UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Marvelous Generations: Lancastrian Genealogies and Translation in Late Medieval and Early M

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Marvelous Generations: Lancastrian Genealogies and Translation in Late Medieval and Early M UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Marvelous Generations: Lancastrian Genealogies and Translation in Late Medieval and Early Modern England and Iberia A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in English by Sara Victoria Torres 2014 © Copyright by Sara Victoria Torres 2014 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Marvelous Generations: Lancastrian Genealogies and Translation in Late Medieval and Early Modern England and Iberia by Sara Victoria Torres Doctor of Philosophy in English University of California, Los Angeles, 2014 Professor Christine Chism, Co-chair Professor Lowell Gallagher, Co-chair My dissertation, “Marvelous Generations: Lancastrian Genealogies and Translation in Late Medieval and Early Modern England and Iberia,” traces the legacy of dynastic internationalism in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and early-seventeenth centuries. I argue that the situated tactics of courtly literature use genealogical and geographical paradigms to redefine national sovereignty. Before the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, before the divorce trials of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon in the 1530s, a rich and complex network of dynastic, economic, and political alliances existed between medieval England and the Iberian kingdoms. The marriages of John of Gaunt’s two daughters to the Castilian and Portuguese kings created a legacy of Anglo-Iberian cultural exchange ii that is evident in the literature and manuscript culture of both England and Iberia. Because England, Castile, and Portugal all saw the rise of new dynastic lines at the end of the fourteenth century, the subsequent literature produced at their courts is preoccupied with issues of genealogy, just rule, and political consent. Dynastic foundation narratives compensate for the uncertainties of succession by evoking the longue durée of national histories—of Trojan diaspora narratives, of Roman rule, of apostolic foundation—and situating them within universalizing historical modes. At the same time, they reconfigure national space and geography in fantasies of imperial mapping that spatialize their genealogical (re)constructions. The dynastic internationalism characterizing late medieval royal marriages contributes to emerging discourses of the nation and sets the stage for the imperial rivalries between England and Iberia during the Renaissance era. Within this Anglo-Iberian context, my dissertation tracks an understudied aspect of the legacy of Lancastrian kingship: its claims to the throne of Castile and the multiple Iberian marriages that materialize those claims as they shape late medieval and early modern international historiography. In the early stages of Lancastrian rule, the prestige of foreign kingship reinforced Lancastrian claims to England, claims which in turn fueled political ambitions in France. In the process, English and Iberian historiographies become entangled. I argue that common dynastic descent is mobilized as an alternative way of understanding national relations, thus positioning the consanguinity of royal houses against cultural, linguistic and religious difference—the international claims of dynastic affinity over the specifically national ones of the polity. In both cases, the political fantasy of a moment of dynastic origins reinforces political theories that render the “king’s body” as proximate to the nation, while at the same time destabilizing the relationship between the monarch and the polity. iii My first and second chapters explore how manuscripts produced within the Lancastrian sphere of influence reflect dynastic circuits of power and engage in the construction of cultural legacies that serve to articulate royal power. My first chapter, “Translating Authority in the Confessio Amantis and O Livro do Amante,” argues that Gower positions himself within a legacy of poetic genealogy and political counsel that is synchronous with the imperial lineages of the poem’s exemplary narratives. The poem conceives of lineage in ethical terms, and thus the interplay between Gower’s evocations of translatio studii and translatio imperii is fundamental to his narrated mechanisms of political descent. Under the patronage of Philippa of Lancaster, the Confessio Amantis is translated into both Portuguese and Castilian, and within these material conditions of book production the political discourse of counsel is linked closely to the performance of queenship. In its Portuguese rendering, then, queen and poet are linked to the practice of just rule in a imagined textual community at once focused on the spiritual, intellectual, and physical regulation of the king and also on the wider readership of those encompassed within the bounds of “common weal.” The second chapter, “Mapping Dynastic Sovereignty in Lancastrian Manuscripts: Margaret of Anjou’s Shrewsbury Book and the Burghley Polychronicon,” traces how the figure of Charlemagne, as a dynastic trope, embodies English ambitions to the throne of France during the so-called Lancastrian “Dual Monarchy.” By focusing on two manuscripts created under Lancastrian patronage—one by John Talbot for Margaret of Anjou, and one by Thomas Mull, I trace both the changes in valence of references to Charlemagne as well as to the political geographies of his narrative traditions. While Talbot’s Shrewsbury Book consolidates a Lancastrian French perspective on the cultural negotiations of the Dual Monarchy by assembling a collection of French-language texts, the Burghley Polychronicon compiles various English documents and historical texts to convey a particularly Lancastrian vision of sovereign history and cultural boundaries. iv My third and fourth chapters focus on early modern texts that commemorate the House of Lancaster’s genealogical ties to Iberia in order to inscribe contemporary imperial rivalries into larger dynastic histories. The fourth chapter, “Epic Afterlives: The Lusiads and Historical Legacy,” argues that the inclusion of the mid-fifteenth century Portuguese chivalric romance “The Twelve of England” into the great Portuguese epic, Luís Vaz de Camões’s Os Lusíadas, links Vasco da Gama’s voyage and subsequent Portuguese expansionism to specific historical moments of national and dynastic foundation narrated in the epic. Within the Lusiads, the Portuguese knight Magriço features in the Twelve of England story as the embodiment of chivalric valor. Chivalry, embodied in the martial valor of crusades and of tournaments, is recovered as a facet of a collective national past and deployed in the celebration of the heroic exploits of the explorer-protagonist Vasco da Gama. This ideological and cultural continuity models a relation between king and knight that is replicated in that of King Manuel and da Gama, whose voyage Camões describes using both epic conventions and romance modalities. However, the metatextual figure of Magriço also embodies the motif of belatedness that runs through the larger poem—a sense of temporal delay that resonates with the poem’s larger celebration of contemporaneity and serves to glorify the “late” arrival of the Portuguese onto the imperial stage of Europe. The fourth and final chapter, “‘La antigua emulación de estas coronas’: Habsburg Patrons, English Dynastic Memory and the Spanish Match of 1623,” explores how the proposed marriage between Charles Stuart, Prince of Wales and María of Austria, sister of Philip IV of Spain, offered political and religious writers new ways of inflecting dynastic history, as well as the chance to imagine alternative genealogies—spiritual, literary, imperial—for inscribing the union within each kingdom’s history. By contrasting two textual productions—a manuscript created by the exiled Syon nuns in Lisbon for the Habsburg monarchs, which links the legitimizing religious patronage of Henry V of England to Philip II of Spain, and the journalistic v relaciones of Andrés Almansa y Mendoza, which record Charles’s visit to Madrid in the language of a chivalric romance—I argue that English and Spanish political subjects represented the infanta as a figure at once responsible for ensuring dynastic continuity and one around whom other, gendered, paradigms of descent could coalesce. In an era in which rich cultures of reading were driven by both the creation and circulation of manuscripts and printed books and ephemera, a comparative study of these historical sources offers insights into how manuscript and print sources record and appeal to royal history and the diplomatic maneuvering that helps shape it. In showing how Lancastrian nationalism functions in a larger world, my project resituates and frames the work of recent Lancastrian scholars such as Paul Strohm and Maura Nolan. I join Elizabeth Salter, Kathy Lavezzo, Ardis Butterfield, and David Wallace in demonstrating that English national claims cannot be realized except in an international frame. Furthermore, by discussing the legacy of the marriages of John of Gaunt within a larger context of Anglo-Iberian cultural exchange extending temporally from the High Middle Ages to the seventeenth-century marriage of Charles II to Catherine of Braganza, my project foregrounds Early Modern studies of Anglo-Spanish imperial competition and cultural exchange pursued by scholars such as Barbara Fuchs. In excavating the sometimes-repressed matter of Spain as a determinant in the domestic imaginings of England, my project works against insular nationalism to reveal a “sceptered isle” whose political integrity is both reinforced and troubled by its deep and unavoidable
Recommended publications
  • Good King Charles Study Guide New.Pub
    In Good King Charles’s Golden Days By Bernard Shaw ONNECTIONS Shaw Festival CStudy Guide The Shaw Story 2 The Players 3 The Story 4 The Playwright 5 Who’s Who 6-7 Director’s Notes 8 Designer’s Notes 9-10 Production History 11 World of the Play 12-16 Did You Know? 17 Say What? 18 Sources 19 Activities 20-32 THE SHAW STORY MANDATE The Shaw Festival is the only theatre in the world which exclusively focuses on plays by Bernard Shaw and his contemporaries, including plays written during, or about the period of Shaw’s lifetime (1856 – 1950). The Shaw Festival’s mandate also includes: • Uncovered Gems – digging up undiscovered theatrical treasures, or plays which were considered major works when they were written but which have since been unjustly neglected • American Classics – we continue to celebrate the best of American theatre • Musicals – musical treats either from, or set during the period of our mandate • Canadian Work – to allow us to hear and promote our own stories, and our own WHAT MAKES points of view about the mandate period. SHAW SPECIAL MEET THE COMPANY — OUR ENSEMBLE • Our Actors: All Shaw performers contribute to the sense of ensemble, much like the players in an orchestra. Often, smaller parts are played by actors who are leading performers in their own right, but in our “orchestra,” they support the central action helping to create a density of experiences that are both subtle and informative. • Our Designers: Every production that graces the Shaw Festival stages is built “from scratch,” from an original design.
    [Show full text]
  • The Basques of Lapurdi, Zuberoa, and Lower Navarre Their History and Their Traditions
    Center for Basque Studies Basque Classics Series, No. 6 The Basques of Lapurdi, Zuberoa, and Lower Navarre Their History and Their Traditions by Philippe Veyrin Translated by Andrew Brown Center for Basque Studies University of Nevada, Reno Reno, Nevada This book was published with generous financial support obtained by the Association of Friends of the Center for Basque Studies from the Provincial Government of Bizkaia. Basque Classics Series, No. 6 Series Editors: William A. Douglass, Gregorio Monreal, and Pello Salaburu Center for Basque Studies University of Nevada, Reno Reno, Nevada 89557 http://basque.unr.edu Copyright © 2011 by the Center for Basque Studies All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America Cover and series design © 2011 by Jose Luis Agote Cover illustration: Xiberoko maskaradak (Maskaradak of Zuberoa), drawing by Paul-Adolph Kaufman, 1906 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Veyrin, Philippe, 1900-1962. [Basques de Labourd, de Soule et de Basse Navarre. English] The Basques of Lapurdi, Zuberoa, and Lower Navarre : their history and their traditions / by Philippe Veyrin ; with an introduction by Sandra Ott ; translated by Andrew Brown. p. cm. Translation of: Les Basques, de Labourd, de Soule et de Basse Navarre Includes bibliographical references and index. Summary: “Classic book on the Basques of Iparralde (French Basque Country) originally published in 1942, treating Basque history and culture in the region”--Provided by publisher. ISBN 978-1-877802-99-7 (hardcover) 1. Pays Basque (France)--Description and travel. 2. Pays Basque (France)-- History. I. Title. DC611.B313V513 2011 944’.716--dc22 2011001810 Contents List of Illustrations..................................................... vii Note on Basque Orthography.........................................
    [Show full text]
  • Law, Counsel, and Commonwealth: Languages of Power in the Early English Reformation
    Law, Counsel, and Commonwealth: Languages of Power in the Early English Reformation Christine M. Knaack Doctor of Philosophy University of York History April 2015 2 Abstract This thesis examines how power was re-articulated in light of the royal supremacy during the early stages of the English Reformation. It argues that key words and concepts, particularly those involving law, counsel, and commonwealth, formed the basis of political participation during this period. These concepts were invoked with the aim of influencing the king or his ministers, of drawing attention to problems the kingdom faced, or of expressing a political ideal. This thesis demonstrates that these languages of power were present in a wide variety of contexts, appearing not only in official documents such as laws and royal proclamations, but also in manuscript texts, printed books, sermons, complaints, and other texts directed at king and counsellors alike. The prose dialogue and the medium of translation were employed in order to express political concerns. This thesis shows that political languages were available to a much wider range of participants than has been previously acknowledged. Part One focuses on the period c. 1528-36, investigating the role of languages of power during the period encompassing the Reformation Parliament. The legislation passed during this Parliament re-articulated notions of the realm’s social order, creating a body politic that encompassed temporal and spiritual members of the realm alike and positioning the king as the head of that body. Writers and theorists examined legal changes by invoking the commonwealth, describing the social hierarchy as an organic body politic, and using the theme of counsel to acknowledge the king’s imperial authority.
    [Show full text]
  • Deixis and the Renaissance Art of Self Construction1
    1 Deixis and the renaissance art of self construction Sylvia ADAMSON University of Sheffield ABSTRACT This paper is offered as a contribution to our understanding of both the history of literary style and the psychology of reading. I begin with a comparison with art history, where the development of the technique of linear perspective provides a stylistic boundary-marker between medieval and renaissance styles. Identifying the ‘printed voice effect’ as an analogous demarcator in literary history, I explore the technical means by which the effect was created, in a set of case-studies representing the emergent genres of essay and dramatic lyric. My analytical model is adapted from Gombrich’s account of ‘guided projection,’ which explains pictorial illusion as the cooperative creation of the artist (who provides the visual cues) and the spectator (who interprets them). I argue that the literary equivalent to the geometric cues of perspective is to be found in the linguistic system of deixis and claim that renaissance texts show an innovative and experimental awareness of the deictic resources of the English language. KEYWORDS: deixis, renaissance, historicism, self in literature, language and style 1. The printed voice In the history of art forms, some stylistic innovations seem to demand the title revolutionary, if only because their effects are so striking as to be felt by the non-professional observer. In the western 1 I am grateful to the organisers of 15 SEDERI for inviting me to give the plenary on which this paper is based and to the conference participants for their helpful responses to my presentation.
    [Show full text]
  • Henry VI, Part III in the Wake of the Yorkist Victory at St
    Henry VI, Part III In the wake of the Yorkist victory at St. Albans, York now has the Dramatis Personae crown of England. Henry arranges for a parley and presents an offer to York: Henry will rule England until his death, with ascen- King Henry the Sixth sion at that time passing to the house of York. York agrees, but this Edward, Prince of Wales, his son infuriates Queen Margaret; the Prince of Wales, her son, will be Lewis the Eleventh, King of France the next king. At Sandal Castle, Margaret leads an army that de- Duke of Somerset feats the Yorkists, killing the Duke of York and his youngest boy, Duke of Exeter Rutland. A rally by the Yorkists, however, leads to Margaret and Earl of Oxford Henry fleeing to France and Scotland, respectively. Edward, eldest Earl of Northumberland son of York, assumes the title of King of England. Earl of Westmoreland Lord Clifford Henry secretly returns to England, where he is captured by Edward Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York and put in the Tower of London. Margaret, meanwhile, is petition- Edward, Earl of March, afterwards King Edward the Fourth ing the King of France to come to Henry’s aid. However, Warwick Edmund, Earl of Rutland enters the scene trying to broker a marriage between Edward and George, Duke of Clarence the King’s sister-in-law, Bona, and the King temporarily lends his Richard, Duke of Gloucester allegiance to Edward—only to revoke it when word comes that Duke of Norfolk Edward has hastily wed a woman he fancies, Lady Grey.
    [Show full text]
  • Topography and the Relative Realism of Battle Scenes in Chansons De Geste*
    H. S. Kay Topography and the Relative Realism of Battle Scenes in Chansons de geste* The norms of epic writing militate against the chansons de geste being thoroughly realistic.1 Their concern is with the heroic experience,2 and their narrative outline is contrived to give pride of place to its ex- pression in violent physical action, while what might be called their nar- rative substance is constituted by the moral and emotional reflexes of such action.3 Exaggeration is an essential feature of such writing, and the rhetoric of the chansons de geste is dominated by hyperbole.4 There are, *This article was read as a paper at a Joint Colloquium of the Me- dieval Societies of the Universities of Liverpool, Belfast, and Dublin, on War and Society in the Later Middle Ages, at Liverpool University on May 7, 1977. 1It is controversial to what extent "realism" involves judgment on content and to what extent it results from conformity with current literary (or other) conventions. Rather than enter this controversy, I propose to use the following simply as a working definition: a text will be said to be realistic insofar as the fictional events it refers to resemble or are compatible with historically attested events, and specifically those which can be regarded as "normal" or characteristic in the circumstances in which they arose. My principal historical sources are: Villehardouin, La Con- quests de Constantinople, 2 vols, ed. Edmond Faral (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1938-39); Joinville, Histoire de Saint Louis, ed. E. Jarry (Angers: J. Petit, 1941); J. H. Beeler, Warfare in Feudal Europe, 730-1200 (Ithaca and New York: Cornell University Press, 1971); C.
    [Show full text]
  • Exile, Diplomacy and Texts: Exchanges Between Iberia and the British Isles, 1500–1767
    Exile, Diplomacy and Texts Intersections Interdisciplinary Studies in Early Modern Culture General Editor Karl A.E. Enenkel (Chair of Medieval and Neo-Latin Literature Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster e-mail: kenen_01@uni_muenster.de) Editorial Board W. van Anrooij (University of Leiden) W. de Boer (Miami University) Chr. Göttler (University of Bern) J.L. de Jong (University of Groningen) W.S. Melion (Emory University) R. Seidel (Goethe University Frankfurt am Main) P.J. Smith (University of Leiden) J. Thompson (Queen’s University Belfast) A. Traninger (Freie Universität Berlin) C. Zittel (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice / University of Stuttgart) C. Zwierlein (Freie Universität Berlin) volume 74 – 2021 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/inte Exile, Diplomacy and Texts Exchanges between Iberia and the British Isles, 1500–1767 Edited by Ana Sáez-Hidalgo Berta Cano-Echevarría LEIDEN | BOSTON This is an open access title distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license, which permits any non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided no alterations are made and the original author(s) and source are credited. Further information and the complete license text can be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ The terms of the CC license apply only to the original material. The use of material from other sources (indicated by a reference) such as diagrams, illustrations, photos and text samples may require further permission from the respective copyright holder. This volume has been benefited from financial support of the research project “Exilio, diplomacia y transmisión textual: Redes de intercambio entre la Península Ibérica y las Islas Británicas en la Edad Moderna,” from the Agencia Estatal de Investigación, the Spanish Research Agency (Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad).
    [Show full text]
  • Marketing Fragment 6 X 10.Long.T65
    Cambridge University Press 0521853591 - The Cambridge History of Warfare Edited by Geoffrey Parker Index More information Index Abrams, Creighton (American general, aircraft carriers, 251; American (1930s), Vietnam War), 381 320; American (World War II), 356; Actium, battle of (31 BC), 427 Japanese (World War II), 355 Adrianople; battle of (AD 378), 63; Aisne offensive (1918), 283, 305 most fought-over town in history, Aix-la-Chapelle, treaty of (1748), 183, 427 184 Aelian (Tactics), 4, 157, 417, 431 Alans, 64 Aemilius Paulus (Roman general), 40 Alba, duke of, 5, 152, 155 Aeschylus on the Persian wars, 23, 25 Alberich (German withdrawal, 1917), Aetius (Roman general), 62, 63 298 Afghanistan’s democratic election. See Alberti, Leon Battista, on angled also al-Qaeda; Laden, Osama Bin, defences, 106 407 Alexander the Great, 3, 71, 98, 418 Agesilaus (Spartan general), 26, 37 Alexius (east Roman emperor), 79 aggression in the western military Alfonso X of Castile (Siete Partidas), 99 tradition, 6, 10, 414, 416, 418, Alfred the Great, 72, 76 425 Algerian War (1954–62), 372–374 Agincourt, battle of (1415), 88, 89 Algonkians, 139 agrarian warfare, 25, 30; Bronze-Age, Aljubarrota, battle of (1385), 85 18; hoplite, 18, 19, 21, 22; Roman Allerheim, battle of (1645), 160 militias, 49 Alma, battle of (1854), 222 air attacks; Gulf War, 392; Six Day War, Almagro, Diego de (Spanish 386; Vietnam War, 377–378, 380, conquistador), 139, 140 381; World War I, 309; World War al-Qaeda, 412. See also Laden, Osama II, 334, 351, 354, 357, 364; Yom Bin, 403; America strikes back, Kippur War, 387 406–412; America under attack, Air Corps Tactical School (USA), 319 403–406; Madrid explosion, 411 air defence,319, 387, 392; British Alvarez de Toledo, Don Fernando.
    [Show full text]
  • Of Catherine Howard, Henry's Fifth Wife, and How, After Ordering Her
    book 1, chapter 43 Of Catherine Howard, Henry’s Fifth Wife, and How, after Ordering Her Put to Death, He Married Katherine Parr1 Within eight days, the king married Catherine Howard, the duke of Norfolk’s niece (his brother’s daughter).2 But though the king was pleased beyond mea- sure with his new bride, that did not stop him from inflicting his cruelty on Catholics. Thus, on July 30, he put to death three saintly doctors of theology for having defended the cause of Queen Doña Catherine and for now denying the king’s pontifical power. Alongside them he condemned three Zwinglian heretics, ordering that they be paraded two by two, a Catholic together with a heretic, as a blacker mockery of religion and a worse torment to the Catholics, who received more pain from this awful company than from their own deaths. When a knight of the king’s household saw them borne off to death, com- panioned in this manner, and learned that some were condemned for being Catholics and the others for not being so, he said, “On this account I will take care henceforth to be of the king’s religion—that is to say, none at all!”3 Then, on August 2, he also dispatched the prior of Doncaster with three other monks and two laymen, on the same grounds, as well as for refusing to acknowledge the royal supremacy.4 1 Sander, De origine ac progressu, 214–19. 2 Henry and Catherine were married on June 28, 1540, several weeks after the finalization of the divorce from Anne.
    [Show full text]
  • Medieval Portuguese Royal Chronicles. Topics in a Discourse of Identity and Power
    Medieval Portuguese Royal Chronicles. Topics in a Discourse of Identity and Power Bernardo Vasconcelos e Sousa Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas Universidade Nova de Lisboa [email protected] Abstract It is only in the 15th century that the Portuguese royal chronicles assume their own unequivocal form. The following text analyses them as a discourse of the identity and power of the Crown. Three topics are selected by their importance and salience. These topics are the territory object of observation, the central subject of the narrative and the question of the authors of the historiographical accounts, or rather the position in which the chroniclers place themselves and the perspective they adopt for their description of events. Key words Portugal, historiography, medieval chronicles Resumo É apenas no século XV que a cronística régia portuguesa ganha a sua forma inequívoca. No texto seguinte analisam-se as respectivas crónicas como um discurso de identidade e de poder da Coroa. Assim, são seleccionados três tópicos pela sua importância e pelo relevo que lhes é dado. São eles o território objecto de observação, o sujeito central da narrativa e a questão dos autores dos relatos historiográficos, ou seja a posição em que os cronistas se colocam e a perspectiva que adoptam na descrição que fazem dos acontecimentos. Palavras-chave Portugal, historiografia, cronística medieval The medieval royal chronicle genre constitutes an accurate type of historiography in narrative form, promoted by the Crown and in which the central protagonist is the monarchy (usually the king himself, its supreme exponent). The discourse therefore centers on the deeds of the monarch and on the history of the royal institution that the king and his respective dynasty embody.
    [Show full text]
  • Jonesexcerpt.Pdf
    2 The Texts—An Overview N’ot que trois gestes en France la garnie; ne cuit que ja nus de ce me desdie. Des rois de France est la plus seignorie, et l’autre aprés, bien est droiz que jeu die, fu de Doon a la barbe florie, cil de Maience qui molt ot baronnie. De ce lingnaje, ou tant ot de boidie, fu Ganelon, qui, par sa tricherie, en grant dolor mist France la garnie. La tierce geste, qui molt fist a prisier, fu de Garin de Monglenne au vis fier. Einz roi de France ne vodrent jor boisier; lor droit seignor se penerent d’aidier, . Crestïenté firent molt essaucier. [There were only threegestes in wealthy France; I don’t think any- one would ever contradict me on this. The most illustrious is the geste of the kings of France; and the next, it is right for me to say, was the geste of white-beardedPROOF Doon de Mayence. To this lineage, which was full of disloyalty, belonged Ganelon, who, by his duplic- ity, plunged France into great distress. The thirdgeste , remarkably worthy, was of the fierce Garin de Monglane. Those of his lineage never once sought to deceive the king of France; they strove to help their rightful lord, . and they advanced Christianity.] Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube, Girart de Vienne Since the Middle Ages, the corpus of chansons de geste has been di- vided into groups based on various criteria. In the above prologue to the thirteenth-century Girart de Vienne, Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube classifies An Introduction to the Chansons de Geste by Catherine M.
    [Show full text]
  • Óscar Perea Rodríguez Ehumanista: Volume 6, 2006 237 Olivera
    Óscar Perea Rodríguez 237 Olivera Serrano, César. Beatriz de Portugal. La pugna dinástica Avís-Trastámara. Prologue by Eduardo Paro de Guevara y Valdés. Santiago de Compostela: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas-Xunta de Galicia-Instituto de Estudios Gallegos “Padre Sarmiento”, 2005 (Cuadernos de Estudios Gallegos, Anexo XXXV), págs. 590. ISBN 84-00-08343-1 Reviewed by Óscar Perea Rodríguez University of California, Berkeley In his essays, Miquel Batllori often argued that scholars researching Humanism should pay particular attention to the 15th century in order to gain a better understanding of the 16th century. This has been amply achieved by César Olivera Serrano, author of the book reviewed here, for in it he has offered us remarkable insight into 15th-century Castilian history through an extraordinary analysis of 14th-century history. As Professor Pardo de Guevara points out in his prologue, this book is an in-depth biographical study of Queen Beatriz of Portugal (second wife of the King John I of Castile). Additionally, it is also an analysis of the main directions of Castilian foreign policy through the late 14th and 15th centuries and of how Castile’s further political and economic development was strictly anchored in its 14th-century policies. The first chapter, entitled La cuestionada legitimidad de los Trastámara, focuses on Princess Beatriz as the prisoner of her father’s political wishes. King Ferdinand I of Portugal wanted to take advantage of the irregular seizure of the Castilian throne by the Trastámara family. Thus, he offered himself as a candidate to Castile’s crown, sometimes fighting for his rights in the battlefield, sometimes through peace treatises.
    [Show full text]