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This article proposes to read Robert de Clari's account of Constantinople through the lenses of vibrant materiality, orientalism and the ethics and affects of colonial pursuit. Why was his account so different from Geoffroy de Villehardouin's? Why was he so focused on objects, on materials, and marvels? If we position his text, one of the first vernacular prose histories in French, in its relation to romance, to broader narratives of empire and the "Saracen" other, and in regard to the politics of colonial logic, we see that his version of events reflects broader logics and legacies of the Crusades and their attempts to colonize, rationalize, and interpret the "Other" through orientalist, racist, and marvelous lenses. Clari's account justifies the sacking of a sister empire—a Christian empire—due to the wealth of the relics conquered and the affective power therein, thus rationalizing the imagined end of Christendom at the borders of Byzantium. Clari thus uses the affective power of relics to imagine a united Christendom, united against a foreign, pagan/"Saracen" other, and to participate in the prophesy that, vaticinium ex eventu, Constantinople was always marked for conquest by the "French" and never for truce with the "Saracens." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Nasleđe is the property of University of Kragujevac, Faculty of Philology & Arts and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Universum is the property of Instituto de Estudios Humanisticos Juan Ignacio Molina, Universidad de Talca and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of eHumanista is the property of Professor Antonio Cortijo-Ocana and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The selected fairy tale novels, „Goldröschen” (2021) by Jenny Voölker and „So finster, so kalt” (2014) by Diana Menschig, use a variety of magical motifs from classical fairy tales, especially from the well-known tales by the Brothers Grimm. This article analyzes two different motif categories based on the Stith Thompson register. Present in both chosen fairy tale novels, the first category includes beings such as fairies, spirits, or elves, while the second category includes magical objects such as musical instruments, food, drinks, or utensils. The aim of the article is to highlight the extent to which the authors have transformed the meaning of the motifs to bring magical elements into the reality-like context of the fairy tale novels. The theory of adaptation, the motif-index of folk-literature, studies on the origin and meaning of the motifs, and a qualitative literature analysis are used as methodological support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Normativity has long been a central concept in ethics, medicine, and the social sciences. It has not been fully explored as an element in historiography or historical thought. This article contends that normativity, when taken as a metaconcept that underpins notions of the "normal," "norms," and "normality," can help us understand changing attitudes to the possibility, actuality, and moral exemplarity of historical phenomena, but only if we disaggregate three different modes or registers of normativity: moral, metaphysical, and phenomenal. After exploring the place of moral normativity in historical thought and writing from antiquity to the early modern era, I discuss metaphysical and phenomenal normativity as filters that, from the Middle Ages through the seventeenth century, were applied to reported or recorded experience prior to any decision to derive from it any moral conclusions. I then argue that Baconian empiricism, Humean skepticism, classical probability theory, and mathematical statistics collectively gave rise to a modern sense of what constituted "normality" for past and present events. Finally, I conclude that the late Enlightenment bequeathed to modernity and postmodernity a normalized sense of fundamental rupture (exemplified by the French Revolution and characterized as the "historical sublime") that we still experience and struggle through as we routinely reconstruct history as both a linear tradition and a discontinuous series of "new normals." We also contend with this sense of fundamental rupture as we "renormalize" catastrophes that could reasonably be regarded as beyond normalization while simultaneously fetishizing the experience of disruption, which we have defined as a clinamenic swerve from one normality into another. This paradoxical process is accompanied by a deadened capacity to judge that which is, and is not, normal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of eHumanista is the property of Professor Antonio Cortijo-Ocana and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Many video games are using Antiquity in their scenario. One of them has been fascinating gamers and online players for almost 25 years: Civilization. Its principle? To choose one of 18 « civilizations » and lead it from « Stone Age » to contemporary era while confronting other civilizations. Each step of this « evolution » allows the player to acquire new possibilities and to progress until the final victory.Very sophisticated in terms of technology, this video game is a sort of cultural odds and ends: free of any historical verisimilitude (Caesar can face Napoleon), Civilization draws on uninhibited evolutionism and ethnocentrism. It displays a triumphant imperialism and brings to a climax the theory (and ideology) of « the clash of civilizations », since winning supposes to fight and annihilate the other. Yet, this game allows the construction and transmission of stereotypes regarding not only the definition of civilization in the occidental contemporary thought, but also the characteristics and the supposed contribution of each civilization (or people) to the world’s history and in particular the special role devoted to Greek and Roman Antiquity in that « great tale » of the « Human History ».Considering that game as an historical object and as an important vector of cultural representations, we propose to ask a few questions: which specific elements are chosen and put forward to make the Ancient Rome and Greece two “civilizations”? What are the special advantages that help them outperform their competitors (the other civilizations)? In that respect, we analyze the use and functioning of topical items such as the « City States », « Golden Age » or the « Marvels ». This survey also explores the way Latin and Greek words are used and diverted in order to form a specific videogames’ idiom, a shared language that creates a fictional universe.

The image of Indian rivers given by Greek authors in the Roman imperial period depends on the literary genre they chose : specialists of geography and history like Strabo or Arrian wonder about the reliability of the observations formerly made by the companions of Alexander about the Indus and its tributaries (dimensions, floods, delta, flora and fauna, resemblance to the Nile). A novelist like the pseudo-Callisthenes, and a polemicist like Palladios try, for their part, to amaze their readers with the mirabilia found in the Ganges or in the Tiberoboam. They imagine that their paradisiacal banks offer an ideal living environment to the Brahmans.

In the late Middle Ages, authors of fiction, historical texts, and travel narratives discussed issues related to the places and spaces of marvels. Writers debated whether local, western occurrences could be as wondrous--and thus worthy of being recorded in writing -- as foreign, eastern phenomena. This article explores how Boccaccio's engagement with Dante was intertwined with evolving views of the marvelous. It proposes that Boccaccio, following Dante, likened his writings to natural marvels to defend the status of literature, a mode of discourse sometimes considered unnatural or fraudulent. In addition, this research examines how Boccaccio drew on marvels to highlight differences between the properties and ethics of Dante's Comedy and these aspects of his Decameron. In addressing these topics, Boccaccio was inspired by late medieval Latin historians, who foregrounded the novelty of their texts by selfconsciously writing about western marvels. In the Decameron, Boccaccio recalled ideas about local marvels to champion the dignity of his erotic, mundane stories in comparison to Dante's otherworldly, divine poem. Boccaccio thus also reminded readers not only to wonder about future, eternal matters, but to cherish the experiences of this our present life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the Winchester Malory, the single known extant manuscript for the book "Morte Darthur" by Thomas Malory, focusing particularly on its marginalia. The annotations written by scribes point out events occurring within the text, providing insights into what various readers from different periods found noteworthy. Other topics considered include the text's narrative structure, the martial and the marvelous in literature, combat in the "Tale of Sir Gareth," and chivalry in "Sankgreal."