Goodson Caroline, Lester Anne E., Symes Carol, moyen âge, middle ages, , histoire urbaine, histoire de l'architecture, société urbaine, espace urbain, réseaux, espace sacré
Description
Abstract from the publisher :
Cities, Texts and Social Networks examines the experiences of urban life from late antiquity through the close of the fifteenth century, in regions ranging from late Imperial Rome to Muslim Syria, Iraq and al-Andalus, England, the territories of medieval Francia, Flanders, the Low Countries, Italy and Germany. Together, the volume's contributors move beyond attempts to define 'the city' in purely legal, economic or religious terms. Instead, they focus on modes of organisation, representation and identity formation that shaped the ways urban spaces were called into being, used and perceived. Their interdisciplinary analyses place narrative and archival sources in communication with topography, the built environment and evidence of sensory stimuli in order to capture sights, sounds, physical proximities and power structures. Paying close attention to the delineation of public and private spaces, and secular and sacred precincts, each chapter explores the workings of power and urban discourse and their effects on the making of meaning.
The volume as a whole engages theoretical discussions of urban space - its production, consumption, memory and meaning - which too frequently misrepresent the evidence of the Middle Ages. It argues that the construction and use of medieval urban spaces could foster the emergence of medieval 'public spheres' that were fundamental components and by-products of pre-modern urban life. The resulting collection contributes to longstanding debates among historians while tackling fundamental questions regarding medieval society and the ways it is understood today. Many of these questions will resonate with scholars of postcolonial or 'non-Western' cultures whose sources and cities have been similarly marginalized in discussions of urban space and experience. And because these essays reflect a considerable geographical, temporal and methodological scope, they model approaches to the study of urban history that will interest a wide range of readers.
Contents :
Introduction - Caroline J. Goodson, Anne E. Lester and Carol Symes.
Part 1 Constructing and Restructuring:
Writing and restoration in Rome: inscriptions, statues and the late antique preservation of buildings - Gregor Kalas
How to found an Islamic city - Hugh Kennedy
Metropolitan architecture, demographics and the urban identity of Paris in the 13th century - Meredith Cohen
Part 2 Topographies as Texts:
The meaning of topography in Umayyad Córdoba - Ann Christys
Crafting a charitable landscape: urban topographies in charters and testaments from medieval Champagne - Anne E. Lester
Anger and spectacle in late medieval Rome: gauging emotion in urban topography - Joëlle Rollo-Koster and Alizah Holstein
Part 3 Citizens and Saints:
Local sanctity and civic typology in early medieval Pavia: the example of the cult of Abbot Maiolus of Cluny - Scott G. Bruce
Cities and their saints in England, circa 1150–1300: the development of bourgeois values in the cults of Saint William of York and Saint Kenelm of Winchcombe - Sarah Rees Jones
The myth of urban unity: religion and social performance in late medieval Braunschweig - Franz-Josef Arlinghaus
Part 4 Agency and Authority:
City as charter: charity and the lordship of English towns, 1170–1250 - Sethina Watson
'The best place in the world': imaging urban prisons in late medieval Italy - G.Geltner
Out in the open, in Arras: sightlines, soundscapes and the shaping of a medieval public sphere - Carol Symes
Caroline Goodson is a lecturer in History and Archaeology at Birkbeck College, University of London, UK.
Anne E. Lester is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Colorado, Boulder, USA.
Carol Symes is Associate Professor of History and Medieval Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA.
