A01=Joan-Pau Rubies
Alexander III
Alexander Legend
Antoine De La Sale
Arnold Von Harff
Author_Joan-Pau Rubies
Bernard Hamilton
Ca Da Mosto
Category=JHM
cross-cultural encounters
cultural difference analysis
David Abulafia
De Canaria
Descriptio Kambriae
Dragon's Blood
Dragon’s Blood
Epistola Alexandri
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Giovanni Di Piano Carpini
Gran Canaria
Henry III
historical anthropology Europe
Imago Mundi
Irina Metzler
J.K. Hyde
Jacques De Vitry
Jacques Le Goff
James III
Joan-Pau Rubies
Latin West ethnography
Mappae Mundi
marco
Marco Polo
Marco Polo's Book
Marco Polo's Description
Marco Polo’s Book
Marco Polo’s Description
medieval mythologies
medieval perceptions of foreign cultures
medieval travel literature
monstrous
Monstrous Races
Peter Jackson
Peter Russell
polo
Pope Alexander III
Pope Pius II
races
Robert Bartlett
Rudolf Wittkower
Seymour Phillips
Thomas Hahn
Topographia Hibernica
Valerie I.J. Flint
W.R. Jones
Young Man
Ystoria Mongalorum
Product details
- ISBN 9780754659556
- Weight: 1020g
- Dimensions: 169 x 244mm
- Publication Date: 16 Dec 2009
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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From the twelfth century, a growing sense of cultural confidence in the Latin West (at the same time that the central lands of Islam suffered from numerous waves of conquest and devastation) was accompanied by the increasing importance of the genre of empirical ethnographies. From a a global perspective what is most distinctive of Europe is the genre's long-term impact rather than its mere empirical potential, or its ethnocentrism (all of which can also be found in China and in Islamic cultures). Hence what needs emphasizing is the multiplication of original writings over time, their increased circulation, and their authoritative status as a 'scientific' discourse. The empirical bent was more characteristic of travel accounts than of theological disputations - in fact, the less elaborate the theological discourse, the stronger the ethnographic impulse (although many travel writers were clerics). This anthology of classic articles in the history of medieval ethnographies illustrates this theme with reference to the contexts and genres of travel writing, the transformation of enduring myths (ranging from oriental marvels to the virtuous ascetics of India or Prester John), the practical expression of particular encounters from the Mongols to the Atlantic, and the various attempts to explain cultural differences, either through the concept of barbarism, or through geography and climate.
Dr Joan-Pau Rubiés is Reader in International History at the LSE, UK
