Global Inferno: Medieval Giants, Monsters, and the Breaching of the Great Barrier
-
Fidel Fajardo-Acosta
Abstract
Globalism and globalization are processes having to do with the ex - changes, forms of awareness, influences, and effects that come about as a result of connections and interactions between different cultures and human groups spread out over the span of the known world at a given point in time. While globalism is merely the fact of connectedness, globalization is the exploitation of that connectedness for the political and economic benefit of one of the points in the overall global network of connections. The infrastructure of globalism comes into being in the first place because of the aggressive trailblazing of globalization. Once in place, however, globalism can generate knowledge that runs contrary to the spirit and tendential growth of globalization. Apocalyptic narratives, this essay argues, are an example of a globalism that is critical of globalization, predicting the failure of imperialist enterprises of world domination. Through comparison of medieval Islamic travel narratives, Old Norse literature, and Dante’s Divina Commedia, this essay proposes that their prophetic, otherworldly, and eschatological dimensions can be considered a form of pre-modern globalism and also a figuration of its modern counterpart, a connecting of past, present, and future into an intertemporal globalism in which we too participate by historical and comparative thought, and by the formulation of our own projections of the future. Rather than merely pointing out the predictability of the rise and catastrophic fall of empires, what this study seeks to illuminate is globalism’s collective adumbration of a much larger drama unfolding in dimensions of existence of considerably greater consequence than the cyclical births and rebirths, the comings and goings, of individuals, nations and empires.
Abstract
Globalism and globalization are processes having to do with the ex - changes, forms of awareness, influences, and effects that come about as a result of connections and interactions between different cultures and human groups spread out over the span of the known world at a given point in time. While globalism is merely the fact of connectedness, globalization is the exploitation of that connectedness for the political and economic benefit of one of the points in the overall global network of connections. The infrastructure of globalism comes into being in the first place because of the aggressive trailblazing of globalization. Once in place, however, globalism can generate knowledge that runs contrary to the spirit and tendential growth of globalization. Apocalyptic narratives, this essay argues, are an example of a globalism that is critical of globalization, predicting the failure of imperialist enterprises of world domination. Through comparison of medieval Islamic travel narratives, Old Norse literature, and Dante’s Divina Commedia, this essay proposes that their prophetic, otherworldly, and eschatological dimensions can be considered a form of pre-modern globalism and also a figuration of its modern counterpart, a connecting of past, present, and future into an intertemporal globalism in which we too participate by historical and comparative thought, and by the formulation of our own projections of the future. Rather than merely pointing out the predictability of the rise and catastrophic fall of empires, what this study seeks to illuminate is globalism’s collective adumbration of a much larger drama unfolding in dimensions of existence of considerably greater consequence than the cyclical births and rebirths, the comings and goings, of individuals, nations and empires.
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- Globalism in the Pre-Modern World? Questions, Challenges, and the Emergence of a New Approach to the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Age 1
- Global Inferno: Medieval Giants, Monsters, and the Breaching of the Great Barrier 99
- Swords as Medieval Icons and Early “Global Brands” 147
- Ecce! A Ninth-Century Isidorean T-O Map Labeled in Arabic 189
- Going Rogue Across the Globe: International Vagrants, Outlaws, Bandits, and Tricksters from Medieval Europe, Asia, and the Middle East 221
- Modifying Ancestral Memories in Post-Carolingian West Francia and Post-Tang Wuyue China 247
- Scalping Saint Peter’s Head: An Interreligious Controversy over a Punishment from Baghdad to Rome (Eighth to Twelfth Centuries) 273
- A Global Dialogue in al-Kindī’s “A Short Treatise on the Soul” 293
- Globalism in Paul of Antioch’s Letter to a Muslim Friend and Its Refutation by Ibn Taymiyya 315
- The Global Fable in the Middle Ages 351
- Globalism in the Late Middle Ages: The Low German Niederrheinische Orientbericht as a Significant Outpost of a Paradigm Shift. The Move Away from Traditional Eurocentrism 381
- The Germanic Translations of Lanfranc’s Surgical Works as Example of Global Circulation of Knowledge 407
- Brick by Brick: Constructing Identity at Don Lope Fernández de Luna’s Parroquieta at La Seo 445
- Quello assalto di Otranto fu cagione di assai male. First Results of a Study of the Globalization in the Neapolitan Army in the 1480s 463
- The Diplomat and the Public House: Ioannes Dantiscus (1485–1548) and His Use of the Inns, Taverns, and Alehouses of Europe 485
- Globalism During the Reign of Queen Elizabeth I 509
- Between East and West: John Pory’s Translation of Leo Africanus’s Description of Africa 537
- The Old and the New – Pepper, Bezoar, and Other Exotic Substances in Bohemian Narratives about Distant Lands from the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period (up to the 1560s) 553
- John Dee and the Creation of the British Empire 581
- Eberhard Werner Happel: A Seventeenth-Century Cosmographer and Cosmopolitan 595
- Globalism Before Modern Globalism 613
- List of Illustrations 623
- Biographies of the Contributors 627
- Index 635
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- Globalism in the Pre-Modern World? Questions, Challenges, and the Emergence of a New Approach to the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Age 1
- Global Inferno: Medieval Giants, Monsters, and the Breaching of the Great Barrier 99
- Swords as Medieval Icons and Early “Global Brands” 147
- Ecce! A Ninth-Century Isidorean T-O Map Labeled in Arabic 189
- Going Rogue Across the Globe: International Vagrants, Outlaws, Bandits, and Tricksters from Medieval Europe, Asia, and the Middle East 221
- Modifying Ancestral Memories in Post-Carolingian West Francia and Post-Tang Wuyue China 247
- Scalping Saint Peter’s Head: An Interreligious Controversy over a Punishment from Baghdad to Rome (Eighth to Twelfth Centuries) 273
- A Global Dialogue in al-Kindī’s “A Short Treatise on the Soul” 293
- Globalism in Paul of Antioch’s Letter to a Muslim Friend and Its Refutation by Ibn Taymiyya 315
- The Global Fable in the Middle Ages 351
- Globalism in the Late Middle Ages: The Low German Niederrheinische Orientbericht as a Significant Outpost of a Paradigm Shift. The Move Away from Traditional Eurocentrism 381
- The Germanic Translations of Lanfranc’s Surgical Works as Example of Global Circulation of Knowledge 407
- Brick by Brick: Constructing Identity at Don Lope Fernández de Luna’s Parroquieta at La Seo 445
- Quello assalto di Otranto fu cagione di assai male. First Results of a Study of the Globalization in the Neapolitan Army in the 1480s 463
- The Diplomat and the Public House: Ioannes Dantiscus (1485–1548) and His Use of the Inns, Taverns, and Alehouses of Europe 485
- Globalism During the Reign of Queen Elizabeth I 509
- Between East and West: John Pory’s Translation of Leo Africanus’s Description of Africa 537
- The Old and the New – Pepper, Bezoar, and Other Exotic Substances in Bohemian Narratives about Distant Lands from the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period (up to the 1560s) 553
- John Dee and the Creation of the British Empire 581
- Eberhard Werner Happel: A Seventeenth-Century Cosmographer and Cosmopolitan 595
- Globalism Before Modern Globalism 613
- List of Illustrations 623
- Biographies of the Contributors 627
- Index 635
