This volume provides relevant insights into medieval political legitimation, and its impact on political competition and notions of power. With a main focus on medieval Castile, the political discourses purporting to legitimate practices of power are discussed, both as pieces of textual material and in their wider historical context.
The career of Arthur L-F. Askins is celebreated in a panorama of current scholarship on the Iberian peninsula during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. This volume is dedicated to Professor Arthur L-F. Askins, whose scholarship on Spanish and Portuguese literatures of the Medieval and Renaissance periods is esteemed by colleagues around the world. Many North American and European scholars have contributed with essays of an exceptionally high scholarly quality, in English, Spanish and Portuguese, to this wide-ranging tribute, dealing with Spanish and Portuguese literary culture from the end of the fourteenth to the late sixteenth century. Some tackle problems concerning manuscripts, texts, and books; other essays are literary, theoretical, and interpretive in nature; topics range from medieval and Renaissance epic and love poetry to spiritual, travel and chivalric literature, as well as balladry and pliegos sueltos. CONTRIBUTORS: Gemma Avenoza, Nieves Baranda, Vicenç Beltran, Alberto Blecua, Pedro M. Cátedra, Manuel da Costa Fontes, Alan Deyermond, Aida Fernanda Dias, Dru Dougherty, Thomas F. Earle, Charles B. Faulhaber, María del Mar Fernández Vega, Helder Godinho, Angel Gómez Moreno, Thomas R. Hart, Ana Hatherly, David Hook, Victor Infantes, Paul Lewis-Smith, Beatriz Mariscal Hay, Aires A. Nascimento, Joao David Pinto-Correia, Dorothy Sherman Severin, Harvey L. Sharrer. Martha E. Schaffer is Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of San Francisco; Antonio CortijoOcaña is Professor of Spanish at the University of California.
The Crown of Aragon. A Singular Mediterranean Empire recovers the history of an empire which was of great importance in the late medieval Mediterranean, but which has since been relegated almost to oblivion by the course of history. The Crown of Aragon was a Mediterranean crossroads: between west and east for the economy, and between north and south for culture and religion, drawing in many different peoples, covering Iberia to Greece. A new vision of the Crown of Aragon as a framework of overlapping identities facilitates its historiographical recovery, showcased in the chapters of this volume which analyse the economy, institutions, social evolution, political strategy and cultural expression in literature and art of the Crown of Aragon. Contributors are David Abulafia, Lola Badia, Xavier Barral-i-Altet, Pere Benito, Maria Bonet, Jesús Brufal, Alessandra Cioppi, Damien Coulon, Luciano Gallinari, Isabel Grifoll, Adam J. Kosto, Esther Martí-Setañés, Sebastiana Nocco, Antoni Riera, Flocel Sabaté and Antoni Simon.
Slavery helped finance the Industrial Revolution in England. Plantation owners, shipbuilders, and merchants connected with the slave trade accumulated vast fortunes that established banks and heavy industry in Europe and expanded the reach of capitalism worldwide. Eric Williams advanced these powerful ideas in Capitalism and Slavery, published in 1944. Years ahead of its time, his profound critique became the foundation for studies of imperialism and economic development. Binding an economic view of history with strong moral argument, Williams's study of the role of slavery in financing the Industrial Revolution refuted traditional ideas of economic and moral progress and firmly established the centrality of the African slave trade in European economic development. He also showed that mature industrial capitalism in turn helped destroy the slave system. Establishing the exploitation of commercial capitalism and its link to racial attitudes, Williams employed a historicist vision that set the tone for future studies. In a new introduction, Colin Palmer assesses the lasting impact of Williams's groundbreaking work and analyzes the heated scholarly debates it generated when it first appeared.
In 1452, Bizkaians assembled at the Oak of Gernika and approved the Fuero Viejo de Bizkaia (the Old Law of Bizkaia) one of Europe's most important yet little known medieval legal codes. Its laws encompassed an extraordinary range of individual and collective liberties, anticipating the 18th-century Declarations of Rights contained in the constitutions of the U.S. and France. It was extraordinarily modern in both spirit and letter and attracted the attention and admiration of John Adams and William Wordsworth. Its influence survives to the present day, underpinning Bizkaian and Basque claims to their own political identity within the Spanish state. Distributed for the Center for Basque Studies.