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Spoken Word and Social Practice: Orality in Europe (1400-1700) addresses historians and literary scholars. It aims to recapture oral culture in a variety of literary and non-literary sources, tracking the echo of women’s voices, on trial, or bantering and gossiping in literary works, and recapturing those of princes and magistrates, townsmen, villagers, mariners, bandits, and songsmiths. Almost all medieval and early modern writing was marked by the oral. Spoken words and turns of phrase are bedded in writings, and the mental habits of a speaking world shaped texts. Writing also shaped speech; the oral and the written zones had a porous, busy boundary. Cross-border traffic is central to this study, as is the power, range, utility, and suppleness of speech.
Contributors are Matthias Bähr, Richard Blakemore, Michael Braddick, Rosanna Cantavella, Thomas V. Cohen, Gillian Colclough, Jan Dumolyn, Susana Gala Pellicer, Jelle Haemers, Marcus Harmes, Elizabeth Horodowich, Carolina Losada, Virginia Reinburg, Anne Regent-Susini, Joseph T. Snow, Sonia Suman, Lesley K. Twomey and Liv Helene Willumsen.
Contributors are Matthias Bähr, Richard Blakemore, Michael Braddick, Rosanna Cantavella, Thomas V. Cohen, Gillian Colclough, Jan Dumolyn, Susana Gala Pellicer, Jelle Haemers, Marcus Harmes, Elizabeth Horodowich, Carolina Losada, Virginia Reinburg, Anne Regent-Susini, Joseph T. Snow, Sonia Suman, Lesley K. Twomey and Liv Helene Willumsen.
Price: $258.00
Pages: 500
Publisher: Brill
Imprint: Brill
Series: Medieval and Renaissance Authors and Texts
Publication Date:
17 July 2015
ISBN: 9789004288683
Format: Hardcover
"This collection of essays successfully recovers and reconstructs a variety of late medieval and early modern oral practices. [...] The essays in this volume provide remarkable insight into late medieval and early modern orality, demonstrating how recovering speech habits also affect larger historical, literary, and cultural discussions. [...] For many who could not read or write, orality provided a form of power as well as a sense of community and belonging. This theme courses throughout many of the essays in this volume, and indeed, is what makes it such a strong and intriguing read for historians and literary scholars alike." Chelsea McKelvey, Southern Methodist University in: Sixteenth Century Journal 48/2 (2017), pp. 505-506.
"From the first cry at birth to the last words on the deathbed, oral communication is essential to humankind. Spoken words transmit ideas, shape identities, manage power, give pleasure. Obvious, yes, and yet all too easy to forget when interpreting the past through silent writings, images, and objects. Orality, nevertheless, was even more pervading in medieval and early modern times than today, and its interactions with writing more complex and mutual. Scholars are increasingly aware that recovering this dimension, albeit difficult and uncertain, is potentially revealing—as this book confirms.[...] thanks to the wide scope of its case studies, together with the methodological relevance of some, this collection has undoubtedly something valuable to offer to anyone interested in the study of oral culture and communication as an opportunity to sharpen and even transform our understanding of the Renaissance world." Luca Degl’Innocenti, Università degli Studi di Firenze, in: Renaissance Quarterly, 71/1 (2018), pp. 278-279
"From the first cry at birth to the last words on the deathbed, oral communication is essential to humankind. Spoken words transmit ideas, shape identities, manage power, give pleasure. Obvious, yes, and yet all too easy to forget when interpreting the past through silent writings, images, and objects. Orality, nevertheless, was even more pervading in medieval and early modern times than today, and its interactions with writing more complex and mutual. Scholars are increasingly aware that recovering this dimension, albeit difficult and uncertain, is potentially revealing—as this book confirms.[...] thanks to the wide scope of its case studies, together with the methodological relevance of some, this collection has undoubtedly something valuable to offer to anyone interested in the study of oral culture and communication as an opportunity to sharpen and even transform our understanding of the Renaissance world." Luca Degl’Innocenti, Università degli Studi di Firenze, in: Renaissance Quarterly, 71/1 (2018), pp. 278-279
Thomas V. Cohen (Ph.D., 1974, Harvard University), is Professor of History and Humanities at York University in Toronto. He writes microhistories about the cultural and political anthropology of early modern Rome, championing close cultural reading of social documents and the narrative light touch.
Lesley Karen Twomey (Ph.D., 1995, Hull University) is Reader in the Department of Arts at Northumbria University. She has published monographs on material culture in religious writing and a study of doctrine in Hispanic poetry and many articles on Isabel de Villena, a fifteenth-century Franciscan woman writer.
Lesley Karen Twomey (Ph.D., 1995, Hull University) is Reader in the Department of Arts at Northumbria University. She has published monographs on material culture in religious writing and a study of doctrine in Hispanic poetry and many articles on Isabel de Villena, a fifteenth-century Franciscan woman writer.