Gift-Giving and Materiality in Europe, 1300-1600

Gift-Giving and Materiality in Europe, 1300-1600 PDF Author: Lars Kjaer
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350183709
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Gift-giving played an important role in political, social and religious life in medieval and early modern Europe. This volume explores an under-examined and often-overlooked aspect of this phenomenon: the material nature of the gift. Drawing on examples from both medieval and early modern Europe, the authors from the UK and across Europe explore the craftsmanship involved in the production of gifts and the use of exotic objects and animals, from elephant bones to polar bears and 'living' holy objects, to communicate power, class and allegiance. Gifts were publicly given, displayed and worn and so the book explores the ways in which, as tangible objects, gifts could help to construct religious and social worlds. But the beauty and material richness of the gift could also provoke anxieties. Classical and Christian authorities agreed that, in gift-giving, it was supposed to be the thought that counted and consequently wealth and grandeur raised worries about greed and corruption: was a valuable ring payment for sexual services or a token of love and a promise of marriage? Over three centuries, Gift-Giving and Materiality in Europe, 1300-1600: Gifts as Objects reflects on the possibilities, practicalities and concerns raised by the material character of gifts.

Gift-Giving and Materiality in Europe, 1300-1600

Gift-Giving and Materiality in Europe, 1300-1600 PDF Author: Lars Kjaer
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350183709
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Gift-giving played an important role in political, social and religious life in medieval and early modern Europe. This volume explores an under-examined and often-overlooked aspect of this phenomenon: the material nature of the gift. Drawing on examples from both medieval and early modern Europe, the authors from the UK and across Europe explore the craftsmanship involved in the production of gifts and the use of exotic objects and animals, from elephant bones to polar bears and 'living' holy objects, to communicate power, class and allegiance. Gifts were publicly given, displayed and worn and so the book explores the ways in which, as tangible objects, gifts could help to construct religious and social worlds. But the beauty and material richness of the gift could also provoke anxieties. Classical and Christian authorities agreed that, in gift-giving, it was supposed to be the thought that counted and consequently wealth and grandeur raised worries about greed and corruption: was a valuable ring payment for sexual services or a token of love and a promise of marriage? Over three centuries, Gift-Giving and Materiality in Europe, 1300-1600: Gifts as Objects reflects on the possibilities, practicalities and concerns raised by the material character of gifts.

The Medieval Gift and the Classical Tradition

The Medieval Gift and the Classical Tradition PDF Author: Lars Kjær
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108424023
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
Explores how classical ideals of generosity influenced the writing and practice of gift giving in medieval Europe.

Food in Early Modern Europe

Food in Early Modern Europe PDF Author: Ken Albala
Publisher: Greenwood
ISBN:
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
This unique book examines food's importance during the massive evolution of Europe following the Middle Ages.

The Medieval Gift and the Classical Tradition

The Medieval Gift and the Classical Tradition PDF Author: Lars Kjær
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110833573X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
This interdisciplinary study explores how classical ideals of generosity influenced the writing and practice of gift giving in medieval Europe. In assuming that medieval gift giving was shaped by oral 'folk models', historians have traditionally followed in the footsteps of social anthropologists and sociologists such as Marcel Mauss and Pierre Bourdieu. This first in-depth investigation into the influence of the classical ideals of generosity and gift giving in medieval Europe reveals to the contrary how historians have underestimated the impact of classical literature and philosophy on medieval culture and ritual. Focusing on the idea of the gift expounded in the classical texts read most widely in the Middle Ages, including Seneca the Younger's De beneficiis and Cicero's De officiis, Lars Kjær investigates how these ideas were received, adapted and utilised by medieval writers across a range of genres, and how they influenced the practice of generosity.

Cosmos and Materiality in Early Modern Prague

Cosmos and Materiality in Early Modern Prague PDF Author: Suzanna Ivanič
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192898981
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
In the seventeenth century Prague was the setting for a complex and shifting spiritual world. By studying the city's material culture, this book presents a bold alternative understanding of early modern religion in central Europe.

The Dutch East India Company in Early Modern Japan

The Dutch East India Company in Early Modern Japan PDF Author: Michael Laver
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350126055
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
Michael Laver examines how the giving of exotic gifts in early modern Japan facilitated Dutch trade by ascribing legitimacy to the shogunal government and by playing into the shogun's desire to create a worldview centered on a Japanese tributary state. The book reveals how formal and informal gift exchange also created a smooth working relationship between the Dutch and the Japanese bureaucracy, allowing the politically charged issue of foreign trade to proceed relatively uninterrupted for over two centuries. Based mainly on Dutch diaries and official Dutch East India Company records, as well as exhaustive secondary research conducted in Dutch, English, and Japanese, this new study fills an important gap in our knowledge of European-Japanese relations. It will also be of great interest to anyone studying the history of material culture and cross-cultural relations in a global context.

The Languages of Gift in the Early Middle Ages

The Languages of Gift in the Early Middle Ages PDF Author: Wendy Davies
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521515173
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
This book is a collection of original essays on gift in the early Middle Ages, from Anglo-Saxon England to the Islamic world. Focusing on the languages of gift, the essays reveal how early medieval people visualized and thought about gift, and how they distinguished between the giving of gifts and other forms of social, economic, political and religious exchange. The same team, largely, that produced the widely cited The Settlement of Disputes in Early Medieval Europe (Cambridge University Press, 1986) has again collaborated in a collective effort that harnesses individual expertise in order to draw from the sources a deeper understanding of the early Middle Ages by looking at real cases, that is at real people, whether peasant or emperor. The culture of medieval gift has often been treated as archaic and exotic; in this book, by contrast, we see people going about their lives in individual, down-to-earth and sometimes familiar ways.

The Purchase of Paradise

The Purchase of Paradise PDF Author: Joel T. Rosenthal
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429553099
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
Originally published in 1972, The Purchase of Paradise is an account of medieval philanthropy and looks at the late medieval aristocracy as a social, rather than political group. The book analyses their voluntary behaviour, their gift giving and the Church, and addresses the nature of charity in the Middle Ages, providing an insight into the noble families of the time. The book depicts charitable practices within the family, such as the buying of prayers for relatives, and the family traditions of support for favoured houses lasting through several generations. The book shows that the family was the most operative unit for most forms of benefaction and ecclesiastical contact, and that the hard necessities of baronial politics were often ignored when men turned their thoughts to philanthropy and prayers for their immortal souls. The book will of value to historians and sociologists alike, as well as those working in the field of anthropology.

Luxury Arts of the Renaissance

Luxury Arts of the Renaissance PDF Author: Marina Belozerskaya
Publisher: Getty Publications
ISBN: 0892367857
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Today we associate the Renaissance with painting, sculpture, and architecture—the “major” arts. Yet contemporaries often held the “minor” arts—gem-studded goldwork, richly embellished armor, splendid tapestries and embroideries, music, and ephemeral multi-media spectacles—in much higher esteem. Isabella d’Este, Marchesa of Mantua, was typical of the Italian nobility: she bequeathed to her children precious stone vases mounted in gold, engraved gems, ivories, and antique bronzes and marbles; her favorite ladies-in-waiting, by contrast, received mere paintings. Renaissance patrons and observers extolled finely wrought luxury artifacts for their exquisite craftsmanship and the symbolic capital of their components; paintings and sculptures in modest materials, although discussed by some literati, were of lesser consequence. This book endeavors to return to the mainstream material long marginalized as a result of historical and ideological biases of the intervening centuries. The author analyzes how luxury arts went from being lofty markers of ascendancy and discernment in the Renaissance to being dismissed as “decorative” or “minor” arts—extravagant trinkets of the rich unworthy of the status of Art. Then, by re-examining the objects themselves and their uses in their day, she shows how sumptuous creations constructed the world and taste of Renaissance women and men.

Textile gifts in the middle ages. Objects, actors, and representations. Ediz. italiana, tedesca e inglese

Textile gifts in the middle ages. Objects, actors, and representations. Ediz. italiana, tedesca e inglese PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN: 9788885795860
Category : Art
Languages : de
Pages : 208

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Book Description