This volume, the first to address Philippe Mézières (1327-1405) and his legacy comprehensively since 1896, gathers twenty-two contributions shedding new light on Philippe’s literary, political, and mystical writings, and places him in the context of his age and his contemporaries.

This book investigates issues of identity and narrativity in late Byzantine romances in a Mediterranean context, covering the chronological span from the capture of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204 to the 16th century. It includes chapters not only on romances that were written and read in the broader Byzantine world but also on literary texts from regions around the Mediterranean Sea. The volume offers new insights and covers a variety of interrelated subjects concerning the narrative representations of self-identities, gender, and communities, the perception of political and cultural otherness, and the interaction of space and time with identity formation. The chapters focus on texts from the Byzantine, western European, and Ottoman worlds, thus promoting a cross-cultural approach that highlights the role of the Mediterranean as a shared environment that facilitated communications, cultural interaction, and the trading and reconfiguration of identities. The volume will appeal to a wide audience of researchers and students alike, specializing in or simply interested in cultural studies, Byzantine, western medieval, and Ottoman history and literature.

The establishment of feudal principalities in the Levant in the wake of the First Crusade (1095-1099) saw the beginning of a centuries-long process of conquest and colonization of lands in the eastern Mediterranean by French-speaking Europeans. This book examines different aspects of the life and literary culture associated with this French-speaking society. It is the first study of the crusades to bring questions of language and culture so intimately into conversation. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to the study of the crusader settlements in the Levant, this book emphasizes hybridity and innovation, the movement of words and people across boundaries, seas and continents, and the negotiation of identity in a world tied partly to Europe but thoroughly embedded in the Mediterranean and Levantine context.

Trauma in Medieval Society is an edited collection of articles from a variety of scholars on the history of trauma and the traumatised in medieval Europe. Looking at trauma as a theoretical concept, as part of the literary and historical lives of medieval individuals and communities, this volume brings together scholars from the fields of archaeology, anthropology, history, literature, religion, and languages. The collection offers insights into the physical impairments from and psychological responses to injury, shock, war, or other violence—either corporeal or mental. From biographical to socio-cultural analyses, these articles examine skeletal and archival evidence as well as literary substantiation of trauma as lived experience in the Middle Ages. Contributors are Carla L. Burrell, Sara M. Canavan, Susan L. Einbinder, Michael M. Emery, Bianca Frohne, Ronald J. Ganze, Helen Hickey, Sonja Kerth, Jenni Kuuliala, Christina Lee, Kate McGrath, Charles-Louis Morand Métivier, James C. Ohman, Walton O. Schalick, III, Sally Shockro, Patricia Skinner, Donna Trembinski, Wendy J. Turner, Belle S. Tuten, Anne Van Arsdall, and Marit van Cant.

Specialists in other languages offer perspectives on the widespread use of French in a range of contexts, from German courtly narratives to biblical exegesis in Hebrew. French came into contact with many other languages in the Middle Ages: not just English, Italian and Latin, but also Arabic, Dutch, German, Greek, Hebrew, Irish, Occitan, Sicilian, Spanish and Welsh. Its movement was impelled by trade, pilgrimage, crusade, migration, colonisation and conquest, and its contact zones included Muslim, Jewish and Christian communities, among others. Writers in these contact zones often expressed themselves and their worlds in French; but other languages and cultural settings could also challenge, reframe or even ignore French-users' prestige and self-understanding. The essays collected here offer cross-disciplinary perspectives on the use of French in the medieval world, moving away from canonical texts, well-known controversies and conventional framings. Whether considering theories of the vernacular in Outremer, Marco Polo and the global Middle Ages, or the literary patronage of aristocrats and urban patricians, their interlocutions throw new light on connected and contested literary cultures in Europe and beyond.

What life was like for ordinary French and English people, embroiled in a devastating century-long conflict that changed their world. The Hundred Years War (1337–1453) dominated life in England and France for well over a century. It became the defining feature of existence for generations. This sweeping book is the first to tell the human story of the longest military conflict in history. Historian David Green focuses on the ways the war affected different groups, among them knights, clerics, women, peasants, soldiers, peacemakers, and kings. He also explores how the long war altered governance in England and France and reshaped peoples’ perceptions of themselves and of their national character. Using the events of the war as a narrative thread, Green illuminates the realities of battle and the conditions of those compelled to live in occupied territory; the roles played by clergy and their shifting loyalties to king and pope; and the influence of the war on developing notions of government, literacy, and education. Peopled with vivid and well-known characters—Henry V, Joan of Arc, Philippe the Good of Burgundy, Edward the Black Prince, John the Blind of Bohemia, and many others—as well as a host of ordinary individuals who were drawn into the struggle, this absorbing book reveals for the first time not only the Hundred Years War’s impact on warfare, institutions, and nations, but also its true human cost. “[Hundred Years War] makes us care about this long-ago conflict and the society that pursued and was shaped by it. . . . [It is] likely to (and indeed should) become a standard introduction to the war.”—Charles F. Briggs, Speculum

Matytsin, Darrin M. McMahon, James Schmidt, Céline Spector, Jo Van Cauter