Norman Tradition and Transcultural Heritage: Exchange of Cultures in the ‘Norman’ Peripheries of Medieval Europe
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| Anteprima |
The
Normans have long been recognised as one of the most dynamic forces
within medieval western Europe. With a reputation for aggression and
conquest, they rapidly expanded their powerbase from Normandy, and by
the end of the twelfth century had established themselves in positions
of strength from England to Sicily, Antioch to Dublin. Yet, despite this
success recent scholarship has begun to question the ’Norman
Achievement’ and look again at the degree to which a single Norman
cultural identity existed across so diverse a territory. To explore this
idea further, all the essays in this volume look at questions of Norman
traditions in some of the peripheral Norman dominions. In response to
recent developments in cultural studies the volume uses the concepts of
’tradition’ and ’heritage’ to question the notion of a stable
pan-European Norman culture or identity, and instead reveals the degrees
to which Normans adopted and adapted to local conditions, customs and
requirements in order to form their own localised cultural heritage.
Divided into two sections, the volume begins with eight chapters
focusing on Norman Sicily. These essays demonstrate both the degree of
cultural intermingling that made this kingdom an extraordinary paradigm
in this regard, and how the Normans began to develop their own distinct
origin myths that diverged from those of Norman France and England. The
second section of the volume provides four essays that explore Norman
ethnicity and identity more broadly, including two looking at Norman
communities on the opposite side of Europe to the Kingdom of Sicily:
Ireland and the Scandinavian settlements in the Kievan Rus. Taken as a
whole the volume provides a fascinating assessment of the construction
and malleability of Norman identities in transcultural settings. By
exploring these issues through the tradition and heritage of the
Norman’s ’peripheral’ dominions, a much more sophisticated understanding
can be gained, not only of th
