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Medieval Alterities : Race, Religion, and Orientalism

Medieval Alterities : Race, Religion, and Orientalism. Richard Lionheart unhorses Saladdin Luttrell Psalter, MS London, BL, Add. 42130, F.82. Imagination: Representation of ‘ Alterity ’ as construction of Identity. Representation of difference in… Religion Race / ethnicity

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Medieval Alterities : Race, Religion, and Orientalism

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  1. Medieval Alterities: Race, Religion, and Orientalism Richard Lionheart unhorses Saladdin Luttrell Psalter, MS London, BL, Add. 42130, F.82

  2. Imagination: Representation of ‘Alterity’ as construction of Identity Representation of difference in… • Religion • Race / ethnicity • ‘Space’ or geography • ‘Time’ or history • The ‘self’ vs. the ‘other’ • Definitions? • Attention to Specific Historical Context

  3. The Image of the World: symbolic and spiritual geographyT-O Maps ‘Zonal’ Maps MS Oxford, Bodleian Library, D’Orville 77, fol. 100r. Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae Augsburg 1472

  4. Jerusalem as • Centre of the world • periphery? • margins? Psalter Map MS BL Add. 28681 (after 1262)

  5. Medieval Maps • Conceptual / symbolic geography • Establish hierarchies and dichotomies (centre/periphery ; order/chaos) • Encyclopedic maps: history as well as geography • Cosmological maps

  6. Monstrous Races: Livre des Merveilles du Monde MS BNF fr 2810 Fol. 76v / 29

  7. The monstrous races: • Influence of Late classical natural philosophy (Pliny) • Presumed link between climate and ‘biological’ aptitude / predisposition (e.g. Bartolomeus Anglicus, De Proprietatibus Rerum) • The Three Races sprung from the three sons of Noah (Ham, Japhet, Shem) • Monstrous creatures as descendents of Cain

  8. Pre-modern ‘race’? • How is Race conceptualised in the Middle Ages? • Less rigidly ‘biological’ category than nowadays • Shaped by climate and living conditions • Race, like other bodily characteristics (deformity, illness…), is an outward manifestation of interior disposition • Race often blurred with religious definitions (i.e. a Saracens are always BOTH ethnical and religious ‘others’) • Race, ultimately, is not a stable, reliable or independent signifier of identity: need to relate ‘Race’ to other discourses of cultural, linguistic, religious difference.

  9. The East or Orient • Site of Monstrosity but also Exoticism, Marvels, Portents, Wonders (Alexander the Great Tradition) • Mixture of attraction / repulsion • Legendary History + Geography, e.g. Prester John • ‘space’ for the projection of both fantasies and anxieties • ‘Desire’? - Wonder vs. Appropriation / Encounter vs. Colonisation • Importance for Sacred History (Jerusalem); destination of Pilgrimage • Eschatological / apocalyptic association (Heavenly Jerusalem).

  10. Identity and difference: Travel, the Orient and Exoticism as (self-)discovery • Mandeville’s Travels (1355-71) • Curiosity / wonder • Encounter • Mutual intelligibility of East and West • Travel is as much about a reassessment of Western ‘Self’ than an encounter with the Eastern ‘Other’ > doubts about the stability of the ‘self’; potential blurring of the identitarian boundary

  11. Jews and Muslims in the Christian Middle Ages Jews • Previous Hebrew Tradition (Old Testament) • History • Diaspora • Economic importance of Jews > Geographic interpenetration and historical continuity-but-‘separateness’: ‘supersessionist’ history Muslims • Later development • Geographical separateness • Oriental / Eastern location • Crusade > Geographic and historical separation; Islam as either Idolatry or debased Christian Heresy

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