Vernacular Texts Research Articles

Medieval Arles through the Lives of Its Founding Bishop

Texts recounting the careers of saints were foundational to Christian worship and historical construction in medieval Europe. They were also fluid, living works that evolved over time as individual saints’ stories were revised, adapted, and retold. These texts changed in response to changing contexts in which they were used and understood. This article undertakes a case study to see how the evolution of one urban saint’s legend reflects the history of that saint’s city. Specifically, it analyzes the numerous Latin and vernacular texts produced between the mid-fifth and late twelfth centuries that recount the deeds of Saint Trophimus, first bishop of Arles. It argues that shifts in the saint’s story reflect broad changes in the political, religious, and social life of Arles. It also demonstrates that the number of parties recounting the legend multiplied over time, and that dissonances within the story arose as these groups adapted the tale to their own interests.

System Search Service Implementation Based on a Custom Lexical Search

The search bar on any system is a highly employed and advantageous feature that helps make lives easier every day. Users see a tremendous improvement in their efficiencies as the search bar retrieves applications, and documents in a specific folder with just the file name. It helps avoid manual searching throughout the system. However, the existing technology does not help in the retrieval of documents where the search query is generic and about the document, and not just its name. This study presents a developed application that could be used to retrieve documents from anywhere on the system with user input keywords. These keywords are present inside the document and cannot be read by the existing technology of the search bar on the systems. The user can enter vernacular text as the search query on this application’s search bar. The application would accurately retrieve the files, order them according to relevancy, and list them as ready-to-open files with just a click. The program works with the elimination of the redundancy of reading all documents for each search query and using parallel processing to divide the files into batches. The application runs 303418.495ms, approximately 5 minutes, for the first run where it reads all the documents on the system. From the second run onwards, it takes only 20.080ms, approximately 0.02008 seconds.

Reflections on the Circulation of Wisdom Literature in Late Medieval Aragon and Castile

ABSTRACT: This article studies three stages in the circulation of wisdom literature in Aragon and Castile in the later Middle Ages: 1) Origins: wisdom texts in romance were preceded by texts in Arabic, Hebrew and Latin. By the time these romance texts appeared there was a highly developed (in terms of aids for the reader) of florilegia in Latin which, often dependent on other florilegia, preserved a wide range of authors, both familiar and rare. 2) Manuscript context: a conspectus of the manuscripts in which the vernacular texts are found suggests that scribes (or perhaps rather editors) had a sense of what defined wisdom as a genre. 3) Consumption: the article concludes with the use which romance authors made of the Latin florilegia and testifies to the function of these florilegia as a network of knowledge.

La réforme politique en Birmanie pendant le premier moment colonial (1819–1878) by Aurore Candier

Reviewed by: La réforme politique en Birmanie pendant le premier moment colonial (1819–1878) by Aurore Candier Penny Edwards Aurore Candier. 2020. La réforme politique en Birmanie pendant le premier moment colonial (1819–1878). Paris: École Française d’Extrême-Orient. 430 pages. ISBN 978-2-85539-135-9 This impressive study throws a gauntlet at prevailing British and European schemas of nineteenth century Burma as a trifecta of colonial conquest (1824, 1852, and 1885) and Burmese collapse. Focusing on the period between 1819 and1878, historian Aurore Candier resets both the clock and the lens, shifting the perspective to success through the prism of political reform. Across these six decades, Candier reminds us, the Burmese court managed to maintain its sovereignty in the north and center, even as its western and coastal territories were being nibbled away and absorbed into British India. The riddle of this central resilience is at the heart of this book. The book’s title, with its postcolonial gesture to the “moment,” would have confused key actors from the period, whose thought-worlds and administrative antics Candier so deftly illuminates. For as Candier demonstrates through meticulous research and innovative analysis, this was no “moment” but an extended period of transition and adaptation. As tensions arose between the notions of “cyclical reform” embedded in scriptural traditions, enshrined in prophecies, and reinforced by ritual calendars and alternative agendas of “social reform” [End Page 187] as a linear progression, Burma’s royal, intellectual, and monastic leaders and seers engaged in an extended wrestling match with time and notions of it. Stretching the contours of “political reform” to encompass cultural, religious, social, and spiritual concerns, Candier draws on four key types of literature: historical, administrative, normative, and prophetic, across several Burmese linguistic registers, and demonstrates an extensive command of Burmese intellectual history and spiritual geography. Her keen eye for cultural nuance and sociopolitical contexts is shaped in part by the author’s long-standing lived experience of political transition across several turbulent and for the most part tyrannical decades in Myanmar. The book’s structure is thematic and partly anachronic. Part I sets a conceptual and historical and regional context for precolonial reform (réforme precoloniale). Part II (1819–1879) examines the adaptation of cyclical reform (réformes cycliques) to transformation of historical context, Part III (1830–1860s) looks at the “réformes conjuncturelles: ajustées à l’expérience coloniale,” and Part IV (1820s–1870s) at sociopolitical conceptions in transformation. Candier brings coherence to the whole by focusing on three different “Stages” of reform that cut across all four parts of the book. Candier’s methodology is spellbinding. She intertwines Burmese vernacular sources including normative literature and prophecy, Burmese and European chronicles, royal and colonial archives, and writes history from prescriptions for moral and behavioral norms and interpretations of omens. Engaging with normative or didactic vernacular texts such as the Jataka tales (stories of the Buddha’s lives before he became the Buddha) alongside highbrow court chronicles such as yazawun, literary texts, and prophecy, Candier provides rare insights into [End Page 188] the “l’univers des pensées birmanes” and extends the parameters of that “universe” from elite views to popular perceptions. As the century wears on and colonial influence thickens with the appointment of European advisors to the court, so do European chronicles, and Candier makes judicious use of such sources. Wielding this web of source materials, Candier argues for a distinct understanding of “la réforme politique” in Burma. She demonstrates that there was a specifically Burman conceptualization of both “political” and of “reform,” that was dynamic and responsive, and shines a light on the acumen and impact of court advisors over time. In the 1810s, four rigid “tiers” regulated life in the kingdom and shaped roles at court: King (Min), Advisors (Ponna), wealthy (Vessa), and poor’; the king’s sovereignty was supreme and the role of appointed court advisors was to interpret the vedas rather than tinker with structures. By the late 1870s, there was far more fluidity, and the role of ponna, or appointed court advisors, had shifted from interpreting the vedas to normalizing, synthesizing, and codifying a diverse body of texts. These...

History of the Dukes of Normandy and the Kings of England by the Anonymous of Béthune

Ever since its publication by Francisque Michel for the Société de l’Histoire de France in 1840, the Old French prose history of the dukes of Normandy translated here has been recognized as an important source for the history of Normandy, England, Flanders, and Capetian France. Its unnamed author is customarily referred to as the ‘Anonymous of Béthune’ because of the prominence in the narrative of the lords of Béthune (dépt. Pas-de-Calais), who were ‘advocates’ (lay protectors) of Arras but also major landowners in England between the eleventh and mid-thirteenth centuries. The same writer is believed to have been the author of a vernacular prose history of the kings of France, usually called the Chronique des Rois de France, which was partly published by Léopold Delisle in 1904. The two Béthune texts reworked and continued two French texts from the beginning of the thirteenth century, known, respectively, as the Chronique de Normandie and the Geste de France, which in turn drew upon and embellished older Latin texts—respectively, in the traditions of Norman and pro-Capetian historical writing. Despite their wealth of original detail, historians have been hesitant to use the two Béthune histories as historical sources. In part, this is due to their genre: vernacular texts, whether in prose or verse, have often been treated with suspicion by medieval historians trained in the use of Latin chronicles, and the relationship between the many vernacular histories from this period is also problematic. Yet there can be no doubt that the lack of either a modern critical edition or an English translation of the Anonymous Norman history has also hindered its use, and so the present work, published in Routledge’s Crusade Texts in Translation series, is very welcome indeed. The translation, using the 1840 edition, was drafted by the distinguished translator Janet Shirley, who died in 2017, but it is Paul Webster who has prepared it for publication, with extensive historical notes and a scholarly introduction.

Aretino: Conjuring the Sensuous City

AbstractThis article examines Pietro Aretino's promotion and critique of the sensorial aspects of the physical, the political and the sociable city through a selection of his letters and the three comedies La Cortigiana, Il Marescalco and La Talanta. It explores the shared physical and social experiences that Aretino counts on in order for his words to resonate with his readers, especially with regard to Venice and Rome, viewed at times through the lens of Venice. Aretino lives during a time of intense sensorial concerns, from the imitation of nature promoted in works of art to the regulation of the urban sensorium through the control of speech and print, sumptuary laws and public performance. Drawing upon his own early experience of painting, writing poetry and perhaps street performance, Aretino evokes those concerns and displays a particularly urban sensibility as he seizes the opportunities offered by printing and the expansion of vernacular texts to explore what it is to inhabit the early modern Italian city in all its jumbly, chaotic and colourful sensorial ‘noise’.

Cultural Syncretism and Interpicturality: The Iconography of Throne Benches in Medieval Icelandic Book Painting

Abstract In relation to the major topic of the present volume, this article is intended to provide new methodological and iconographic insights into the cultural adaptation and integration of European iconographic motifs in the medieval western Scandinavian arts and culture, as well as the relations between the iconographic detail and its surrounding texts. At the same time, this article offers a new approach to existing research on the basis of two methodological theories hitherto little investigated in iconographic research: cultural syncretism and interpicturality. In archaeology and media studies, these approaches are used to interpret cultural–historical artefacts that were created for one and then reused in a new context which may alter their meaning. The present article seeks to explain how both meaning and appearance of a single motif change between the vernacular texts it accompanies, and how the working methods of the illuminators differ between manuscripts. As a qualitative example, the investigation will focus on a complex iconographic motif that is found in six Icelandic manuscripts from the fourteenth century, namely the feature of animal heads as extensions on throne seats. Although little studied in the context of manuscripts, this is a motif widely used throughout the Middle Ages and with various secular and religious connotations. In particular, this is linked to the specific narrative roles that iconographic details play in relation to the written text and generally to the physical objects that carry both text and iconography: the manuscripts.

The Afterlife of St Cuthbert: Place, Texts and Ascetic Tradition, 690–1500

The Afterlife of St Cuthbert: Place, Texts and Ascetic Tradition, 690–1500

Benedicamus Domino as an expression of joy in Christmas songs of the Devotio moderna

Abstract Christmas, as the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, is a central and joyful feast of Christian worship. In medieval and early modern Europe, this translated into a rich musical tradition, of which Christmas songs were a significant part. Song collections from the Devotio moderna, a spiritual movement that spread in the Low Countries and Germany during the 15th and 16th centuries, are an important witness to this Christmas tradition. However, because of their wide dissemination and their simple musical style, these songs have presented an historiographical challenge: it has proved impossible to detail in full the ubiquitous circulation of the well-known songs adopted within the Devotio moderna, as well as to subject their music and texts to close analysis of the kind usually undertaken for more ‘complex’ polyphony. In this context, the Benedicamus Domino offers a new and productive perspective: not only was the Benedicamus Domino singled out for special permission to be sung in polyphony at Christmas, but many Christmas songs are in fact Benedicamus tropes. I trace the uses and functional implications of the Benedicamus Domino within a single and very widely transmitted song, Puer nobis nascitur. Based on an analysis of its polyphonic versions in Latin and of its transmissions with a mix of Latin and vernacular texts, I argue that the Benedicamus was one element deliberately used in Christmas songs to guide spiritual exercises and meditation, inspiring and expressing joy during the Christmas season.

Identifying Tweets with Personal Medication Intake Mentions using Attentive Character and Localized Context Representations

Individuals with health anomalies often share their experiences on social media sites, such as Twitter, which yields an abundance of data on a global scale. Nowadays, social media data constitutes a leading source to build drug monitoring and surveillance systems. However, a proper assessment of such data requires discarding mentions which do not express drug-related personal health experiences. We automate this process by introducing a novel deep learning model. The model includes character-level and word-level embeddings, embedding-level attention, convolu- tional neural networks (CNN), bidirectional gated recurrent units (BiGRU), and context-aware attentions. An embedding for a word is produced by integrating both word-level and character-level embeddings using an embedding-level attention mechanism, which selects the salient features from both embeddings without expanding dimensionality. The resultant embedding is further analyzed by three CNN layers independently, where each extracts unique n-grams. BiGRUs followed by attention layers further process the outputs from each CNN layer. Besides, the resultant embedding is also encoded by a BiGRU with attention. Our model is developed to cope with the intricate attributes inherent to tweets such as vernacular texts, descriptive medical phrases, frequently misspelt words, abbreviations, short messages, and others. All these four outputs are summed and sent to a softmax classifier. We built a dataset by incorporating tweets from two benchmark datasets designed for the same objective to evaluate the performance. Our model performs substantially better than existing models, including several customized Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) models with an F1-score of 0.772.

Vernacular Texts for Schizophrenic Selves: Language Ideologies and Language Activism in Contemporary Urban Morocco

À partir des années 2000, le Maroc a connu une vague de publications écrites dans une langue prétendument orale : l’arabe marocain ( dārija ). Cet article examine l’idéologie linguistique qui sous-tendait ces textes en se concentrant sur les militants linguistiques qui les ont produits. À travers une analyse de leur rhétorique, je montre comment les militants ont construit discursivement les Marocains comme des « schizophrènes linguistiques » souffrant d’une méconnaissance fondamentale de l’arabe standard ( fuṣḥā ) comme « langue maternelle ». Dans ce contexte, les militants considéraient les textes en dārija , la « vraie langue maternelle » des Marocains, comme des remèdes ayant le pouvoir de réveiller les Marocains à leurs contradictions linguistiques – et aux contradictions sociétales.

Study on Pandithamani's Urainadai Kovai

Although Pandithamani Kathiresan has published various works, Urainadai Kovai published in the 1940s has been considered as the best book. Annamalai University Tamil Professor and University Scholar Subramaniapillai has made a special dedication to this book. There are five parts in Pandithamani's Urainadai Kovai book. They are properly San maargam, Siva Puranam, and interpretation of Saivism. This article explains about Pandithamani's religious studies. He not even attended school for seven months but worked at Annamalai University because of his talents. He translated many vernacular texts. He taught many things to Tamil scholars and was a great orator. Though he has created various works in his life the main purpose of this article is to give a clear explanation about Urainadai Kovai.

Vernacular Tradition, Dalits and Connected Social History in the Littoral Bay of Bengal

The Bengal delta has been a recipient of Islamic influences since medieval times through trade, commerce and cultural exchanges with Southeast and West Asia via the Bay of Bengal–Indian Ocean trade route. This aspect of Bengal’s cultural history and engagement with different religious traditions has gained attention in recent times through works done on subaltern literature, cultural history and global history. The vernacular tradition of littoral Bengal presents a strong frontrunner for this. Jatra (theatre), pala (lyrical play), scroll painting of pir, gazi, fakir and poetic discourse locally known as tarja demonstrate the diverse forms of vernacular philosophy in the littoral Bay of Bengal. In this article, I will engage with Bonbibis Johurnama, an Islamic text 1 which illustrates the struggle of the protagonist Dukhe who is protected by Bonbibi (forest goddess) from the man-eating tiger, personified as Dakhin Ray, the Hindu god. The article will explore the cosmic and mundane aspects of marginalized seafaring communities who depend on the delta’s backwaters and the mangrove forest for livelihood. Bonbibi is venerated as the ultimate protector in this amorphous landscape, interspersed by land and water. The vernacular history of the region exposes the serendipity and the mundane everyday activities of Dalit fisherman who venture into the forests and backwaters to collect honey and wax. Through vernacular text – punthi literature – I will show how the ritual practices are shared and how this shapes the religious syncreticism that creates solidarity between Dalit Hindu and Muslim foresters and fishers in the delta. These syncretic and heterodox religious practices are part of the vernacular literary tradition that illustrates how the littoral villages have lived together. The maritime trade and cultural acquaintances with the wider littoral world has been an obvious influence on the creation of liminal religiosity.

Caught in a Conflict of Loyalties

Abstract In tribute to Allison Busch, who did so much to restore the reputation of vernacular literature not just as poetry but also as history, Talbot offers an account of an obscure Rajput warrior from Bikaner who decided it would be better to die. In asking why Ramsingh Kalyanmalot sought death in 1577, we must address the larger issue of the changes wrought on the Rajput world by the expanding power of the Mughal empire, one of the main questions that Busch probed in her research. Vernacular texts composed at Rajput courts not only provide a valuable alternate perspective on the power dynamics of the Mughal era, as Busch repeatedly pointed out, but can also cast light on the lives of locally powerful men who hardly figure in imperially sponsored Persian histories. In Dalpat Vilas, a prose biography composed in Marwari, we witness the dilemma of Ramsingh, a second son who was caught between his older brother, the Bikaner Raja and obedient Mughal servant, and his younger brothers, occasional bandits who wandered freely. Their story illustrates how competing loyalties and priorities could strain brotherly bonds, especially in times of political turmoil.

The Afterlife of St Cuthbert: Place, Texts and Ascetic Tradition, 690–1500

The Afterlife of St Cuthbert: Place, Texts and Ascetic Tradition, 690–1500

Little Lewis and Latin Folk in Chaucer's Prologue to the Treatise on the Astrolabe

Little Lewis and Latin Folk in Chaucer's Prologue to the <i>Treatise on the Astrolabe</i>

Being Natural and Supernatural: Animals between Spiritual Sense-Making and Environmentalism from 19th to 21st Century CentralAsia

The history of pastoralist and agricultural societies in Central Asia is intimately interlinked with the non-human world: non-human animals shared their habitat with humans, domesticated animals were used as meat, fur, milk and fuel suppliers, drought animals, beasts of burden, mounts and wealth. Wild animals were cherished as heralds of upcoming seasonal weather change, hunted for meat, fur, prestige and the alleged medical-magical faculties of their body parts or feared for their destructive potential. The close cohabitation of humans and non-humans is reflected in a complex cosmological order. Without denying the fundamental religious importance of canonical texts in an Islamicate context, vernacular texts that belong to the so-called “small genres” were more important sources of information for large parts of Central Asian populations, and shaped the spiritual map for the majority of Central Asians and guided them in making sense of their natural and supernatural environment. This article examines Central Asian conceptualisation of animals as shaped by these texts as a departure to the mundane and spiritual relationship between human and non-human animals in Muslim Central Asia and explores how these different conceptual registers reverberate in contemporary, global debates on animal rights, sustainability and environmental protection.

Emotion and the History of Rhetoric in the Middle Ages by Rita Copeland

Reviewed by: Emotion and the History of Rhetoric in the Middle Ages by Rita Copeland Shea McCollough Rita Copeland, Emotion and the History of Rhetoric in the Middle Ages ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), xv + 432 pp. More than three decades have passed since Rita Copeland first published Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages (1991), a study that has become an indispensable resource for scholars thinking about the development of vernacular texts and interpretative models from late antiquity to the Middle Ages. That first book laid the foundation for a body of scholarly work from Copeland that, while dealing with the variously related topics of classical reception, pedagogy, and representation, is nonetheless bound together by the through-line of rhetoric, her most persistent and pervasive research interest. Her newest book, Emotion and the History of Rhetoric in the Middle Ages, is a delightful expression of that rhetorical preoccupation, demonstrating a sustained interest in the intertwined relationships between rhetoric, emotion, and ethics that developed and redeveloped from classical antiquity to the Middle Ages and offering a compelling and comprehensive narrative of the transformations of rhetorical thought and practice over nearly two millennia. Like the good rhetorician that she is, Copeland offers a map of the book's overarching scope in apophatic terms, outlining the contours of the study by simultaneously delineating what it is not: it does not endeavor to offer a comprehensive history of medieval emotions—à la Barbara Rosenwein's Generations of Feeling (2015), or any number of similar studies that Copeland mentions throughout her footnotes—nor is it an attempt to uncover and represent the emotional experiences of medieval readers per se, although readerly experience becomes a secondary interest in the book, particularly in chapter 2. Rather, what Copeland does embark upon is a twofold history of both rhetoric through emotion and emotion through rhetoric in the Middle Ages, a history predicated upon [End Page 240] a belief that rhetoric "represented the role of emotion in shaping persuasions" and that is ultimately "concerned more with production than with consumption of emotive content" (1). Copeland builds from these initial claims, describing the "double plot" of her book "as a reception history that commences with the Ciceronian rhetorics of antiquity, that develops on a long course, and that, at a later juncture, incorporates the Aristotelian perspective" (14). Following this robust outline, the rest of the text splits into two halves, emblematized by the figures of Cicero and Aristotle, respectively. Chapter 1 analyzes Cicero's theory of affectio as presented in De inventione, establishing emotion as a valid form of invention (the process of developing an argument), as opposed to an exclusive element of style, even though the stylistic understanding would eventually come to dominate the discourse of medieval rhetoric. Chapter 2 picks up on this thread and demonstrates how early Christian thinkers, primarily Augustine and Cassiodorus, expanded their understanding of style to accommodate an ethical dimension of rhetorical appeal invested in the cultivation of "textual affection" (59), whether for the scriptures or for Virgil. As this instilled love for texts grew commonplace, it became less imperative to explicitly outline the ethical valence of style in rhetorical texts, resulting in the paradoxical effacement of this notion from Christianized rhetorical treatises by the twelfth century. Chapter 3 narrates the rise of style to a place of preeminence in the "pragmatic rhetoric" of the eleventh through fourteenth centuries by close reading pedagogical treatises (112), love letters, Chaucer's Nun's Priest's Tale, Petrarch's Seniles, and Chaucer's (again) Clerk's Prologue. Chapter 4 (re)turns to Aristotle's Rhetoric, the second piece of the book's "double plot," in order to "chart the routes through which Aristotelian rhetoric found its place in later medieval thought" (158). Copeland sketches the transmission history of the Rhetoric, arguing that the text effectively disappeared until resuscitated by a group of Arabic scholars—Al-Farabi (ca. 870–950), Avicenna (980–1037), and Averroes (1126–98)—whose commentaries treated the emotions "as both cognitive and moral forces in persuasion" (175). Chapter 5 extends the discussion of the Rhetoric's medieval afterlife by focusing on a shift in thinking about the emotions evident in Giles of Rome...

Noisy medieval data, from digitized manuscript to stylometric analysis: Evaluating Paul Meyer’s hagiographic hypothesis

Abstract Stylometric analysis of medieval vernacular texts is still a significant challenge: the importance of scribal variation, be it spelling or more substantial, as well as the variants and errors introduced in the tradition, complicate the task of the would-be stylometrist, by inducing noise and perhaps even interferences in the authorship signal. Basing the analysis on the study of the copy from a single hand of several texts can partially mitigate these issues (Camps and Cafiero, 2013, Setting bounds in a homogeneous corpus: a methodological study applied to medieval literature. Revue Des Nouvelles Technologies de l’information (RNTI), SHS-1, pp. 55–84), but the limited availability of complete diplomatic transcriptions might make this difficult. In this article, we use a workflow combining handwritten text recognition and stylometric analysis, applied to the case of the hagiographic works contained in MS BnF, fr. 412. We seek to evaluate Paul Meyer's hypothesis about the constitution of groups of hagiographic works, as well as to examine potential authorial groupings in a vastly anonymous corpus.

The Precious Scroll of the Blood Pond in the “Telling Scriptures” Tradition in Changshu, Jiangsu, China

The Precious Scroll of the Blood Pond is a newly discovered manuscript (copied ca. 1993), used in the “telling scriptures” tradition in Changshu, which represents ritualized storytelling based on the vernacular narrative texts called “precious scrolls” (baojuan). The local tradition of “telling scriptures” can be traced back to the 19th century, though it may have even earlier origins. While it has been generally accepted that precious scrolls had ritual functions in the late imperial period, little research has been done on the local varieties of this type of storytelling in connection with ritual practices. The material of the Precious Scroll of the Blood Pond from Changshu demonstrates how the Mulian story, widely known in China, has been adapted to the folk ritual of the afterlife salvation of a female soul through repentance of her sin of physiological impurity. While the related ritual in the neighboring Jingjiang on the northern bank of the Yangtze River has been thoroughly studied, the Changshu practice has received little attention of scholars so far. The Precious Scroll of the Blood Pond from Changshu demonstrates that the Mulian narrative was also associated with the ritual of “breaking the Blood Pond” in the Jiangnan areas, which also provides a new angle of evaluation of the Jingjiang tradition of “telling scriptures”. This article discusses relations between modern ritual practices and several variants of the Precious Scroll of the Blood Pond, mainly using fieldwork materials collected by the author in Changshu and adjacent areas in 2011–2018.