This study of the social content of the only Spanish epic surviving in more or less complete form provides a means of assessing the motives and intentions of the protagonist and of other characters. Chapters are devoted to such themes as the significance of kinship and lineage; amity as a system of fictive kinship, personal honor, and public organization; the importance of women and the meaning and function of marriage, dowry, and related practices; the emergence of polity as the result of a rivalry of social, legal, and economic systems; and the implications, within an essentially kin-ordered world, of the poem's notions of shame, honor, status, and social inequality.

The Epic of the Cid records the deeds of Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, the Cid of history and legend. A powerful warrior in the Christian reconquest of medieval Spain, a formidable strategist, and a charismatic leader, the Cid deeply impressed his contemporaries, both Christian and Muslim. Already, in his lifetime, songs, stories, and chronicles were devoted to his exploits. In offering both a highly readable, colloquial prose translation of El Cantar de Mio Cid and selections from a wide variety of those contemporary accounts, this volume brings the historical figure back to life for modern readers. Harney's substantial Introduction and annotation provide the historical, military, and literary background necessary for an informed reading of the texts; also included are maps, a compendium of proper names, a bibliography, and an index.

These studies of medieval military history examine the topic of siege warfare, exploring the urban milieu within which it developed, and the evolution of siege technology up to the advent of gunpowder weaponry.

Horses serve as central characters in great literary works that span ages and cultures. But why? In The Horse in Literature and Film: Uncovering a Transcultural Paradigm, Francisco LaRubia-Prado, Ph.D. explores the deep symbolic meaning, cultural significance, and projective power that these magnificent animals carry in literature, film, and the human psyche. Examining iconic texts and films from the Middle Ages to the present—and from Western and Eastern cultural traditions—this book reveals how horses, as timeless symbols of nature, bring harmony to unbalanced situations. Regardless of how disrupted human lives become, whether through the suffering caused by the atrocities of war, or the wrestling of individuals and society with issues of authenticity, horses offer an antidote firmly rooted in nature. The Horse in Literature and Film is a book for our time. After an introduction to the field of animal studies, it analyzes celebrated works by authors and film directors such as Leo Tolstoy, Heinrich von Kleist, D.H. Lawrence, Akira Kurosawa, John Huston, Girish Karnad, Michael Morpurgo, and Benedikt Erlingsson. Exploring issues such as power, the boundaries between justice and the law, the meaning of love and home, the significance of cultural belonging, and the consequences of misguided nationalism, this book demonstrates the far-reaching consequences of human disconnection from nature, and the role of the horse in individual and societal healing.

Keith Whinnom, Professor of Spanish and Deputy Vice-Chancellor in the University of Exeter, died on March 6, 1986. He was one of the leading hispanists of his generation, and a world authority on the literature of the reign of the Catholic Monarchs (and, in a quite different area, on pidgin and creole languages). The contributors to this memorial volume are all specialists in the literature of Keith Whinnom’s chosen period, and all had close links with him, through personal friendship, research collaboration, and correspondence. They include his most admired teacher, two young scholars whom he helped at the outset of their careers, and representatives of the academic generations in between; they come from Britain, Spain, the United States, Argentina and France. Most of the articles deal with the favorite Whinnom subjects of cancionero poetry, sentimental romance, and Celestina, and there are others on historiography, humanistic prose, chivalric romance, sermons, drama, and the interaction of history and literature. A bibliography of Keith Whinnom’s scholarly writings is included.

This work represents a considerably revised edition of the first comparative history of Islamic and Christian Spain between A.D. 711 and 1250. It focuses on the differential development of agriculture and urbanization in the Islamic and Christian territories and the flow of information and techniques between them.

These essays explore the place, function and meaning of women as characters, authors, constructs and symbols in Medieval epics from Persia, Spain, France, England, Germany and Scandinavia. Usually believed to narrate the deeds of men at war, this book looks at the key roles often played by women and the impact of this on the history of gender.