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The Global Fable in the Middle Ages

  • Abdoulaye Samaké and Amina Boukail
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Abstract

Kalila waDimna had been composed first in India; it then moved across different countries, cultures, and continents. Even though this text resisted the different changes imposed by the several translations and rewritings staying close to its original version, it was subject to some cultural transformations through its history of reception in the Western culture. Our paper aims to investigate how Kalila waDimna can be considered as a medieval global narrative text. By analyzing the mobility of the “Ring Dove” tale in Kalila waDimna, we intend also to examine some aspects of medieval globalism in the fable as a global literary genre characterized by dynamic cross-cultural interactions. Therefore, the analysis will be focused on the adaptations and/or influences of the “Ring Dove” in two Eastern (Arabic and Hebrew) and three Western (Old Castilian, Early New High German, and French) literary languages.

Abstract

Kalila waDimna had been composed first in India; it then moved across different countries, cultures, and continents. Even though this text resisted the different changes imposed by the several translations and rewritings staying close to its original version, it was subject to some cultural transformations through its history of reception in the Western culture. Our paper aims to investigate how Kalila waDimna can be considered as a medieval global narrative text. By analyzing the mobility of the “Ring Dove” tale in Kalila waDimna, we intend also to examine some aspects of medieval globalism in the fable as a global literary genre characterized by dynamic cross-cultural interactions. Therefore, the analysis will be focused on the adaptations and/or influences of the “Ring Dove” in two Eastern (Arabic and Hebrew) and three Western (Old Castilian, Early New High German, and French) literary languages.

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Contents V
  3. 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
  4. Global Inferno: Medieval Giants, Monsters, and the Breaching of the Great Barrier 99
  5. Swords as Medieval Icons and Early “Global Brands” 147
  6. Ecce! A Ninth-Century Isidorean T-O Map Labeled in Arabic 189
  7. Going Rogue Across the Globe: International Vagrants, Outlaws, Bandits, and Tricksters from Medieval Europe, Asia, and the Middle East 221
  8. Modifying Ancestral Memories in Post-Carolingian West Francia and Post-Tang Wuyue China 247
  9. Scalping Saint Peter’s Head: An Interreligious Controversy over a Punishment from Baghdad to Rome (Eighth to Twelfth Centuries) 273
  10. A Global Dialogue in al-Kindī’s “A Short Treatise on the Soul” 293
  11. Globalism in Paul of Antioch’s Letter to a Muslim Friend and Its Refutation by Ibn Taymiyya 315
  12. The Global Fable in the Middle Ages 351
  13. 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
  14. The Germanic Translations of Lanfranc’s Surgical Works as Example of Global Circulation of Knowledge 407
  15. Brick by Brick: Constructing Identity at Don Lope Fernández de Luna’s Parroquieta at La Seo 445
  16. 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
  17. The Diplomat and the Public House: Ioannes Dantiscus (1485–1548) and His Use of the Inns, Taverns, and Alehouses of Europe 485
  18. Globalism During the Reign of Queen Elizabeth I 509
  19. Between East and West: John Pory’s Translation of Leo Africanus’s Description of Africa 537
  20. 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
  21. John Dee and the Creation of the British Empire 581
  22. Eberhard Werner Happel: A Seventeenth-Century Cosmographer and Cosmopolitan 595
  23. Globalism Before Modern Globalism 613
  24. List of Illustrations 623
  25. Biographies of the Contributors 627
  26. Index 635
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