Bücher der Reihe Research in Medieval and Early Modern Culture

Travel narratives and historical works shaped the perception of Muslims and the East in the Victorian and post-Victorian periods. Analyzing the discourses on Muslims which originated in the European Middle Ages, the first part of the book discusses the troubled legacy of the encounters between the East and the West and locates the nineteenth-century texts concerning the Saracens and their lands in the liminal space between history and fiction. Drawing on the nineteenth-century models, the second part of the book looks at fictional and non-fictional works of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century which re-established the "Oriental obsession," stimulating dread and resentment, and even more strongly setting the Civilized West against the Barbaric East. Here medieval metaphorical enemies of Mankind - the World, the Flesh and the Devil - reappear in different contexts: the world of immigration, of white women desiring Muslim men, and the present-day "freedom fighters."

This volume offers the author¿s central articles on the medieval and early modern history of cartography for the first time in English translation. A first group of essays gives an overview of medieval cartography and illustrates the methods of cartographers. Another analyzes world maps and travel accounts in relation to mapped spaces. A third examines land surveying, cartographical practices of exploration, and the production of Portolan atlases.

This volume considers the reception in the early modern period of four popular medieval myths of nationhood ¿ the legends of Brutus, Albina, Scota and Arthur ¿ tracing their intertwined literary and historiographical afterlives. The book thus speaks to several connected areas and is timely on a number of fronts: its dialogue with current investigations into early modern historiography and the period¿s relationship to its past, its engagement with pressing issues in identity and gender studies, and its analysis of the formation of British national origin stories at a time when modern Britain is seriously considering its own future as a nation.

This study examines the various means of becoming empathetic and using this knowledge to explain the epistemic import of the characters¿ interaction in the works written by Chaucer, Shakespeare, and their contemporaries. By attuning oneself to another¿s expressive phenomena, the empathizer acquires an inter- and intrapersonal knowledge that exposes the limitations of hyperbole, custom, or unbridled passion to explain the profundity of their bond. Understanding the substantive meaning of the characters¿ discourse and narrative context discloses their motivations and how they view themselves. The aim is to explore the place of empathy in select late medieval and early modern portrayals of the body and mind and explicate the role they play in forging an intimate rapport.

When James VI of Scotland and I of England proclaimed himself King of Great Britain he proposed a merger of parliaments as he had joined two crowns in his own person ascending the throne of England in 1603. For James, the Cambro-Celtic past led to an Anglo-Scottish present, and Wales stood as the ideal.¿Although the parliamentary union of Great Britain was not initiated for another 100 years, Parliament¿s denial failed to deter James from wanting a Great Britain, and R. A.¿s play The Valiant Welshman became part of the public spectacle of unity required to nurture James¿s dream. The Valiant Welshman, the Scottish James, and the Formation of Great Britain¿considers national, regional and linguistic identity and explores how R.A.¿s play promotes Wales, serves King James and reveals what it means to be Welsh and Scots in a newly forming "Great Britain."