Medieval Texts Research Articles

"Deidamia Achilli" – średniowieczny dialog z "Heroidami" Owidiusza w przekładzie na język polski

The article presents the first translation into Polish of an anonymous medieval poem entitled Deidamia Achilli. It belongs to the rich tradition of continuation and imitation of Ovid’s Heroides. The dependencies of the medieval text on Ovid’s elegies (especially Her. III) are shown, as well as its connections with Statius’ Achilleis.

Zum Problem der ‚Heilsgeschichte‘: Raumzeitliche Situierungen der Alexanderfigur in deutschen und französischen Texten des 12. Jahrhunderts

Abstract This essay takes as its starting point the tension between the biblical role of Alexander the Great and his status as a non-Christian, and explores how medieval texts deal with this tension. Working outwards from selected theories of the secular that establish the term as a representative construct and describe its (modern) functions, the essay analyses the semantics of time and space in two twelfth-century Alexander romances: the German Vorauer Alexander and its manuscript transmission, and the French Roman d’Alexandre in the version of Alexandre de Paris. Through detailed analysis the essay tests the concept of ‘Heilsgeschichte’ (‘salvation history’), which emerges as both a productive yet also highly problematic critical terminology and interpretive matrix. The analysis also demonstrates that Alexander narratives (or episodes within them) defy straightforward categorisation as either religious or secular/worldly; the semantics of time and space in the texts create forms of meaning that cannot be grasped through idealised binaries of Christian and ‘worldly’ signification.

The Death of “Jewish Christianity” in the Afterlife of the Clementine Recognitions

AbstractThe editorial history of the two Pseudo-Clementine narratives known as the Recognitions and the Homilies is intricate, to say the least. From an ever-elusive “basic writing” spring two novelistic stories with extensive translation histories, subjected to significant editorial interventions, and anthologized alongside other late ancient and medieval texts. This article focuses on the addition of pseudonymous epistles as prefatory material for these Pseudo-Clementines and follows one of these letters in particular, the Epistula Clementis (Ep. Clem.). The Epistula Clementis accompanies the Latin Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions in a host of medieval anthologies concerned with Petrine hagiography and ecclesial succession, as well as histories, dialogues, and epistolary texts with anti-Judaic resonances. I argue that the Epistula Clementis, as a prefatory text, was integral to the success of the Recognitions in these later anthologies, highlighting the transformative power of the preface upon its associated text as well as the hermeneutical force of the anthology itself.

“Good to Feel With, Good to Think With”? Troubling the Affective Encounter in Medieval Bernardine and Anselmian Marian Dialogues

ABSTRACT This article focuses on medieval dialogues in which the Virgin Mary relates the Crucifixion story to an interlocutor, particularly the traditions surrounding Sts. Bernard and Anselm deriving from the twelfth-century Quis dabit and the thirteenth-century Dialogus beatae Mariae et Anselmi. Mary often figures as the supreme medieval model for compassion, and modern critics often position these dialogues as influential models for broader medieval affective piety traditions. A closer reading, however, reveals the dialogues’ affective tensions, undermining the idea that they seamlessly generate compassion for devoted readers. Mary appears alternately impassive and impassioned, detached and sunk anew in unspeakable sorrow; her interlocutors often compassionate her inadequately and flounder in the knowledge of that affective failure. This article explores such tensions, emphasizing the texts’ troubled temporality, Mary’s traumatic experience, and the interlocutor’s affective deficiencies. It directs attention to the troubling failures of feeling at the heart of several seemingly “affecting” medieval texts.

ON THE PROBLEM OF THE FORMATION OF THE OLD RUSSIAN BOOK TOPIC

One of the characteristic features of the poetics of medieval texts is the widespread use of traditional phrases and semantic commonplaces, which have been considered from different positions by medievalists since the beginning of the 20th century. Already in The Tale of Bygone Years (the oldest Russian chronicle) these elements of poetics are clearly revealed, although the genre design of the historical narrative at this early stage is not yet completed. The answer to the question about how the body of topoi was composed and the range of its sources is ambiguous. The article attempts to trace the penetration of a number of stable stylistic formulas into the ancient Russian historical narrative. They should be classified as laconic, non-poetic traditional phrases, devoid of epithets or comparisons that give the statement a certain emotionality. This element of military poetics simultaneously has a clear terminology, formed in a professional military environment, and is based on certain iconic gestures. The work expresses the idea of a connection between such book topoi and kinetic manifestations. These are, first of all, the gestures of princes as leaders of squads, as well as other elements of nonverbal communication. The phenomenon under consideration is only one aspect of the poetics of the military narrative of ancient Russian texts, which arose under the influence of extraliterary reality.

Role of medieval texts in the system of common Turkic historical sources

Source studies, as a science is fundamental to various fields within the humanities and is inherently interdisciplinary. Among the theoretical issues of source studies, historical source analysis holds the primary position. The article utilized works by Mirza Muhammad Haidar Dughlat and Kadyrgali Kosymuly Zhalairi as the primary source. These works contain unique information about the consolidation of Kazakh tribes in the middle of the 15th century and their unification into a large state entity.The fundamental nature of source studies is determined primarily by the distinctive features of historical science: a historian cannot directly study the object of history - the “past of society”. It is only mastered through critical analysis of historical sources, which are the subject of historical science. According to the theory of source studies, the main goal of research is generalization and systematization of historical information, methods of assessment and generalization are shown. Data science is closely intertwined with the practice of factual data analysis. Source studies is a critical assessment of their reliability and validity. Theory of source studies theory should ensure professionalism, quality, and the effectiveness of research.

Specyfika staropolszczyzny a anotacja gramatyczna. O lematyzacji tekstu staropolskiego

Specyfika staropolszczyzny a anotacja gramatyczna. O lematyzacji tekstu staropolskiego

PHRASEOLOGICAL UNITS IN A WRITTEN MONUMENT SAFE SHEDS «GULISTAN BIT-TURKI»

The language of written monuments of the Golden Horde era is rich in such artistic and stylistic means as phraseological units and metaphors that reflect the worldview and way of life of the Turkic peoples. Therefore, the relevance of the research topic is due to the value of studying phraseological units and metaphors found in the written monument of the Sarai Safe «Gulistan bit-Turki» (hereinafter – «Turkshe Gulistan») of the Golden Horde period. The article analyzes phraseological units and metaphors in two aspects: structural-semantic and linguocognitive. Phraseological units and metaphors are divided into four lexical and semantic groups and their continuity with the Kazakh language is analyzed. Phraseological units and figurative expressions, collected in eight sections of the written monument, form the concept of «Man», which reflect the existence and knowledge of the people. They are intertwined with the religious knowledge of that period. The concept of «Man» is subdivided and analyzed according to the linguocognitive models «Man – power», «Man – satisfaction», «Man – about the benefits of laconicism». The practical significance of the work. Linguistic explanations of metaphors and phraseological units in the text of "Turkshe Gulistan" can be used in the practical development of semantic meta-marks of linguistic units of medieval texts of the historical subcorpus. They are being developed within the framework of the National Corpus of the Kazakh Language at the Institute of Linguistics Akhmet Baitursynov.

From translatio to translation: the reconceptualization of translation in the Early Modern period

ABSTRACT The medieval concept of translatio was qualitatively different from our contemporary understanding of “translation”. Not only was it a much broader concept, encompassing many forms of relocation or transposition far beyond the inter-linguistic, it also implied change and adaptation to local conditions. Thus, medieval texts would mutate and shapeshift in a way that is incompatible with the modern idea that, in translation, the “meaning” should remain the same. This article argues that the transition from the medieval to the modern mindset was marked by the onset of a new semiotic theory, a new understanding of the relationship between form and meaning. Following the recovery of Hellenistic science in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Platonic notion of the semantic invariant (or transcendental signified) gradually took over from the rhetorical attitude of embedded meaning. The dynamics involved in the shift are explored in both the secular and the sacred domains.

Judeo-Syriac in late antiquity and the Middle Ages

In 2012 the term ‘Judeo-Syriac’ was coined independently by two scholars to refer to Syriac written in Jewish Aramaic/Hebrew script, in texts from late antiquity, on the one hand, and in medieval texts, on the other. In this article the differences between these two types of Judeo-Syriac are established, particularly in respect of their sociolinguistic contexts. The earlier context involves the Jews of Edessa and its environs, for whom Syriac was their mother tongue, and who, as evidenced by the Peshitta Old Testament, normally used Syriac script; their use of Jewish script in funerary inscriptions was exceptional. The later context involves Jewish scholars, for whom Syriac was not their mother tongue, engaging with Syriac Christian scholarship, initially through direct contact with Christian scholars. The textual products of such collaborations resulted in Judeo-Syriac texts that continued to be copied by Jewish scholars who had little knowledge of Syriac in Syriac script.

СИНКРЕТИЗМ ОБЩЕСТВЕННОГО МИФОЛОГИЧЕСКОГО СОЗНАНИЯ ДРЕВНЕЙШЕЙ ПОРЫ

This article examines the syncretism of the public mythological consciousness of the ancient era. The main features of this phenomenon include essential anthropomorphism, syncretism, syncretism. The texts of the Old Testament are analyzed, which show that the Old Testament syncrets are creative borrowings from the Sumerian written culture. The transition from the appropriating type of management to the producing type gives rise to reflection and criticality of human thinking. This contributes to the destruction of mythological consciousness and the emergence of initial scientific forms. Methods and techniques of diachronic linguistics and techniques of cognitive description of ancient and medieval texts make it possible to establish the semantics of linguistic units - syncrets that have turned into “frozen metaphors”. Syncrets are a consequence of anthropomorphism and syncretism of mythological consciousness; they were preserved in the vocabulary of modern languages after the annihilation of ancient mythological consciousness.

Enriching Portuguese Medieval Texts with Named Entity Recognition

Historical data poses unique challenges to natural language processing (NLP) and information retrieval (IR) tools, including digitization errors, lack of annotated data, and diachronic-specific issues. However, the increasing recognition of the value in historical documents has promoted efforts to semantically enrich and optimize their analysis. This article contributes to this endeavour by enriching the Corpus de Textos Antigos through NLP tools and techniques to enhance its usability and support research. The corpus undergoes linguistic annotation, including part-of-speech tagging, lemma annotation and named entity recognition (NER). Subsequently, the article delves into the tasks of entity disambiguation and entity linking, which involve identifying and disambiguating named entities by referring to a knowledge base (KB). Addressing the challenges posed by factors such as text state, epoch and the chosen KB, the article presents insights into related work, annotation results and the linguistic interest of a medieval annotated corpus for named entities. It concludes by discussing the challenges and providing avenues for future research in this domain.

Animals and Emotions in Medieval German Literature: The Various Functions of Bestial Imagery in the Staging of Emotions

This article, which continues ideas developed in the context of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft: Graduiertenkolleg 1876—215342465 (GRK1876), examines how animals are used in medieval texts to (re)present, shape, and develop the literary representation of emotions. On the basis of selected examples, it shows how diverse the literary functions of animal imagery can be and how many different poetic and aesthetic strategies can be found for staging animals, connecting them with human characters and the recipientsof the tale. In this way, animals can serve as objects of cultural self-reflection and as models for philosophical orientation. bySandra HofertFriedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nurembergsandra.hofert@fau.de

O thrinos yia ton Diyeni Akriti kai tous oikeious tous sto omonimo bizantino epos. Mia proti sinkritiki prosengisi me ton thrino yia ton Ektora stin Iliada

The motif of epic lamentation for familiar persons who have passed away has been a popular theme in world literature since the Epic of Gilgamesh and Homer’s Iliad. In this contribution, we focus on the Byzantine epic poem of Digenes Akrites, written by an unknown author of the early 12th century, which recounts the exploits of the eponymous hero on the frontier between the Byzantines and the Arabs. Six manuscripts in Greek survive today (apart from some adaptations in Old Russian), which are variants of the lost original version—all date from the mid-13th or 14th century to the 17th century. Our interest focuses on the four laments for Akritis’ father and mother, himself and his wife, as presented in the six manuscripts. The approach will be comparative between the six texts, the laments for Digenes and similar laments for Hector in the Iliad. Finally, it is essential to draw on Zumthor’s schema of epic lament in French epic medieval texts, and the form in which it is found in the epic laments we are studying.

The intersection of medieval studies and Indigenous studies: A Norse-Saami case study

Medieval texts reveal the normalised presence of Saami peoples in medieval Fennoscandia, suggesting close interactions involving trade, relationships, rituals, and magic. Despite growing recognition of these relations, the Saami remain overlooked in general studies of the Middle Ages, often relegated to symbolic roles or footnotes. As a result, Saami characters are typically depicted as the exotic Other within Norse society, often being stripped of agency and humanity in historical narratives. To counter these biases and distorted narratives, an essential step is analysing exclusionary structures in medieval literature and critically reviewing existing research on Saami representation. This process challenges dehumanising portrayals and confronts present-day stereotypes. The present study aims to ‘re-humanize’ (as Paulette F. C. Steeves puts it) the medieval Saami past by using decolonising frameworks and perspectives offered by the so-called ‘Indigenous turn’ of medieval studies, bridging medieval studies and Indigenous studies within a Norse context.

La pensée au Moyen Âge dans les textes hagiographiques

Reading a medieval text is immersing yourself in another way of thinking, another way of looking at reality, and everything obviously finds its explanation in religion and, implicitly, in theology. The hagiographical texts of French literature from the Middle Ages (and more precisely, the Sequence of Saint Eulalia and also Life of Saint Alexis), starting from this constant, present two postulates of thought in the Middle Age: on the one hand, the dichotomous relationship between inner and inner beauty (that is, between body and soul) and, on the other hand, the antithesis between faith and philosophy. The first texts of French literature in the Middle Ages, in this sense, come from the biblical and patristic tradition. However, we should not consider this imprint on the literary sphere as a stigma or as a deficiency, but, on the contrary, as a specific way looking at the world, as an emblem of the beginning of modern culture. Thus, we will focus in the following lines on the role that these texts had and on the thinking that reflects from them. And at the same time, we hope to demonstrate, in one way or another, the fact that the Middle Age cannot be categorized only as an age of darkness; this period is, as Jean Verdon notes, between shadows and lights.

Дискурс Максима Грека «начальствующим правоверно»: вопросы атрибуции текстов

The manuscript heritage of Maximus the Greek was especially popular from the late 16th to the first third of the 17th centuries. New collections of his works compiled in Russia at that time significantly enlarged the whole corpus compared to the lifetime compilations. However, nowadays, scholars encounter the verification issue since the editors of the volumes would attribute the name of the scholarly monk to texts that he did not actually produce. Therefore, the author’s name on the title page of a medieval text cannot be considered an ultimate reference for its attribution. This study aims at establishing the authenticity of two writings preserved only in the written tradition of the 17th–18th centuries: “By Monk Maximus the Greek. An Epistle to Those Ruling Properly on Guiding…” and “By Monk Maximus the Hagiorite. On Truth and Grace.” Their content and narrative style are scrutinized in the context of two treatises of the author’s corpus, Chapters 24 and 25 of the Iosaf’s Collection. The common theme among all four texts is the admonitions directed towards “Those Ruling Properly” and the way in which they are presented. This similarity allows for the identification of a distinct discourse in the writings of Maximos the Hagiorite. The stages of this discourse generation are revealed, with a version regarding the addressee of the “Epistle to Those Ruling Properly on Guiding...” proposed. It is Boyar Vassily Mikhailovich Zakharyin-Yuryev, a voivode, a prominent courtier from Tver, and the cousin of the wife of Ivan IV.

МАНИПУЛЯЦИЯ КАК НЕТРАНСАКЦИОННАЯ ПЕРЛОКУЦИЯ

In the modern information society, access to information and means of communication has become easier and more widely available, which creates a more vulnerable environment for manipulation. This article examines the phenomenon of manipulation (to manipulate) as a non-transactional perlocution. The research methodology includes content analysis of the literature, definition of key concepts, and contextual analysis to determine the characteristics of manipulation as a non-transactional perlocution. Manipulation by us is considered as a perlocution in which the recipient allegedly cannot take part (unlike such perlocutions as convincing or charming). The concepts of persuasion, manipulation and zombification are revealed and their use in media discourse is compared with the medieval expressions of seduction and darkening. The role of demons, which in medieval texts influence people in such a way that they cannot free themselves from the power of evil, is today partly prescribed to the media and the Internet. However, the assertion of media power should not serve as an excuse for the evil feelings, beliefs and actions of recipients. Manipulation can be blocked by the recipient if he self-critically asks himself whether the influence of his media consumption leads to evil. Disclosure of these issues will allow us to more deeply understand the nature of manipulation as a non-transactional perlocution and come closer to solving the issues of promoting media literacy as a tool to counter manipulation, and develop practical recommendations for improving public safety and the effectiveness of communication.

А.В. Назаренко как филолог

The notes below deal with that side of life and works of the historian of Ancient Rus’ and the Russian church Alexandr Vasiljevich Nazarenko which is connected with his philological education, his philological talents and interests, and his philological studies that greatly influenced his scientific achievements. Especially important is his philological contribution to the source-critical studies of German Medieval texts that preserved information on Eastern Europe and the monuments of Old Russian ecclesiastical literature. Philological education enabled A.V. Nazarenko to professionally interpret German people- and place-names as well as the terms and to retrieve additional historical information. His works are a model of integrated, historical and philological, approach in historical studies.

СРЕДНЕВЕКОВЫЕ АРАБСКИЕ ГЕОГРАФИЧЕСКИЕ ТЕКСТЫ И КАРТЫ

Over the centuries, the interest of scholars in Arabic medieval sources on geography and geographical maps has been growing. This is connected with the important contribution of the Arab-Muslim civilization to the development of ideas about the inner and surrounding world, on the one hand, and the desire to restore or renew the history of various peoples involved in the zone of research interests of Arabic-speaking geographers, on the other hand. The authors of the article considered the sources stored in European repositories, available for study thanks to the descriptions and publications of Western orientalists, while discovering some trends manifested in the academic traditions of different stages of the development of historical geography. The interest of scientists of the 19th century was directed primarily to medieval texts, which were considered the primary and most important object for research, and the establishment of their authenticity was perceived as the main task of critical analysis of their content. As for maps, only in recent decades, did the historical and cultural context of this pictorial genre begin to be interpreted by scholars in all their fullness and functionality and published in the form of atlases, books, and encyclopedias, inviting readers to immerse themselves in a re-evaluated cultural tradition. The article aims to determine the features of different approaches to the interpretation of geographical Arabic-language sources in European oriental studies. For this purpose, critical editions of the sources undertaken in the projects of the Leiden and Bodleian libraries were studied and their characteristics were revealed through historical and comparative methods of analysis. The general dynamics in understanding historical geography from primarily philological textological work to cultural and interdisciplinary reevaluation of medieval Islamic maps is noted.