Module: Doing HistoryAssessment: Project ProposalStudent No: 600005732
HIH 2001 DOING HISTORY: PERSPECTIVES ON SOURCESPROJECT PROPOSAL FORM
Please complete all of the sections of this form, by typing into each of the boxes provided (below the text already given). Sections 1-3 do NOT count towards the word limit of 1000 words. You should not write more than 500 words each for sections 4 and 5.
Student Number: 600005732 / Name of Supervisor: Dr Emma Cavell
1. What question you will address in the Source Portfolio. This should be one sentence only.
To what extent was a universal ‘othering process’ applied to foreigners by western Europeans in the later Middle Ages, 1000-1400?
2. List the primary sources that you intend to use for the Portfolio. There should be at least five different sources that address different aspects of the question. These should all be different types of source as far as possible. Give a full reference for each and indicate the type of source and a brief description.
Abelard, Peter, A Dialogue of a Philosopher with a Jew, and a Christian, trans. Payer, Pierre J, (Toronto, 1979): a fictional dialogue written by an early twelfth-century theological thinker in which a pagan philosopher, a Jew and a Christian appeal to an external judge in an attempt to solve their doctrinal disputes through reasoned argument.
Eschenbach, Wolfram von, Willehalm, in The Middle High German Poem of Willehalm by Wolfram von Eschenbach, trans. Passage, Charles E. (New York, 1977): an early twelfth-century German poem telling the quasi-fictional tale of William of Toulouse, first cousin of the Emperor Charlemagne, and his efforts to stave off his Saracen enemies in battle, having taken one of their noblewomen as his wife.
The Book of John Mandeville with Related Texts ed./trans. Higgins, Iain Macleod (Indianapolis, 2011): a third person travel narrative, constructed through the amalgamation of two early fourteenth-century travelogues, describing diverse lands and peoples outside of Latin Christendom.
‘The Chronicle of Fulcher of Chartres, Book I (1095-1100)’, trans. McGinty, Martha E, in The First Crusade: The Chronicle of Fulcher of Chartres and Other Source Materials, ed. Peters, Edward (Philadelphia, 1998): a chronicle describing the motives, people and events of the First Crusade from the perspective of western Europeans fighting in the East.
The Letter of Prester John, Celtic Literature Collective Website, http://maryjones.us/ctexts/presterjohn.html (Last accessed 4 February 2012): a letter of uncertain origin claiming to have been written by the legendary eastern Christian ruler, Prester John, to Emperor Manuel of Constantinople in c.1165 describing his extensive and idyllic dominions and the wonders to be found in them.
Wonders of the East: A Critical Edition and Commentary, ed./trans. Gibb, Paul Allen (Ph.D diss, Michigan, 1977): consulted for its modern English translation of the Tiberius B.v manuscript (c.1050).
Marvels of the East: A Full Reproduction of the Three Known Copies, ed./trans. James, Montague Rhodes (Oxford 1929): consulted for its facsimile of the Tiberius B.v manuscript including all illustrations:
illustrated prose piece in Anglo-Saxon English and Latin describing and depicting the plants, creatures and peoples believed to inhabit the eastern areas of the world.
3. List key secondary works (books and articles) for this question, in alphabetical order by surname of author. Give a full reference for each.
Austin, Greta, ‘Marvelous Peoples or Marvelous Races? Race and the Anglo-Saxon Wonders of the East’, in Jones, Timothy S. and Sprunger, David A. (eds.), Marvels, Monsters and Miracles: Studies in the Medieval and Early Modern Imaginations (Kalamazoo, 2002), pp.25-51.
Azbari, Suzanne Conklin, Idols in the East: European Representations of Islam and the Orient, 1100-1450 (Ithaca, 2009).
Baudet, Henri, Paradise on Earth: Some Thoughts on European Images of Non-European Man, trans. Wentholt, Elizabeth (New Haven, 1965).
Beckingham, Charles F. and Hamilton, Bernard (eds.), Prester John: The Mongols and the Ten Lost Tribes (Aldershot, 1996).
Blanks, David R. and Frassetto, Michael (eds.), Western Views of Islam in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Perception of Other (New York, 1999).
Campbell, Mary B, The Witness and the Other World: Exotic European Travel Writing, 400-1600 (Ithaca, 1988).
Classen, Albrecht (ed.), Meeting the Foreign in the Middle Ages (New York, 2002).
Cutler, Allan Harris, The Jew as Ally of the Muslim: Medieval Roots of Anti-Semitism (Notre Dame, 1986).
Freedman, Paul, ‘The Medieval Other: The Middle Ages as Other’, in Jones, Timothy S. and Sprunger, David A. (eds.), Marvels, Monsters and Miracles: Studies in the Medieval and Early Modern Imaginations (Kalamazoo, 2002), pp.1-24.
Friedman, John Block, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought (Cambridge, 1981).
Gibb, Paul Allen, Wonders of the East: A Critical Edition and Commentary (PhD diss, Michigan, 1977).
Harvey, P.D.A, Mappa Mundi: The Hereford World Map, 2nd edition (Hereford, 2002).
Helleiner, Karl F, ‘Prester John’s Letter: A Medieval Utopia’, Phoenix 13 (1959), 47-57.
Hoffmann, Richard C, ‘Outsiders by Birth and Blood: Racist Ideologies and Realities around the Periphery of Medieval European Culture’, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 6 (1983), 3-34.
Letts, Malcolm, Prester John: A Fourteenth-Century Manuscript at Cambridge’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 29 (1947), 19-26.
Moore, R. I, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950-1250 (Oxford, 1987).
Said, Edward, Orientalism (New York, 1978).
Wittkower, Rudolf, ‘Marvels of the East. A Study in the History of Monsters’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 5 (1942), 159-197.
4. What are the issues raised by your question? How does it contribute to the understanding of the wider topic? Explain in not more than 500 words.
Many historians have investigated how western Europeans perceived foreigners in the later Middle Ages, generally focussing on one of the particular groups of Jews, Muslims, pagans or the monstrous races of the East. Different approaches include exploring medieval concepts of monstrosity and their application (Wittkower), psychological investigations into the construction of the imagined non-European (Baudet), and the application of Said’s theory of ‘Orientalism’ to medieval understandings of the East (Azbari).
However, the aim of my question is to take a comparative approach to investigate how far medieval perceptions of foreigners can be seen as homogenous with regard to all the peoples listed above and the extent to which such perceptions can be seen to have constituted an ‘othering process’. Through this I hope to gauge, however tenuously, some idea about how insular western Europe was at this time, in terms of geography, religion and intellectual understandings, and how far this led to a rejection of outsiders.
Such an outcome may contribute to the wider topic of medieval European foreign interaction in a number of ways. It may be linked with the study of the crusades and the motivations behind them, the Iberian reconquista, the treatment of Jews, the expansion of missionary efforts in the East and, eventually, the attitudes towards the natives after the discovery of the New World. An investigation reaching a more generalised and comparative understanding of how western Europeans perceived foreigners towards the end of the medieval period may therefore have implications for the study of European foreign relations with various cultures right up to the early modern age of discovery.
My question in itself raises a number of issues which require particular mention or focus. Although some previous studies, such as that of Richard Hoffmann, have attempted to differentiate between the perceptions of foreigners in different geographical locations within Europe, the scope of this project means that my intention is to simply treat Latin Christendom as a homogenous intellectual body and instead focus on differentiating and comparing its perceptions of different types of foreigner. To this end, I intend to use my sources to investigate medieval attitudes to the groups of Jews, foreign Christians, pagans, Muslims and the monstrous races and the similarities and differences between the factors influencing the perceptions of each group of foreigners; namely religious teaching, concepts of monstrosity and civilisation and differences in geographical origins and appearance. I then wish to assess how Europeans constructed this difference and, particularly, how negatively the differences were portrayed in order to decide how far an ‘othering process’ was being applied to any or all of the groups of foreigners. I intend to consider how Europeans reconciled foreigners to their theories of the Great Chain of Being and the extent to which foreigners were seen to be accepted by God. Although the bias of the sources unavoidably leans heavily towards ecclesiastical authorship, I also plan to intimate some differentiation between the perception of foreigners by different social groups; namely the clergy, the secular nobility and the intellectual elite.
I thus hope to utilise this collection of sources to assess the extent to which the application of a universal ‘othering process’ to foreigners by western Europeans actually constituted the intellectual background to the increased interaction with foreigners throughout the later centuries of the Middle Ages.
5. How do the sources which you have identified help you to answer the issues raised by your question? Explain in not more than 500 words.
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