DOCSLIB.ORG

Pouneh Saeedi-Tabatabai a Thesis Submitted in Conformity with The

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Pouneh Saeedi-Tabatabai a Thesis Submitted in Conformity with The CORPOREAL CONFIGURATIONS OF THE HEROIC AND THE MONSTROUS: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF ‘BEOWULF’, ‘THE SHAHNAMEH’ AND ‘TRISTAN’ By Pouneh Saeedi-Tabatabai A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of the Centre for Comparative Literature University of Toronto © Copyright by Pouneh Saeedi (2010) Corporeal Configurations of the Heroic and Monstrous: A Comparative Study of ‘Beowulf’, ‘The Shahnameh’ and ‘Tristan’ Pouneh Saeedi Doctor of Philosophy, 2010 Centre for Comparative Literature University of Toronto Abstract This dissertation explores various characteristics that define the monstrous and the heroic — both on their own and in conjunction with each other — in three representative texts of the Middle Ages, the Old English Beowulf (manuscript c.1000), the Persian epic, The Shahnameh (c.1010) and Gottfried von Strassburg’s Middle-High German poem, Tristan (c.1210), as it delves into the cataclysmic aftermath of their corporeal confrontation. At the core of this study of three linguistically and geographically different, yet thematically contiguous texts, lies the significance of corporeality in terms of its articulation of the heroic self and identification of the monstrous other. Far from being diametrically opposed, the heroic and monstrous bodies bear enough resemblance to justify René Girard’s use of the phrase ‘monstrous doubles’ in reference to the host of similarities they manifest in the course of their confrontations. However, as shall be demonstrated, heroic and monstrous bodies need not be engaged in a single battle to manifest signs of similitude. Particular properties, such as ‘gigantism’, could be read as tokens of heroism and monstrosity, depending on the context. Both Beowulf and Grendel in Beowulf , for example, stand out on account of their massive bulk, yet the former is marked as heroic; the latter, as monstrous. Significantly, the hero’s monstrosity not only endows him with an advantage over his fellow-humans, but also facilitates his mastery of monstrous bodies. The conquest of monstrous bodies overlaps with other paradigms of power including mastery over land and women. Gigantomachia and dragon-slaying tend to be coterminous with territorial ii claims. It is no coincidence that colonized lands are marked by their so-called ‘monstrous’ inhabitants, for as such, their conquest is rendered as both an act of heroism and a means of purification. Indeed, the purging of lands is a primordial priority of the heroic mission. Paradoxically, however, the hero has to be stained by elements of monstrosity in the first place to succeed at monstrous confrontations and goes on to acquire even more monstrous characteristics in a process which leads to ‘sublation’, the incorporation of an entity by a subsequent one in a way that leads to the manifestation of features of both. A third zone of possibilities comes to the fore in the midst of the entanglement of heroic and monstrous bodies. The clash between the heroic and the monstrous bodies could be read as a fusion, a marriage, which gives birth to a third party, in this case, a ‘Third Space’, a zone of discursivity and hybridity arising from the confrontation of an ‘I’ and a ‘Thou’. Significantly, the ‘Third Space’, in being unstable and fluid, is both susceptible to and a harbinger of change. In light of the fluidity of this space, the dismemberment and incorporation of bodies marking monstrous encounters take on added significance. One of the primary consequences of monstrous conflicts is ‘incorporation’, a freighted term, as shall be argued in the final chapter. While ‘incorporation’ can take place at the simple corporeal level, including the acts of cannibalism interspersed in Beowulf and The Shahnameh , it can constitute a mental challenge, a fusion of two different horizons of understanding. After all, in being both mixta and mira , monsters not only pose as obstacles to the heroic body, but also to the intellectual mind. Reflective of the mutability of times and the incertitude of man’s life during what has come to be known as the monstrous Middle Ages, monsters continue to charm us with their composite and enigmatic essence. iii Acknowledgements: I have been fortunate enough to have had the support of a group of exceptional people without whom this dissertation would never have come to fruition. I owe great thanks to my supervisor, Professor Jill Ross, for introducing me to many invaluable reference materials and offering me immense support in the course of my revisions. I owe her so much more, for it was upon taking her course ‘Body and Medieval Texts’ that I came to develop a passion for the monumental literature of the Middle Ages. I am immensely grateful to Professor Andy Orchard, without whose genius and unfailing acumen, this study would be lacking its indispensable annotations and contextual details. My sincere gratitude goes to Professor Amir Hassanpour who kindly accepted to assist me with the completion of this study under circumstances when Persianists of his calibre and depth were so hard to come by. I also wish to thank him for his meticulous editing of my text. This study would have never borne fruit were it not for the timely arrival of Professor Markus Stock at the University of Toronto’s academic scene. I have greatly benefited from Professor Stock’s guidance and discipline and am tremendously indebted to him for his constructive comments and criticism. I also wish to express my gratitude to Shahnameh -expert, Dr. Mahmoud Omidsalar, whose emails were crucial to my current study of Ferdowsi’s magnum opus. Without ever having had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Omidsalar, I have great respect for his true passion for Iran and Ferdowsi. My special thanks go to my external examiner, Professor Dean Miller, whose many suggestions proved to be of unparalleled value in the course of my subsequent revisions. In addition, I wish to thank Professor Reza Baraheni, who greatly helped me with structuring my thesis in its earlier stages. I am also grateful to Professor George Rigg and Dr. Rob Getz of the Centre for Medieval Studies for instilling in me a passion for Latin, this very much alive language of the academic world. There are so many more professors from iv whose vast knowledge I have benefited over the years including Prof. Brian Stock, Prof. Antonette diPaolo Healey, Prof. Veronika Ambros, Prof. David Townsend, Prof. Francesco Guardiani and Prof. Linda Hutcheon. Amongst my friends, I am thankful to Maryam Abedi, for being just a phone-call away despite her many responsibilities in Vancouver; Shabnam Ronaghi, for inviting me to Göteberg, Sweden, right after my Field Exams and Nasrin Askari, for her immense moral and academic support. Amongst my academic colleagues, I wish to thank Professor Marju Toomsalu of Ryerson University, whose friendly supervision helped me develop better pedagogical techniques in teaching Ryerson’s ESL students and Professor Victoria De Zwaan of Trent University, who trusted in my abilities and helped me better my course outline and teaching techniques while I was instructing for Trent’s Cultural Studies Department. I also wish to thank my librarian friends, especially, Hormuz Khakpour, Elaine Genius and Soheila Nikzadeh, who made working at Robarts so much fun. My thanks also go to Jane Lynch of Robart’s Interlibrary Loan Service and Lisa Fannin of the PhD Exams Office for their great support. It goes without saying that I would never have come this far had it not been for my parents’ undying love from two continents away. Their constant support has fueled me with much needed energy at moments of despair and nostalgia for a time and place that are no more. From a much closer distance, it has been the encouragements of my sister, Parastoo, that kept me on track. In particular, I wish to thank Paul Corvo whose love and friendship made this academic venture much more enriching, exciting, and, definitely, much less isolating than it could have been. It is to him and my family that I dedicate this work. v Table of Contents: Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………. ii Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………… iv Abbreviations………………………………………………………………………………. viii Glossary of Zoroastrian Terminology……………………………………………………… x A Note on Transliteration…………………………………………………………………...xi Introduction………………………………………………………………………………… 1 Chapter One Heroic Bodies…………………………………………………….. 19 1.1. The Shahnameh : Guardianship of the Farr …………………. 28 1.2. Tristan : The Artist-Warrior………………………………….. 41 1.3. Beowulf: Singularity of Strength…………………………….. 64 Chapter Two Monstrous Bodies…………………………………………………78 2.1. Beowulf : Dirt of Darkness…………………………………… 89 2.2. The Shahnameh : Personified Plagues of Land……………….114 2.3. Tristan : Land-scourges and Demonic Forces……………….. 131 Chapter Three Clashing Bodies………………………………………………….. 146 3.1. Tristan : Ars Venandi and Ars Veneris ……………………… 156 3.2. Beowulf : Fah from feondum ………………………………... 168 3.3. The Shahnameh : Div-Binding and Heroic Initiation……….. 188 Chapter Four Incorporation…………………………………………………….. 206 4.1. Beowulf : Maw of the Monster………………………………. 214 4.2. The Shahnameh : Razm u Bazm ……………………………… 224 4.3. Tristan : Ruminatio …………………………………………... 236 vi Epilogue……………………………………………………………………………………. 249 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………….. 257 An Appendix to The Shahnameh …………………………………………………………... 285 vii Abbreviations: ABäG Amsterdamer Beitrage zur Alteren Germanistik AIr Acta Iranica ASE Anglo-Saxon England BT Bosworth, Toller, An Anglo-Saxon
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Classical Persian Literature Bahman Solati (Ph.D), 2015 University of California, Berkeley [email protected]
    Classical Persian Literature Bahman Solati (Ph.D), 2015 University of California, Berkeley [email protected] Introduction Studying the roots of a particular literary history enables us to better understand the allusions the literature transmits and why we appreciate them. It also allows us to foresee how the literature may progress.1 I will try to keep this attitude in the reader’s mind in offering this brief summary of medieval Persian literature, a formidable task considering the variety and wealth of the texts and documentation on the subject.2 In this study we will pay special attention to the development of the Persian literature over the last millennia, focusing in particular on the initial development and background of various literary genres in Persian. Although the concept of literary genres is rather subjective and unstable,3 reviewing them is nonetheless a useful approach for a synopsis, facilitating greater understanding, deeper argumentation, and further speculation than would a simple listing of dates, titles, and basic biographical facts of the giants of Persian literature. Also key to literary examination is diachronicity, or the outlining of literary development through successive generations and periods. Thriving Persian literature, undoubtedly shaped by historic events, lends itself to this approach: one can observe vast differences between the Persian literature of the tenth century and that of the eleventh or the twelfth, and so on.4 The fourteenth century stands as a bridge between the previous and the later periods, the Mongol and Timurid, followed by the Ṣafavids in Persia and the Mughals in India. Given the importance of local courts and their support of poets and writers, it is quite understandable that literature would be significantly influenced by schools of thought in different provinces of the Persian world.5 In this essay, I use the word literature to refer to the written word adeptly and artistically created.
    [Show full text]
  • The Devils' Dance
    THE DEVILS’ DANCE TRANSLATED BY THE DEVILS’ DANCE HAMID ISMAILOV DONALD RAYFIELD TILTED AXIS PRESS POEMS TRANSLATED BY JOHN FARNDON The Devils’ Dance جينلر بازمي The jinn (often spelled djinn) are demonic creatures (the word means ‘hidden from the senses’), imagined by the Arabs to exist long before the emergence of Islam, as a supernatural pre-human race which still interferes with, and sometimes destroys human lives, although magicians and fortunate adventurers, such as Aladdin, may be able to control them. Together with angels and humans, the jinn are the sapient creatures of the world. The jinn entered Iranian mythology (they may even stem from Old Iranian jaini, wicked female demons, or Aramaic ginaye, who were degraded pagan gods). In any case, the jinn enthralled Uzbek imagination. In the 1930s, Stalin’s secret police, inveigling, torturing and then executing Uzbekistan’s writers and scholars, seemed to their victims to be the latest incarnation of the jinn. The word bazm, however, has different origins: an old Iranian word, found in pre-Islamic Manichaean texts, and even in what little we know of the language of the Parthians, it originally meant ‘a meal’. Then it expanded to ‘festivities’, and now, in Iran, Pakistan and Uzbekistan, it implies a riotous party with food, drink, song, poetry and, above all, dance, as unfettered and enjoyable as Islam permits. I buried inside me the spark of love, Deep in the canyons of my brain. Yet the spark burned fiercely on And inflicted endless pain. When I heard ‘Be happy’ in calls to prayer It struck me as an evil lure.
    [Show full text]
  • Tribes and Empire on the Margins of Nineteenth-Century Iran
    publications on the near east publications on the near east Poetry’s Voice, Society’s Song: Ottoman Lyric The Transformation of Islamic Art during Poetry by Walter G. Andrews the Sunni Revival by Yasser Tabbaa The Remaking of Istanbul: Portrait of an Shiraz in the Age of Hafez: The Glory of Ottoman City in the Nineteenth Century a Medieval Persian City by John Limbert by Zeynep Çelik The Martyrs of Karbala: Shi‘i Symbols The Tragedy of Sohráb and Rostám from and Rituals in Modern Iran the Persian National Epic, the Shahname by Kamran Scot Aghaie of Abol-Qasem Ferdowsi, translated by Ottoman Lyric Poetry: An Anthology, Jerome W. Clinton Expanded Edition, edited and translated The Jews in Modern Egypt, 1914–1952 by Walter G. Andrews, Najaat Black, and by Gudrun Krämer Mehmet Kalpaklı Izmir and the Levantine World, 1550–1650 Party Building in the Modern Middle East: by Daniel Goffman The Origins of Competitive and Coercive Rule by Michele Penner Angrist Medieval Agriculture and Islamic Science: The Almanac of a Yemeni Sultan Everyday Life and Consumer Culture by Daniel Martin Varisco in Eighteenth-Century Damascus by James Grehan Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey, edited by Sibel Bozdog˘an and The City’s Pleasures: Istanbul in the Eigh- Res¸at Kasaba teenth Century by Shirine Hamadeh Slavery and Abolition in the Ottoman Middle Reading Orientalism: Said and the Unsaid East by Ehud R. Toledano by Daniel Martin Varisco Britons in the Ottoman Empire, 1642–1660 The Merchant Houses of Mocha: Trade by Daniel Goffman and Architecture in an Indian Ocean Port by Nancy Um Popular Preaching and Religious Authority in the Medieval Islamic Near East Tribes and Empire on the Margins of Nine- by Jonathan P.
    [Show full text]
  • On the Modern Politicization of the Persian Poet Nezami Ganjavi
    Official Digitized Version by Victoria Arakelova; with errata fixed from the print edition ON THE MODERN POLITICIZATION OF THE PERSIAN POET NEZAMI GANJAVI YEREVAN SERIES FOR ORIENTAL STUDIES Edited by Garnik S. Asatrian Vol.1 SIAVASH LORNEJAD ALI DOOSTZADEH ON THE MODERN POLITICIZATION OF THE PERSIAN POET NEZAMI GANJAVI Caucasian Centre for Iranian Studies Yerevan 2012 Siavash Lornejad, Ali Doostzadeh On the Modern Politicization of the Persian Poet Nezami Ganjavi Guest Editor of the Volume Victoria Arakelova The monograph examines several anachronisms, misinterpretations and outright distortions related to the great Persian poet Nezami Ganjavi, that have been introduced since the USSR campaign for Nezami‖s 800th anniversary in the 1930s and 1940s. The authors of the monograph provide a critical analysis of both the arguments and terms put forward primarily by Soviet Oriental school, and those introduced in modern nationalistic writings, which misrepresent the background and cultural heritage of Nezami. Outright forgeries, including those about an alleged Turkish Divan by Nezami Ganjavi and falsified verses first published in Azerbaijan SSR, which have found their way into Persian publications, are also in the focus of the authors‖ attention. An important contribution of the book is that it highlights three rare and previously neglected historical sources with regards to the population of Arran and Azerbaijan, which provide information on the social conditions and ethnography of the urban Iranian Muslim population of the area and are indispensable for serious study of the Persian literature and Iranian culture of the period. ISBN 978-99930-69-74-4 The first print of the book was published by the Caucasian Centre for Iranian Studies in 2012.
    [Show full text]
  • Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi - Poems
    Classic Poetry Series Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi - poems - Publication Date: 2004 Publisher: Poemhunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi(1207 - 1273) Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Balkhi (Persian: ?????????? ???? ?????), also known as Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (?????????? ???? ????), and more popularly in the English-speaking world simply as Rumi (30 September 1207 – 17 December 1273), was a 13th-century Persian[1][6] poet, jurist, theologian, and Sufi mystic.[7] Iranians, Turks, Afghans, Tajiks, and other Central Asian Muslims as well as the Muslims of South Asia have greatly appreciated his spiritual legacy in the past seven centuries.[8] Rumi's importance is considered to transcend national and ethnic borders. His poems have been widely translated into many of the world's languages and transposed into various formats. In 2007, he was described as the "most popular poet in America."[9] Rumi's works are written in Persian and his Mathnawi remains one of the purest literary glories of Persia,[10] and one of the crowning glories of the Persian language.[11] His original works are widely read today in their original language across the Persian-speaking world (Iran, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and parts of Persian speaking Central Asia).[12] Translations of his works are very popular in other countries. His poetry has influenced Persian literature as well as Urdu, Punjabi, Turkish and some other Iranian, Turkic and Indic languages written in Perso-Arabic script e.g. Pashto, Ottoman Turkish, Chagatai and Sindhi. Name Jalal ad-Din Mu?ammad Balkhi (Persian: ?????????? ???? ????? Persian pronunciation: [d?æl??læddi?n mohæmmæde bælxi?]) is also known as Jalal ad- Din Mu?ammad Rumi (?????????? ???? ???? Persian pronunciation: [d?æl??læddi?n mohæmmæde ?u?mi?]).
    [Show full text]
  • “The Spinning of the Mill Lightens My Soul”1
    PERSICA XVII, 2001 “THE SPINNING OF THE MILL LIGHTENS MY SOUL”1 Asghar Seyed-Gohrab Leiden University Introduction Within a more than four centuries old relationship between Dutch and Persian culture, there are a wide range of subjects luring the researcher to launch an investigation.2 One may, for instance, choose to examine the Persian names of flowers in Dutch, or to linger on Rembrandt’s interest in the Persian miniature painting, or to study the 17th century translation of Sa‘di’s (d. 1292) Bustan in Dutch and so on and so forth.3 As a native Per- sian living in the country of tulips, clogs and mills, I have chosen to study the mill in Persian literature. In recent years I have been more and more fascinated by the mills in the foggy, flat and green Dutch landscape, while being constantly reminded of the wide- spread literary metaphors, popular beliefs, riddles, proverbs and folksongs based on this ancient invention of mankind in Persian literature. It should be, however, stated at the outset that although I deal briefly with the relationship between ancient Persian windmills and their Western counterparts, this essay does not pretend to peruse the link between these windmills; the study is an attempt to demonstrate how the mill, whether a windmill, watermill or handmill, is presented in Persian literary sources as well as in popular ex- pressions. Moreover, a study of the mill at literary level is conductive; especially since in molinological literature, Persian literary sources are usually neglected. It is generally believed that the Persians played a major role in the invention, the development and the spread of the mill.
    [Show full text]
  • A Communication for Students of Folklore
    FOLKLORE FORUM A COMMUNICATION FOR STUDENTS OF FOLKLORE FOLKLORE FORUM A Conlrnunication for Students of Folklore Bibliographic and Special Series, No. 9 1972 ~ - Table of Contents Foreword Introduction...... ~..c.........................,...................... i Maps of Folklore and Folklife.........................................l Bibliographies$ Dictionaries, Indexes, ad a Guide to Fieldwork ..................1............................2 Peoples, Cultures, and CUS~O~S........................................~ Hik~y-e................................................................. 7 Drma................................................,...............l 3 Epic and Romance .....................................................14 Proverbs and Riddles.. ................... .......................... .18 Magic, Superstition, and Medicine....................................21 Islam, Sufism and Philosophy .........................................28 Folktale CoZlections.................................................30 Author Inde~..................................~.................~....3~ Area Index ........................................................... 38 Chief Editor: John M. Vlach Manuscript Editors: Ben Adam Kroup, Dick Sweterlitsch Reviews Editor : Howard Wight Marshall Managing Editor: Janet Gilmore Bibliographic and Special Series Editor: W. K. McNeil " Corresponding Editors : R. Gerald Alvey (University of ~ennsylvania) Bruce Giuliano (UCWL) Advisory Board: Gerald Cashion, Philip Brandt George, Andrea Greenberg The Folklore
    [Show full text]
  • The Impact of Shahnamafirdausi in Contemporary Literature
    International Conference on Arts, Culture, Literature, Languages, Gender Studies/ Sexuality, Humanities and Philosophy for Sustainable Societal Development The Impact of Shahnamafirdausi in Contemporary Literature Mumtaz Ahmed Deptt of Persian Aligarh Muslim University Aligarh, U.P India E-mail: [email protected] Abstract—There is not an iota of doubt, that Shahnameh (the book Persian-speaking people would be the publication of a critical of kings) is the consequence of 30 years of indefatigable and resolute and reliable edition of the Shahnameh. The Borūḵīm endeavor by the master of Persian language and literature, Hakim Publishing House in Tehran has tried to address this matter Abulqasim Firdausi who is known to the Iranian people and the and published the entire text of the Šāh-nāma, based on Persian speaking nations as the reviver of Persian language and Vullersversion under the supervision of MojtabaMinovi, literature. Firdausi Tusi started writing shahnama in 977 A.D and completed in 8 March 1030 A.D. Iranians owe to Firdausi to Abbas Eqbal, SolaymanHaïm and Said Nafisi. invigorate their language and literature and that is why Firdausi is Fritz Wolff, made a lasting contribution with the considered to be the most prominent Persian poet of all times. though publication of his glossary of Ferdowsi'sShahnameh some scholar have their own notions that Firdausi's work, in literary and formational context, cannot be compared to those of (GlossarzuFerdosisSchahname), which was offered as a gift to Hafiz, Sa'di, Rumi and Rudaki as the nature of Firdausi's work is the Persian people by the German ambassador in the first day essentially different from what other notable Persian poets have of the congress.
    [Show full text]
  • (C. 1165 – 1229) Albert Was the Third Bishop of Riga in Livonia Who
    Albert of Riga (c. 1165 – 1229) Albert was the third Bishop of Riga in Livonia who founded Riga in 1201, and built the city's cathedral twenty years later. Albert headed the armed forces that forcibly converted the eastern Baltic region to Christianity, in the nature of a crusade that was undertaken while the Fourth Crusade was sacking Constantinople. Albert was a canon in Bremen when his uncle, the Archbishop of Bremen and Hamburg, named him Bishop of Livonia, provided that he could conquer and hold it, and convince the pagan inhabitants to become Christians. In 1200 he embarked with a Baltic fleet of 23 vessels and more than 1,500 armed crusaders. He had the support of the Hohenstaufen German King, Philip of Swabia, and the more distant blessing of Pope Innocent III. Together with merchants from the Baltic island of Gotland, Albert founded Riga in 1201, where a small community of Hanseatic traders from Lübeck held a tentative trading encampment. He successfully converted many Livs under their leader Caupo, offering them protection against neighboring Lithuanian and Estonian tribes; Albert also converted some Latvians later on. He spent almost 39 years in the conquest of Livonia. Albert created a military order, the Livonian Brothers of the Sword. King Philip made him a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, with Livonia for a fief, and thus Albert became a "Prince-Bishop". Albert declared his diocese independent of Bremen, and later Riga was raised to an archbishopric. Albert died in Riga in 1229, and was venerated as a Catholic saint until the Protestant Reformation.
    [Show full text]
  • Firdawsi: a Scholium
    Firdawsi: A Scholium by Burzine Waghmar and Sunil Sharma Hakim Abu’l-Qasim Mansur b. al-Hasan al-Firdawsi al-Tusi (ca. 940/41-ca. 1020/25), a middle- ranking aristocrat recognised by his nom de plume, Firdawsi (‘paradisiacal’), was a central figure in the history of classical Persian literature.1 His monumental epic poem, Shahnama (‘Book of Kings’), conjures Homeric as well as Miltonic associations to the Iranian mind thus ensuring him a niche in the universal literary canon.2 This mytho-poetic masterpiece, dealing with Persian legendary and recorded history from the first man to the Arab conquest in AD 652, has been continuously read, recited, remembered, and re-enacted across the Iranian-speaking oecumene straddling West, Central and South Asia for over a millennium.3 Starting from the nineteenth century, a virtual school of Shahnama studies has flourished as successive generations of scholars interpreted and contextualised the text in published abridgements, translations and new editions. Animated productions of Rustam’s adventures, as those of Hercules, are keenly enjoyed by adults and children in contemporary Iran and the diaspora.4 Although Firdawsi dedicated his work to Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni (r. 998-1030), his life was spent in the town of Tus, Khurasan, away from the courts of princes and paladins. For almost a generation, about thirty years, he quietly worked on his magnum opus and interspersed it with brief vignettes of his personal life for the reader. As Shahpur Shahbazi has noted: Much has been written on Ferdowsī and his work, but even learned studies have given inharmonious results for the simple reasons that our sources are late, uncritical and contradictory, and that … [t]he best authority is the Šāhnāma itself as the poet frequently breaks his narrative to insert a few lines about his age, work and thoughts.5 Firdawsi belonged to the traditional squirearchy or dihqan class emotively tied to its land and ancient Persian culture.
    [Show full text]
  • Inauguration and Images of Kingship in England, France and the Empire C.1050-C.1250
    Christus Regnat: Inauguration and Images of Kingship in England, France and the Empire c.1050-c.1250 Johanna Mary Olivia Dale Submitted for examination for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of East Anglia School of History November 2013 This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with the author and that use of any information derived there from must be in accordance with current UK Copyright Law. In addition, any quotation or extract must include full attribution. Abstract This thesis challenges the traditional paradigm, which assumes that the period c.1050-c.1250 saw a move away from the ‘biblical’ or ‘liturgical’ kingship of the early Middle Ages towards ‘administrative’ or ‘law-centred’ interpretations of rulership. By taking an interdisciplinary and transnational approach, and by bringing together types of source material that have traditionally been studied in isolation, a continued flourishing of Christ-centred kingship in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries is exposed. In demonstrating that Christological understandings of royal power were not incompatible with bureaucratic development, the shared liturgically inspired vocabulary deployed by monarchs in the three realms is made manifest. The practice of monarchical inauguration forms the focal point of the thesis, which is structured around three different types of source material: liturgical texts, narrative accounts and charters. Rather than attempting to trace the development of this ritual, an approach that has been taken many times before, this thesis is concerned with how royal inauguration was understood by contemporaries. Key insights include the importance of considering queens in the construction of images of royalty, the continued significance of unction despite papal attempts to lower the status of royal anointing, and the depth of symbolism inherent in the act of coronation, which enables a reinterpretation of this part of the inauguration rite.
    [Show full text]
  • Journey to Antioch, However, I Would Never Have Believed Such a Thing
    Email me with your comments! Table of Contents (Click on the Title) Prologue The Gentile Heart iv Part I The Road North 1 Chapter One The Galilean Fort 2 Chapter Two On the Trail 14 Chapter Three The First Camp 27 Chapter Four Romans Versus Auxilia 37 Chapter Five The Imperial Way Station 48 Chapter Six Around the Campfire 54 Chapter Seven The Lucid Dream 63 Chapter Eight The Reluctant Hero 68 Chapter Nine The Falling Sickness 74 Chapter Ten Stopover In Tyre 82 Part II Dangerous Passage 97 Chapter Eleven Sudden Detour 98 Chapter Twelve Desert Attack 101 Chapter Thirteen The First Oasis 111 Chapter Fourteen The Men in Black 116 Chapter Fifteen The Second Oasis 121 Chapter Sixteen The Men in White 128 Chapter Seventeen Voice in the Desert 132 Chapter Eighteen Dark Domain 136 Chapter Nineteen One Last Battle 145 Chapter Twenty Bandits’ Booty 149 i Chapter Twenty-One Journey to Ecbatana 155 Chapter Twenty-Two The Nomad Mind 162 Chapter Twenty-Three The Slave Auction 165 Part III A New Beginning 180 Chapter Twenty-Four A Vision of Home 181 Chapter Twenty-Five Journey to Tarsus 189 Chapter Twenty-Six Young Saul 195 Chapter Twenty-Seven Fallen from Grace 210 Chapter Twenty-Eight The Roman Escorts 219 Chapter Twenty-Nine The Imperial Fort 229 Chapter Thirty Aurelian 238 Chapter Thirty-One Farewell to Antioch 246 Part IV The Road Home 250 Chapter Thirty-Two Reminiscence 251 Chapter Thirty-Three The Coastal Route 259 Chapter Thirty-Four Return to Nazareth 271 Chapter Thirty-Five Back to Normal 290 Chapter Thirty-Six Tabitha 294 Chapter Thirty-Seven Samuel’s Homecoming Feast 298 Chapter Thirty-Eight The Return of Uriah 306 Chapter Thirty-Nine The Bosom of Abraham 312 Chapter Forty The Call 318 Chapter Forty-One Another Adventure 323 Chapter Forty-Two Who is Jesus? 330 ii Prologue The Gentile Heart When Jesus commissioned me to learn the heart of the Gentiles, he was making the best of a bad situation.
    [Show full text]