieval Europe 21
2.2
Maps, Ocean, and Islands in the Middle Ages 28
2.3
Islands, Ocean(s), and Mythical Traditions 40
3 Islands as Centers, Islands as Limits 48

3.1
Insular Center and Insular Peripheries in Medieval Maps 52
3.2
Towards a Redefinition of the Insular Margins: Periphery and Center in
Early Modern World Maps
62
3.3
Periphery, Insularity, and Identity: The British Isles in the
Medieval Worldview
68
4 Maps of Islands, Islands on Maps 76

4.1
Establishing Islands as a Genre: De insulis and Liber insularum 78
4.2
Mapping Islandness in Venice 83
4.3
The isolario Goes Global 86
5 Conclusions 99

Bibliography
101

Riccoldo da Monte di Croce

Un ouvrage collectif vient de paraître sur Riccoldi da Monte di Croce:

Riccoldo da Monte di Croce (†1320): Missionary to the Near East and Expert on Islam

éd. Kurt Villads Jensen et Davide Scotto, Stockholm, Kungliga Vitterhetsakademien, 2024.

Riccoldo da Monte di Croce, a Dominican friar, embarked on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1288 and spent years as a missionary in Muslim Baghdad, learning Arabic and studying the Qur’an. After returning to Florence, he wrote extensively about non-Christian peoples. Liber pere-grinationis recounts his travels and includes ethnographic observations and theological discussions. His Libellus ad nationes orientales explores Eastern religions and conversion strategies, with a focus on the Mongols. Contra legem Sarracenorum, a detailed critique of the Qur’an, had a significant influence on Christian European understandings of Islam, impacting figures like Nicholas of Cusa, Guillaume Postel and Martin Luther.
This collection provides a comprehensive look at Riccoldo’s writings and their impact on the history of medieval and modern Christian-Muslim relations. It brings together contributions from 16 authors, each offering different perspectives on Riccoldo as an author and his intellectual legacy.

Table des matières:

Kurt Villads Jensen, Davide Scotto, Preface

Kurt Villads Jensen, Davide Scotto, Riccoldo as an Author and His Intellectual Afterlife

Kurt Villads Jensen, Authority versus Personal Experience: What Was New in Riccoldo’s Writings?

Susanna Fischer, “Adoravimus Christum natum ad modum magorum”: Performance and Theatricality as Narrative Strategies in Riccoldo’s Liber pereginationis

Jana Valtrová, Contextualizing Riccoldo da Monte di Croce’s Experience with Religious Conversion

Jean-Marie Mérigoux OP (†), Friar Riccoldo da Monte di Croce’s Letters to the Church in Heaven: “The Lament of a Camel Driver of Christ”

Daniel Pachurka, Riccoldo’s Tractatus contra Saracenos and Its Sources: A Refutation of the Prophethood of Muhammad

Anthony John Lappin, Riccoldo’s Use of the Corpus Cluniacense in the Contra legem Sarracenorum

José Martínez Gázquez, Topics of Riccoldo da Monte di Croec’s Latin Glosses to the Arabic Qur’an (BnF Arabe 384)

Davide Scotto, A Spiritual Reaction to Islamic Prosperity: The Power of Sorrow in Riccoldo da Monte du Croce’s Letters to the Triumphant Church

Rita George-Tvrtković, The Christian Theology of Islam: A Trajectory via Riccoldo da Monte di Croce and Guillaume Postel

Jacob Langeloh, Reasoning with Riccoldo: John of Ragusa’s Fragmentum de Conditionibus Legum, Written at Constantinople (?) c. 1437

Ulli Roth, John of Segovia and Nicholas of Cusa Reading Riccoldo: A Chiasmus of Rejection and Approval?

Eduardo Fernández Guerrero, “Tam falsorum christianorum quam falsigraphorum sarracenorum crimina”: Christian Reform and the Contra legem Sarracenorum in the Early Modern Period

Johannes Ehmann, Luther’s Translation of Riccoldo: A Specific Protestant Reception of a Medieval Tradition of Islam

Marco Robecchi, Riccoldo after Riccoldo: The Liber peregrinationis and Its Vernacular Translations

Stefan Schreiner, Riccoldo da Monte di Croce in an East European Context: Some Remarks on the Reception of Riccoldo’s Works in Russian and Polish Literature and Its Historical Context

 

 

 

 

 

Marco Polo Research

Vient de paraître:

Marco Polo Research. Past, present, future, Hans Ulrich Vogel et Ulrich Theobald (éd.), Tübingen Library Publishing, 2024.

Présentation:

This collective volume on Marco Polo’s (1254-1324) travels attempts to integrate the fragmented research landscape by bringing together individual disciplines which usually work separately, like philology, comparative literature, text and reception history, Romance linguistics, as well as geography, anthropology, the history of religion, science, military, economics, etc. It is thus one of but a few works that go beyond singular aspects of Marco Polo’s journey and his observations and thus shows that Polo’s Description of the World is much more than just a travelogue.
The international contributors to this volume, who are leading scholars in their fields, make use of different, sometimes unique sources and thus help us better understand the Venetian’s report and the times it was created, and also to verify and elucidate statements in the many versions and editions in which it came down to us. In addition, the essays published here are meant to be a contribution to the celebrations commemorating the 700th anniversary of Marco Polo’s death.

Table des matières:

Ulrich Theobald and Hans Ulrich Vogel, Preface

Le Devisement dou monde: History and Digitization of the Text(s)
– Philippe Ménard, Recherches passées, travaux récents et investigations futures sur le Devisement du monde de Marco Polo
– Alvise Andreose, The Textual Transmission of the Devisement dou monde: Old Problems and New Insights
– Samuela Simion, Mario Eusebi and Eugenio Burgio, On the Way to an Integral Edition of the Book of Marco Polo: A First Attempt to Create a Digital Edition
– Giuseppe Mascherpa, The Description of the City of Quinsai in the Early Tradition of the Devisement dou monde
– Michel Quereuil, Le Tibet dans les principales versions du Devisement du monde

Reception and Styles of the Book, and the Literary Field
– Marcello Ciccuto, The Illuminated Manuscripts of the Devisement: Words and Images in Establishing a Late Medieval Pattern of Perception for the Topic of Travelling to the Far East
– Christine Gadrat-Ouerfelli, Who Read Marco Polo’s Book and Why?
– Sharon Kinoshita, Translating Marco Polo’s Le Devisement du monde
– Danièle James-Raoul, La poétique du voyage dans le Devisement du monde: Éléments de style
– Dominique Boutet, L’exotisme dans le Devisement du monde, en particulier dans le « Livre d’Inde »
– Michèle Guéret-Laferté, Persia, a Strategical Place in the Devisement du monde: Order and Disorder in the Progress of the Narrative

Marco Polo’s Reports and the World He Witnessed
– Li TANG, Marco Polo’s Description on “Nestorians” and other Christian Groups in Yuan China
– DANG Baohai, Two Mongolian Toponyms in Marco Polo’s Account: The Green Mound and Cacciar Modun
– LUO Wei, On Some Designations Used in the Description of the World and the Political Attitude of Marco Polo

Die ‚Genuesische Weltkarte von 1457‘

Vient de paraître:

Gerda Brunnlechner, Die ‚Genuesische Weltkarte von 1457‘,Bild und Stimme einer ambiguen Welt, Turnhout, Brepols, 2024, coll. Terrarum orbis 17.

Présentation:

Dieses Buch lenkt den Fokus auf die Rolle vormoderner Karten als potenzielle Stimmen, die Überzeugungen und Handlungsaufforderungen vermittelten. Es stellt ein neues Konzept zur Analyse vormoderner Karte vor und setzt es am Beispiel der sogenannten ‘Genuesischen Weltkarte‘ von 1457 um, einer anonymen, dem nordmediterranen Raum entstammenden Karte, von der weder der genaue Erstellungsort noch der unmittelbare Nutzungskontext bekannt sind. Im ausgehenden Mittelalter beschäftigten sich verschiedenartige Kreise intensiv mit geographischen und kartographischen Fragen. Zusätzlich zu den Zeugnissen gelehrter Mönche und Kleriker wird nun das Interesse von weltlichen Gelehrten, Fürsten, Notaren, Händlern, Seefahrern und humanistischen Zirkeln an Karten greifbarer. Angeregt wurde dieses Interesse durch das Anwachsen des Wissens über die Welt. Lateineuropäische Reisende und Gesandte aus fernen Ländern berichteten über ihre Erfahrungen aus Asien und Afrika. Frühe Humanisten fanden Handschriften fast vergessener antiker Werke wieder, so dass sich der Blick auf das Autoritätenwissen änderte. Insbesondere die spätestens 1409 fertiggestellte lateinische Übersetzung der ‚Geographia‘ des Alexandriner Astronomen Klaudios Ptolemaios machte Furore und wird in der Forschung als Anstoß einschneidender Veränderungen der Kartographie gesehen.

Der Abgleich der ‘Genuesischen Weltkarte‘ mit Karten aus über 130 Archivsignaturen zeigt, dass sie sich in mehrfacher Hinsicht von den üblichen Karten des 14./15. Jahrhunderts der nordmediterranen Region abhebt. Ihre Kartenmacher waren keine konventionellen Ersteller von Küstenlinienkarten oder Serienkarten. Vielmehr waren sie humanistisch interessiert, mathematisch gebildet und entstammten wahrscheinlich dem Umfeld der Kurie und des Konzils von Ferrara-Florenz (1438-1445). Es greift zu kurz, ihre innovative Anlehnung an Ptolemaios als Verengung des Fokus rein auf topographische Genauigkeit zu deuten, vielmehr zeichneten sie ein raumzeitliches, als kohärente heilsgeschichtliche Erzählung zu verstehendes Bild der Welt.

Table des matières:

Einleitung

Kapitel Eins: Grundlagen

Kapitel Zwei: Kartenmachende – Annäherung an den Handlungsraum

Kapitel Drei: Kartenbild – Strukturen der dargestellten Welt

Kapitel Vier: Kommunikation – Stimmen der Kartenmachenden im Kartenbild

Epilog

Summary in English

Anhang:
I. Erläuterungen, Transkriptionen und Übersetzungen zu den Kartenzeichen der ‚Genuesischen Weltkarte‘
II. Liste der Vergleichskarten
III. Vergleich der ‚Genuesischen Weltkarte‘ mit den Koordinaten des Ptolemaios
IV. Vergleich der Größen verschiedener Karten