En el presente trabajo analizamos el tratamiento que hace Isidoro de Sevilla (c. 556-636), la más ilustre figura de la cultura hispanovisigoda, que ejerció un notabilísimo influjo durante todo el medievo a lo largo y ancho de la cristiandad, del problema de la pobreza y la injusticia social. En los dos primeros epígrafes estudiamos sus con…[Read more]

Parvin Iʿtisami (1907–1941), the first important twentieth-century woman poet of Iran, was well versed in classical Persian poetry. Her knowledge of English language and education at the American school for girls as well as her father’s translations from foreign literature contributed to her appreciation of modern ideas, including women’s rights…[Read more]

Was King Æthelred ‘the Unready’ seen as a failure by his contemporaries? The study looks at sources that were written during and immediately after Æthelred’s reign in order to see if the king was criticised or blamed for the misfortunes in the conflicts with the Danes. The most important authors to be considered are Ælfric of Eynsham and Archbish…[Read more]

This is a case study on how the positioning of bishops in succession struggles had effects on the dioeceses. It looks at the dioeceses of Worms and Cologne during the three royal successions of Otto III (984), Henry II (1002) and Conrad II (1024).

One of the main arguments used to legitimise Christian military expansion in medieval Iberia was the location of the origin of the Christian Iberian kingdoms in the ancient Visigothic Kingdom of Toledo (507–711), which established a notion of political continuity between these entities. The legitimacy of the Visigothic Kingdom was reflected in t…[Read more]

Focusing on the work of John McWhorter and, to a lesser extent, Peter Trudgill, this paper critically examines some common themes in language complexity research from the perspective of intellectual history. The present-day conception that increase in language complexity is somehow a “natural” process which is disturbed under the “ab…[Read more]

The city of Ephesus experienced a marked civic transformation in Late Antiquity. After having centered its settlements and economic fortunes on its proximity to a deep-water harbor for over a millennium, late antique Ephesus gradually shifted to an inland, fortified settlement on Ayasoluk Hill. While several factors undoubtedly informed this civic…[Read more]

This article describes the development of the typographical phenomenon of “small capitals” during the fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century.

As Seyed-Gohrab rightly mentions in the introduction to this volume, “poets and writers are so essential in the turbulent history of twentieth-century Iran that any history of modern Iran neglecting the role of literature … would be seriously incomplete” (14). This volume, focusing on the second half of the twentieth century, provides a his…[Read more]

Through offering an ethnography of a group of educated, middle-class women who “had been attending weekly Qur’an and classical poetry classes for years” (xii), the volume shows that poetry and prayer are companions in the cultural history of Iran. It attempts to answer the question, “What does this companionship mean for forms of religio…[Read more]

As Seyed-Gohrab rightly mentions in the introduction to this volume, “poets and writers are so essential in the turbulent history of twentieth-century Iran that any history of modern Iran neglecting the role of literature … would be seriously incomplete” (14). This volume, focusing on the second half of the twentieth century, provides a his…[Read more]

Building on the author’s PhD thesis on “the British cultural and imaginative engagements with Persia in the nineteenth century” (vi), the volume charts “the diversity of perceptions associated with Persia in Victorian literary culture” (2). It focuses on poetry as the medium through which to survey the Victorian conception of Persia. It consists…[Read more]

The paper proposes that the Egyptian-style design on a 5-6th century CE magical amulet discovered at Nea Paphos in Cyprus (Inv. no. PAP/FR 44/2011) draws upon an apotropaic design against the Evil Eye known as the “All-Suffering Eye,” which dates back to the time of the early Roman Empire and is common on Byzantine “Holy Rider” medallions. [No…[Read more]

Desde que Alan Deyermond, entre los años 70 y 80 del siglo pasado , consiguiera vencer toda reticencia académica para que la obra de Leonor López de Córdoba pasase de ser una delicada rareza literaria a ser introducida con pleno derecho en el canon de la literatura hispánica medieval , la investigación sobre la autora nacida en Calatayud, aunqu…[Read more]

Con mucha frecuencia, las vías que a diario son solo holladas por pacíficos caminantes se tornan en sendas cuyo caminar obedece a razones diametralmente opuestas. Es el triste caso que vivimos en la Europa de nuestros días, marcada por el lamentable tránsito hacia el Viejo Continente de los que huyen de conflictos armados en Oriente Medio. Muy poc…[Read more]

The Abbey of St. Gallen was the foremost centre for the study of the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville in the Carolingian period. Not only can more than twenty early medieval manuscripts transmitting material from the Etymologiaebe associated with Carolingian St. Gallen, but its scriptorium also produced two scholarly redactions of Isidore’s e…[Read more]

Introduction, Greek text, and English translation of 3 Apocryphal Apocalypse of John, a Byzantine question-and-answer dialogue between Abraham and John set after Jesus’s ascension.

This essay traces the development of the right-hand inscription (zuoyouming 座右銘) from its birth in the second century CE through its culmination as a complex literary subgenre in the tenth. Over the course of these eight centuries, right-hand inscriptions were used by some of the most prominent poets of their respective eras, including Cui Yuan…[Read more]

There seems to be a continuum between Fernando Pessoa’s metadrama of heteronyms and his strict-sense plays, but this is more hypothesis than theory, because Pessoa’s dramas—notwithstanding the editions of Teatro Estático (2017) and Fausto (2018)—are still largely unknown. Written between 1903–1908, the tragedy of Marino is the earliest of Pessoa’…[Read more]

This article describes how the Polish intellectuals G.E. Groddeck (1763–1825) and Joachim Lelewel (1786–1861) referenced and analysed events connected with the fall of Athens in the Peloponnesian War. It aims to show how treatments of ancient Athens changed after 1795, when the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth ceased to be an independent count…[Read more]