The Routledge Companion to Cultural History in the Western World

Alessandro Arcangeli, Jörg Rogge, Hannu Salmi, Alessandro Arcangeli, Jörg Rogge, Hannu Salmi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000097917
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Social History
• Index: History

The Routledge Companion to Cultural History in the Western World is a comprehensive examination of recent discussions and findings in the exciting field of cultural history.

A synthesis of how the new cultural history has transformed the study of history, the volume is divided into three parts – medieval, early modern and modern – that emphasize the way people made sense of the world around them. Contributions cover such themes as material cultures of living, mobility and transport, cultural exchange and transfer, power and conflict, emotion and communication, and the history of the senses. The focus is on the Western world, but the notion of the West is a flexible one. In bringing together 36 authors from 15 countries, the book takes a wide geographical coverage, devoting continuous attention to global connections and the emerging trend of globalization. It builds a panorama of the transformation of Western identities, and the critical ramifications of that evolution from the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century, that offers the reader a wide-ranging illustration of the potentials of cultural history as a way of studying the past in a variety of times, spaces and aspects of human experience.

Engaging with historiographical debate and covering a vast range of themes, periods and places, The Routledge Companion to Cultural History in the Western World is the ideal resource for cultural history students and scholars to understand and advance this dynamic field.

Part 1 Shaping Western identities, 1250–1500

Introduction

Jörg Rogge

In accordance with the general methodological development in cultural history, ­research on the Middle Ages also stresses the importance of narratives and narrative patterns in the written record. The focus is no longer on the question of whether a reported incident was true in a positivistic sense. Instead, the cultural historians of this period are more interested in how people wrote about their experiences.¹ The manner in which they recounted or recorded events and behaviour was a contribution to the process of world shaping and expressing of values and beliefs within a society. With the focus on the narrative strategies or dominant patterns of argumentation, we can get an insight into the value system and guiding concepts for proper behaviour in a given society.² Another fruitful perspective and attempt to understand the cultures of the Middle Ages better is the research on rituals and gestures; perhaps the most important form of communication in our period. Rituals not only reflect the norms and values of a culture, but are also used by contemporaries as a means to create meaning in social or political spaces.³

These research fields help to show that people in medieval Europe developed norms, ideas and values which contributed to the shaping of their identities. Some chapters in this part of the book describe and analyse what kind of influence political rituals, travelling and encounters with other cultures had on the shaping of a Western identity proper. Other chapters show how people expressed their emotions, and their understanding of themselves, their bodies and their world, as well as their experience of otherness. All this takes place – as the chapters demonstrate – in political settings, social spaces and material frames like courts, cities, villages, churches, monasteries and frontiers. Contemporaries tried to explain the world by creating a web of meanings that offered orientation in the world and helped them to develop and shape diverse forms of expression of Western identities. In sum, the chapters cover a wide range of recent and important research on the cultures from the High Middle Ages to 1500. In what follows, I will stress and highlight some aspects of the chapters in the first part of the Companion. All chapters argue that the Middle Ages, like our modern world, were characterized by different and sometimes contradictory voices or discourses; in other words, by different cultures.

Concerning politics, there has been a major change in resent research as the focus is more on the decipherment of the symbolic meaning of political actions; we have envisaged the establishment of a cultural history of politics. This is demonstrated in this section of the volume by the chapters (Arlinghaus, Kamp) that deal with the importance of rituals for the creation of (political) order, (social) status and hierarchies (honour). Rituals are considered to be part of the practices of communication in and between individuals and groups in medieval societies, like other forms of communication (writing, gestures).⁴ It is argued here (Arlinghaus) that in pre-modern times the social aspect of communication was more important than the information itself, because the culture insists on the co-presence of actors. Valuing the written documents as materializations of immaterial interaction and communication has opened new perspectives for the understanding of medieval cultures (Hirschbiegel and Zeilinger). Even for the regulation of conflicts, communication played an important role, because in the late Middle Ages kings and other juridical authorities had to work with their nobles and/or subjects to enforce their laws and jurisdiction.⁵ The research shows that in most European realms there was an amalgamation of ‘private’ power and ‘public’ authority (Armstrong).

Princely and noble courts were important centres for communication and networks of relations. Like the town halls in the cities, they were important for the functioning of face-to-face societies. However, they did not pre-exist but were socially constructed by the interaction of location, objects and actors (Hirschbiegel and Zeilinger). Courts and towns also functioned as catalysts for the development of identities or medieval personhood, which was not an innovation of the Renaissance (Lutter). Moreover, research on the concepts and categories used by medieval people to make sense of their subjectivity has shown that they have always expressed their personalism within different groups (Tamm). This is a form of identity that differs from our modern understanding of individualism. However, the chapters in this section highlight that there was even a medieval form of personality and understanding of oneself at all.

In current research the study of emotions starts with the assumption that we can see the performance of an emotion as a cultural construct (Cohen). The importance of emotions has been stressed and it has become clear that it is not only necessary but also possible to consider the manner in which emotions influenced the creation and stability of social groups of different kinds (couples, families, associations) and cultures as well.⁶ Love, for example, was a core emotion, which could be an intimate emotion in the context of religious belief (compassion) as well as a public expression of juridical settlement (Cohen). Moreover, emotions were used as means of communication in the political public sphere if, for example, a queen begged with tears in her eyes for the pardon of trespassers in front of her king.

Closely linked with the research on emotions is the work on medieval bodies, which often includes gender and sex. The questions that have guided and are guiding the research in this field range from whether there was a medieval body at all to whether it was a result of human experience and environmental influences. Again, we are able to describe body concepts of common (peasant), noble (chivalric) and religious (ecclesiastic) people in this case, to illustrate the plurality of medieval cultures (Schuh). On the basis of medieval discourses on medicine and fertility, it becomes evident that during the Middle Ages much knowledge and scholarly opinion with regard to the human body and gender relations circulated in the towns, courts and universities, as well as in the quarters of soldiers and mercenaries.⁷

During the later Middle Ages people in Europe broadened their knowledge about other people and cultures by travelling. An important consequence of travelling was its potential to open up new perspectives on oneself and one’s society and home culture (O’Doherty). Maps and travel accounts, used as gifts for high nobles, are also seen as being important objects for the representation of exclusive knowledge for the noble elite in Western Europe. Encounters with other cultures is shown to have been a frequent experience during the Middle Ages not only in Europe but in other parts of the world as well.⁸ The research with regard to these cultural encounters has stimulated a debate about the terms, methods and heuristics that are most suitable for this kind of research. The consequences of the encounters as a form of cultural transfer or exchange are shown in this volume for Syria, Palestine and Egypt after the Muslim occupation (Pahlitzsch).

Notes

1 V. Nünning (ed.), New Approaches to Narrative. Cognition – Culture – History, Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2013.

2 J. Rogge (ed.), Recounting Deviance. Forms and Practices of Presenting Divergent Behaviour in the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period, Bielefeld: Transcript, 2016.

3 B. Stollberg-Rilinger, Rituale, Frankfurt, New York: Campus Verlag, 2013.

4 L. Ross, Communication in the Middle Ages, in: Albrecht Classen (ed.), Handbook of Medieval Culture, vol. 1, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2015, 203–31.

5 C. Valente, The Theory and Practice of Revolt in Medieval England, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003; M. Kintzinger, F. Rexroth, J. Rogge (eds), Gewalt und Widerstand in der politischen Kultur des späten Mittelalters (Vorträge und Forschungen LXXX), Ostfildern: Schwabenverlag, 2015.

6 S. Broomhall (ed.), Gender and Emotions in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Destroying order, structuring disorder, Aldershot: Ashgate 2015.

7 J.M. Bennett, R.M. Karras (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2013.

8 C. Holmes, N. Standen (eds), Towards a Global Middle Ages (Past and Present, vol. 238, Supplement 13), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.

1

Culture Of Politics In The Middle Ages

Rituals to create and confirm political order

Hermann Kamp

The people in the Middle Ages did not have a concept of rituals that corresponds to our modern understanding of the term. However, they had a sense for the extraordinary character of certain symbolic acts such as custom (mos), festivity (solemnitas) or rite (ritus). The belief of the binding character of what was demonstrated and said during such acts beyond the present time was inherent to rituals. The binding nature of these acts arose from the participants’ claim to act as per tradition and thereby recreate it. Rituals were staged in public because this underlined the extraordinary and memorable character of the event and again increased the binding nature. The chapter shows how rituals stabilized and recreated the political order.

Generally, rituals support the cohesion and self-assurance of societies and communities. Their primary function is to initiate and make visible a person or group of people transitioning into a new status. Certain recurring and combined symbolic acts indicate the change of status. At the same time, they display the religious, social and political order altered by this transition.¹ In cases where the intended alteration caused by these acts recedes into the background, and the acts themselves are performed to display the social order, symbolic acts become ceremonies.² This makes it difficult in specific cases to distinguish a ritual from a ceremony. In either case, a doubled power is inherent in rituals: they restore and confirm the social order and they provide a sense of meaning for it.³

To what degree rituals can develop their power highly depends on the structure of the respective society. Generally, rituals served to alter the social order in societies with a lack of institutions and literacy, and to make this alteration visible.⁴ Nonetheless, rituals did not lose their importance as the literacy rate increased and the political order was more and more institutionalized. This is particularly evident in European medieval history. During this time, the importance of rituals did not decrease; although, from the twelfth century onwards, written records were on the rise, and offices came to be increasingly structured.⁵

However, not only is the degree to which rituals can restore and shape social order subject to change; the form, meaning and practice of rituals also alter and adapt to ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• General Introduction
• PART 1: Shaping Western identities, 1250–1500
• PART 2: Europe meets the globe: Western identities in question, 1500–1750
• PART 3: The Western world and the global challenge, from 1750 to the present
• Index of names