Medieval Empires and the Culture of Competition
Subtitle: Literary Duels at Islamic and Christian Courts
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Published: 20171010
ISBN-13: 9781474425247; 9781474425254
Subjects: Spain
Description: Shows how the interactive, confrontational practice of courtly arts shaped imperial thought in the Middle Ages

A probing inquiry into medieval court struggles, this book shows the relationship between intellectual conflict and the geopolitics of empire. It examines the Persian Buyids’ takeover of the great Arab caliphate in Iraq, the counter-Crusade under Saladin, and the literature of sovereignty in Spain and Italy at the cusp of the Renaissance. The question of high culture—who best qualified as a poet, the function of race and religion in forming a courtier, what languages to use in which official ceremonies—drove much of medieval writing, and even policy itself. From the last moments of the Abbasid Empire, to the military campaign for Jerusalem, to the rise of Crusades literature in spoken Romance languages, authors and patrons took a competitive stance as a way to assert their place in a shifting imperial landscape.
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