The writing and reading of history in the early Middle Ages form the key themes of this 2004 book. The primary focus is on the remarkable manifestations of historical writing in relation to ...historical memory in the Frankish kingdoms of the eighth and ninth centuries. It considers the audiences for history in the Frankish kingdoms, the recording of memory in new genres including narrative histories, cartularies and Libri memoriales, and thus particular perceptions of the Frankish and Christian past. It analyses both original manuscript material and key historical texts from the Carolingian period, a remarkably creative period in the history of European culture. Presentations of the past developed in this period were crucial in forming an historical understanding of the Greco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian past and, in subsequent centuries, of early medieval Europe. They also played an extraordinarily influential role in the formation of political ideologies and senses of identity within Europe.
On 1st July 1916, the Bay of Somme was the scene of the deadliest day in British military history. What happened there? Englishmen, Scotsmen, Irishmen, Welshmen, Canadians, South Africans, ...Australians, New Zealanders - many soldiers from Great Britain and the Commonwealth volunteered in 1916 to attack on the front in Picardy.
Apostles of Empire is a revisionist history of the French Jesuit mission to indigenous North Americans in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, offering a comprehensive view of a transatlantic ...enterprise in which secular concerns were integral. Between 1611 and 1764, 320 Jesuits were sent from France to North America to serve as missionaries. Most labored in colonial New France, a vast territory comprising eastern Canada and the Great Lakes region that was inhabited by diverse Native American populations. Although committed to spreading Catholic doctrines and rituals and adapting them to diverse indigenous cultures, these missionaries also devoted significant energy to more-worldly concerns, particularly the transatlantic expansion of the absolutist-era Bourbon state and the importation of the culture of elite, urban French society. In Apostles of Empire Bronwen McShea accounts for these secular dimensions of the mission’s history through candid portraits of Jesuits engaged in a range of secular activities. We see them not only preaching and catechizing in terms that borrowed from indigenous idioms but also cultivating trade and military partnerships between the French and various Indian tribes.  Apostles of Empire contributes to ongoing research on the Jesuits, New France, and Atlantic World encounters, as well as on early modern French society, print culture, Catholicism, and imperialism. McShea shows how the Jesuits’ robust conceptions of secular spheres of Christian action informed their efforts from both sides of the Atlantic to build up a French and Catholic empire in North America through significant indigenous cooperation.
Examines how a national filmmaking culture interacts with neoliberal capitalism. Case studies include both English and French language films across a range of genres such as action, comedy and ...documentary. Each chapter can be used as a stadalone text for use in different course modules.
Deals with contemporary issues such as LGBTQ identities, terrorism or social tensions and inequities in French and Francophone societies. Presents significant filmmakers whose work has rarely been ...discussed in an academic setting. Introduces the works of emerging directors and/or prominent directors from Francophone countries. Gathers academics from different fields, offering a multi-faceted approach to the topic of youth in film.
The most complete study of women in French-language comics to date - and the first published in English. Taking a two-pronged approach of historical and case-study analysis, and with a chronological ...span of over a century, it is the fullest examination thus far of female depiction in Francophone sequential art. 16 plates, 7 col. 9 b/w.
Challenging the traditional narrative of an orderly establishment of law, sovereignty, and authority in the colony, Disputing New France reveals how negotiations and contestations among a range of ...actors actively shaped empire building, offering readers an intertwined history of French state formation and empire building in New France.
An encounter between a warring knight and the world of learning could seem a paradox. It is nonetheless related with the Twelfth-Century Renaissance, an essential intellectual movement for western ...history. Knights not only fought in battles, but also moved in sophisticated courts. Knights were interested in Latin classics and reading, and writing poetry. Supportive of “jongleurs” and minstrels, they enjoyed literary conversations with clerics who would attempt to reform their behaviour, which was often brutal. These lettered warriors, while improving their culture, learned to repress their own violence and were initiated to courtesy: selective language, measured gestures, elegance in dress, and manners at the table. Their association with women, who were often learned, became more gallant. A revolution of thought occurred among lay elites who, in contact with clergy, began to use their weapons for common welfare. This new conduct was a tangible sign of Medievalist society's leap forward towards modernity. This monograph contains a great deal of detailed information about the attitudes towards learning and written culture among members of the nobility in different parts of Europe in the Middle Ages.
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 civilian population suffers. The minstrel was a professional story-teller, and his livelihood likely depended on his ability to captivate an audience. Beyond would-be objective reporting, the minstrel dramatizes events through dialogue, while he delves into the motives and intentions of important figures, and imparts traditional moral guidance. We follow the deeds of many prominent women and witness striking episodes in the lives of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Richard the Lionhearted, Blanche of Castile, Frederick the Great, Saladin, and others. These tales survive in several manuscripts, suggesting that they enjoyed significant success and popularity in their day. Samuel N. Rosenberg produced this first scholarly translation of the Old French tales into English. References that might have been obvious to the minstrel’s original audience are explained for the modern reader in the indispensable annotations of medieval historian Randall Todd Pippenger. The introduction by eminent medievalist William Chester Jordan places the minstrel’s work in historical context and discusses the surviving manuscript sources.
Conceived as both a vehicle to national prestige and as a civilizing mission, the second French colonial empire (1830–1962) challenged soldiers, scholars and administrators to understand societies ...radically different from their own. The resultant networks of anthropological inquiry, however, did not have this effect. Rather, they opened pathways to political and intellectual independence framed in the language of social science, and in the process upended the colonial political system and reshaped the nature of human inquiry in France. While still unequal, French colonial rule in Africa revealed the durability and strength of non-European modes of thought. In this ground-breaking new study, historian Douglas W. Leonard examines the political and intellectual repercussions of French efforts to understand and to dominate colonial Africa through the use of anthropology. From General Louis Faidherbe in the 1840s to politician Jacques Soustelle and sociologist Pierre Bourdieu in the 1950s, these French thinkers sowed the seeds of colonial destruction.