Making Difference in Medieval and Early Modern IberiaUniversity of Notre Dame Press, 2005 - 218 pages In this engaging study Jean Dangler examines the way that ideas of difference were forged in four types of medieval Iberian discourse: muwashshah/jarcha poems from al-Andalus, Andalusi "cutting poems," medical literature about the body, and portrayals of the monster. According to Dangler, these texts demonstrate the two fundamental precepts of medieval Iberian alterity: multifaceted subject formation and the embrace of contrasts and the negative. Medieval Iberia was a multicultural territory of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian societies. These communities had constant geographic, cultural, political, and economic contact with one another. Because medieval Iberia was not hierarchical and homogenous, medieval subjectivity was not always marked by essential qualities of character, but was mutable and shifting. The adverse was often esteemed in the making of meaning and the forging of the social order. Dangler explores how the four discourses she analyzes changed in the early modern period, from an acceptance of difference to more rigid concepts of subjectivity and the marginalization of difference. This shift accompanied the rise of the Castilian nation-state and its imposition of static hierarchies of value. This book will appeal to a broad range of medievalists. It makes an important contribution to the growing interest in medieval Iberia and offers a nuanced understanding of medieval history and culture in general. |
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... negativa as a legitimate path toward affirmative fulfillment . For example , me- dieval topical theorists depended on the via negativa in their belief that the begin- ning locus of communication was an empty place . They thought that in ...
... negativa , the negative route to knowledge . Its presence in medieval society extended from philosophical tracts to sacred iconography and cartography . Early Christian writers such as Augustine greatly influenced the early medieval ...
... negativa . As demonstrated above , the monstrous and deformed had an important intermediary function in medieval society , which is apparent in Romanesque art and tripartite epistemological models , such as the Pseudo - Dionysian ...