Spoken Word and Social Practice
Orality in Europe (1400-1700)
Published on 17. July 2015
Book
Hardback
518 pages
978-90-04-28868-3 (ISBN)
Description
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 Baehr, 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 Baehr, 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.
Reviews / Votes
"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, Universita degli Studi di Firenze, in: Renaissance Quarterly, 71/1 (2018), pp. 278-279
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Leiden
Netherlands
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Students of late medieval and early modern literature and language, religion, social action and general culture, both high and low.
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 239 mm
Width: 163 mm
Thickness: 33 mm
Weight
930 gr
ISBN-13
978-90-04-28868-3 (9789004288683)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
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.
Content
Contents
Acknowledgements ix
List of Figures x
List of Contributors xi
Life and Works of Alexander Francis Cowan xii
Bibliography of Alexander Cowan xiV
Introduction 1
Thomas V. Cohen and Lesley K. Twomey
Witches' Words
1 Oral Transfer of Ideas about Witchcraft in Seventeenth-Century
Norway 47
Liv Helene Willumsen
2 St Helena and Love Magic: From the Spanish Inquisition to the
Internet 84
Susana Gala Pellicer
Words on Trial
3 The Power of the Spoken Word
Depositions of the Imperial Chamber Court: Power, Resistance,
and 'Orality' 115
Matthias Baehr
4 Tracking Conversation in the Italian Courts 139
Thomas V. Cohen
Preaching the Word
5 Tears for Fears: Mission Preaching in Seventeenth-Century France -
a Double Performance 185
Anne Regent-Susini
6 Powerful Words: St Vincent Ferrer's Preaching and the Jews in
Medieval Castile 206
Carolina Losada
7 'A Most Notable Spectacle': Early Modern Easter Spital Sermons 228
Sonia Suman
Word on the Street
8 Orality and Mutiny: Authority and Speech amongst the Seafarers
of Early Modern London 253
Richard J. Blakemore
9 'A Blabbermouth Can Barely Control His Tongue': Political Poems,
Songs and Prophecies in the Low Countries (Fifteenth-Sixteenth
Centuries) 280
Jan Dumolyn and Jelle Haemers
10 Proverbs and Princes in Post-Reformation England 300
Marcus Harmes and Gillian Colclough
Gossip and Gossipers
11 The Meanings of Gossip in Sixteenth-Century Venice 321
Elizabeth Horodowich
12 Gossip and Social Standing in Celestina: Verbal Venom as Art 343
Joseph T. Snow
Prayer, Teaching, and Religious Talk
13 Oral Rites: Prayer and Talk in Early Modern France 375
Virginia Reinburg
14 The Seducer's Tongue: Oral and Moral Issues in Medieval
Erotodidactic Schooltexts 393
Rosanna Cantavella
15 Preaching God's Word in a Late-medieval Valencian Convent:
Isabel de Villena, Writer and Preacher 421
Lesley K. Twomey
16 Afterword 446
Michael J. Braddick
Bibliography 463
Index 486
Acknowledgements ix
List of Figures x
List of Contributors xi
Life and Works of Alexander Francis Cowan xii
Bibliography of Alexander Cowan xiV
Introduction 1
Thomas V. Cohen and Lesley K. Twomey
Witches' Words
1 Oral Transfer of Ideas about Witchcraft in Seventeenth-Century
Norway 47
Liv Helene Willumsen
2 St Helena and Love Magic: From the Spanish Inquisition to the
Internet 84
Susana Gala Pellicer
Words on Trial
3 The Power of the Spoken Word
Depositions of the Imperial Chamber Court: Power, Resistance,
and 'Orality' 115
Matthias Baehr
4 Tracking Conversation in the Italian Courts 139
Thomas V. Cohen
Preaching the Word
5 Tears for Fears: Mission Preaching in Seventeenth-Century France -
a Double Performance 185
Anne Regent-Susini
6 Powerful Words: St Vincent Ferrer's Preaching and the Jews in
Medieval Castile 206
Carolina Losada
7 'A Most Notable Spectacle': Early Modern Easter Spital Sermons 228
Sonia Suman
Word on the Street
8 Orality and Mutiny: Authority and Speech amongst the Seafarers
of Early Modern London 253
Richard J. Blakemore
9 'A Blabbermouth Can Barely Control His Tongue': Political Poems,
Songs and Prophecies in the Low Countries (Fifteenth-Sixteenth
Centuries) 280
Jan Dumolyn and Jelle Haemers
10 Proverbs and Princes in Post-Reformation England 300
Marcus Harmes and Gillian Colclough
Gossip and Gossipers
11 The Meanings of Gossip in Sixteenth-Century Venice 321
Elizabeth Horodowich
12 Gossip and Social Standing in Celestina: Verbal Venom as Art 343
Joseph T. Snow
Prayer, Teaching, and Religious Talk
13 Oral Rites: Prayer and Talk in Early Modern France 375
Virginia Reinburg
14 The Seducer's Tongue: Oral and Moral Issues in Medieval
Erotodidactic Schooltexts 393
Rosanna Cantavella
15 Preaching God's Word in a Late-medieval Valencian Convent:
Isabel de Villena, Writer and Preacher 421
Lesley K. Twomey
16 Afterword 446
Michael J. Braddick
Bibliography 463
Index 486