Narrating Desire: Moral Consolation and Sentimental Fiction in Fifteenth-Century Spain proposes a new taxonomy and conceptual frame for the controversial Iberian genre of sentimental fiction. It traces its origin to late-medieval education in rhetoric, philosophy, and medicine as the foundation for virtuous living. In establishing the genre's boundaries and cultural underpinnings, Narrating Desire emphasizes the crucial link between Eastern and Western Iberian sentimental traditions, and offers close readings of a vast array of Catalan and Castilian fictions, translations, narrative poems, letters, and doctrinal treatises: the Catalan translations of Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, Santillana's El sueno, Bernat Metge's Lo somni, Romeu Llull's Lo despropiament d'amor, Pedro Moner's La noche and L'anima d'Oliver, Rodriguez del Padron's Siervo libre de amor, Carros Pardo de la Casta's Regoneixenca, Rois de Corella's Parlament and Tragedia de Caldesa, Pedro de Portugal's Satira, Francesc Alegre's Somni and Raonament, Pere Torroella's correspondence, and the well-known works by Diego de San Pedro (Arnalte y Lucenda; Carcel de Amor) and Juan de Flores (Grisel y Mirabella; Grimalte y Gradissa) among others. From them, Miguel-Prendes singles out a group of dream visions whose interpretive and compositional practices sire the sentimental genre. Social interactions lead to either a consolatory or a sentimental form, which imply very different ways of seeing: the allegorical gaze of consolation gives way to narrative fiction. In distorting moral conversion, the sentimental genre heralds the novel.

This is a revisionary study of Muslims living under Christian rule during the Spanish 'reconquest'. It looks beyond the obvious religious distinctions and delves into the subtleties of identity in the thirteenth-century Crown of Aragon, uncovering a social dynamic in which sectarian differences comprise only one of the many factors in the causal complex of political, economic and cultural reactions. Beginning with the final stage of independent Muslim rule in the Ebro valley region, the book traces the transformation of Islamic society into mudéjar society under Christian domination. This was a case of social evolution in which Muslims, far from being passive victims of foreign colonisation, took an active part in shaping their institutions and experiences as subjects of the Infidel. Using a diverse range of methodological approaches, this book challenges widely held assumptions concerning Christian-Muslim relations in the Middle Ages, and minority-majority relations in general.

This book is the first archival study of the Mudejar or conquered Muslim community of Xàtiva from 1240 until 1327. It is a long overdue model study of the largest and most important Mudejar community in the kingdom of Valencia.

Bringing together thirteen leading art historians, Beyond the Yellow Badge seeks to reframe the relationship between European visual culture and the many changing aspects of the Christian majority’s negative conceptions of Jews and Judaism during the Middle Ages and early modern periods.

This encyclopedia provides 300 interdisciplinary, cross-referenced entries that document the effect of the plague on Western society across the four centuries of the second plague pandemic, balancing medical history and technical matters with historical, cultural, social, and political factors. Encyclopedia of the Black Death is the first A–Z encyclopedia to cover the second plague pandemic, balancing medical history and technical matters with historical, cultural, social, and political factors and effects in Europe and the Islamic world from 1347–1770. It also bookends the period with entries on Biblical plagues and the Plague of Justinian, as well as modern-era material regarding related topics, such as the work of Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur, the Third Plague Pandemic of the mid-1800s, and plague in the United States. Unlike previous encyclopedic works about this subject that deal broadly with infectious disease and its social or historical contexts, including the author's own, this interdisciplinary work synthesizes much of the research on the plague and related medical history published in the last decade in accessible, compellingly written entries. Controversial subject areas such as whether "plague" was bubonic plague and the geographic source of plague are treated in a balanced and unbiased manner.

This volume traces the development of Carmelite foundations in Medieval Catalonia and shows how they reflected the dichotomy between the Order's eremitical origins and the active mendicant apostolate in which it was engaged. In discussing Carmelite life in an urban setting, mention is made of secular involvement with its positive and negative effects, popular piety and miraculous sightings and outstanding intellectual achievement. The conclusion raises the question that Carmelite friars might have migrated to Europe at an earlier date than traditionally suggested; similarly, that the inaccurate foundation document for Peralada dated 1206 was a fourteenth-century falsification. The appendices provide supplementary material: archival documents, names of priors, royal chaplains, students and graduates and finally an alphabetical list of known medieval Catalan Carmelites. A bibliography and index complete the volume.