Research Catalog

In light of another's word : European ethnography in the Middle Ages

Title
In light of another's word : European ethnography in the Middle Ages / Shirin A. Khanmohamadi.
Author
Khanmohamadi, Shirin A.
Publication
Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2014]

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StatusFormatAccessCall NumberItem Location
Book/TextUse in library JFE 14-2138Schwarzman Building - Main Reading Room 315

Details

Description
202 pages : 1 illustration; 24 cm.
Summary
Challenging the traditional conception of medieval Europe as insular and even xenophobic, Shirin A. Khanmohamadi's In Light of Another's Word looks to early ethnographic writers who were surprisingly aware of their own otherness, especially when faced with the far-flung peoples and cultures they meant to describe. These authors - William of Rubruck among the Mongols, "John Mandeville" cataloguing the world's diverse wonders, Geraldus Cambrensis describing the manners of the twelfth-century Welsh, and Jean de Joinville in his account of the various Saracens encountered on the Seventh Crusade-display an uncanny ability to see and understand from the perspective of the very strangers who are their subjects. Khanmohamadi elaborates on a distinctive late medieval ethnographic poetics marked by both a profound openness to alternative perspectives and voices and a sense of the formidable threat of such openness to Europe's governing religious and cultural orthodoxies.
Series Statement
The Middle Ages series
Uniform Title
Middle Ages series.
Subject
  • Ethnology > Europe > History > To 1500
  • East and West > History > To 1500
  • Travel, Medieval > History > Sources
  • Travelers' writings, European > History and criticism
  • Authors, Medieval > Attitudes
  • Civilization, Medieval
Bibliography (note)
  • Includes bibliographical references (pages 149-193) and index.
Contents
Introduction -- Conquest, conversion, crusade, salvation : the discourse of anthropology and its uses in the medieval period -- Subjective beginnings : autoethnography and the partial gazes of Gerald of Wales -- Writing ethnography "in the eyes of the other" : William of Rubruck's mission to Mongolia -- Casting a "sideways glance" at the Crusades : the voice of the other in Joinville's Vie de Saint Louis -- Dis-orienting the self : the uncanny Travels of John Mandeville -- Conclusion.
Call Number
JFE 14-2138
ISBN
  • 9780812245622 (hardcover : alk. paper)
  • 0812245628 (hardcover : alk. paper)
  • 9780812208979 (ebook) (canceled/invalid)
LCCN
2013026522
OCLC
842880474
Author
Khanmohamadi, Shirin A., author.
Title
In light of another's word : European ethnography in the Middle Ages / Shirin A. Khanmohamadi.
Publisher
Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2014]
Type of Content
text
Type of Medium
unmediated
Type of Carrier
volume
Series
The Middle Ages series
Middle Ages series.
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 149-193) and index.
Research Call Number
JFE 14-2138
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