Oxford University Press Europe: A Literary History, 1348-1418

This collaborative literary history of Europe, the first yet attempted, unfolds through ten sequences of places linked by trade, travel, topography, language, pilgrimage, alliance, disease, and artistic exchange. The period covered of 1348 to 1418 provides deep context for understanding contemporary developments in Europe, particularly as initiated by the destruction and disasters of World War II. We begin with the greatest of all European catastrophes: the 1348 bubonic plague, which killed one in three European people. Literary cultures helped speed the recovery from this unprecedented 'ground zero' experience, providing solace, distraction, and new ideals to live by. Questions of where Europe begins and ends, and disputes over whom truly 'belongs' on European soil, are explored through writing. A war that would last for a century convulsed much of western Europe. Divisions between Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christianities endured, and in 1378 the West divided again between popes of Avignon and Rome. Arabic literary cultures linked Fes and Granada to Jerusalem and Damascus; Persian and Turkish writings began to flourish south and west of Constantinople; Jewish intellectuals treasured Arabic texts as well as Hebrew writings; Armenian colophons proved unique. From 1414-18 western nations gathered to heal their papal schism while also exchanging literary, humanist, and musical ideas; visitors from the East hoped for commitment to wider European peace. Freed from nation state historiography, as bequeathed by the nineteenth century, these 82 chapters freshly assess the free movement of European literature in all its variety, local peculiarity, and regenerative power. Review Review from previous edition This compilation holds the promise of identifying underappreciated, understudied literary networks that merit deeper and more exhaustive study ... Each chapter is an excellent starting point for considering these European literary itineraries. By then connecting a chapter thematically to other chapters in Europe, the reader will find new vistas for exploration. ( Candace Barrington, Medieval Review) These modern examples ... illustrate the key aspect that the book so wonderfully brings to our attention: literature is produced in places that are saturated with text, character, and experience; and these texts migrate, get archived, become parts of libraries and collections, and generate readers and texts in these very places, welcoming itinerant materials and engaging with them. ( Marisa Galvez, Speculum) About the Author David Wallace, who studied at York (BA), Perugia, and Cambridge (Ph.D.), has been Judith Rodin Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania since 1996, with visiting positions at Jerusalem, London, Leipzig, Melbourne, and Princeton. He has travelled and lectured widely across Europe, and also north America, Australia, and Japan, and has made a series of radio documentaries for the BBC. He is the author or editor of ten books, including Premodern Places and The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature.