Kim Bergqvist
I am a doctoral candidate in medieval history at the Centre for Medieval Studies in the Department of History at Stockholm University. I have been a Visiting Scholar in the Departamento de Historia, Historia del Arte y Geografía at the Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona, Spain (2012-13), the Department of Romance Studies at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY (2014), and the Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures at Columbia University in the City of New York (2016).
My dissertation project, with the working title "Politics of Aristocracy and Chivalry: Ideology and Political Identities in Narrative Sources from Castile-León and Sweden, c. 1275-1350", examines aristocratic ideology and political identity within the Castilian and the Swedish realms -during a period when the sociopolitical structure was reshaped, social groups consolidated and the aristocracy began cultivating the myth of itself as a naturally dominating class- in a comparative fashion.
My investigations are related to the dialectical relationship between literature and society, and I analyse the political language of narrative sources in order to understand how political thinking was constructed and disseminated and how political action was legitimated in these contexts.
Thematically I study chivalry and nobility, the legitimation of power through narrative, normative and historicizing strategies, and the function and political identities of the aristocracy. I consider the ideals and norms that form ideologies and how they legitimate social domination and subordination.
My approach is intended to take into account the context of production as well as the context of reception of the literary texts, particularly with the moment of inscription in focus. In other terms, I aim to acknowledge both the authorial logic and the social logic of these texts.
The use of a comparative methodology is justified by the aim of broadening and nuancing the image of medieval aristocracy in its different 'proto-national' contexts that dominates current research, to step out of the fixed historiographical frameworks and widen the perspective.
Keywords: aristocracy, ideology, political identity, legitimation of power, historiography, romances, didacticism, narrative, courtly literature, comparative history, Crónica de Castilla, Fernán Sánchez de Valladolid, Libro del caballero Zifar, don Juan Manuel, Erikskrönikan, Eufemiavisorna, Konungstyrelsen.
Apart from my dissertation, my main research interests relate to the following broad themes: the history of emotions; gender history; medieval fictionality; and the history of diplomacy (in the Middle Ages).
Supervisors: Kurt Villads Jensen and Gabriela Bjarne Larsson
Address: Stockholm University
Department of History
SE-106 91 Stockholm
SWEDEN
My dissertation project, with the working title "Politics of Aristocracy and Chivalry: Ideology and Political Identities in Narrative Sources from Castile-León and Sweden, c. 1275-1350", examines aristocratic ideology and political identity within the Castilian and the Swedish realms -during a period when the sociopolitical structure was reshaped, social groups consolidated and the aristocracy began cultivating the myth of itself as a naturally dominating class- in a comparative fashion.
My investigations are related to the dialectical relationship between literature and society, and I analyse the political language of narrative sources in order to understand how political thinking was constructed and disseminated and how political action was legitimated in these contexts.
Thematically I study chivalry and nobility, the legitimation of power through narrative, normative and historicizing strategies, and the function and political identities of the aristocracy. I consider the ideals and norms that form ideologies and how they legitimate social domination and subordination.
My approach is intended to take into account the context of production as well as the context of reception of the literary texts, particularly with the moment of inscription in focus. In other terms, I aim to acknowledge both the authorial logic and the social logic of these texts.
The use of a comparative methodology is justified by the aim of broadening and nuancing the image of medieval aristocracy in its different 'proto-national' contexts that dominates current research, to step out of the fixed historiographical frameworks and widen the perspective.
Keywords: aristocracy, ideology, political identity, legitimation of power, historiography, romances, didacticism, narrative, courtly literature, comparative history, Crónica de Castilla, Fernán Sánchez de Valladolid, Libro del caballero Zifar, don Juan Manuel, Erikskrönikan, Eufemiavisorna, Konungstyrelsen.
Apart from my dissertation, my main research interests relate to the following broad themes: the history of emotions; gender history; medieval fictionality; and the history of diplomacy (in the Middle Ages).
Supervisors: Kurt Villads Jensen and Gabriela Bjarne Larsson
Address: Stockholm University
Department of History
SE-106 91 Stockholm
SWEDEN
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Books Edited by Kim Bergqvist
Journal Articles by Kim Bergqvist
Resumen: Este artículo ofrece un análisis del lenguaje político evidente en representaciones de dos episodios históricos en la Crónica de Castilla (c. 1300): las minorías de edad de los reyes de Castilla Alfonso VIII y Enrique I. En comparación con representaciones de los mismos eventos en crónicas emparentadas del período que lo precede, un examen atento de los discursos aporta información sobre las estrategias usadas por el cronista para proponer una versión ideológicamente investida del pasado. Usamos las conclusiones sacadas de esta investigación para discutir la lucha por la hegemonía historiográfica, en relación con la lucha por el poder político entre los magnates (o ricos hombres) y la autoridad real.
Essays in Books/Edited Volumes by Kim Bergqvist
How are we then to approach the emotions of people in the Middle Ages, when they are so far away in time, and so ephemeral? Certainly we cannot be sure to reach anything more than an assumption of what this or that person may have felt in a particular situation. Nevertheless, the attitudes held towards emotive expressions and the ways in which they were interpreted are accessible to us. The shedding of tears is a constant human gesture, while its signification and cultural relevance are not. The meanings attributed to crying men and women vary according to each historical situation, with each cultural context or emotional community (to use a phrase coined by Barbara Rosenwein). As historians we need to be sensitive to the particular context in which emotional expressions were constructed.
This article examines crying, the emotions connected thereto, and the portrayal of kings as fathers and sons in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Spanish prose, in varying literary genres. The aim is to offer some reflections on the attitudes taken towards lachrymose behaviour, and to reach some insight into the distinction between the public and the private, the political and the emotional life in said context.
Resumen: Este artículo ofrece un análisis del lenguaje político evidente en representaciones de dos episodios históricos en la Crónica de Castilla (c. 1300): las minorías de edad de los reyes de Castilla Alfonso VIII y Enrique I. En comparación con representaciones de los mismos eventos en crónicas emparentadas del período que lo precede, un examen atento de los discursos aporta información sobre las estrategias usadas por el cronista para proponer una versión ideológicamente investida del pasado. Usamos las conclusiones sacadas de esta investigación para discutir la lucha por la hegemonía historiográfica, en relación con la lucha por el poder político entre los magnates (o ricos hombres) y la autoridad real.
How are we then to approach the emotions of people in the Middle Ages, when they are so far away in time, and so ephemeral? Certainly we cannot be sure to reach anything more than an assumption of what this or that person may have felt in a particular situation. Nevertheless, the attitudes held towards emotive expressions and the ways in which they were interpreted are accessible to us. The shedding of tears is a constant human gesture, while its signification and cultural relevance are not. The meanings attributed to crying men and women vary according to each historical situation, with each cultural context or emotional community (to use a phrase coined by Barbara Rosenwein). As historians we need to be sensitive to the particular context in which emotional expressions were constructed.
This article examines crying, the emotions connected thereto, and the portrayal of kings as fathers and sons in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Spanish prose, in varying literary genres. The aim is to offer some reflections on the attitudes taken towards lachrymose behaviour, and to reach some insight into the distinction between the public and the private, the political and the emotional life in said context.
I will argue that the virtue of moderation (mesura) came to assume a great deal of sociopolitical significance in this period, partly through the attempts of Alfonso X the Learned (r.1252– 1284) to implement a courtly, aristocratic knighthood, partly by noble responses such as that of Don Juan Manuel (1282–1348), and partly through the historiographical discourse on a larger scale, that staged and represented this virtue in a particular manner that was arguably much more influential than any juridical doctrine or purely didactic work.
Can we consider chronicles then to teach the management of emotions, in the likeness of mirrors of princes? I would argue that the didactic qualities inherent in medieval history writing support such a perspective. Part of the paper will be aimed at examining the significance of the cross-cultural connections between Christian and Islamic societies in medieval Iberia. Contemporary Islamic historiography will be compared to the Castilian examples, in order to discuss whether attitudes to emotions and emotional display were shared between these two cultures that had been physically adjacent during many centuries, but the difference between which – in dogma and in mentality – is often assumed to be great.
Combining the Evidence from Romance and Chronicle
In the fourteenth century, Swedish aristocracy as a social group posed a real (and imagined) threat to the power and authority of the monarch. I examine the literary evidence from the first half of the fourteenth century, analysing the means by which the authors put the figure of the king into question, and to which factors and aspects of kingship and its legitimacy these strategies were linked. These aspects include considerations of lineage and rightful rule, the ordering of society and its upkeep by acts of violence, as well as notions of masculinity. I read these strategies as expressions of aristocratic ideology; a conception of how the social world should be ordered that is constructed in these texts. My aim is to discover and explain the ideological underpinnings of the texts studied, focussing on the particular topic of questions raised around the nature of kingship. Thus, the paper engages in the socio-historical reality surrounding the production of the texts by analysing their content.
The romances were crucial to the construction of an aristocratic ideology in late medieval Sweden. These literary texts reflect a past reality that they also helped create. The main texts for this inquiry are the three early fourteenth-century Old Swedish verse romances jointly known as the Eufemiavisor: Herr Ivan (a translation of Yvain: Le chevalier au lion), Flores och Blanzeflor (Floire et Blanchefleur), and Hertig Fredrik av Normandie (original unknown). But the romances also influenced other genres of Swedish vernacular texts such as the writing of chronicles. This is particularly true of the Erikskrönika, an historical narrative that spans the preceding century before its composition in the early 1320s. Previous research has pointed out the influence of the romances on the chronicle, but not examined its importance for the political or social aspects of the narrative, explored in this paper.
Select bibliography
Primary sources
NOREEN, Erik, ed. Hertig Fredrik av Normandie. Kritisk upplaga på grundval av Codex Verelianus. Uppsala, Svenska fornskriftssällskapet, 1927. Serie 1, Svenska skrifter 163.
---, ed. Herr Ivan. Kritisk upplaga. Uppsala, Svenska fornskriftssällskapet, 1930-31. Serie 1, Svenska skrifter 164-166 (1-3).
OLSSON, Emil, ed. Flores och Blanzeflor. Kritisk upplaga. Nytryck av häft. 157 (med ett tillägg). Stockholm, Svenska fornskriftssällskapet, 1956. Serie 1, Svenska skrifter 214.
PIPPING, Rolf, ed. Erikskrönikan enligt Cod. Holm: D.2 jämte avvikande läsarter ur andra handskrifter. Nytryck av häft. 158 (med ett tillägg). Uppsala, Svenska fornskriftssällskapet, 1963. Serie 1, Svenska skrifter 231.
Secondary literature
BAMBECK, Florian, ed. and transl. Herzog Friedrich von der Normandie: der altschwedishe Ritterroman Hertig Fredrik av Normandie: Text, Übersetzung, Untersuchungen. Diss. Würzburg U, 2009. Wiesbaden, Reichert, 2009. Imagines Medii Aevi 24.
BAMPI, Massimiliano. ”Translating Courtly Literature and Ideology in Medieval Sweden: Flores och Blanzeflor.” Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 4 (2008): 1-14.
BAREFIELD, Laura D. Gender and History in Medieval English Romance and Chronicle. New York, Peter Lang Publishing, 2003. Studies in the Humanities 63.
BENGTSSON, Herman. Den höviska kulturen i Norden. En konsthistorisk undersökning. Diss. Stockholm U, 1999. Stockholm, Kungl. Vitterhets-, historie- och antikvitetsakademien, 1999. Antikvariska serien 43.
FERRARI, Fulvio. ”Literature as a Performative Act: Erikskrönikan and the Making of a Nation.” Lärdomber oc skämptan: Medieval Swedish Literature Reconsidered. Ed. Massimiliano Bampi and Fulvio Ferrari. Uppsala, Svenska fornskriftsällskapet, 2008. Serie 3, Smärre texter och undersökningar 5. 55-80.
GRIEVE, Patricia, E. Floire and Blancheflor and the European Romance. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 32.
HUNT, Tony. ”Herr Ivan Lejonriddaren”. Mediaeval Scandinavia 8 (1975): 168-186.
JANSSON, Sven-Bertil. Medeltidens rimkrönikor. Studier i funktion, stoff, form. Diss. Uppsala U, 1971. Stockholm, 1971. Studia litterarum Upsaliensia 9.
LAYHER, William. Queenship and Voice in Medieval Northern Europe. New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Queenship and Power 7.
NOREEN, Erik. Studier rörande Eufemiavisorna, Vol. 1-3. Uppsala, K. Humanistiska vetenskapssamfundet, 1923-1929.
PÉNEAU, Corinne, ed. and transl. Erikskrönika = Chronique d'Erik: première chronique rimée suédoise (première moitié du XIVe siècle). Paris, Publications de la Sorbonne, 2005. Textes et documents d’histoire médiévale 5.
REUTER, Timothy. ”Nobles and Others: The Social and Cultural Expression of Power Relations in the Middle Ages.” Nobles and Nobility in Medieval Europe: Concepts, Origins, Transformations. Ed. Anne J. Duggan. Woodbridge, Boydell Press, 2000. 85-98.
SMÅBERG, Thomas. ”Bland drottningar och hertigar - Utblickar kring riddarromaner och deras användning i svensk medeltidsforskning”. Historisk tidskrift 131.2 (2011): 197-226.
THOMPSON, John B. Studies in the Theory of Ideology. Cambridge, Polity Press, 1984.
VILHELMSDOTTER, Gisela. Riddare, bonde och biskop: studier kring tre fornsvenska dikter jämte två nyeditioner. Diss. Stockholm U, 1999. Stockholm, Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1999. Stockholm Studies in History of Literature 42.
Much research has been put into studying how official chronicles and histories proposed proto-national ideologies and spread monarchic or dynastic propaganda, i.e. the untruthfulness of historiographical works. What interests me is how these developments in research can be used in the analysis of un-official histories: those written not as a dynastic project or commissioned by a king, but for other purposes.
I consider the ways in which aristocratic or noble identity and ideology were constructed and formulated in these texts, how aristocratic superiority and privileges were legitimated and defended in the contemporary discourse, at a time when the nobility was in a phase of consolidation, and society in a state of turmoil. What role(s) did the nobles claim in society (not least in relation to monarchic power), and how did they separate themselves from other social strata? In viewing these areas as European peripheries, in my dissertation I would like to discover how they relate to the main European trends that are visible in earlier research on this topic, and of course also give attention to the distinctive particularities.
I will discuss the content of the aristocratic ideology, and how it manifests itself in these historiographical texts, as well as in which ways, and by using which specific arguments, legitimizing practice takes place. Questions will concern historical writing: how the writers used past events to further their arguments; as well as narrative exposition.
Selected bibliography
Primary sources
JUAN Manuel & Blecua, José Manuel (1982). Obras completas. T. 1, Madrid: Gredos.
PIPPING, Rolf (ed.) (1963). Erikskrönikan enligt Cod. Holm: D.2 jämte avvikande läsarter ur andra handskrifter. Uppsala.
Secondary literature
BENITO-VESSELS, Carmen (1994). ”La prosa histórica de don Juan Manuel: La Crónica abreviada y el Libro de las armas”, in: Actas del III Congreso de la Asociación Hispánica de Literatura Medieval (Salamanca, 3 al 6 de octubre de 1989). T. 1. Salamanca: Biblioteca Española del siglo XV, pp. 181-186.
DÍEZ DE REVENGA, Francisco Javier (1982). ”El Libro de las armas de don Juan Manuel: algo más que un libro de historia”, in: Abad, Francisco (ed.), Don Juan Manuel: VII centenario. Murcia: Univ. de Murcia, Academia Alfonso X el Sabio, pp. 103-116.
FERRARI, Fulvio (2008), ”Literature as a performative act: Erikskrönikan and the making of a nation”, in: Bampi, Massimiliano & Ferrari, Fulvio (eds.), Lärdomber oc skämptan: medieval Swedish literature reconsidered. Uppsala: Svenska fornskriftsällskapet, pp. 55-80.
GRABOWSKA, James A. (2006). The challenge to Spanish nobility in the fourteenth century: the struggle for power in Don Juan Manuel's Conde Lucanor, 1335. Lewiston, N.Y.: E. Mellen Press.
ORDUNA, Germán (1982). “El Libro de las armas: clave de la justicia de Don Juan Manuel”, Cuadernos de Historia de España 47-48, pp. 230-268.
PÉNEAU, Corinne (ed.) (2005). Erikskrönika = Chronique d'Erik : première chronique rimée suédoise (première moitié du XIVe siècle). Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne.
SKINNER, Patricia (ed.) (2009). Challenging the boundaries of medieval history: the legacy of Timothy Reuter. Turnhout: Brepols
THOMPSON, John B. (1984). Studies in the theory of ideology. Cambridge: Polity P.
VILHELMSDOTTER, Gisela (1999). Riddare, bonde och biskop: studier kring tre fornsvenska dikter jämte två nyeditioner. Diss. Stockholm: Univ.
COMpARATIVE RECONqUESTS
Our aim is to examine the conceptualization and practice of reconquest from a comparative viewpoint, considering how, in various circumstances and geographical situations, the terminology of reconquest is deployed. We seek to
expore terminology and depictions of reconquests which make implicit and explicit claims in returning what has become other to rejoin what was before undivided and the same. We would thus welcome papers not only on the Iberian reconquista as traditionally understood, but on dreams, plans and execution of the reconquest of Jerusalem, Constantinople, al-Andalus, the Baltic, the Northern Kingdoms, ... indeed, anywhere where political actors seek to assert control over other’s space by claiming that they are, in fact, re-asserting former control.
We will look for three sessions, covering the following areas:
Reconquest as narrative
Reconquest as ideal
Reconquest as praxis
Abstracts of papers should be sent to "historiansofmedievaliberia@gmail.com" no later than 29 September 2016.
Kim Bergqvist
Kurt Villads Jensen
Anthony John Lappin
we shall celebrate a symposium with the theme "Enemies and Friends" in Stockholm on March 14-16, 2016. This theme should be understood widely, and it is intended that it embraces courtly cultures, diplomacy, shifting alliances and military and social conflict; rituals of friendship, signs of enmity; patronage and exclusion, exile and execution; odium theologicum, polemic, competition, and coexistence within and between religious communities; charitas and supernatural threats.
Confirmed keynote speakers are:
Professor Simon Barton (University of Exeter)
Assistant Professor Maria João Violante Branco (Universidade Nova de Lisboa)
Professor Simon Doubleday (Hofstra University, NY)
Professor Maribel Fierro (Centro Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Madrid)
We accept short proposals for 20-minute papers, containing an abstract (of about 300 words) and a brief CV, or proposals for sessions containing three such papers. These should be sent by October 30, 2015 to historiansofmedievaliberia@gmail.com.
The preferred language of the symposium will be English.
Notification of acceptance of proposed sessions and papers will be given on November 30, 2015.
Presenters will be invited to submit their papers for evaluation for a publication of the proceedings edited by the organisers.
We shall discuss bishops and/as canonists, bishops and pastoral obligations, bishops and monasteries for the early medieval period; for the central middle ages, bishops and/in the crusades, and papal legates, and bad behaviour; and for the end of the middle ages, bishops and/in the court, and/in armies and, finally, the last three bishops of Uppsala.
We are pleased to note that we have, as speakers, one Angle, one Celt, one Celtiberian, one Dane, three (!) Finns, one Geat (Western), one Jute, and one from the lands of the Rus.
The Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature is pleased to announce that it will award up to ten travel and accommodation bursaries for graduate students, based in the UK and elsewhere in Europe, who wish to attend the conference. If you wish to apply, please email the Executive Officer (ssmll@history.ox.ac.uk) as soon as possible.
The Conference will take place on 3rd December 2015 at the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquity, Stockholm Sweden. Find more details and register here: http://mediumaevum.modhist.ox.ac.uk/dayconference
Vera lex historiae? is constituted by contributions that reveal the variety of evental strategies by which historical truth was constructed in late antiquity and the earlier middle ages, and the range of procedures by which such narratives were established first as being historical and then as ‘true’ histories. This is not only a matter of narrative strategies, but also habitus, ways of living and acting in the world that feed on and back into the commemoration and re-enactment of the past by communities and by individuals. In doing this, we hope to recover something of the plurality of modes of preserving and reenacting the past available in late antiquity and the earlier middle ages which we pass by because of preconceived notions of what constitutes history-writing.