Historiography and Identity VI: Competing Narratives of the Past in Central and Eastern Europe, c. 1200 -c. 1600 (Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages)

Description

The volume discusses narratives of identification in late Medieval eastern central Europe written in Latin as well as in various vernaculars emerging as the new political languages in the time. The volume discusses Central European and Eastern Central European historiographies of the High and Late Middle Ages. It deals with histories written in a time which brought about a profound differentiation of medieval societies in these regions. As new social classes achieved economic and political power, the demand for reassuring identifications grew more pressing. Narratives of the past were tailored specifically for distinct social groups, often using vernacular languages instead of the universal language of elite education, Latin. The volume pays attention to the interplay between languages and focuses on the strategies that individual works developed in order to balance the many alternative modes of identification. Filling a significant scholarly gap, the volume offers important insights into narratives of identification written in Latin and in the various vernaculars emerging as the new political languages of the period. Front Matter Pavlína Rychterová. Introduction Paweł Żmudzki. The Terms ‘Polans’, ‘Poles’, ‘Poland’, and their Historiographical Context in Medieval Poland and Rus’ János M. Bak. People, Realm, and Dynasty in the Fourteenth Century — Chronica de gestis Hungarorum Jacek Banaszkiewicz. Master Vincent and his Making of the Oldest History of the Lechites-Poles Matthias Meyer. Narrating for Specific Communities? The Case of the Österreichische Chronik von den 95 Herrschaften Pavlína Cermanová. How to Create a Hussite Identity? The Hussite Chronicle by Lawrence of Březová Ryszard Grzesik. The Hungarian-Polish Chronicle as the Polish-Hungarian Perspective on the Earliest Hungarian and Polish History Pavlína Rychterová. The Chronicle of the So-Called Dalimil and its Concept of Czech Identity Václav Bok. Literary Reminiscences in the Characterization of the Bohemian King Wenceslas II (1283–1305) and his Contemporaries in Ottokar from the Geul’s Styrian Rhymed Chronicle Václav Žůrek and Pavlína Rychterová. Slavonic and Czech Identity in the Chronicon Bohemiae by Přibík Pulkava of Radenín Vlastimil Brom. The Rhymed German Translation of the Chronicle of the So-Called Dalimil and its Strategies of Identification Rimvydas Petrauskas. From Dynasty to Noble Identity: The Development of the Historical Tradition in the Chronicles of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries Przemysław Wiszewski. Versus Lubenses: Ethnic Differences, Political Identification, and the Cohesion of Social Groups in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Silesia Christina Lutter. Affective Strategies for Narrating Community: Jans (the) ‘Enikel’’s Fürstenbuch Piotr Węcowski. Historical Memory and Local Identity: Jan Długosz and the Church in Cracow Marcus Wüst. The Chronicles of the Teutonic Order in Prussia in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries Martin Haltrich. Annals, Chronicles, and Saints: Monastic Narratives in Early Austrian Historiography and their Perception by Local Elites Jörg Sonntag. Adam: A German? The Ethnic Element in Swabian Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century Back Matter